As Christians our responsibility is to watch (be on guard) until the Kingdom comes. This boils down to expressing love correctly in its various forms. Not controlling love and passion brought David to nothing and sapped Sampson's strength. We have options for our present and these determine our future (Song of Songs of Ecclesiastics). Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. He did not look into his future and assess the value of what he was selling. Later, with tears he (Esau) sought to have it back but it was too late. In the matter of sex we can also sell our birthright cheaply.
For a Biblical example of romance, marriage and sex see Solomon's Song of Songs: Song of Solomon.
For some discussion on what it means to be a man or woman look here.
Dispassionate Sex
Dispassionately sex is about bringing new life into the world. Mothers have a place in their tummy to nurture babies while they grow. Babies are made from two parts. One part comes from the father and the other from the mother. The part that comes from the mother is called an egg and is stored safely in a part of her tummy called the ovary where it cannot easily be reached or damaged. The part that comes from the father is called sperm and that is stored in the father where it is also protected from exposure. Giving birth to a child is very painful for the mother, therefore normal parents only seek to have children when they love each other. The mother must be willing to endure that pain and the father must be willing to take on the responsibility of providing for both the mother and child. Normally the father and mother have already agreed to look after each other until death and that is done in a ceremony called marriage. The addition of a child means further sacrifice, so only parents that love each other and love a child even before it is born, will endure the pressure of having one.
from Stevie Wonder – song Isn't she lovely
Isn't she lovely
Isn't she wonderfull
Isn't she precious
Less than one minute old
I never thought through love we'd be
Making one as lovely as she
But isn't she lovely made from love
Isn't she pretty
Truly the angel's best
Boy, I'm so happy
We have been heaven blessed
I can't believe what God has done
through us he's given life to one
But isn't she lovely made from love
Isn't she lovely
Life and love are the same
Life is Aisha
The meaning of her name
Londie, it could have not been done
Without you who conceived the one
That's so very lovely made from love
Adding the Passion
As I mentioned before, the parts to make a baby are kept separately in the parents but they must be brought together for the baby to be conceived and begin to grow. They must be brought together safely within a special area created in the mother so that they are not damaged and so that the baby can be nourished and begin to grow. God refers to this as joining together in Genesis 2:24 (KJV): Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh
. In order for this to be possible God has given the male a special devise called a penis which can reach the area in the mother but that is only part of the problem. In order for the male to be able to produce the other part of the baby he needs to be lovingly stimulated by the mother. God has made this is a very pleasant and special sensation for both parents. It is wonderfully done in love. This pleasant sensation is called passion therefore God has designed making a baby as a very satisfying experience.
from Stevie Wonder – song I just called to say I love you
No New Year's Day to celebrate
No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away
No first of spring
No song to sing
In fact here's just another ordinary day
No April rain
No flowers bloom
No wedding Saturday within the month of June
But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you
chorus:
I just called to say I love you
I just called to say how much I care
I just called to say I love you
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart
No summer's high
No warm July
No harvest moon to light one tender August night
No autumn breeze
No falling leaves
Not even time for birds to fly to southern skies
No Libra sun
No Halloween
No giving thanks to all the Christmas joy you bring
But what it is, though old so new
To fill your heart like no three words could ever do
chorus repeated
Now I am personally opposed to celebrating things like Halloween and Christmas but the sentiment of an all year around love for a person is beautiful to me.
Passion is wonderful but because of the heart of man it has produced serious problems. At the root of all sexual problems is uncontrolled passion. People sell their birthright for passion. Uncotolled passion creates little foxes that will damage any future marriage but they also have the potential to become big foxes that can destroy it completely.
Unwanted Pregnancy
Not all unwanted pregnancies produce babies. A growing number of young people are having abortions, but then we live in a society where abortion is considered by many as a normal form of birth control. Abortions cause growth of the baby to be prematurely terminated so that it never matures. I prefer not to be embroiled in the dispute over what God says about abortions. On one extreme people argue that God says that He knows us BEFORE we are formed in the womb. This means that any form of birth control is against scripture because birth control seeks to manage what happens before the foetus us formed. At the other extreme people would terminate the life of a baby even when it is able to survive on its own which is clearly murder as I understand it, arguing that it is the property of the parent. Everybody brings scripture to support their point of view. I am not an abortion supporter but at the same time I cannot bring foolproof arguments against it at this time.
We have just just explored how children are produced by loving parents. These children usually grow up to enjoy their childhood and go on to have happy children of their own. On the other hand sex outside of marriage usually leads to unwanted pregnancy and in the case of minors it creates a vicious cycle. Minors are usually immature parents who rear children poorly and these children go on to repeat the cycle of unwanted pregnancy, unhappy children and terrible parenting. God takes a very dim view of this situation.
Children that result from unwanted pregnancy may be hated by society and worse, by their own parents. When relationships go sour women may take the hatred of the father out on the child.
Sex, Disease and Idolatry
You will remember that I said the parts of the baby are stored in the parents and must be brought together in a carefully protected area. This area has to be protected because it is very vulnerable to disease and the device that God has given the man is also very vulnerable. When any one of these areas is unhealthy it will pass its malady to the other area if they are brought into contact. These diseases can be very severe and lead to death. Some of them cannot be cured. This is reason number one why parents encourage their children to have good hygiene and to protect these delicate areas and keep them covered. By far the greatest danger to health is by allowing these special areas to be touched in any way by anyone other than a parent or very close relative like a grandparent. Parents and grandparents have already taken every precaution for the safety of their offspring and there is absolutely no danger from them. This is one reason why the relationship between parents and their children is so special. They can be free to behave in the company of each other in ways that would not be appropriate with others present. If Children are careful to listen to parents they will learn what they should or should not do. Uncontrolled passion can motivate people to break these rules and become very ill. According to some commentaries this problem goes back to before the nation of Israel was set up where the disease is called an issue.
At the core of sexual immorality is idolatry because the offender is obeying sexual urges rather than God. It is believed that some of the plagues in the Bible for idolatry (which often included sexual immorality) were aggressive strains of venereal diseases. Even today many religions encourage what is described by God as forms of sexual immorality e.g. homosexuality (Romans 1:26-27) and common law marriage or shacking up (John 4:16-19).
On the more superstitious side, some sexually active people believe that if they become sick with a sexual disease they can get rid of it (or at least reduce it) by passing it on to a clean person. Such people will seek to seduce as many clean people as possible by pretending to be sexually attracted to them.
Homosexuality is probably the most insidious form of sexual immorality. While most sexual offenders are overcome by natural urges homosexuals are deviant predators. The have usually been abused at an early age and have had their minds and consciences damaged. They are often vicious, covert and diabolical. Satan appears as an angel of light and these people often position themselves in society as model citizens in some form and reach positions of power and respectability in the home or in society. From there they spread their gospel of satanic sexual freedom. They use their influence over others to initiate them and keep them involved; when that fails they may resort to threats and terror (for example threats to expose the victim to their parents or peers) until the minds of their subjects are also completely warped.
If we follow Gods laws then sexually transmissible diseases would disappear and so would sexually distorted thinking. It is perfect protection.
Sex and Violence
The Bible shows two contrasting views of sex and violence. Passion is very pleasant and it has been given to the parents who love each other very much as a very good gift from God; consequently there are people who would like to take it by force. For the most part such people are emotionally unstable, cunning and vicious. They expect that the other person is to enjoy their violence and they are very disappointed when their victims don't. An example is Davids son Amnon and Tamar, Davids daughter, found in 2 Samuel 13. This disappointment can spur them on to do things that will hurt the innocent person long after the initial assault.
On the other hand they may be spoilt, socially immature and ignorant as with Dinah in Genesis 34. In the case of Dinah we see what appears to be a spoilt child and parental irresponsibility (she used a euphemism to conceal her actions). She had no right going out alone to see the daughters of the land unsupervised. We live in a world where people have different values from ours and being exposed to some environments is risky at best. Children need to understand that among certain company they are not in control and the unexpected can happen, therefore it is best to stay away. In the case of Tamar the people involved were brother and sister (you can have no stronger natural bonding than that) nevertheless one took advantage of the other. This brings in the subject of incest. Incest is defined predominantly in Leviticus 18:8–18 and 20:11–21, but also in Deuteronomy. It prohibits sexual relationships between near relatives.
Satan is behind unmanaged passion. In the first case it was used to cause people that should have been priests of God to be detested by the people of the land. In the second instance it drove a wedge between members of a family.
Violence is not pleasant and for lasting healing to occur it must be reported to parents. For very young children, pre-teens, it is never your fault so have no fear of confiding in parents. For older children it may be your fault but it is far better to work through it with your parents that to try to conceal the problem. Violent people are unstable and they will try to convince the victim that they will be punished too but this is just a tactic to escape their punishment.
The Bible shows some horrendous examples of sick, violence and sex. Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed for their abominable practises. In spite of this Israel sank to a similar level of depravity shortly after the nation was established (Judges 19:22-26). Here some Israelites were willing to abuse a woman all night after they could not get the the man who she was with.
Sex and Money
Another evil spinoff that is driven by passion is called pornography. Pornography comes in many forms but at the root of it is a desire to obtain money (or something equivalent to money) for passion. People peddle passion in books, movies, songs etc. but the one that is oldest is called whoredom or harlotry in the Bible. Women are called harlots or whores if they are intimate with men for money and the men involved are called whoremongers.
Pimps are very dangerous men who prey on vulnerable women. They are very closely attracted to runaway girls. Because of this they may encourage girls to abandon their families and go away with them. Once the girl is at their mercy they will force her to provide passion by any means to any stranger who is willing to pay. Then they take the money away from the girl so that she remains dependent on them. Some young girls who are enticed away from home are sold to people who live thousands of miles away and they never see their families again.
God wants nothing to do with sex for money
I am going to quote a scripture from the New Testament that covers the whole gamut because people claim that there is no condemnation of some of these in the New Testament. You may not see the specific word but enough is here to cover it all in one or more category.
Recreational Sex
There was a time when only men were encouraged to sow wild oats but today, for both genders, recreational (or casual) sex is encoureaged as safe sex. God commands us not to participate in recreational sex.
Recreational sex is when sex is seen as a pastime like cricket or football. Passion becomes just another source of entertainment that is to be enjoyed like a meal or a cold drink. It may be expected as the hospitable thing to do as a reward for being good company.
Recreational sex is a real challenge for teenagers especially because of something called raging hormones. To explain a bit about hormones let us consider what happens when you smell some nicely grilled snapper 😋(you can get a similar but in my opinion drastically reduced reaction from beef 😄). You anticipate the taste of the succulent flesh with its delicate texture and tantalizing spices and you automatically begin to salivate. Most people can control their appetites, however, and will not lose all sense of composure and dart off to soothe their craving at any cost. Now what about if you see some one eating a dry bread and drinking water. You will not give it a second thought. All of that is done through the production of hormones in the body. If your food hormones are raging then you will react to the dry bread just as to the succulent meat. Your body will behave irrationally. In teenagers their sex hormones are raging so it takes very little to set them off.
The combination of having raging hormones and being encouraged to sow wild oats is powerful. Under such pressure it is easy to begin to think of sex as recreational. It is like having chicken pox and being encouraged to scratch them. As the itch intensifies in wild swings you may reason just this once. With chicken pox it will leave a mark just as in life. Things like adultery and fornication in the Bible fall into the category of recreational sex.
Casual sex is is the opposite of how God wants us to look at sex. Adam was blown away by Eve and went on to build a strong bond of unashamed unity. No skeletons in the closet.
Men and women are supposed to have that strong physical attraction which propels them to become one physically and eventually spiritually. In casual sex one partner often gets hurt very badly because that partner thinks of the other as theirs exclusively forever but the other has a different view. I know one girl who lived in a house with a man and had a child for him. He reputedly slept with her one week and got married to another woman the weekend. The amazing thing is that the marriage fell apart and he went back living with her and had more children. Even worse than that, sometimes what started out as an overwhelming desire can in time become intense hatred e.g. once again, Davids son Amnon and Tamar Davids daughter found in 2 Samuel 13. These situations can go unresolved and lead to terrible retribution.
The way to deal with sexual problems is to repent, in others words learn to accept correction in humility and go to God for help. Repentance often means that we have to demonstrate to God that we are serious by boldly doing whatever He shows is necessary from His word. Most people seem to choose their present based on self gratification and the desire to avoid the consequences of their actions. Our future is made up of all the decisions that we make in the present and retribution is cumulative and it comes sooner or later. God gives us a better way; the right way.
Sex and affection
This world is sick. When I was a child, adults hugging children was no problem but today it arouses suspicion and it is not without basis. The world has lost natural affection. Peoples minds are have been corrupted; they expect the worst and not without reason.
Natural affection is a good thing but in this world we have to express it with wisdom or else it becomes inordinate affection. Excessiveness depends on the people and circumstances involved and we need to watch for reactions and respond accordingly.
We cannot afford to have evil spoken of our good intentions. People should have no doubt where our ulimate affections lie. There should be no mixed signals with regard to who is lord of our lives. For the other persons conscience sake we sometimes have to withold our affection just as with eating food offered to idols.
For a Biblical example of romance, marriage and sex see Solomon's Song of Songs