Sexual Purity Is an Act of Love

Audio Transcript

What if sexual purity is an act of love for others? Well, it is. Personal sexual purity is an act of love to others, and it’s the topic today in a question from Joe, a listener to the podcast.

“Dear Pastor John, thank you so much for APJ! Regardless of what’s happening in my life or what the topic is, I always leave feeling uplifted. I’m a young man, eighteen years old, and much of my thinking revolves around girls and marriage. I believe the Lord has called me to hold off on sex and marriage until at least college, but until then, I am working hard to keep my romantic desires for the godly young women around me from growing, which can be painful at times.

“In 1 Corinthians 7:9, Paul says, ‘But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.’ I know I can exercise self-control through the Holy Spirit’s power, but the temptation to desire these relationships in a romantic way (not just friendship) is still there. (I guess I want your answer to make these feelings go away, which I know it can’t.) My question: What advice can you give to a young man who is tempted to burn with desire but who wants to wait?”

First, a celebration: If Joe means that he’s burning with desire for a godly, lifelong covenant relationship with a woman in marriage that has satisfying sexual relations as part of a larger vision of life and ministry together, then let him burn. That’s a beautiful thing; in our day, it’s an increasingly rare thing.

God designed you for a lifelong, promise-keeping, heterosexual, sexually satisfying, family-raising, God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-governed, complementary, hardworking, mission-driven marriage. Yes, he did. That’s what Joe seems to be burning for — and if it is, let him burn. May it shine like a bright light among all his contemporaries: “I’m living for that godly relationship someday and keeping myself pure in the meantime.” Wow. Amen. Celebrate!

Now, of course, that would be the end of the APJ, and people want more than two minutes, I suppose. (I do, anyway.) Because now I need to qualify that and raise the possibility that this burning might get out of hand in two ways.

Possible Struggles

One way is that the burning, as I just described it in all of its godly fullness, could be out of proportion to other good passions in his life. And so, it could be an unhealthy obsession and could get in the way of doing what God has called him to do.

The other way this burning could get out of hand is that it could drift into something very different from the wholesome passion for a healthy Christian marriage and become riveted on the sheer physical pleasure of sex that leads his mind into pornography and his relationships with women into a stunted awkwardness — because he knows that if they knew what was going on in his head, they wouldn’t want to be around him.

From this question, it sounds to me like the second problem of preoccupation with lust and pornography is not what he’s asking about. I could be wrong about that, but I’m going to address the first issue, and I think it might say something relevant for the second issue as well.

So, what would I say to help him not be inappropriately dominated by a desire for marriage that distorts his relationships and perhaps cripples the other areas of his life, even though this passion is a good one?

Calibrate Your Desires

First, keep very clear, Joe, that marriage and sex are not created by God to be your ultimate goal in life. Marriage and sex will never satisfy the human soul, your soul. We are made for God, and marriage is a platform from which we know God and love God and serve God. There are varying degrees to which the platform itself is a major part of the ministry of our lives. That’s not bad, but it is never enough to satisfy the soul.

Don’t idolize marriage or sex. It will always disappoint. The healthiest marriages are those in which a husband and a wife look into each other’s eyes and say, “You, dear, are not number one, and this marriage is not number one. Christ is number one for us, and I will love you better because of it.”

Second, with every desire for marriage and for its appropriate sexual satisfaction, let those desires catapult you into superior desires for Christ. Use them that way. Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). The same is true for husband and wife.

Use these years before marriage to cultivate a love for Christ that is so strong that when God brings a woman into your life, you will have settled it: “Though I love you with a love like Niagara Falls, if you die on our honeymoon, my love for Christ and my satisfaction in him will not be shaken.” Go deep with Christ now.

Third: Indeed, in these years of waiting, set your heart to grow in all the ways that make a strong, faithful, godly husband. There’s great work to be done here. If you love the thought of being married, prepare yourself to be the best married man you can possibly be. Let all your desires for marriage channel your energies not into daydreaming but into real-life growth in every way that makes a man a Christlike leader in his home. Talk to mature married men about this, and let them help you prepare.

Fight the Fight

Fourth, stay busy, stay diligent, stay industrious. Occupy yourself with significant things. Don’t dribble your life away on empty pastimes or gaming or anything that’s pointless. “An empty mind is the devil’s workshop.” Now, that’s not in the Bible, but it ought to be. (No, I shouldn’t say that. God knows what should be in the Bible.) It might as well be, because the Proverbs are dense with warnings about being slothful and lazy and empty-headed.

• “How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man” (Proverbs 6:9–11).
• “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing” (Proverbs 13:4).
• “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6).
• “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11).

An empty, passive, aimless mind will drift toward sexual sin. Those high aspirations for godly marriage will slide down the slick slope into a morass of desires for sexual titillation that will corrupt all your worthy dreams and sink you in very bad habits that don’t prepare you for marriage but distort the relationships you have. So, stay busy. Stay busy with worthwhile efforts, and do as many of these as you can with other people. Excessive solitude is the playground of unhealthy sexual desires.

And finally (you can say it negatively and positively): Negatively, avoid all unnecessary sexual stimulation. God has blessed you, Joe, with a beautiful dream to keep yourself pure until he leads you into marriage — so, fight that defensive battle.

But here’s a positive, offensive strategy, and it was a great help to me between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two. (And yes, fifteen. I really wanted to be married from fifteen on. I said, “I want to be married.”) So, here’s the way I fought. Picture your battle for purity as a battle for her. That future woman that you are going to love like crazy someday — fight for her. Don’t just fight in general. Say to her, in your imagination, “I love you. I’m going to keep myself pure for you. And I know that you would not want me to look at this or do that, so for Christ and for you, I will be faithful.”