Some of the best things in life are also some of the most dangerous. They are both beneficial and dangerous because they are powerful, and any kind of power can be used to accomplish great good or great evil. Consider the many biblical warnings about the tongue and how it can be used to build up or tear down, to lift people high or crush them to the dust. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” says Solomon, and we have all experienced both.
One of the most mysterious of God’s creations is sexuality and perhaps especially male sexuality. We are tragically accustomed to hearing accounts of how it has been used for evil—how it has been used to harm, abuse, exploit, and destroy. We hear how it has been turned toward digital strangers instead of real-life wives and how it has been used for self-serving purposes instead of self-sacrificial ones. A wise man is aware of the power of his sexuality and never grows apathetic in his knowledge that it can so easily be used for harm.
A wise man is aware of the power of his sexuality and never grows apathetic in his knowledge that it can so easily be used for harm.
But sexuality is not intrinsically evil. Male sexuality was not exempt from God’s creation-closing declaration that what he had made was not merely good but very good. And while sexuality was subject to the fall and by it gained all sorts of negative powers and harmful abilities, it remains a good creation and a good gift.
I once watched a long cascading waterfall tumble down a mountainside. As it fell lower and lower, the water picked up speed so that what was a mere trickle at the source had become a roaring torrent at the bottom. I observed how many years before, engineers had narrowed the stream so its force would grow even stronger as it was squeezed between sheer walls of stone. By the time it reached the valley below, it was moving fast enough to drive a turbine and power a town. All of that potential existed in the trickle of water, but it only became power—a beneficial power—as it was concentrated, managed, and directed.
And I think that offers a helpful illustration of male sexuality. It can be used to accomplish such good, but it must be treated with care and it must be faithfully managed. It is beneficial when constrained and directed, but dangerous when left to run wild, and more dangerous still when purposely aimed at ignoble or harmful purposes.
When a man directs his sexuality as God intends, it teaches him to exercise self-control, to practice self-denial, and to take every thought captive. These are beautiful virtues each Christian is meant to exemplify and virtues that most men learn (or fail to learn) in relation to their sexual desires. It motivates him to woo a woman to become his wife and thereby become the appropriate recipient of his sexuality, the one who can receive it as a true blessing. When he becomes a husband, it influences him to continue to pursue his wife as a willing, joyful participant in their sexual relationship. It enables him to carry out the divine mandate to be fruitful and multiply and draws him ever closer to his wife so their healthy marriage can be the firm foundation of a strong family. The inevitable times of struggle or times when sex is not possible are opportunities for him to grow all the more in being a faithful steward of God’s gift. They give no license to sin but instead provide lessons in holiness.
Some of the best things in life are also some of the most dangerous, and a man’s sexuality is at the same time one of the best of God’s creations and the most dangerous. It can be such a blessing or such a curse, create such joy or such destruction. And so my call to all men, and perhaps especially to young men whose sexual desire tends to run the strongest even while their self-control is least developed, is this: Understand the power of male sexuality for good and for evil. Death and life are in the power of your sexuality, so resolve, by God’s grace, that you will turn it only to the best and highest of purposes. Constrain the power of your sexuality to developing the most noble of virtues and, if God should provide a wife, to blessing her by it and through it. In this way, the mysterious power of your sexuality will be a blessing that will extend inward from your body to your soul and outward to your family and the world around.
