Church

The Gospel and Sex

by Tim Keller

Another problem with the courtship approach involves modern-day sociocultural factors. For one thing, the courting system of the nineteenth century assumed a more homogenous, less mobile society. Most readers will acknowledge the difficulties involved in attempting modern-day courting. How can a thirty-something Christian single person living two thousand miles from his or her family engage in traditional courting? Still another problem is the choice and limitation of terms. Removing the word dating from one’s vocabulary creates more problems than it solves. In everyday English nearly every social engagement can be considered a date. (We call our personal planners “date books,” after all.) If one says, “I don’t date,” does this mean he or she will never do something social with a person of the opposite sex?

Instead of abandoning the concept willy-nilly, we should admit the problems with contemporary dating models and dialogue about how dating can be different in a Christian community.

FOLLOWING ARE SOME SPECIFIC GUIDELINES PERTAINING TO BEING SINGLE AND SEEKING MARRIAGE.

1. Seasonality.
The seasons of life include many times in which active dating and marriage-seeking do not have to be pursued, such as when one enters a period of significant transition—starting a new job, beginning a graduate program, or assisting a critically ill family member. In fact, it is advisable to avoid marriage seeking during and immediately following an emotionally charged life transition, since our judgment may be cloudy and our motives suspect.

2. Singleness as a “Gift”?
In the 1 Corinthians 7 text on being single, Paul most likely means that the “gift” of being single accompanies a low need for romantic relationship. Be advised, however, that it is possible that a low need for relationships, far from being a spiritual gift (1 Cor. 7:7), may mask an idol of personal freedom. Or it may stem from an in- ability to create deep relationships. One should be careful not to mistake a selfish spirit or an inability to keep friendships as the “gift of singleness.” It is also possible that a gift like this is not a permanent condition but rather is given for a definite period of time with need for periodic evaluation. Lacking either a spiritual gift or season of singleness, one should be actively dating and marriage seeking. Why is this important?
+    to affirm people of the opposite sex within the Christian community
+    to help one another learn the intricacies of cross-gender communication, discernment, and relationship
+    to stay open to God’s own leading toward marriage or singleness
+    to avoid the contemporary idols that make dating and marriage threatening
+    to avoid avoidance (dating and marriage-seeking is a process of self-discovery and cross-gender understanding; as such, it should not be avoided)

PRINCIPLES FOR SEASONS OF MARRIAGE-SEEKING

Following are a few practical principles to remember in the dating and marriage-seeking process.

1. Strive to be balanced.
As was outlined above, courtship is oriented toward character assessment and consideration of marriage pros- pects. It is pure marriage seeking. Dating is oriented toward recreation and companionship. If we try to insist that we should never date without marriage seeking, we are going to fall into legalism. There are too many social occasions that call for something like a date. On the other hand, those who preponderantly engage in recreational dating, especially as they get older, will be playing with the emotions of others. There must be gentle ways to signal the seriousness with which you ask or agree to a particular date. The older you are, and the more often you go out, the quicker both people must be to acknowledge that marriage seeking is an important part of dating.

2. Do not allow yourself deep emotional involvement with a non-believing person of the opposite sex.
2 Corinthians 6:14–18 contains the important prohibition against marrying outside of one’s faith. If your part- ner does not share your faith, then he or she doesn’t understand it. And if Jesus is central to you, then that means that your partner doesn’t understand you. He or she does not understand the mainspring and motivation of your life. The essence of intimacy in marriage is the beautiful realization that finally you have someone who really understands you and accepts you as you are, someone you don’t have to hide from. But if the person is not a believer, he or she cannot understand your very essence and heart.

If you marry someone who does not share your faith, you will have to lose your transparency. In the normal, healthy Christian life, you relate Christ and the gospel to everything you do. You base decisions on Christian principles. You think about what you read in the Bible that day. But if you are natural and transparent about all of these thoughts, your unbelieving partner will find you tedious or even offensive. The other possibility is that you simply move Christ out of a central place in your consciousness. You may even have to let your ardor for Christ cool, in order to keep from feeling isolated from your spouse.

Technically there is nothing in the Bible forbidding you to date a nonbeliever, since there is nothing in the Bible about dating at all. But there is a clear rule against marrying outside the faith. Wisdom dictates, then, that you not get serious with someone who doesn’t believe.

3. Look for attraction in the most comprehensive sense.
Physical attraction is something that must grow between marriage partners, and it will come easily if you have the deeper attraction I’m speaking of. “Comprehensive” attraction is something you can begin to experience if you deliberately disable the appearance-and-status screening default mode of our culture.

By “comprehensive attraction” I mean being attracted to a person’s character, spiritual fruit (Gal. 5:22–26), and spiritual gifts. Jonathan Edwards said that true virtue in any person—the contentment, peace, and joy of the gospel—is beautiful. When you begin to mine the depths of another person’s character, to understand her mission in life, to discover his deepest passions, then you begin to see that person’s future self. Ephesians 5 tells us that the purpose of marriage is to help one another become the glorious, unique persons God is making us. Marriage partners can say, “I see what you are becoming and what you will be (even though, frankly, you aren’t there yet). The flashes of your future self attract me.”

4. Don’t romanticize things too quickly.
One of the great advantages of the old courtship approach was a steady relational cadence. In courtship, the courting couple got to see one another in more natural settings, such as the family home, their places of wor- ship, and in the community. Evaluation of character was easier to do in these settings. My suggestion is to focus on friendship experiences early on. The Christian community affords plenty of opportunity for this. Even after you declare to another, “I want to date you,” you are able to enter the worlds of one another in the older courtship way that is very difficult outside the Christian community. You can attend a small group fellowship together, study the Bible together, serve in the city together, among many other things. And yes, don’t have sex before marriage. The biblical, theological, and practical reasons are voluminous. There is no ambiguity about this in the Bible or in the history of Christian theology and practice; in fact, it is something that all major world religions agree upon!

5. Submit to community input.
Courtship assumed that experienced married people in your extended family would give you input in the selection of a spouse. Many people are now insisting that we return to the old requirement of getting the father’s consent or even arranged marriages. But that is seldom practicable, especially for singles who have been away from home for years and for single Christians whose parents have little understanding of the gospel. Regardless, the basic principle is important. Christian marriage, like most Christian practices, is not to be based on a singular decision but rather should take place in the context of community. The Christian community has a deep investment in you and a deep interest in healthy and happy marriages. Also, the community has many married people in it who have much wisdom for single adults.

In the end, there are only a few necessary components in a gospel-centered marriage. Both partners should be on the same page spiritually, that is, able to relate to one another and help each other grow in their faith; both should be able to work through problems without repeating the same ones over and over again, or one person always getting their way; and both should feel attraction in the comprehensive sense, able to share their deep- est joys and longings with each other and not (just) attraction in the physical sense.

-----

How can you better foster a community where singleness is as accepted and as valued as marriage?
What does it look like for your community to be a place where sex, money, and in power are used in life-giving ways?

-----

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Gospel and Life conferences of 2004 and 2005 and is posted here from Redeemer City to City with permission. The image used was taken by Flickr user Cuentosdeunaimbecila.

-----

1. See C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, book 3, chapter 5.
2. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 189–90.
3. Ibid., 174, 190
4. Ibid., 191.
5. Unfortunately, many Christian churches continue to make single people feel like awkward outsiders and do not take 1 Corinthians 7 seriously, which seems to indicate that the average Christian church forbids premarital sex more out of a traditional or Platonic view of sex than out of a biblical worldview.
6. Hauerwas, Community of Character, 194–95.
7. Ibid., 190–91.
8. Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, Intimate Allies: Rediscovering God’s Design for Marriage and Becoming Soul Mates for Life (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1999), 253–54.
9. C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 217.
10. William Lane, Hebrews 9–13, Word Biblical Commentary 47B (Dallas: Word, 1991), 305.
11. See Matthew 15:19; Mark 7:21; Acts 15:20; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, 18; Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3–5; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; 1 Timothy 1:10; Hebrews 13:4.
12. David John Atkinson, The Message of Genesis 1–11: The Dawn of Creation (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 76.
13. D. S. Bailey, Sexual Relation in Christian Thought (New York, 1959), 9–10.
14 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. 3, chap. 6.
15. Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 98, emphasis mine.
16. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p.104.\
17. Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
18. One of the better efforts to do this is the well-known book I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris (1997).

Previous 1 2 3 4 5

Comments

Joe Bradford

INteresting article, and admirably brief given the dizzying complexity of almost every term therein contained. I have nothing much to add, except to sadly note that the Church, that community within which Keller proposes these norms, is largely nonexistent (as a covenant community.) Even within a particular and well-defined "church" congregation, it rings as a fanciful (even if biblical) idea, and wildly unfamiliar to American Christians. It seems to fit nicely and realistically amid the Christian churches of India that I visited e few years back, however. But the notion of Community has become so foriegn that I don't even know where we might begin to adopt or enforce these norms. Ideas anybody?

john van sloten

"Sex is sacred because, with God, it co-creates a new soul." Tweeted that!

I've often thought of the ecstacy of sex as a foretaste of the ecstacy of our perfect union with Christ. Something tells me that if we kept this more in mind, we'd make much wiser sexual choices. In fact, all that is sex would be transformed.

Loran

Tim, I'd love to see this article expanded into a small paperback book that could be used as instruction/discussion starter in church youth groups, etc.; even formatted so that there was a chapter per week for study. This is as concise an article as I have ever seen that focuses on the rationale within Scripture for faithfulness as opposed to the "don't's of sex". The don't's of sex do not deter many youth from the ravages of their hormones; however, some understanding of the importance of faithfulness --- throughout all of our living -- might do more to help with our obsession with sex. Added the insight that the Holy Spirit is the third person on all dates causes some second thinking, too! I could foresee a paperback study book of maybe 80 to 100 pages in Reader's Digest size booklet. Good luck on the idea!! ---- Loran

Alejandro Baldwin

Beautiful piece. I like that it wasn't written for teenagers who are "kissing dating goodbye." Even though that is need I appreciated the "grown" tone of this article. Needles to say it spoke to me. Thank you sir.

Taylor

Joe,

I understand the sentiment of your comment about the lack of community that exists in the church today; however, you're using your personal experience to make a generalization which is not true. I know it is not true because I have experienced Gospel-centered community in my church community. Undoubtedly, there are a great number of churches that have rather stagnant community, but it's wrong to say that ALL churches are the same way.

John

I talk to my son about "our tribe" and its men that hold a different view from the rest. I use "sex as recreation" to highlight the differing view that sex is far more than recreation and that for the best sexuality we treat each other differently. The formation of family within a permanent loving relationship that will commit to each other and those children all their lives. Such love is the context for sexual union. Without such commitment we harm ourselves and our society by having broken families and a world filled with lack of lifetime-commitment-love. What if God's intention for us was to this higher level of expression that showed lifetime-commitment-love that was similar to His love? Would that be a good world? What will our contribution be to our wives and children be son? Will we chose recreation or something greater?

Always searching for words that will be meaningful to teens...

Chefnp90

Paul (From the Bible), 8/26/2011

I, as a Christian, can certainly appreciate your dedication to God and yourself insomuch so as to commit yourself to lifetime celibacy. I can also understand that, as in many cultures, such as the "Fa'afafine" of Polynesia, the "Mahu" of Hawai'i and the "Men of two spirits" in Native American tribes, we have those in our society who are naturally single/alone. These people serve as social "helpers" if you will and allow for both cultural diversity as it relates to gender orientation and fostering orphaned children who have nowhere else to go. I get it. However, I cannot sit back and simply accept that I, as a HOMOSEXUAL male, am destined to either a life of sin (because sex outside of marriage is not celestially-condoned) or of solitude (because I must marry a woman if I'm going to have sex [ barf ]). What a dichotomy of destruction! Talk about spiritual and cognitive dissonance.

I consider myself a god-fearing individual, but not even I can see eye-to-eye with you on this one, Paul. It has been a question of mine for quite some time whether God has made me homosexual. I often wonder if it is a birth defect/gene modification (as some scientific theories suggest). Regardless of the definitive cause of my sexual orientation, I am who I am and I'm STILL a son of God. Having studied cultures and both ancient and modern texts relating to the existence of homosexuality, it has become blatantly obvious to me that this so-called "defect" is more common than most people think. It stands to reason, then, that it might have been by divine design - maybe we ARE supposed to gay!

It is my personal, unorthodox belief that God really doesn't care so much about what we do, so long as we are responsible, prayerful, and generally "Good," (as subjective as the term may be). Yes, I concede that God has laid foundations for morality and general social interaction (The 10 Commandments). These have been given to us, through the prophet Moses, to guide us, or otherwise dictate what we must do in order to return to Christ. I, with my very prideful, arrogant, yet reasonable mindset, cannot accept that God will hate/castigate me because I choose to follow the third reason for making love (as defined in the article above). I'm a realist, and I know my Creator on a personal level, not just from a book. He would never think less of me because I am who I innately came to this earth as. He loves me just the same.

I respect you, Paul, but I set aside your dichotomic resolve and substitute it for this; reality. God wants us to be happy and, beyond that, he really isn't concerned with the how or what.

Respectfully,

- Nicholas

TC Epperson

Nicholas,

I think Paul would have considered homosexuality the least of mankind's problems. The problem that we are all born with is that we don't believe what God says. We don't believe him when he says we are carriers of evil. We don't believe him when he says our means of assessing ourselves is defunct. We don't believe him when he says there is only one way out of the mess: letting Jesus remake us.

Ultimately, we are all predisposed to believe our own assessment of ourselves rather than his assessment of us. And this disbelief is going to kill us in the end, if we hang on to it. If we do let go of it, we will be shown the terrifying depth of our own culpability; and we will be shown the perfection of God, with which he offers to upgrade us. I can tell you from personal experience, that upgrade from outside the self is the only way to have real depth of joy. In this sense, absolutely, God wants us to be happy.

jon

would love to hear more about this:

1. Seasonality.

The seasons of life include many times in which active dating and marriage-seeking do not have to be pursued, such as when one enters a period of significant transition—starting a new job, beginning a graduate program, or assisting a critically ill family member. In fact, it is advisable to avoid marriage seeking during and immediately following an emotionally charged life transition, since our judgment may be cloudy and our motives suspect.

i started dating my now fiance right when i began the 1st year of my MBA program. just before meeting her, i told myself that i would focus on school and avoid marriage seeking. well, sometimes God chooses a different path for you. we have been in different cities since the start of the relationship and have pursued the relationship with the full understanding that God is always first in our lives. we even give advice to other couples who may or may not be Christians in how to engage in a God-loving relationship. i would not trade this experience for anything. through this season of my life, my fiance and i have learned how to work with one another during times of stress and longing. we have learned how to communicate and manage time with one another. i truly believe this time God has given us is a blessing. it may not be ideal for me to be in school in a different city, but i would make the case that even when i tried to avoid marriage seeking, God led me to her. that i cannot avoid.

Nate

There are so many people who look at sex differently. There are those that can sit and watch porn all day and it's just like a regular movie to them. Others are very sensitive to the issue. A good read. Thanks

PASTOR perez

It is written "My people suffer for lack of knowledge" all people need deliverance from demonic oppressions and generational curses. This is real bible and christ Jesus did it for all people.( In jesus name cast out the delvil and rebuke him) christians do not be cowards , but live a life free of earthly bondages !!

james

Post is nicely written and it contains many good things for me. I am glad to find your impressive way of writing the post. Now it become easy for me to understand and implement the concept. Thanks for sharing the post.

Caleb Darku Mensah

I perceive sex to be a honorable gift or treasure that has to be kept for a future spouse. I it my prayer that all singles that have not indulge themselves in sexual fornication will remain pure until they are joyfully married.

Caleb Darku Mensah

I perceive sex to be a honorable gift or treasure that has to be kept for a future spouse. It is my prayer that all singles that have not indulge themselves in sexual fornication will remain pure until they are joyfully married.

Salvador Moreno

I am a very spiritual person and would love souly to express myself in a way that is mattering to my basic standard of liveing And my soul partner . Which would be a female . Your inspiration was generous . Sincerely : Sal Moreno

Comments are now closed

ALSO BY TIM KELLER

ALSO IN CHURCH