9. Sexual wholeness

What kind of sexuality does God approve? Think with me: a teller in a bank is skilled at distinguishing real bills from counterfeit bills. They know all the features of a real bill—the feel of the paper, the color variations in the ink, the watermarks. This is what they learn. Do they learn how fake bills look also? Of course. But the best way to tell real from fake is by having a very clear idea of what the real thing looks like. If you know what the real thing looks like, you’ll never confuse it with the fake thing.

The same is true of sexual wholeness. Scripture paints a clear picture of what sexual wholeness looks like. There are some mentions of deviant practices, but the biblical authors devote most of their attention to describing the kind of sexuality God desires for each of us.

What is sexual wholeness?

Sexual wholeness is a specific kind of spiritual health. It includes two equally important facets: faithfulness in the marriage of one man and one woman, and chastity in singleness.

Scripture makes clear that marriage is sacred:

Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love. Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife? Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?

—Proverbs 5: 15–20

Scripture also carefully defines marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman, and informs us that sexual relations with a person besides one's spouse brings judgment:

Taken together, these scriptures inform us of two key things:

• First, scripture presupposes marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman. All references to marriage take for granted the fact that it is between one man and one woman. We see this first in Genesis, then centuries later in the gospel of Matthew and Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The fact that Jesus and Paul both quote the statement in Genesis word for word tells us just how important it was to them—just so, with no need for clarification.

• Second, the writer of Hebrews presents the marriage bed and sexual immorality as two choices—one moral, the other immoral. Anything within the marriage bed is approved as “pure,” anything outside the marriage bed is condemned as “immoral.” There is no textured nuance here, no room for debate. There is not a place outside of marriage where sex acts can be pure, because only the marriage bed is pure.

In addition to these statements about marriage as specifically between one man and one woman, there are indirect and metaphorical references to marriage throughout the Bible:

It is no coincidence that the Bible begins and ends with a wedding. In Genesis, Adam and Eve. In Revelation, the Lamb of God and the New Jerusalem. In both instances, it is a heterosexual wedding. This model for marriage resonates throughout the Bible. There is no other model for marriage in scripture other than the union of one man and one woman.

Chastity in singleness

Single people remain sexually pure by denying themselves lust and sex with persons of either sex. Paul gives several clear statements on the importance of this:

Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy

—Romans 13: 13

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

—Ephesians 5: 3

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.

—1 Thessalonians 4: 3–6

For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

—1 John 2: 16

God’s standard of sexual wholeness is a high one, but He provides guidance and help—and even a measure of protection—to those willing to accept it:

[God] gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

—Isaiah 40: 29–31

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. “All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish,” (…) declares the Lord].

—Isaiah 41: 10–14

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

—1 Corinthians 6: 9–11

What does sexual wholeness look like for a person who experiences SSA?

Just like anyone else, person who experiences SSA needs to repent of any sexual sin to be restored before God—but they do not need to repent of SSA. This is because SSA is a form of temptation and scripture does not call us to repent of temptation, only to pray not to be led into it (Matthew 6: 9–13; Luke 11: 2–4) and to acknowledge its source (James 1: 13–15). To clarify this position, let’s think about some specific sins and the way Christ heals them. We’ll start with a short list from the Book of Mark:

“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” [emphasis added]

—Mark 7: 20–23

These sins, like sin in general, are a result of the Fall in the Garden of Eden, which affected Adam and Eve, their descendants, and all of creation, as Paul tells us:

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

—Romans 8: 19–21

The early Church did not devote much time to analyzing and categorizing all the different ways to be sexually impure. Sexual impurity was any sexual act outside of the male-female marriage covenant—plain and simple. That’s why Paul’s instruction to “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6: 18) was enough to get his entire point across—he didn’t need to spell out what exactly he meant by “sexual immorality,” because his audience already knew. 

If we view sexual impurity in this way, then sexual restoration for a person with SSA is not so different from sexual restoration for a heterosexual person. Restoration for either group does not entail trading one form of temptation or attraction for another, but rather achieving a condition of faithfulness to one’s spouse in marriage, or of chastity in one’s singleness—that is, sexual purity. The path to sexual purity is the same for a person with SSA as it is for a heterosexual person.

This view of sexual wholeness captures two important truths about SSA:

• SSA is not a part of God’s plan. God did not create people with SSA, just as He did not create people with an inclination toward any other kind of sexual impurity. He does, however, deliver people from the temptations of SSA, so that they become less vulnerable to them over time.

• The restored state of SSA is not attraction to the opposite sex. Though it is possible for a person to experience a change in sexual attraction, a more typical (and realistic) path of restoration is toward a greater goal of sexual purity in a general, life-changing sense. For those who don’t want to marry a person of the opposite sex, the alternative is chastity in singleness.

Men and women who experience SSA have often felt pressured to marry a person of the opposite sex, thinking that such marriage would “cure” them of their SSA or perhaps make it easier to manage. While heterosexual marriage has been known to bring about changes in orientation, this result is far from typical. A 2002 scientific survey of Australian men seems to confirm this. The survey included 24 men from a Christian background who were married to women or who had been married to women. All had experienced SSA at the time of their marriage. At the time of the survey, only 2 of the men were still married, but all of them reported being “predominantly homosexual.” On average, the marriages lasted 16 years. Most of the marriages had children. These findings strongly suggest that even with the best of intentions and a strong desire to rid oneself of SSA, it is common for SSA to persist even in a sexually active heterosexual marriage. I suggest, as do many other Christian thinkers, that SSA persists even when it is unwanted, even when one is married to an opposite-sex spouse, because the path of restoration is not about experiencing SSA less, but about experiencing sexual purity more.

Whatever the path of change looks like for a given individual, the focus of purity must always be Christ Himself:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

—Colossians 3: 23–24

For discussion:

1. Even with the clarity of scriptural arguments for faithfulness in the marriage of one man and one woman, and chastity in singleness, many Christians today still struggle to view certain forms of sexual immorality as sinful. What are some of the forms and why do you think so many Christians refuse to see them as sinful?

2. Despite the fact that very few men and women ever experience substantial changes in their sexual attraction, it is still shockingly common for churches to push heterosexual marriage as a "cure" for SSA. Why do you think this is?

3. If you are a person who experiences SSA, how does it make you feel when you read that "SSA is not a part of God's plan"? Do you find this fact saddening or empowering? Why?