Sex and Worship,,, Beloved and Chastened The journey of a Christian Domestic Discipline wife. rodofkindness@gmail.com

https://belovedandchastened.blogspot.com/?zx=6b28d083b1c113d6 Beloved and Chastened The journey of a Christian Domestic Discipline wife. rodofkindness@gmail.com HomeDirectory of Postings Tuesday, January 17, 2023 Sex and Worship IN many human cultures, sex is associated with worship. This is why there are such things as "temple prostitutes" in pagan religions, for instance. Or why it has to be a virgin that gets thrown into the volcano. (horrible.). This is why there is such a thing as the Kama Sutra or Tantric sex. It has not been lost on humanity, even lost humanity, that there is some connection between spirituality and sexuality. And strange as it may be to point it out, this is true in Christianity too. People ask all sorts of questions about why someone should wait until marriage to have sex, and not engage in fornication. And all sorts of practical answers can be given; things like avoiding STD's, and avoiding pregnancy out of wedlock, and stewarding one's heart and emotions well. These things are all valid, but the Bible authors never state any of them as the reason to avoid fornication (sex before marriage.). No, the reason to live a chaste life actually is all about "worship." It starts with the idea that what we do with our bodies is an offering to God: I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1) Worship of a diety occurs in a Temple. This is true of pagan dieties, and it is also true of our God. The difference, is the type of temple. In this case, *we* are His temple. Or rather, our bodies are. And Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6, links avoiding sexual sin with being God's holy temple. "... The body is not meant for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body... [snip]... Flee from fornication. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral [fornicating] person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." [1 Cor 6] So outside of marriage, we worship God in many ways, but one of those ways is by not having sex. For a single Christian, not having sex is literally a dedicated offering of their bodies to God. And, it is not optional. The role of a Christian is to be a temple, and a priest, so there is not option to "not worship" in this manner. It is an obligatory thing for the Temple of God to be holy. It is an obligatory thing for the priests of God to offer spiritually acceptable sacrifices. It is our duty. In so doing, the single Christians of the body of Christ paint a collective picture of an Earthly bride, waiting for her Heavenly groom, and a Heavenly groom, waiting for his Earthly bride. It is a picture of Christ and the church. She (the church) keeps herself chaste, waiting for Him. He has no other lovers, waiting for her. Being a living example of this picture (whether a male or female) is an act of worship to the King. And engaging in sex outside of marriage is a destruction of this picture, and a defilement of our bodily worship. (Of course with confession and repentance we can be made clean, but it is better to be faithful in our worship for the duration of our singlehood.) Marriage is a different picture. Where one worships God before marriage, by painting a picture in one's own life and body of a waiting bride and groom, in marriage it is the opposite. Where once holding back one's sexual side is worship, now it becomes glorifying and obedient to God to give one's body fully to one's spouse. It again is worship; not worship of the spouse, but worship to God to make love to one's spouse. At the basic level, it fulfills God's very first commandment to humanity: "Be fruitful and multiply." Not every sex act will result in offspring, but sex itself in a general sense is the mode of the fulfillment of that command. In other words, the very first command of God to humanity waited until He invented marriage and then it was, "Have sex; make some babies." (Even if some medical processes like IUI or IVF help create babies without typical sex, even those processes are still based on the template of sexual reproduction.). And where there is a commandment, bodily obedience is worship, per Paul in Romans 12:1 (shared above.) It's easy to toss around phrases like, "Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church," but there is some Victorian thing we've inherited where we'd rather not think of that beautiful spiritual truth as having anything to do with sex. We're like squeamish little kids who just had 'the talk' for the first time from their parents and are going, "ewww, I don't even want to know about that." We don't want to hear "Christ" in the same sentence as "sex." But really now, what is marriage if it is not about sex? Unless you've got confused stuff going on, you usually pick someone to marry who is not just your best friend, but someone of opposite gender than you -- because you don't marry someone unless you can have sex with them. Every single Christian who "waits" until marriage knows with longing that marriage is when they will finally get to have sex. You can't separate the meaning of marriage from the joy, privilege, and duty of having sex....with one person, who is yours, and you are theirs. Physically and bodily. And so, crazy as it may sound to say it, if marriage is a picture of Christ and the church, that means that sex shows us something about Christ and the Church. It is in sex that we fully can experience marital headship and submission. A husband takes his wife. She offers herself to him for the taking. Tell me that verses that say things like "wives submit to your husbands in EVERYTHING" don't evoke a sensual flavor, and I'll tell you that you're either gotten really good at tuning out innuendo, or you're just lying. It's there. "In everything..." as a command, begin with the first thing that comes to mind, that REALLY comes to mind. It's racey. Let it be. Sex is spoken of by Paul as a duty for married people. Not just wives, but also husbands. Again, where there is duty towards God, obedience is considered worship to God. But even though both husband and wife belong to each other and both are commanded to engage in sex together, the equality ends once the sex begins. The husband is the leader; the wife, the surrenderer. She is to yield to him "in all things." Maybe this is why so many people who don't believe in marital discipline still end up doing erotic spanking. Those who do practice marital spanking may also come to know -- in some sense it is always erotic. Even if it is not for that purpose, even if no one feels aroused, even if it's really just a punishment for disrespect or disobedience -- at its core, it is based on the fact that her body belongs to him sexually, and he can bring her pleasure or pain, depending one which will bring them closest in the situation. Defiance, disrespect, disobedience invites a special type of physical action by a husband; often which brings them back to tenderness and even lovemaking when the right order of things has been restored. The right of a husband to discipline his wife is rooted in the design of the sexual dance they share, with His rights unchallenged as being her head and her lord. For years I knew this when we made love, that I loved my husband being King in this place. I loved surrendering to him under the covers, I just didn't think it extended to anything else. But everything a marriage is springs from the bedroom place. The togetherness, the the bonding, the union, the offspring, and the hierarchy of man and wife; it all starts in the bedroom. Sex is the fullest expression of being "one flesh." It is the drawing together and the capstone of marriage. It is a form of worship to God to make love to one's spouse, and also to demonstrate that headship and submission of lovemaking in all the other aspects of marital life. It is worship of God to do so, both in and out of the bedroom. It is a picture of Christ and the church that we demonstrate in our lives, through this spiritual act of worship. And a husband rightfully disciplining his wife, is just another version of this physical sign of their relationship of sexual dominion and submission. +++ To my readers, I know this post is a bit less personal than most of mine, but I've been wanting to write it for a while because even though I don't want to be super personal on this sort of matter, realizing some of these things is what started us, and what keeps propelling us forward on this road of headship, submission, and discipline. So in that sense, this actually is very, very personal. at January 17, 2023 3 comments: Email This BlogThis! 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