(1) HOW TO READ THE BIBLE

    a) Intellectual activity

 At one level, reading the bible is an intellectual activity – mere comprehension (reading in order to find out what the author is saying.)  It’s not very difficult, but it does require effort.

 However it doesn’t require interpretation.  It’s quite different to it.  We don’t have to interpret the bible.  The intellectual activity of interpreting the bible is exactly the same as reading the newspaper.  You read the Sydney Morning Herald, but you don’t interpret it.  That’s not the activity.  The SMH is an interpretation of the world that you are reading.   Now, the Bible is an interpretation of the world.  What we’re doing is reading the interpretation in order to comprehend and understand the interpretation.  Eg. In I Cor 15, it says Jesus Christ died for our sins.  The fact is Jesus died.  The interpretation is ‘for our sins’.  What we’re doing is reading the interpretation of the fact – the fact that Jesus died.  The bible’s interpretation of it is ‘for our sins’.  And our activity is not to interpret that, but to read it and comprehend it.

 b) Posture

 However, comprehending the bible’s message is more than an intellectual exercise. It requires the right posture, metaphorically.  There is a right spiritual posture which is essential to understand the bible.  We need to read the scriptures on our knees, with the insight of the spirit of God as reborn people.  Now this isn’t contrary to the intellectual activity that PJ’s just mentioned.  You see the essence of comprehension is trying to understand what the author says.  But when the author is God, then the essence of your comprehension must involve your recognition of who this author is and by what authority he is saying what he is saying.  For if you are reading the bible in rebellion to God, you will not be reading the bible to find out what God has to say.  And so your comprehension will be defective.  In fact, the person who doesn’t care about God often has more chance of understanding the bible than the person who does care about God but wants to rebel against what he has to say.  That is, the out and out atheist can often tell you that “this is what the bible says but I think its wrong”, whereas the liberal Christian will always be trying to say “well the bible really doesn’t say that, it really couldn’t possibly actually mean that” because he wants to still be in the ‘God basket’ but at the same time rebellious against what God has to say.  The real posture to understand what God has to say is ‘God is God and He can say to me whatever He likes and I will do it.  I want to know what God tells me to do so that I can do what God wants me to do.”  If we’re not reading it on our knees, we’re not reading it in the right posture.  The New Testament Jews had the scriptures, they read them industrially but failed to understand them because there was a veil over their minds and hearts (2 Cor 3), they couldn’t recognise Jesus about whom the scriptures spoke.  It wasn’t because they didn’t read the Old Testament, it was because they didn’t read the OT in order to obey God.  Remember Nicodemus, the teacher of the Law?  Nicodemus didn’t understand that you needed to be born again, so he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. 

2) THE PHARISEES AND THE DISCIPLES

 There is a contrast between the Pharisees and the disciples

 a) Pharisees 

The Pharisees were a highly moral lay movement – middle class, industrious, kind of like the Rotarians of the 1^st century.  They were concerned about the compromise that Israel was involved with being led by the Herodians; the Herod family were half-cast Jews, they were constantly in compromise with the Roman overloads who were ruling Israel at the time.  They saw that the future lay between a clear separation between what was Pagan/Roman/Gentile and what was Jewish.  They tried to make this distinction in every part of their lives in obedience to the law.  We know the Pharisees as hypocrites, but in their own day and age, they were the most moral upright people there was in society.  They were the moral light of society, attempting to be consistently people of God.  But we know them from Jesus as hypocrites and humbugs…

 b) Jesus’ critique 

Jesus’ critique is true and real.  But we mustn’t think that all would’ve agreed with Jesus’s critique.  Because it wasn’t the normal way to see the Pharisees – people held the Pharisees in high esteem for their zeal for the law.  That is why when Jesus told his disciples that their righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, they would’ve been shocked, because the Pharisees were the most righteous, upright people of that society – it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible for someone to conceive to out do the Pharisees in their righteousness.  But Jesus saw what many people failed to see – that sometimes we can pay attention to the law not to fulfil it but instead, to avoid it.  It is the ‘minimum requirement of the law’.  You study/read the law in order to find the loopholes, the ‘minimum requirement of the law’.  No one knows Australia’s taxation law better than our tax lawyers.  They’re not looking through the details of tax law in order to find extra ways their clients can pay more tax.  If they are, they’re unemployed tax lawyers.  Their aim is to find the loopholes, to avoid tax for their clients.  You can be an expert in the law to avoid the law.  And that was what the Pharisees were about.  They trying to find out what you had to do in order to really find out what you could get away without doing.  Because their heart was not in obedience to the law; their heart was in their attempt of self-righteousness.  And if you can lower the bar far enough, everyone can be self-righteous. 

  c) The disciples 

Not so the disciples.  Their righteousness had to exceed the Pharisees because it was a different righteousness altogether.  Their righteousness had to be the righteousness of those who had been born again by the spirit of God who’re earnest and zealous to do what God wants.  So they look to the law to find out how much they can, not to find out how little to do.  Jesus illustrates this by a series of case studies in the sermon on the mount – in anger, lust, divorce, oaths etc…and in each of these, he points to the motives and argues for a misunderstanding of the law that has come from a hardness of heart.  And he gives a view of law keeping that makes us all guilty.  Jesus’ standards pricks the conscience and assures us of failure because as we read what Jesus does to the law we start to see the full implications of God’s Word, and as we start to see this, we see the totality of your failure in keeping God’s Word.  When someone says that “I don’t go by all this church stuff but I always live by the Sermon on the Mount” you know that they’ve never read the sermon on the mount.   Because if you’ve read it you would know that nobody lives by the Sermon on the Mount, for the Sermon on the Mount drives us to despair about our failure to live for God.

 3) JESUS’ TEACHING 

a) Hypocrisy

 Before we go to the questions on Love, Sex and Marriage, we have to understand in this Jesus’ teaching.  It really cuts through hypocrisy – the kind of question that wants permission to sin is destroyed by the way Jesus teaches.  A woman came to PJ once to ask at Katoomba whether she should marry an unbeliever.  In the process, it became apparent that she’d been asking everyone, she wasn’t asking PJ for the answer, she was asking PJ because she was desperate to find someone who would give her permission for doing something that she knew was wrong.  You can ask questions for many different reasons.  Jesus’ teaching gives you no place for hypocrisy like that – that’s exactly what he’s attacking – the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.  Therefore you need to read what Jesus says in that light – that he’s really not seeking to discuss divorce and remarriage; he’s seeking to show that there’s a different way to treat the law of God.  And if you treat it like the Pharisees, you’ll just twist it to make your own behaviour acceptable.  But if you treat it like you should as a child of God, then you will see its implications far and beyond what it’s specifically talking about, especially implications concerning your own motivations.   

b) Taken seriously

 However, his teaching is to be taken seriously.  You cannot ignore it as being an attack on the Pharisees without any application to us.  When he challenged eg the rich young ruler, we must not limit Jesus’ teaching to that young man – to limit it to rich young rulers.  Certainly it was a specific challenge to that rich young man, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not ours that we have to get rid of.  So on Love Sex and Marriage, there are two key topics that Jesus speaks on – Lust, and Divorce. 

 c) Lust

 In Matt 5:27-30, we see Jesus repeating the command ‘you shall not commit adultery.’  How would the Pharisees treat this commandment?  Well, they would say ‘adultery is wrong, now adultery is when one or more partner is married, it doesn’t apply to sex outside of marriage.’  You see what they’re doing – limiting down the law to only apply to what it has to apply to.  Now adultery can’t be, they would say, apply to when you are remarried because when you are remarried you’re not committing adultery…so…etc.  So what happens is that you end up limiting down and limiting down what adultery and making it more and more limited and specific so you can do the things you want to do.  Jesus puts the knife right into it and says v28 – everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.   

There are six quick points to this:

·          Note the context is the attack on the hypocrisy of pharisaic legalism – maximising and minimising the 7^th commandment.

 ·          Notice the seriousness with which Jesus takes the subject (v29, 30 – cut out your eye/chop off your hand if it causes you to sin)

 ·          Notice the reality of the judgment that Jesus is speaking of; sin in this area of life can take you to hell, and hell is so awful and dreadful that it is better to go through life maimed than to go to hell.  It is really serious – do not minimise this kind of sinfulness. 

·          However, don’t misread/mistranslate v28 – it’s not talking about normal sexual instincts.  To look upon a woman and to think of sex is completely normal thing for men.  If it wasn’t normal then humanity would’ve died out many years ago.  There’s nothing abnormal with it, you mustn’t feel guilty about your normal physical appetite.  That’s not being spoken of here.  Is PJ trying to minimise it now?  No…it’s got to do with the translation, and the NIV is particularly bad on this verse.  It says “look at a woman with lustful intent”, or as the Greek actually says “To look upon a woman in order to lust”.  It’s not that I’m looking at a woman and I happen to have a sexual feeling, it is about looking at women in order to lust – perving, pornography, strip show – looking in order to lust.  The Greek is even more explicit…it is saying “looking in order to get her to lust”.  So it’s further that you’re looking upon her in such a way as to arouse lust in her for you.   

·          That is, it’s the whole activity of flirting and foreplay.  That is what is being said.  Do not arouse a woman inappropriately for a sexual relationship.  Do not flirt with someone that you shouldn’t have sexual relationship.  Eg… When Bill Clinton said “I have not had sexual relations with that woman”, he was fulfilling the Pharisees completely and perfectly.  What he meant was that “I have not had intercourse with her”.  He’d done all other kinds of things with her, but because he technically had not had intercourse with her, he could say this.  That is exactly what Jesus is attacking here.  What he did to that woman was about arousing her…it was pharisaic pure and simple.  Having sex is not purely about intercourse.  If you are relating with a woman in order to arouse her interests sexually and if she is not your wife, then you are committing adultery.  Foreplay, petting, the whole ,sexual innuendo etc around the office – it’s all that kind of thing that’s being spoken of.  To the Pharisee, it’s like Bill Clinton – he didn’t have intercourse.  And the whole  question of ‘how far can you go’ which is so frequently asked in youth groups – the answer is nowhere, that’s how far – no far.  With your wife/husband, you can go all the way.  With anyone else, you don’t start.  Sex is for the marriage relationship and outside of that relationship, all activity seeking to arouse another person is inappropriate.  Why should you seek to arouse that other person whom you cannot satisfy or should not satisfy?  What is the purpose of that other than adultery that is within your heart. 

·          In this context, it’s the time to mention masturbation.  This verse (v28) has given to men and women terrible feelings of guilt.  Because in masturbation, the ideas of sexual lust, dreams, thoughts are almost inevitable; in fact, are normal and healthy.  So does this mean that masturbation is always wrong?  Genesis 38 – the story of Onan, and one of the words for masturbation is ‘onanism’.  That is completely incorrect.  Onan was not masturbating.  The failure of Onan was a failure to fulfil his responsibility to the widow of his brother, for the responsibility in Israel was that if a man was to die childless, it was the responsibility of his brothers to provide a child for him by having sexual relations with his widow.  Onan failed in that responsibility as did the father-in-law fail in that responsibility by giving the third son to fulfil the responsibility for the woman.  Which is why she then tricked her father-in-law to doing it.  She was more righteous than her father-in-law.  You’ll notice that the bible doesn’t pull back from pretty degenerative, unseemly stories.  Onan’s failure was a sexual intercourse interruption, it has absolutely nothing to do with masturbation.  But it was wrong in its failure in the responsibility of relationship.  But it does help us also to see that the problem is not the sex act itself.  That is where we’ve come off the rails a bit.  We think of the sex act rather than the relationship.  The sexual act is something we share with animals.  What marks humans as different is the relationship in which we do that sexual act.  The faithfulness, the love, the care that they exercise towards the partner, the use of sex to help that relationship – its that which marks us out as different from animals.  Masturbation is never mentioned in the bible.  It is never condemned in the scriptures, therefore we should be wary of condemning that which God has not condemned.  It can be a way of caring for your partner – overcoming in periods of pregnancy, sickness, periods of long enforced absence, for waiting for the right partner to come etc – it can be used for help and for good in people’s ways of relating for their future and for their present.  The dreams and desires that you can have while masturbating can be degenerate and therefore unhelpful to you or can be wholesome, and therefore helpful to you.  To masturbate without any sexual feeling would be a little strange.  But it’s not what Matthew 5:28 is talking about.  It’s talking about what you do with another person in flirtatious relationship.  And that comes out of your desire to commit adultery with that person.  For as you seek to arouse them, you’re doing it because you’d like to have them.  That is a different thing to masturbation. 

d) Divorce  

Secondly, what about divorce?  Jesus is attacking the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who want divorce, and found in Deut 24 how to do it.  In fact, Deut 24 describes how divorces take place in Israel and warns against it.  They ignored these warnings against it and just looked at how it took place and then discussed in detail what was something that would be indecent in your partner that would lead to you creating the divorce.  So some saw that something ‘indecent’ was adultery whereas others saw that something ‘indecent’ was that the next door neighbour was more attractive than your wife.  The views differed far and wide, and the Pharisees spent all their time trying to work out what something indecent was, instead of adhering to what the passage said, which was merely that you really shouldn’t divorce at all.  Jesus points to the law on marriage in Gen 2, and says we shouldn’t be divorcing in order to marry another.  Ok…with that background, we turn now to the questions that we have. 

Question and Answer (4) 

Courtship choices:

What is permissible before marriage?  Holding hands, warm hugs, if hormones start to boil up and we stop there have we sinned etc?  

When you ask questions about ‘what is permissible’, you’re asking the Pharisees question aren’t you?  What you should be asking is how can I act in a way that will be godly and helpful.  The answer is - never arouse another person.  There are kisses and there are kisses.  You can kiss a baby and not aim to be sexually arousing.  There is holding hands and there is touch.  What I must not do is act in any way that goes down the path of sexual arousal.  That I indicate by holding hands that there is a special ness of relationship is not a problem.  But it is the sexual arousal that is the problem.   

Is it true that a Christian woman should only marry a Christian man who is more spiritual than her?  Can a Christian marry a Catholic or Orthodox Christian? 

Who’s more spiritual?  Do you need to have someone who is more spiritual?  Beware of equating spiritual with being more articulate/educated.  Do not equate this to spiritual maturity.  Just because someone has deep biblical knowledge does not automatically equate to spiritual maturity.  You can know an enormous amount and yet know nothing.  The truly spiritually mature person generally does not think of themselves as spiritually mature.  They are overwhelmed by their sense of their need.  Faithfulness is what is required in a relationship.  And someone who may be only a new Christian may show the real signs of faithfulness.  And if they are Christian, they will grow in their knowledge and understanding.   

And what if his church is not teaching the bible?  Then there are some very basic questions to ask as to whether they are Christian at all, or just a tribal Christian.  If I am an Anglican, then I am most likely not a Christian.  But if I am a Christian, then may belong to the Anglican church.  But if my identification is Anglican, then you’ve got to doubt whether I am really Christian.  So if someone is Orthodox or when they are Catholic, that’s a worrying sign.  If they are Christian, then that’s what counts.  And if the Christian church they go to doesn’t honour the Lord Jesus Christ by preaching and teaching the gospel, then you’ve got to start asking why they are there and whether their Christianity is real. 

I am single, does that mean I should not date anyone who is divorced?  What if the divorced person’s spouse divorced them but not for adultery?  Does it mean that a Christian if single cannot go out with someone who is divorced?    

What about the dating = one person going out with another person of the opposite sex.  “oh no, we’re just good friends” – don’t believe it.  Dating in our culture is a way of social bonding with a view to permanency.  Therefore it’s mad to start with someone with whom you cannot finish in that permanency.  It’s misleading to yourself, it’s misleading to them.  Why the person is divorce may affect whether they are free to marry.  For the single person, if you want to date a divorced person, you’ve got to find out that reason pretty quick before the bonding of relationship starts to grow and the heartache of breaking up becomes too intense.  You need to talk about it with a third party…because people can rationalise divorce very well, so you need to get help from a wise third party (eg your pastor) to decide whether your potential partner’s reason for divorce is satisfactory.     

Marriage Questions: 

If one of the reasons for marriage is procreation, are there legitimate godly reasons for not having children?   

The child-free choice reflects our atheistic culture.  Infertility is tragic, it is a difficult burden to have to bear.  But at the same time, to have people running around discouraging the birth of children only seems to be mad.  You’ve got one group of people going to extraordinarily lengths to have children and then you’ve got another group who’ve got a website up called the ‘child-free’ website where they discourage people from having children and making child-free a choice.  The bible’s view is that child-free is a blessing.  The blessed life is to have children (Ps 127, 128).  Having children is having life.  It is one of the great blessing of life.  To not have children is a choice that is not of godly character.  Once children come along parents look together at what they’ve produced and live for more than themselves.  It opens you up to a whole world of unselfishness. 

Do you have any wisdom for the Christian man whose wife refuses him sex and no longer loves him, indeed is indifferent?  The wife once professed her faith but now shows little difference, it is an ongoing and painful situation which is making the man very bitter. 

Life in a sinful world is a dreadful sin because people do hurt each other.  PJ is very sorry for people who fail to be faithful in their marriages.  Unfaithfulness in marriage is not merely committing adultery, it’s failing to keep the promises that you have made – to love or to submit as the case may be.  Whoever asked the question needs real help.  If your partner is not willing to acknowledge the problem or to seek real personal help with you, it’s really tough.  Sometimes we find out what is meant when we make the promise for richer or poorer, for better or worse.  Sometimes ‘for worse’ is very, very worse.  We need to recognise that and be realistic in our commitment to marriage, because there is a rosy perception that marriage solves problems but in fact, marriage doesn’t – at best it changes problems or in some cases deepens them.  God will help and teach us through the process and through all the pains of life (Hebrews 12).  God disciplines those he loves, and the suffering we go to give us knowledge and insight into how better to serve and minister to others, however painful this suffering is.  That is what Hebrews 12 outlines.  But God does understand – eg. In Hosea, Israel’s faithlessness as God’s bride.  You need to talk to somebody about it, starting with your wife. 

How do you rebuild the building blocks of trust in a marriage once that trust has been lost? 

Rebuilding trust is a massive problem – for every 5 steps forward, there’s 4 steps back.  You need to persist and change consistently long enough to be found trustworthy.  At first in every relationship, you are met on the presumption that you are trustworthy.  Once that trust has been broken, you then have to win trust.  And to win trust, there’s nothing other than to be trustworthy for a long period of time to catch up to it.  For Christians though, the gospel can enable us to be quicker in our rebuilding of trust because the gospel is about forgiveness and atonement, and we understand better how to forgive.  You can’t force your partner to forgive, but if they are Christian, then they certainly have the opportunity to forgive more quickly by taking seriously the nature of forgiveness.  Again, if there is a serious problem then you need to talk to someone about it. 

What if a woman marries a man who is unsafe, physically and mentally abusive?  1 Cor 11 says its okay to separate from your husband but Phillip (Jensen, the speaker) said that it’s not ok to divorce with the intention of remarriage.  What if the woman doesn’t have any intention to remarry, but because the man still thinks he owns the wife for the wife to be free from her husband she has to divorce? 

Divorce and separation are different at this point.  Divorce has at its intention marrying someone else.  Separation has at its intention setting a distance for the sake of safety to sort out our problems in order to sometime in the future, reunite again.  Sometimes its just the recognition that you’ll never be able to reunite again so you live separately.  But what if in this separation he harasses her?  Well, in our country you can take out formal court orders to insist on that separation – very sad, but if that has to happen, then that has to happen.  No person should be living in fear of harm and abuse by their spouse.  In the heart of separation is the setting apart in order to come back together sometime in the future.  If the problem is that acute enough though, eg. Stalking etc, then sometimes you will need to ask the authorities help to enforce that separation to step in and help us so that we can sort out our problems.  That’s why you have marriage counsellors and mediators because sometimes you reach such a point that you need a third party to help you work out a marriage because sometimes two people have reached such a stalemate in their problems that they can’t see past it to work them out without the help of a third party.   

Singleness Issues: 

Though I’m only in my 20’s, doctors are telling me if I want to have children I need to have them soon.  I struggle to remain to remain pure, and want to marry but no men at church have asked me out; is it appropriate to ask them out?  Why does God give us all these good things to see but not be able to have it, it seems like I’m a starving person watching everyone else eat.   

This is a problem…it is a growing problem as a consequence of feminism that women in their forties having gone through many relationships have come to the point of being childless even though they wanted children.  They’ve come to a defacto childlessness, which is something that they did not want to do.  It’s the consequence of the world’s way of living – that you enter into these relationships that aren’t sort out in terms of having children, but rather, sort out in let’s move in together and see how it turns out.  By the time you’re in your 40s, then you end up uncommitted without children.  So this postponement of marriage and having children has been to the detriment of women and children.   

Christians should be different – it matters that men should take action for the sake of our sisters.  We have a responsibility to provide for our sisters the joy of motherhood, to care for them.  Your own self-interest should be set aside for the sake of others.  Women shouldn’t have unrealistic ideals of marriage – such that you are so locked into that ideal image of marriage that you never end up getting married.  You’re not going to get that ‘perfect man’ (precisely what you wanted) – give away this unrealistic image.  Instead you should be looking realistically for a man of faithfulness who will love you and lay down your life for you; somebody you can be happy with him for life.  But take note that you don’t need to marry this faithful, loving man if you don’t like him.  No-one has to marry someone that they don’t like.  But often when you don’t like someone, it tells more about you than it does about the person you don’t like.  It’s often about thinking about yourself –what’s so good about you that you don’t like him.     

There is a need for us to be more open – guys need to take more action, and girls need to be more open and willing to see what matters in relationship.  Often PJ has seen wonderful loving women who would make great wives waiting for a man to take action, and caring, loving men likewise, but being passed by time and again because he doesn’t fit into the world’s knight in shining armour persona.   

How long should you be going out for? 

There’s other bits to it too.  People shouldn’t take too long in their going out phase because it robs people of alternatives.  How long does it take to work out whether this is the person to marry?  If you’ve been going out for so long, it shouldn’t take too long to work out whether he or she is the right one to marry.  But to lock each other up for 3-4 years in an exclusive relationship is immoral…if you’re not going to marry her/him, then release him/her so he/she can find someone who will marry him/her.  Don’t lack the courage of commitment and conviction…take action!! 

The principles are this: we are created for relationships with God and with each other, to have children in marriage – this is more important than career, wealth, success, fame, fortune etc…but we must act in loving faithfulness, considering each other and providing for each other.  Let us open our eyes to see the good things that God has provided…beware of spurning the people for whom Christ died and saying they are unsuitable for me as a marriage partners. 

Arranged marriages: 

My parents really want me to marry a girl from my parent’s country of origin.  My main criteria for a wife is a girl who is Christian and loves me and is concerned for my salvation and building up me in Christ.  How can I satisfy both worlds? 

Arranged marriages is a solution to this singleness problem.  It is a cultural thing that works very well, and has great success.  It’s important though that people are free to marry and reject – that people have a choice about it.  But there’s nothing wrong with an arranged marriages, especially when the parents are Christian and are choosing on a Christian criteria.  It’s more difficult though if the parents are non-Christian.  Inter-racial marriages, especially when both are Christian seem to be eminently successful in the history of the St Matthias Churches, speaking from experience.  Marrying a Christian is far more successful across racial boundaries than marrying a non-Christian of the same race.   

1 Cor 7 talks about arranged marriages.  What do you do if you’re betrothed to a non-Christian but you’ve become a Christian.  Paul says that you should stick to it and fulfil your responsibility.   You don’t need to marry within your culture…there’s advantages in doing so, but it’s must more imperative to marry a Christian, and if you have the freedom, then choose what you think is best to do.  But listen to your parents – they may have your best interests in mind.  If you have to choose against your parent’s wish, then don’t worry too much, because no-one can ever reject their grandchildren.  There is no way that the hostility can continue once grandchildren are born.   

1 Cor 7 – allows the unbelieving husband to separate from his believing wife because we cannot stop unbelievers from acting out their unbelief by acting out their unbelief.  Thus we’re not to encourage people to stay faithful to someone who wants to run away from the marriage.  That is the choice of the unfaithful, there is nothing you can do to stop it.   

Can I have sex to someone I’m engaged to but not married yet?   

Yes.  Should you? NO.  ‘Can I’ is the Pharisees question in the end.  Marriage and engagement are different.  The difference lies in that the sexual cohabitation has not started yet, so do not start!  It’s like buying a house – you’ve agreed on the price, but haven’t bought the house.  Once you’ve settled and paid the payment, then you’ve bought the house.  This is the critical point where you can’t back out of it – that is when you are married.  Do not pay the price beforehand – that is stupid.  To pay the money when you’ve agreed to the purchase without finishing the transaction completely is stupid.  No one would advise you to do that when buying a house, let alone marriage which is so much more bigger than this!   

But also it’s a failure to see that it’s not the sexual act that is critical, but the whole relationship – you’re already in a relationship, what you must do is express that in a level of commitment that you’ve already come to.  And that is not to have intercourse yet, nor to be arousing each other like that.  You’re in a level of commitment to take responsibility for each other, but you’re not fully taking responsibility for each other yet.  If it’s so important that you have sex now, then bring the wedding forward.  Weddingitis has grabbed hold of people…that is, you need a perfect wedding, reception, lots of time to plan it etc.  Marriage or your uni course?  Which one’s more important?  If you can’t see that marriage is more important then you’ve got a problem.  Holiness is more important than finishing your course before you marry.  If you really need to marry, then marry!   

Masturbation:    

I was horrified to hear that the church minister of a congregation endorse masturbation, to think that boys will go home now to open up magazines and masturbate in front of them, to somehow think that it is condoned by the bible is wrong. 

Hold on…you’ve jumped from masturbation to pornography.  PJ is not saying that you should masturbate if you don’t want to.  He is saying that the physical activity isn’t the central concern.  The relationship and the manner in which you enjoy that is central.  Eg. The classic illustration is the Leverite(?) Marriage (the marriage between the widow and the brother-in-law) which is commanded by God.  It was incestuous, but it was using sex in order to have children for the brother.  It’s not the sex act that God was on about, it’s the relationship in which you have that sex act.  That we use our sexuality to help, encourage, love and care for each other.  There are times in a relationship when masturbation can be used to handle the differing libido pressures of the partners, and it’s an activity that’s nowhere condemned in the bible, even though the bible is explicit about all other sexual perversions, even down to bestiality, which is far less frequent than masturbation but masturbation is not mentioned.   

One of the areas of difficulty in masturbation is lust.  Gen 38 and Matt 5 is misunderstood and mistranslated (see above).  What is helpful is to use our imagination for good and not for evil, even and especially in sexual activity.  This extends to the area of intercourse.  What is going through he mind of a person who is in the activity of intercourse can be degenerate and wicked, or can be loving, kind and wonderful.  It’s important that what takes place in our mind is positive, not negative.   

Pornography is always wrong because pornography de-personalises.  It uses and abuses, often with the mindset of sadism or masochism as the case may be.  It’s destructive of our relationship – placing our sexual feelings in a sinful context.  But masturbation does not necessarily involve that.  Eg. The dream of romance.  When you need to masturbate, you don’t need to think of a degenerate, immoral relationship in order to be aroused.  If you do, then it’s a sign that you don’t need to masturbate.  You can think positively about relationships and love etc, and it’s important to do so.   

Within marriage, there is mutual masturbation which may be helpful because of medical reasons etc.  It’s not masturbation that’s wrong, it’s the context and mindset in which it happens.   

4) Conclusion 

God has created us like the other creatures with all manner of bodily appetite.  Don’t get guilty of your body or your appetite.  Sexual feelings and appetite are given by God – when you think and find yourself daydreaming about that wonderful man; when you see that beautiful girl walking down the street and suddenly remember that you are a man, praise God and be thankful!  When you no longer feel those feelings, go to the doctor and get a check-up!  Rejoice in your bodily appetite, don’t despise them or feel guilty about them.   

But because we as humans are made in the image of God to rule over the animals, we should not satisfy every appetite as the animals do but instead, act responsibly with our bodies in order to serve God and serve each other.  We’re made for relationships that can be nourished by our bodies, or destroyed by our bodies.  Because we’re sinful, we can misuse any good thing of Gods, but remember that Christ came to pay for our sins and Christ sent his spirit to change the way we live.  So whatever we’ve done in the past can be forgiven – just bring it to the blood of Christ to wash you clean, no matter how bad it was.  And whatever you were or are can be changed to live God’s way and not our sinful way because of the power of the Holy Spirit within us.  Therefore don’t be imprisoned by your past or present actions because God is at work within us and has paid the price to set us free from the bondage of sin, and he can work to change you. 

God’s way, if you don’t want to live for him sounds strange and weird, but it’s for our best and it’s very much superior to the world’s way of living.  It brings harmony and happiness to everyone and pleases him when we live his way.  The ultimate question is thus, are you going to live for yourself, or to live for God.  Because if you live for yourself, you’ll inevitably become a slave to your own body and passions – and that’s what has happened in Western culture.  Sex is everywhere…that is the society in which we live today.  Today’s society lives for themselves – their own bodily passions and not for relationships.  You only need to pick up a Vogue magazine to realise that almost every picture is pornography – it displays the woman in a degenerative manner.  But if you live for Christ who died and rose again for you, you’ll seek to master your body and use it for the glory of God and the benefit of your partner and your children, parents and society around you.