Does God Care Who I Sleep With?

When you gave your life to Christ as a high school girl, what was like the first question you wanted answers to now that you're a follower of Christ? So I was 16 years old and I didn't go to a church then because I was brand new in my faith. I didn't grow up in a home that went to church. And the question was, is it okay to have sex before you get married?

And I really wanted to know because I wanted to obey Jesus. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. When you gave your life to Christ as a high school girl, what was like the first question? Is it okay to have sex before you get married?

You weren't the only one. I know that I came to Christ in college. That was one of the questions I had. I think it's still a question. The culture's views on sexuality dominate our thinking, and you wonder, okay, what is God's view? And does God care?

Yeah. And so, I mean, I had no idea. There's a book literally called Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? And we've got the author of that book with us today, Sam Albury. We are so glad you're going to be here to answer our question. Sam, welcome to Family Life Today. It's good to be with you.

Thanks for having me. I'm guessing you know this as well, but as an author and a speaker, and you speak all around the world and written all kinds of different books, but I'm sure this question is something you have heard many times. What does God think about human sexuality and single sexuality? So obviously, the title of your book is Does God Care Who I Sleep With?

That's my first question. Does God care who we sleep with? He does. God is not silent on these things. Jesus has things to say on human sexuality and sexual ethics, and we would expect him to care about this issue if we care about it. Why would he not be concerned with something that means so much to us? And the good news is actually God cares about who we sleep with because he cares about the people doing the sleeping. He cares about us. He cares about every aspect of our life and especially something this intimate and personal to us. So he's not uninvolved.

Yeah. And it is easy to think because I know when I came to Christ, again, I'm a college student, the guy who led me to Christ sat down with me. And again, it was like Ann said, one of my first questions was, what does the Bible say about sexuality, especially as a single man? And when I heard that, the answer was, all I heard was, God says no. God says no.

I don't know why he says no. It didn't sort of jive with me as like, somebody has to help me understand why would God say something like that? So help me help our listeners understand, does God say no and why does God say no? He says no to some things, but he doesn't say no to the totality of our whole experience of sexuality. And you know, there have been Christians certainly over the years who've given the impression that the only message scripture has on sex is the message of no. So I can understand some people having that impression at times that the church has not been sort of biblically balanced on this. But you know, sex was God's idea, not ours. He came up with the idea of it.

We didn't discover this behind his back. And it's part of his gift to us in creation. It's designed to be in the right context, it's designed to be a wonderful thing. So the Bible has a positive vision for human sexuality, but that positive vision also has important guardrails. And whenever the Bible says no to something, a good question to ask ourselves is what is the good thing that prohibition is protecting for us?

I don't know if it was Chesterton or somebody else who once said before you pull down a fence, find out why it was put there in the first place. And there are various prohibitions of different kinds of sexual behavior, even different kinds of sexual thinking in the Bible. And we need to understand the positive vision for human sexuality that God gives us if we're going to understand why there are certain things he says that we shouldn't do. And the church hasn't done a great job of showing the beauty and the biblical side of this area, I don't think. And you've talked about that in your book.

Share a little bit about that, of just the history of this in the church. We've got this wrong, I think, in, you know, different ways, the pendulum swings back and forth. There are other times when we've kind of so prized celibacy that we've sort of made people feel unspiritual for getting married, and that would be one mistake. There are other times when we've, again, we've sounded very, very prudish and as though even talking about sex in any context is somehow unseemly or improper.

And at times, as I said earlier, we've focused on the negatives without really unpacking or even noticing the positives. What is sex designed, how is it designed to be a gift to us? And how does that design then make sense of the various, you know, restrictions that the Bible does put on it? So we do need to be careful. I remember reading about a Christian leader in the Middle Ages, Philip Yancey, talks about this in one of his books, who basically said that Christians shouldn't have sex on, I'm doing this off the top of my head now, but it was something like on Sundays because it's the Lord's Day, then on Tuesdays out of, you know, memory of Mary on Fridays because Jesus died on a Friday, on Thursdays because of some other reason.

And I think he left two nights a week where it was okay. But again, it seems to be one of those things where even within an appropriate biblical context like marriage, the message still seemed to be, well, you know, I suppose if you really have to, then you can, but please, please don't. So again, we've kind of at times treated it as if, well, it's an unfortunate necessity if you're going to have kids, you do need to have sex. But we sort of treated it as a sort of a bad thing that you kind of have to sully yourself with at certain times if you're going to be people who have children, rather than seeing it as a good thing in and of itself. So, and I think we're at a different stage now where with the cultural pressures we find, it's either too easy for pastors just not to talk about this at all, and for parents not to talk about it, in which case, all the thinking and discipling is being done by our world rather than by the word. Or else there's the danger that we kind of accommodate to the cultural pressures and go with the flow and be permissive of things that the Bible actually prohibits. So it's an area where we need to go as far as the Bible goes and no further and no less, but also be mindful of doing so for the reasons the Bible gives us.

Not just that we know where the boundaries are, but that we know what the purpose is as well. Well, maybe you can help us out with the purpose a little bit. One of the things I'm sure you're familiar with, Family Life has a what we call Weekend to Remember marriage conference all around the country.

In fact, I would even say to a listener right now, those are back in operation. We had to sort of close those down because of COVID, but this fall and next spring, we're back. If you want to sign up for a Weekend to Remember, go to familylife.com and you can pick your city and go there. But one of the things we talk about in the Weekend is God's design for married sexuality and human sexuality. It's interesting that you quote Yancey talking about how they couldn't have sex on this day and that day. We sort of have fun in this talk and usually say, you know, God's design for a married couple is to have sex on the days that start with the letter T, Tuesday and Thursday and today, tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday.

It's one of those fun little jokes. You know, when you're talking about sex, you sort of got to have some humor in there. But in some sense, that little joke isn't too far from God's design for human sexuality in a married covenant, right? If our listener understand, okay, if God designed this, what was his purpose? Yeah, I think broadly speaking, there are three purposes we see in the Bible for sex within the right context.

One is obviously procreation. We see that in Genesis 1, we're to multiply and fill the earth and that the reason for that is God has made us in his image and he wants that image to spread around the world. So that's the most obvious purpose for sex. And in Genesis 2, it talks about the two becoming one flesh and so there's a sense of sex being for the deepening of the union, a way of kind of expressing and deepening that sense of unity between the husband and wife. And then a broader purpose we see as the Bible unfolds is we discover that marriage in general and we can presume the joy of sex within that context together point to the ultimate bliss of our union with Jesus. As Paul talks to husbands and wives in Ephesians 5, for example, at one point he says, listen, I'm actually talking about Christ in the church.

That's what this is ultimately all about. And we see that throughout the whole Bible, this amazing theme that God is not just the all-powerful being in the sky, but he's actually a husband. Jesus comes to this earth and among other things calls himself the bridegroom. And so we realize that God is embedded within kind of human nature and human culture, this idea of a covenant relationship between a man and a woman that is actually embedded there to reflect the kind of God he is and what it is he's doing in the universe, which is making a bride for his son, Jesus. So marriage has that purpose as well. And for all three of those purposes, therefore, actually it requires marriage to be between one man and one woman. And that becomes the context in which sex is designed to fulfill its purpose. It's meant to be a form of self-giving and therefore needs to be within a context where it's safe to give the whole of who you are to somebody else exclusively and permanently, which is why it's reserved for the covenant of marriage.

So those to me seem to be the main purposes. I'm thinking back to myself when I was 16, you were 19, but I thought, you know, nobody ever talked about that. I'm new in my faith. And I think a lot of parents are thinking, how do I talk to my kids about this when the culture is bombarding them with saying, yes, why wouldn't you have sex with anyone, especially our culture will say parents will even show this on TV.

Like as long as you love them, that's when it's okay. And so here we are as Christian parents wanting to give a biblical mindset worldview. This is what the Bible says. So Sam, take us, think of Dave and I as 16 year old and 19 year old Dave.

I had hair then. What would you say like out of love and out of God's word, how would you teach us? You know, and I'm thinking of all the parents listening like, yes, please help us know how to communicate this to our kids.

Yeah. It's such a, an important question and there's, there's not one, I'm sure it's not the kind of thing where there's one magic formula that will work in, in every context. I also think aspects of this conversation need to happen earlier on. I don't think we need to get into talking about sex specifically with younger kids, but I think we can talk about marriage and why marriage has the particular shape it does earlier in life because then that will provide the framework within which some of those sexual dos and don'ts that we find in scripture will then make more and more sense. So I think there's, this is part of a sort of an ongoing discussion, even from a very young age about what marriage is and means and points to.

But I'd say to the 16 year old, and I was converted when I turned 18, so not, not much later than, than you would have been. I think I want to show people that, that God has designed sex to be a good thing. It's a gift of creation. It's God's wedding present and it's designed to work beautifully and powerfully within the context of marriage. I've, I don't know who came, first came up with this, but I've heard sex likened to fire in the right context in a fireplace.

Fire is, is life-giving, it warms the whole house. It's just a wonderful, joyful thing to have in your presence. In the wrong context, it burns the whole place down and sex is that powerful that in the right context it can be a huge blessing, life-giving, life-affirming, even life kind of creating. In the wrong context, it can be incredibly destructive.

God has designed it to be that powerful. And so I'd want to talk about how part of God's purpose for sex is to bring about that one flesh union. It is designed to unite and knit two people together at the very deepest level, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, physically, and it's the kind of union that is, that once created is not designed to be undone and can't be undone without extreme pain, without actually ripping part of yourself off as well. And therefore it's, there is pain in having to wait for the right context, for sure. The pain of experiencing sexual longings that you don't feel you can yet fulfill. But the pain of misusing sex can be far, far greater. I've been in pastoral ministry long enough, a lot of that time my pastoral ministry was with university students, and seeing that the fallout of, you know, hastily entered into sexual relationships. You know, God knows us, he made us, he knows what works best for us, and there's kindness in all of his ways.

He's not there with a big stick giving us rules just to see if we can comply or not. These are kind instructions from the creator and we only end up damaging ourselves if we disregard what he says. So, and I think the other thing that is important to say, when I was kind of first converted and this was in the early 90s, the message I heard wasn't much more than sex is for marriage. Which is true.

But it's not the whole truth. And if sex outside marriage is a sin, it doesn't necessarily mean that all sex and any sex within marriage isn't. Because again, I hadn't been taught that sex is meant to be a form of self-giving. And therefore, even within marriage, it's possible to have sex that is about self-gratification rather than about self-giving. So that there are lots of things here that I hadn't been taught. And again, we just weren't talking about this much at that time.

Yeah. And I was never taught anything beyond the, no, you know, it's like God says no before marriage outside of marriage and no one, it's like the culture's view seemed better. Like it can't be that big a deal.

It's not, you know, life threatening. So why is it such a big deal to not have sex? So answer that a little bit. What are we not knowing or learning or hearing from the culture about why would God say no? Obviously he's trying to protect us from something, but we don't understand what is he trying to protect us from?

I'm, I'm in love with this woman. It's no big deal whether we get married or not. That's what I hear the culture saying. So help us understand if God says no, there must be a big, several purposes why he says no. Can you help us understand why would God say no?

Yeah, no, it's, it's such a good question. And I think the reason is because if, if it's designed to be a way of, of mutual self-giving at the most deep level that can happen between two human beings, then you need to know you're ready for that and that the other person is ready for that because that, that's an irreversible step to take. And part of the issue we have in, in our, our culture, and it's, it's been like this for I'm sure many, many decades, is we're trying to find a way of experience sexual gratification without having to have the commitment of my entire life being given to somebody else. And so we're trying to withhold from someone what is meant to be given to them included within the act of sex. It's designed to be a way of, of giving the whole of who you are to somebody else. So when we try and have the sex bit without the commitment bit, it's actually a, I would say it's a form of theft. We're trying to use someone else's sexuality for our own pleasure and gratification, but we're not willing to give that person what the sex acts is designed to be a kind of communication of our giving.

So we're withholding something. So you know, the question is not do you both love each other, but are you, is that person worth the rest of your life? And if they are, tell them that, make that covenant, make that commitment. That's why marriage is, is not just covenantal, but it's publicly covenantal because that's the only context in which it is safe to fully give all that you are to someone else exclusively. To try to have a sexual relationship outside of that context is to put yourself in an extremely vulnerable position where in one sense you're giving your heart to someone without really knowing if they're planning to stick around or not. There was a really weird Tom Cruise movie about 20 years ago called Vanilla Sky, came out in the early 2000s. And in the movie, Tom Cruise's character has a one night stand with Cameron Diaz's character and later in the movie she catches up with him and challenges him. And she says to him, when you sleep with someone, your body makes promises, even if you don't. And I love that line in a, you know, a secular movie.

It speaks a lot of truth. When you have sex with someone, your body makes promises, even if you don't. Sex is designed to express covenant love and covenant commitment. And so to try to have it outside of that context is to go against the grain of, of how it's designed to work. And it's going to cause short term pleasure and long term pain. Maybe not for you, but perhaps profoundly for the other person.

I so relate to that. I'm thinking of Howard Hendricks, who is a Dallas prof and teacher, author. We heard him in his 80s. We were in a question answer time with some friends and somebody asked him, Howard, what's sex like in your 80s? And we're thinking, who would ask them this question?

I don't really want to know. Yeah. I love Howard Hendricks. He really shaped a lot of our thinking and without even a second, he said, oh, it's the best it's ever been. And we're like, what? And it was so interesting because he said, you know, until you've been married over 15 years, you think that sex is all about the physical. It's just the union of the bodies. He said, sex, when you grow older, when you understand who God is and why he created sex, you realize it's a union of your souls together. It's so much more than physical intimacy.

It's that union of every part of your soul. And I'll never forget, I kind of sat back in my seat and I thought I still have no idea. I think I was in my 40s at that time, but I was, I was recalling I've had sexual abuse. Our family wasn't very affectionate in any way. And so the only type of affection that I had was sexual affection. And so then I was promiscuous later on. And so I felt, oh, this is a way to give my love away and to receive love.

And yet I felt emptier than I had ever felt in my life. And I felt again, so used just as sexual abuse made me feel used. And I thought before knowing Jesus, like what kind of a God would stop me from wanting to express my love in a physical way with another person. And what I've come to realize, oh, it's a loving God who wants to protect me, who wants to protect my heart, my soul, my body.

And I'm thinking of so many of us have had abuse in some way sexually. And there's a Father that loves us, that wants to restore us and can restore us. The world is saying, no, just just be free.

But freedom comes from Jesus more than anywhere else that I have found. Yeah. Yeah. So, Sam, as you hear that, how would you respond to a listener that maybe has a similar experience to what Ann was saying? They've been hurt in this area or they've given themselves away not knowing what you shared. They have a soul involved here. There's a much more than physical and they're wanting to do it God's way, you know, from now on.

What would you say to them? I would say that you are not alone in feeling that way. Jesus says all of us are broken in our sexuality. We've all misused our own sexuality and that of other people. And it means that he's come to be good news for sexually broken people.

Yes. He's come to be good news for people who've misused others and hurt and harmed others sexually and he's come to be good news for those who've been abused, those who've been taken advantage of. And if he's not good news for sexually broken people, he's not good news for anyone. So we need him to be good news in this area of life. And it's never too late for us to come to him. This is his speciality and we may feel that, you know, there's too many years of sexual mess in our lives, too much baggage that we don't even begin to comprehend, but that's his thing.

That's what he does. You just can't out mess him, you know, where Romans 5 says, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. And some of us may feel as though, well, there's got to be a limit to quite how much he can deal with and I'm sure I'm past that limit. And Jesus is saying, actually, in the kindest possible way, you're not that special.

He is more than able. There is more grace in him than there is sin in us. And it's often our sexual sin that feels kind of uniquely shameful, again, because this is an area that is meant to, in the right context, is meant to positively involve every area of life. As I was saying, it's a union of souls, which is why the misuse of sex can harm every area of life.

So he's wonderful good news. I think it's appropriate to say that there was a sexual dimension to the humiliation and abuse of Christ before he died. He was stripped naked. He was sexually exposed in order to be humiliated. So we want to be careful with the language of Jesus being a victim. He wasn't a victim in the sense that this was completely out of his control.

He voluntarily went through those things for us. But it means in the language of Hebrews 4, he's not unable to sympathize with those who've been sexually exposed or humiliated or in any other way kind of abused by others. He knows what the pains of this life are like.

So that makes him uniquely qualified to understand. And the other thing I love coming back to is Jesus saying that a bruised reed he will not break. So we can trust our most tender bruises to Jesus. And we can find in him a Savior who is both incredibly powerful, but also incredibly gentle. So we can come to him with our greatest vulnerabilities, our greatest hurts. And we can know that he will be tender and merciful with us. We come to him at our most broken, our most messy, our most needy.

We don't need to tidy ourselves up first because if we could tidy ourselves up, we wouldn't really need him in the first place. We live today in a culture that has come to view God's perspective on human sexuality as restrictive and even punitive, when in reality, God's plan for our sexuality is meant for our thriving. And yet all of us are broken people when it comes to the area of sexuality.

Many of us have scars that we bring into our relationship with us. And author and speaker Sam Albury does a wonderfully helpful job of pointing us back to God's design and the goodness of God's design for sexuality. He's written a book called Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? That is a book that can be shared with those who are wondering, why does it matter?

Why is it important? The culture says who you sleep with is not a big deal. God says it should be one person for a lifetime.

Let me encourage you, if you have questions about this subject, or if you know someone who's wrestling with this, order a copy of Sam Albury's book, Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? You can order it online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again our website familylifetoday.com.

The number to call is 1-800-358-6329, 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Sam Albury's book again is called Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? You know, addressing subjects like this and pointing people back to what the Bible teaches about marriage, family, relationships, sexuality, gender, these kinds of things, this is at the heart of what we're all about as a ministry.

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You can do that online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. We look forward to hearing from you and we appreciate you. And we hope you can join us back tomorrow, Sam Albury will be here again. We're going to continue looking at God's good plan for us when it comes to marriage and sexuality and explore the question, why does God care who I sleep with? Hope you can be here for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.