Before we discuss what Jesus said about sex, we should take a moment to ask how Jesus’ own sexuality informs Christian understanding. According to the witness of the Gospels, Jesus was never married and never engaged in sexual activity. Jesus was celibate. Jesus was fully and perfectly human and lived a fulfilled life without being married and having sex. A man doesn’t need a woman to be fulfilled. A woman doesn’t need a man to be fully human. Men and women need God. Celibacy should be seen as a viable option, and certainly to be preferred over sexual immorality.
Jesus said, “everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28). The word lust does not refer to appropriate sexual desire, but to look with intent to engage in immoral sexual activity. To lust is to be shopping for sex, or to be looking for an opportunity for sexual immorality. The most notorious example of adultery in the Bible is David and Bathsheba. David did not sin when he inadvertently saw Bathsheba bathing. He could have simply looked away. David’s lust began when he inquired about her (2 Sam 11:3). Jesus reminds us that we must guard our eyes: “if your right eye makes you stumble…” Lustful activity includes engaging in pornography. In the ancient world, explicit pornographic images were publicly displayed in wall murals, floor mosaics, and even household pottery. However, there is no evidence of pornographic images in Hebrew culture. Nakedness was not to be uncovered. Sex was not a taboo subject. After all, Song of Solomon is included in the Hebrew scriptures. But sexual images that uncovered the genitals were considered shameful. Also, lustful activities include immoral and vulgar conversations – “filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting” (Eph 5:4).
Jesus said that the basis of a proper understanding of marriage is found in the creation narrative.
Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate (Matthew 19:4-6).
Marriage is not a social construct that can be changed by the political impulses of a changing culture. Marriage is an act of God. According to Jesus, marriage is one male and one female. With the words “let no man separate” Jesus is asserting that human law, not even the law of Moses, cannot change the theological reality of marriage.
In the gospels, it was Jesus’ teaching about divorce that caused controversy among the Pharisees, and even among his disciples. The Mosaic law made many allowances for divorce. Jewish legal tradition allowed a man to divorce his wife if she no longer pleased him in any way. Jesus shocked his audience when he insisted that there is only one viable reason for divorce – sexual immorality (Matt 5:31; 19:9). Serial divorce and remarriage is a form of adultery. Even so, Jesus acknowledges that marriage can be difficult because of the hardness of the human heart. The “hardness of heart” is an expression that reminds us of the brokenness of male/female relationships effected by the Fall. Humans come into marriage as men and women broken by the presence of sin. Two imperfect people cannot form a perfect marriage. Divorce sometimes is necessary when one spouse grievously offends or abandons the other. Jesus was so adamant about the inviolability of marriage that his disciples asked, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry” (Matt 19:10). Jesus’ reply suggest that celibacy is not a desired state for many, but necessary for some.
Jesus said that some people are born with abnormalities that make them incapable of natural sexual function. “For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb…” (Matt 19:12). This includes physical deformities, but might also include the psychological proclivity toward homosexuality, or gender dysphoria. Jesus suggests that these persons should embrace celibacy. This also suggest that like Jesus, we must try to be more understanding towards broken men and women.
We must always remember that Jesus, full of grace and truth, extends mercy to sinners. John presents the story of a woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). The Law provided for the execution of those guilty of sexual immorality. This woman was to be stoned to death. But Jesus extended grace with the words, “I do not condemn you.” Jesus did not excuse her sinfulness, nor did he affirm her love affair. He offered an alternative to the wages of sin – he offered life. He commanded, “Go and sin no more.” Grace and truth make new life possible. One more thing… I’ve always wondered, “Where is the man?” I suspect that he was in the crowd holding a stone and that Jesus looked directly at him when he said, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her (John 8:7).
Christian churches are filled with sexually broken and confused men and women in need of truth and grace. The word confession means to tell the truth about oneself. We need to tell the truth about the sexual dysfunction and immorality around us. There is another truth that we must tell – that there is no sexual sin beyond redemption, there is no such thing as an unforgivable sexual sin. The apostle Paul declared, “…we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh… But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:3–5).
Jesus’ final word about sex is about human sexuality in the eschaton – New Creation. Jesus said, “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matt 22:30). Throughout eternity humans will maintain their sexual distinctions – male and female. We will reign with Christ as a “kingdom and priests to God” (Rev 5:10). However, marriage, sex, and procreation are of this present created order and are not eternal realities. Life in New Creation will be radically different from life in this present age. So too, love in New Creation will be radically different. Love will be perfect, and we shall be perfected in love.
