God spent the precious, sinless blood of his one and only Son not just to forgive our sin, but to keep us from it. He wanted us to see the thorns in his head, the open flesh in his back, and the nails in his wrists, and run like crazy away from sin. When we begin to realize that we will never be able to grasp the fullness of the love God revealed in Jesus’s wounds, in his agony, in his last breath, we will dread doing anything to make that price look cheap, like a clearance-rack redemption. When we commit sexual immorality, we discount the cross.

What Sex Says

But when we choose to pursue purity and postpone intimacy, Jesus’s sacrifice looks costly — like our most expensive and prized possession.

When we do not push boundaries, we announce the priceless weight of every one of his wounds. When we keep our clothes on and our hands from wandering, we celebrate the immeasurable mercy he carried on a back destroyed with lashes. When we wait in dating, we declare again that he really is risen from the dead and reigning in heaven. Our sexual purity will either make the cross look real and valuable, or it won’t.

With our eyes happily fixed on Jesus, the once-for-all sacrifice for our sins, we can say with Paul, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed, but that with full courage, now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by [singleness] or by [marriage]” (Philippians 1:20). Looking to the cross and all Jesus paid to make us his own, we trust God for the grace and courage to resist our impulses to dishonor him and to disgrace the cross. And instead we wield our God-given and grace-filled bodies to honor him, to glorify him, to help others see the beauty of his strength, wisdom, love, and sufficiency.

With every second we deny selfish sexual desires, we say that we trust him more than we trust ourselves, and we say that he is more than enough for us.

Sex Without God

At its simplest, we should have sex (or not) like people who know God. Paul says, “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:3–5).

The Gentiles — people in the world and not in Christ — are involved in all kinds of sexual nonsense, and that makes sense, because they don’t know God. We should expect them to go too far, and too fast — to fool around with the random person at the party, or sleep with their third or fourth person in a month, or move in with their boyfriend.

If God is out of the picture, sex can be as good a god as any. It will still fail them forever, but that doesn’t bother them, because they don’t believe in Jesus or sin, heaven or hell. They believe in now, in living it up here on earth as much as possible, and for as long as possible.

Like We Know God

But we know better. We know that sin, death, and hell are as real as the roof over our heads, last month’s cellphone bill, and the Grand Canyon. They’re not ideas flying around in our philosophy class. They’re realities hanging over every inch of our lives, including our sex lives.

We live every moment in the shadow of a real Creator and a real judge, one who knows our every thought and move. We know that we deserve less than nothing because of our sin, that we’ve earned conscious, relentless, inescapable destruction for ourselves, and that “everyone who is sexually immoral or impure . . . has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Ephesians 5:3–5). And we know that Christ came to die — the crown of the thorns, the whip filled with rocks, the nails in his hands and feet, the terrifying wrath of God — for our sin and to rescue us out of sin.

God made each of us and invented sex, why would we act like we know better than him?

God warns us that sexual immorality only leads to pain, shame, slavery, and ultimately judgment, why would we risk so much for a little pleasure now?

God bought our forgiveness, freedom, and purity with the blood of his own Son — an infinite cost — why would we heave more sin on his shoulders and drive the nails even deeper?

God waits with open arms to welcome us into a never-ending adventure of peace and happiness with him, why would we trade it away for a few seconds of satisfaction?

What We Already Know

Sadly some of us still do. Temptation overwhelms us in moments of weakness. I knew what sexual impurity was, and does, and says, and I still fell. I did not fall because I did not know enough, but because I did not take what I knew with enough seriousness and joy — not yet. Paul is saying what we already know about God is enough to keep us from sexual sin. To know God — his sovereign power, his surprising mercy, his sacrificial love, his satisfying friendship — is to hold the keys to sexual purity, even in a sex-crazed society. Especially in a sex-crazed society.

As we set our eyes and hearts above, “the love of Christ controls us” (2 Corinthians 5:14), and more and more, we “know how to control [our] own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust” (1 Thessalonians 4:4). We put on sexual selflessness, generosity, and patience.

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