Is a Sexless Marriage a Sinful Marriage?

So one of the things a lot of couples struggle with, a lot of Christian couples struggle with, is marriage and intimacy within marriage. Does God care about how often married couples are having sex?

The answer may surprise you. So obviously this is a very sensitive topic and one which is actually unfortunate. We don't talk about it a lot in the church. This is a shame, I'd say, because according to scripture, sexual intimacy isn't taboo, but something that should be celebrated within a Christian marriage. Maybe you've heard the fireplace illustration, marriage is the fireplace where intimacy is supposed to burn.

If you light the fire anywhere else in the house, you run the risk of burning the whole thing down, or something like that. There's an entire book of the Bible that highlights a positive view of sexuality called the Song of Solomon. It's an erotic love poem that describes the blessedness of marital intimacy. You also have proverbs like Proverbs chapter 5 verses 18 and 19. So look, the Bible isn't shy or prudish when it comes to sex, but it does condemn sexual immorality. And frankly, our culture is quickly learning about how devastating the quote unquote sexual revolution has been on families and on young women especially. You think of things like the Me Too movement and what that shows about a culture of sexual perversion and sexual abuse.

Sex outside of marriage is dangerous, but so is a sexless marriage. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians in the 1850s, he was, among other things, responding to a series of questions that they had asked him. He received a letter from the Corinthians sometime earlier, and he responds to their questions. And one of the questions that the Corinthians asked Paul was about whether or not they should abstain from sex within marriage.

Here's the text. Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. When it comes to marriage, according to the law, there are certain legal obligations that you have towards your husband or your wife. Once you're married, certain duties.

In California where I live, the family code emphasizes the fiduciary nature of the marriage relationship, in essence saying that legally spouses have a kind of business partnership. According to God's word, spousal duties extend beyond fiduciary obligations to include things like the sacrificial debt of love that husbands owe their wives, nurturing, providing for and protecting their brides. Paul says wives similarly owe their husbands a debt of love, submission and respect.

He talks about this in Ephesians 5. So many of our problems in marriage can be traced back to an unwillingness to give each other the love and respect God calls us to extend. But here in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says we also have a responsibility of intimacy toward each other, which if we neglect, can be spiritually detrimental. This is what he means by giving conjugal rights.

And note that Paul doesn't say it goes just one way. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband, verse 3. Then Paul explains why this is the case, quote, for the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

His language of mutual authority would have probably raised eyebrows in the patriarchal world in which Paul lived. It's not that wives need to give themselves to their husbands because the husband owns them. It's that both spouses ought to give themselves to each other because, as Genesis says, the two have become one flesh. I think it's fair to say that most people would agree that married couples owe each other something. It's codified in our legal system. And if we were to come up with a list of what those things are that husbands and wives owe each other, we'd probably as Christians say things like love, respect, forgiveness, support, etc.

And those things would all be true. And frankly, they're also things that we owe all people to some degree. But Paul homes in on something that husbands and wives give each other that they don't give to anyone else. Paul says there is a kind of debt of physical intimacy. And of course, this is an exclusive right within the marriage.

You don't owe this to anyone outside of your marriage. In fact, the Bible says that it's strictly forbidden. Now Paul's words shouldn't ever be used as a justification for abuse. The spouse who demands intimacy on the basis of Paul's words here is failing to give the debt of love which marriage calls for.

How strange to demand something even while failing to give what you yourself owe. If husbands are to love their wives like Christ loved the church, then they do this by putting their spouse's needs before their own. Philippians chapter 2 verse 4. But that also shouldn't be used as an excuse for a sexless marriage.

And it seems like this is something that was happening in Corinth. Couples, probably because of a theological asceticism that had crept into the church, were beginning to withhold sex from each other. And Paul says that's very unwise. Again in verse 5, Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Sex is a way that we can serve each other in marriage and it's also a way of guarding against immorality.

Paul is concerned that the Corinthian abstinence will give an open door to temptation. So he says, look, don't withhold yourselves from each other without talking about it. Here's Paul 2,000 years ago saying, one of the most important things you can do to help your intimacy out is have open and honest conversations with your spouse about it. And yet there are many Christian couples that feel like this is a conversation they can't have with each other. Healthy marriages are marriages where trust and love make way for intimacy. Paul doesn't say, here's how often married couples should be having sex, but he does say it's possible for it to be too infrequent. Don't withhold yourselves unless you've talked about it and even then use the time abstaining for things like prayer, Paul said. If our attitude is one of being closed off, withholding, not willing to communicate about this subject with our spouse, then it may be that we are defrauding them of the kind of love and intimacy that Paul says is exclusive to marriage and that leads to marital malfunction. It's also important to recognize that there are different seasons in marriage and sometimes because of that intimacy just isn't going to be a thing maybe like it was at a different point or a different season in marriage. There are things like sickness, mental health struggles. You think of just seasons of having children, giving birth, those types of things.

It's important for us to be sensitive there to those particular seasons and recognize that that's okay, that there isn't anything wrong in that situation. This is why we need to be communicating and talking and this is why you ought to also be the kind of spouse who is quick to listen, sensitive to the needs of your partner and willing to say, okay, I also understand that you're going through something difficult right now or a hard time and so I love you and want to serve you in that. At a bare minimum, Paul's words suggest that this is something we're talking about as married couples. Healthy marriages can serve as a strong tower against Satan's enticements and to the degree that we're unwilling to do the work that it takes to cultivate that kind of marriage, to the degree we withhold from our spouses the things God says we owe them like love, nourishment, care, respect, submission and even intimacy, there's something out of joint in the relationship.

Here's the good news. It doesn't have to be that way. It may not be easy but through prayer, humility, openly communicating with your spouse to understand their needs, this area of frustration for many can end up being a great blessing as God intended it to be. We can only do what we do with the support of our generous donors. Our donors support us not primarily because they know our content and programs are biblically faithful or because they trust that we're good at what we do.

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