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    How Should Christians Think about Sex?
    How Should Christians Think about Sex?
    How Should Christians Think about Sex?
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    How Should Christians Think about Sex?

    By Christopher Ash

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    About this ebook

    Why God cares about your sex life.

    Everyone is talking about sex. Be true to yourself—love whomever and however you want. The world claims to be affirming and inclusive. But Jesus says to deny yourself. Is Christianity repressive?

    In How Should Christians Think about Sex?, Christopher Ash turns to the Bible to find the wisdom and beauty in God's good design. What is marriage? What is sexuality for? Only God's word makes sense of it all. Jesus' way is better, more liberating, and more affirming. Experience the freedom that comes through living not for your own gratification, but for God's glory.

    The Questions for Restless Minds series applies God's word to today's issues. Each short book faces tough questions honestly and clearly, so you can think wisely, act with conviction, and become more like Christ.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLexham Press
    Release dateJun 1, 2022
    ISBN9781683595045
    How Should Christians Think about Sex?
    Author

    Christopher Ash

    Christopher Ash is writer in residence at Tyndale House in Cambridge. He previously served as a pastor and church planter and as the director of the Proclamation Trust Cornhill Training Course in London. He and his wife, Carolyn, are members of a church in Cambridge, and they have four children and numerous grandchildren.

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      Book preview

      How Should Christians Think about Sex? - Christopher Ash

      Cover.png

      QUESTIONS FOR RESTLESS MINDS

      How Should Christians Think about Sex?

      Christopher Ash

      D. A. Carson,

      Series Editor

      Copyright

      How Should Christians Think about Sex?

      Questions for Restless Minds, edited by D. A. Carson

      Copyright 2022 Christ on Campus Initiative

      Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

      LexhamPress.com

      You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at permissions@lexhampress.com.

      Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

      Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV®). Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

      Print ISBN 9781683595038

      Digital ISBN 9781683595045

      Library of Congress Control Number 2021937690

      Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Abigail Stocker, Allisyn Ma, Mandi Newell

      Cover Design: Brittany Schrock

      Contents

      Series Preface

      1.Introduction

      2.Sexuality and Creation Order

      3.Sex in the Service of God

      4.Sex as a Substitute for God

      5.Sex in a Disordered World

      6.Conclusion: Everyone Can Have a Wedding Day!

      Acknowledgments

      Study Guide Questions

      For Further Reading

      Series Preface

      D. A. CARSON, SERIES EDITOR

      The origin of this series of books lies with a group of faculty from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), under the leadership of Scott Manetsch. We wanted to address topics faced by today’s undergraduates, especially those from Christian homes and churches.

      If you are one such student, you already know what we have in mind. You know that most churches, however encouraging they may be, are not equipped to prepare you for what you will face when you enroll at university.

      It’s not as if you’ve never known any winsome atheists before going to college; it’s not as if you’ve never thought about Islam, or the credibility of the New Testament documents, or the nature of friendship, or gender identity, or how the claims of Jesus sound too exclusive and rather narrow, or the nature of evil. But up until now, you’ve probably thought about such things within the shielding cocoon of a community of faith.

      Now you are at college, and the communities in which you are embedded often find Christian perspectives to be at best oddly quaint and old-fashioned, if not repulsive. To use the current jargon, it’s easy to become socialized into a new community, a new world.

      How shall you respond? You could, of course, withdraw a little: just buckle down and study computer science or Roman history (or whatever your subject is) and refuse to engage with others. Or you could throw over your Christian heritage as something that belongs to your immature years and buy into the cultural package that surrounds you. Or—and this is what we hope you will do—you could become better informed.

      But how shall you go about this? On any disputed topic, you do not have the time, and probably not the interest, to bury yourself in a couple of dozen volumes written by experts for experts. And if you did, that would be on one topic—and there are scores of topics that will grab the attention of the inquisitive student. On the other hand, brief pamphlets with predictable answers couched in safe slogans will prove to be neither attractive nor convincing.

      So we have adopted a middle course. We have written short books pitched at undergraduates who want arguments that are accessible and stimulating, but invariably courteous. The material is comprehensive enough that it has become an important resource for pastors and other campus leaders who devote their energies to work with students. Each book ends with a brief annotated bibliography and study questions, intended for readers who want to probe a little further.

      Lexham Press is making this series available as attractive print books and in digital formats (ebook and Logos resource). We hope and pray you will find them helpful and convincing.

      1

      INTRODUCTION

      Why is sex so fascinating? (Why did you choose to read this book rather than the others?) That’s one question. But why pay any attention to what Christians believe about sex? That’s quite another. And yet, the very fascination of sex is a pointer to a religious dimension. Every time a lover worships his beloved, every time a woman says it will be hell to live without her man, whenever someone says to a lover, take me to heaven, or describes a woman as a goddess, they use religious language.

      Ian McEwan’s haunting novel Atonement is better known because of the movie. In the novel, when the lovers Robbie and Cecilia first begin to make love, both in the modern sense of sexual union and in the older sense of a declaration by word (I love you), McEwan comments that Robbie had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.¹ In some way, it was impossible not to think that something transcendent was happening. The psychotherapist Carl Jung is said to have commented that when people brought sexual questions to him, they always

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