Navigating Sexual Ethics in Marriage: God's Design

Sep 27, 2021

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Fantasizing sin is sin. Playing out a situation or behavior in your mind because of its pleasure which would be sinful, a sinful situation or sinful behavior if you did it outwardly, is sin in your mind. And if this is true for fantasies, then it is all the more true that play-acting sin is sin. [00:02:12]

Pretending to do something which if you did it when not pretending is sin, that pretending is sin. I say this because of Matthew 5:27, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks upon a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." [00:02:50]

In other words, Jesus' standard of holiness is not merely a standard of bodily deeds but also of mental delights. If you pursue a pleasure in your mind which is unlawful for your body, you are sinning. What is sin? Think of it. Sin is the heart's preference for anything above God and his ways. [00:03:14]

Demanding or coercing unnatural and bizarre sexual acts when they displease the partner is sin. Romans 12:10 says, "Outdo one another in showing honor." Philippians 2:3 says, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others, like the wife, more significant than yourselves." [00:04:55]

All of that leads to the conclusion that in the marriage bed, the other person's desires and delights and disapprovals and displeasures are as important as our own, indeed more so. To press for your own private bodily satisfaction at the cost of the spouse's displeasure is a failure to honor. [00:05:28]

If you pursue a sexual act or an imagined sexual situation because it is more stimulating, scintillating, pleasurable because it is forbidden, then you are living out the way of the fool, and you are embodying the principle of bondage. Proverbs 9:17 says to him who lacks sense, folly says, "Stolen water is sweet." [00:06:28]

If you pursue forbidden water because its prohibition makes it sweeter, you're a fool. Paul got at the principle like this: he said in Romans 7, "If it had not been for the law, I would have not known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.'" [00:06:59]

If sexual desire has become so prominent in the way you pursue satisfaction in life that you must push the limits of sexual conventions in order to be a joyful and contented person, your god and your purpose for living have become too small. Bodily appetites become gods when God diminishes. [00:08:03]

Paul says in Second Corinthians 3:18, "Beholding the glory," now that's an infinitely beautiful thing he's just mentioned, "beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed into his image from one degree of glory to the next." In other words, we need a big, beautiful, glorious, transcendent, majestic vision of God. [00:08:38]

Finally, I would say to men especially, if you hope to have a thrilling, joyful, mutually satisfying sexual relationship with your wife for the next 50 years, you absolutely will not have it by demanding or expecting ever more bizarre exploits. Rather, you will have it by devoting 99% of your effort to love your wife well outside the bedroom. [00:09:19]

So that she finds you somebody she really desires. I don't promise paradise; there's too much brokenness in the world. But I do promise you, you will not find 50 years of mutual pleasure on the path of play-acted perversion. Wow, that ends with a punch. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for joining us today. [00:10:00]

You can ask questions, even sensitive ones like these. Send them anonymously if you wish. Just mention that you want it to remain anonymous in the emails, and you can send those to us from the link at our online home at desiringgod.org forward slash ask Pastor John. [00:10:20]

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