Editor's Note
This Lausanne Occasional Paper is part of the Theological Foundation Papers collection, which provides a biblical and theological framework for addressing key questions and trends from State of the Great Commission Report . This article is the first in a two-part series, with Part 2 addressing how Christians should understand disorders of sexual development, gender dysphoria, and transgender identities.
Other papers in this series
Introduction
The topics of sex, marriage, and gender identity are not easy to navigate, especially within the context of the church that strives to declare and display the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. Thankfully, the Scriptures speak to these issues with both clarity and compassion. This essay will answer the following two questions: First, what are the biblical foundations of sex, marriage, and singleness? Second, how should Christians understand disorders of sexual development, gender dysphoria, and transgender identities?
To excavate the biblical foundations for sex, marriage, and singleness, we must grasp Genesis in one hand and Revelation in the other. With arms stretched wide, we will find Jesus at the very center.
Old Testament Foundations
In Genesis 1, God made humans “in the image of God…male and female” (Gen. 1:26-28). This is the first building block for our understanding of human identity. Both male and female humans are made in God’s image. God’s first command to humans depends on male and female coming together: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28).1 Men and women together are commissioned by God to fill the earth and rule over his creation under Him.
Genesis 2 focuses on the first human couple. God forms the man out of the dust (Gen. 2:7). Then he declares, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18). The word “helper” here cannot imply inferiority, since God himself is most often described by this word.2 Rather, it implies collaboration and companionship.
None of the animals are fit to be the man’s helper (Gen. 2:19-20). But when God makes a woman from the man’s side, the man recognizes her as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). Unlike the animals, the woman is like the man. But she is also different from the man in the precise way required for the creation of other humans.
This first union is presented as the prototype for marriage: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Marriage is a one-flesh union between one man and one woman. At this point, this first couple is naked together and unashamed (Gen. 2:25). But in Genesis 3, this couple disobeys God’s word. At once, they realize they are naked and become ashamed (Gen. 3:7-11). Sin spoils their relationship with God and with each other.
As the Old Testament progresses, we see the ravages of sin in every area of human life, not least in sexual relationships. Rather than sex being kept for the one-flesh union of one man and one woman in God-honoring marriage, we see adultery, prostitution, rape, incest, and divorce. When God gives his law to his people, we see prohibitions and punishments for various forms of sexual sin, including adultery (Exod. 20:14; Lev. 20:10), incest (Lev. 18:6-18), rape (Deut. 22:25), and same-sex sex (Lev. 18:20; 20:22).
But as we read on in the prophets, we find another theme emerging: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea all compare God to a faithful, loving husband and Israel to an often-unfaithful wife.3 Human marriage is presented as a metaphor for God’s relationship with his people. This marriage is in crisis because God’s people keep cheating on Him with other so-called gods. But then Jesus comes.
In the New Testament, we see God’s original design for marriage as a one-flesh union between one man and one woman underscored and any sex outside of this relationship condemned. But we also see Jesus stepping into the role of husband to God’s people and his relationship with his church presented as the first and final point of marriage.
Jesus’s Words on Marriage, Divorce, and Sexual Sin
When the Pharisees questioned Jesus about divorce, he replied,
Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?” So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate (Matt. 19:4-6).
Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24 to present marriage as a one-flesh, God-ordained, unbreakable union between one man and one woman. This text rebukes our modern tendency to accommodate divorce and remarriage, which Jesus describes as adultery except in cases when the marriage has been broken by sexual immorality (Matt. 5:32). But in addition to this, Jesus quotes from Genesis 1:27, when God made humans “male and female,” and thereby underlines the male-female nature of marriage.
Jesus’s teaching on marriage and on sexual sin is more strict than the Old Testament’s. The Mosaic law allowed men to divorce their wives with a certificate of divorce (Deut. 24:1-4). But Jesus reduces the grounds for divorce on the basis that marriage is a one-flesh union, declaring “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6-9). The law prohibited adultery (Exod. 20:14). But Jesus extends this to include even looking at a woman lustfully (Matt. 5:27-28). The law did not prohibit polygamy. But Jesus underlines God’s original design for marriage as one man and one woman (Matt. 19:4-6).
Jesus locates the problem with sexual sin not only in our actions but in our hearts (Matt. 5:27-28; 15:19; Mark 7:21-23). According to his standards, we are all sexual sinners. But Jesus also sought out sexual sinners (e.g. John 4:7-30) and welcomed those who repented (e.g. Luke 7:36-50). Strikingly, he told the chief priests and the elders of his day that prostitutes were entering God’s kingdom ahead of them (Matt. 21:31).
Christian Marriage as a Pointer to Christ and the Church
Jesus never married, but he called himself the bridegroom (Matt. 9:15). John the Baptist also described Jesus in this way (John 3:29). This evokes the Old Testament metaphor: Jesus is the bridegroom, come to claim God’s people for himself. Building on this, Paul calls Christian husbands and wives to relate to one another like Jesus and his church (Eph. 5:22-33). Wives are called to submit to their husbands “as to the Lord,” and husbands to love their wives “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:22, 25). Christian marriage is intended to enact the one-flesh, sacrificial, love-soaked union between Jesus and his people.
Paul’s teaching is the opposite of a license for husbands to denigrate or abuse their wives. Husbands are not called to make their wives submit to them or to ensure their wives prioritize their needs. Rather, they are called to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of their wives, and to love their wives as their own bodies (Eph. 5:28).
Paul concludes by quoting Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” and declaring, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31-32). Here we find that human marriage from the beginning was designed to be a picture of Jesus’s relationship with his church. The metaphor returns in full force at the end of the Bible, when we hear a great multitude declaring that “the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready” (Rev. 19:6) and the New Jerusalem descends from heaven “prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband” (Rev. 21:2).
This metaphor of Christ and the church stands at the center of a biblical understanding of sex and marriage. God wrote theology into our biology when he made human beings male and female and gave us the capacity to generate new life when one man and one woman come together. Like Jesus’s relationship with his church, marriage is intended to be faithful and designed to be fruitful. Like Jesus’s relationship with his church, marriage is a union across deep differences (the difference of male and female), not a union of two interchangeable parties (male-male or female-female). While every human being is unique, the only binary difference between humans is the difference of male and female, which is written into every cell of our bodies.
The Bible’s View of Sexual Sin
Alongside this positive vision of marriage as a pointer to Jesus’s love for his church, the New Testament also prohibits any sexual relationships outside the lifelong covenant of male-female marriage. The Greek word porneia (typically translated as “sexual immorality”) was a blanket term for all sex outside marriage and the New Testament consistently condemns it.4
In line with Jesus’s teaching, Paul tightens up the Old Testament law. While many leaders of God’s people in the Old Testament had multiple wives, Paul bars anyone with more than one wife from leadership in the church (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:6). While the Old Testament warns against using prostitutes (Prov. 23:27; 29:3), Paul specifically prohibits sex with prostitutes (1 Cor. 6:15-20). The Old Testament prohibited sexual relationships between two males (Lev. 18:22; 20:13). Paul reasserts this prohibition multiple times and explicitly applies it to sexual relationships between women (Rom. 1:26-28; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; 1 Tim. 8:1-12).
Like Jesus, Paul takes sexual sin extremely seriously, and like Jesus, Paul affirms the full forgiveness of all sexual sinners who repent. Paul’s illustrative list of sins that will keep people from inheriting God’s kingdom includes those who engage in sexual immorality (porneia), adulterers, and (literally) “male-bedders” (1 Cor. 6:9). Paul seems to have coined the word he uses here, by combining two Greek words used in the Greek translation of the prohibition on men having sex with males in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. But Paul concludes: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).
Some cultures today affirm same-sex sexual relationships on the grounds that same-sex desire seems to come naturally to some people. But according to Jesus, all our sinful desires—including our desires for sexual sin—come from our hearts (Mark 7:21-23). So, the fact that something seems to arise naturally does not mean it is good. We must recognize all sexual thoughts or actions outside of male-female marriage as sinful. But while some Christians today condemn same-sex sexual sin as if they stood upon a moral high ground, followers of Jesus must recognize that we are all sexual sinners who need Jesus’s forgiveness. Whatever form our temptations take, we need help from our brothers and sisters in Christ to fight sexual sin in thought and deed.
Marriage and Singleness
The fact that marriage is designed to be a declaration of the gospel means we must value it highly (Heb. 13:4). It means that sex within marriage is good and that husbands and wives should have sex regularly and prioritize each other in their sexual relationship (1 Cor. 7:3-5). It means that marriage is a gift (1 Cor. 7:7) and children are a blessing (Ps. 127:3; Mal. 2:15), embodying the one-flesh union of marriage.
It also illustrates the life-giving fruitfulness of Jesus’s relationship with his people. It means that people should see how Christian husbands love their wives and be reminded of the sacrificial love of Jesus. But it also means that marriage is not ultimate, and we must not idolize it.
Jesus himself was single in his life on earth and he taught that there will be no marriage at the resurrection (Matt. 22:30), when God’s people will fully experience the ultimate reality to which Christian marriage points. In line with this, Paul (who was also single) taught that singleness is preferable because it can facilitate wholehearted devotion to the Lord (1 Cor. 7:32-34). Just as married Christians point to the New Creation via their faithful, loving, one-flesh union, so single Christians point to the New Creation, when there will be no more human marriage, but we will all live together as the bride of Christ. Single Christians may not have biological children, but like Paul, they can have many spiritual children (1 Tim. 1:2, 18; Titus 1:4; Philem. 1:10).
Conclusion
God’s first command to humans was, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Jesus’s last command to his disciples was, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:18). Whether they are married or single, the followers of Jesus are called to preach the gospel with their words, lives, and bodies, until Jesus comes again, and we together are his everlasting, sinless, and eternally-beloved bride.
Endnotes
- All Scripture from the ESV.
- E.g., Exodus 18:4; Deuteronomy 33:7; Hosea 13:9; Psalm 20:3; 115:9-11; 121:1-2; 124:8.
- Isaiah 50:1; 54:5-8; 62:4-5; Jeremiah 2:2, 32; 3:6-10, 12-14, 20; 31:31-33; Ezekiel 16:8-14, 32-34, 43, 59-62; Hosea 1:2; 2:2, 7, 14-16, 19-20; 3:1-3; 9:1.
- Matthew 7:21; 15:9; Acts 15:20, 29; Romans 13:13; 1 Corinthians 5:11; 6:12-18, etc.
