#sex

Who Does My Body Belong To?

I spent last weekend at a pair of conferences, each of which dealt in some way with matters of human sexuality. Such conferences are common today as Christians attempt to understand, interpret, and respond to the moral revolution raging around us. It struck me that just three or four years ago these events were discussing issues of marriage in the face of the likelihood that the institution of marriage would soon be opened to homosexual couples. For most people today …

The Birds, The Bees, The Awe, The Wonder

Every parent has the responsibility of eventually having “the talk” with their children. You know the talk I mean—the one that finally tells the children where babies come from. I don’t think there are too many parents who look forward to the conversation or too many that are confident with their handling of it. But somehow we blunder through and both we and our children survive. I spent much of this week preparing a couple of conference messages about God’s …

Become a Patron

Letters to the Editor #14 (Sex in Movies, Messy Grace, Bathsheba Bathing)

With the start of another week comes another selection of letters to the editor. This was a lively week for letters and the ones I publish below represent a cross-section of the feedback from readers like you. Comments on Why Did God Create the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? I’m curious about your Sinclair Ferguson quote from The Whole Christ and am wondering how it’s different than the type of writing found in Jesus Calling? I’m not …

She Who Shall Not Be Named

You never know where your Bible study will take you. You never understand how perfectly God has woven his Word until you follow a single thread from author to author, culture to culture, millennium to millennium, and see how God’s revelation of himself and his purposes is so perfectly consistent. Recently I followed a thread that began in a New Testament epistle and then ran past ancient priests and prophets, cultures and kingdoms, until eventually it wrapped around the life …

Sex on the Silver Screen

What would it take for you? What would it take for you, husband, to be okay with your wife baring her breasts and body in front of a movie camera? What would it take for you to allow another man to strip off her clothes, to kiss her, to fall into bed with her, and to pantomime having sex with her? What would it take for you to be okay with a camera crew recording shot after shot, angle after …

Burning and Yearning

The Bible allows us to distinguish between two kinds of sexual desire, a pure and sinless sexual desire and an impure, sinful one. We can term these yearning and burning. Yearning is a legitimate sexual desire, the desire to explore and experience sexuality with a God-given spouse. Burning is an illegitimate form of sexual desire, the desire to explore and experience sexuality with someone who is not a God-given spouse (or, alternatively, to experience inappropriate or even perverse forms of …

We Cannot Be Silent

It takes no courage to write a book that simply drifts and bobs along in the cultural mainstream. It takes no courage to say the things that are already popular in the world around us. But to stand firm on ideas, on truths, that people despise—now, that takes courage. In that way Albert Mohler’s We Cannot Be Silent is a genuinely courageous work. It closely and critically examines the defining moral issues of our day—sex, gender, and sexuality—and stands firm …

Positive Purity

We live in a sexualized culture—a very, very sexualized culture. You already know that, of course. You can barely walk out your door or turn on a screen without seeing clear evidence of the fact. As Christians we are always in danger of being swept along with the current of the culture around us. For that reason I, like every other Christian, pursue sexual purity in my own heart and life. God calls us to nothing less. Thankfully, the Bible …

How an Affair Really Begins

At some point, we have all witnessed the devastation of an affair. On the one hand, it is shocking just how much can be destroyed by the act of one person sharing sexual intimacy with another. But on the other hand, it is not shocking at all when we consider how much meaning God has packed into marriage and into the sexual relationship within marriage. One of the great misconceptions about affairs is that they begin with sex. Affairs do …

My Wife’s Plea to Christian Men

Over the weekend I could see that Aileen had something on her mind. We spoke and she told me about reading the news, about seeing more Christian men fall into scandal, and, in the face of it all, her confusion, her despair, the crumbling of her hope. I asked if she would write about it. Here is what she said. How long ago was it now? Was it ten years? Twelve? How long has it been since I faced it …