A 3D Look at Human Sexuality

My wife of 49 years died about a year ago. I am often sad. But I am not going to come apart.

Why?

Because the story of my marriage is a subplot of the main plot of God’s story.

My subplot’s chapter is closed. I am no longer married to Melanie. Yet I am still in a marriage. The grand story we’re in is about a Bridegroom, and I am part of his Bride.

What does that grand story have to do with sex, singleness, and marriage? Everything. Our sub-plot relationships are to mirror, accurately, the main plot.

Here’s what I mean: our Bible, in 66 books, is a single, all-encompassing story. As meaning-seeking creatures, our souls need stories like our stomachs need food. And the Bible is a grand, dramatic romance of God and his people.

Within that story, marriage and sex function as a major metaphor. Metaphors point beyond themselves to a deeper reality. It is imperative not to confuse the pointer with the greater thing pointed to.

This is essential: We are made in God’s image. God is the original; humans are the copies. Our earthly marriages reflect only shadows of the true reality. Christ’s marriage to his Bride—the Church—is the sun; our marriages are the reflecting moons.

Our Triune God did not create sex and marriage as a biological necessity—to populate his new planet—and then later decide to use marriage as a helpful illustration of his intimate, committed love for us. It’s not that our marriages are the pattern, the original, which then illuminates Christ’s marriage to the Church.

No. It is the other way around! Christ’s marriage to his Bride is original and lasts.

There are far more dimensions to this than meets the eye. If we look at marriage, sex, and singleness in only one dimension, we are lost before we even begin.

Think of marriage and sex in three dimensions: God’s biblical drama births biblical doctrine, which guides biblical decisions. Drama forms doctrine forms decisions. Our ethical decisions about sex and marriage make no sense unless they are grounded in doctrinal teaching, and that teaching itself is grounded in the epic drama of the Bridegroom who pursues his Bride.

This is what allows us to hear God’s exhilarating “yeses”: to sexual desire and marriage, to celibate singleness, to our identity as members of the Bride, and to his personal, passionate, intimate commitment to us.

And this also helps us to understand God’s clear “nos”: to divorce, to pre-marital sex, to adultery, to pornography, and to same-sex sex.

Any account of any of God’s “no” that bypasses the Bridegroom-Bride drama hangs untethered. It becomes what might be called “cut-flower ethics”—looks okay for a time, but it is severed from the living roots that produce them.

Too much of our conversation about sexuality, including debates about homosexuality and gender, suffers from this rootlessness. It is not a three-dimensional account: drama, doctrine, decision. It is just 1D rules without God’s romance: just “yeses” and “nos.”

• Our brothers and sisters in the Church who experience LGBTQ+ attractions and desires need more than prohibitions. They need the alluring beauty of the greater story, the 3D marriage metaphor.
• Our young people, growing up in a sexually saturated culture and internet, need the alluring beauty of a better love story, God’s great marriage metaphor.
• Single people need to see that they are being wooed by their great Bridegroom; singleness is not a “plan-B” life.
• Married people need to see that their marriages—often imperfect and even disappointing at times—are only glimmers of the ultimate marriage to come: Christ with his Bride.
• All of us need this robust retelling of our daring, passionate, committed Rescuer.

From beginning to end, Scripture is saturated with the imagery of Bridegroom and Bride. Scripture begins with a wedding in a garden (Gen. 2) and concludes with a wedding feast in a garden-city (Rev. 21:2). The metaphor loops throughout Scripture (Is. 54:5). At the center stands a Savior who calls himself a Bridegroom and who by his death rescues his Bride.

Doctrine flows out of drama. Christian doctrine of the definition of marriage is not arbitrarily made; it is discovered within the story God tells about himself, from a God who wishes to unveil himself to his Bride.

What then is the Bible’s definition of marriage?

The Bible teaches marriage is a lifelong, one-flesh union between two sexually different persons—male and female—whose covenant union is for the purpose of reflecting God’s story of faithfulness and fruitfulness. Sexual relationships outside of this covenant are sin.

This understanding emerges from Genesis 1 and 2, where God creates a world of unity across difference, of complementary pairs throughout: heaven and earth, evening and morning, land and sea, day and night, light and darkness.

God brings the cosmos out of chaos, often expressed in paired symmetries (such as heaven and earth). These differences, these complementary pairs, are God’s way of creating patterns. Our Creator God is the original artist. God created the crown of creation as one humanity expressed in two sexually different creatures. Unity and diversity: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen. 1:27).”

The three-in-one God creates a two-in-one humanity.

Paul later calls marriage a profound mystery, because sexual union is meant to function as a window, not an endpoint. It points beyond itself to Christ and His Church.

Our culture has lost this mystery. We trivialize sex (“it’s just physical release”) and at the same time idolize it (“something’s wrong if you aren’t having regular sex”). We’ve reduced sex and lost the mystery God intended.

Sex is not God; sex points to God. It is not merely physical; it mysteriously unites the physical and the spiritual. It is designed as a reflection of the real thing—the greater union, greater intimacy, greater faithfulness, greater fulfillment.

How is this good news to those who are single and those who experience same-sex attraction? I quote my friend Greg Coles, a same-sex-attracted believer. “I love having people stare at me like I’ve sprouted a third eyeball when I explain what Jesus means to me, the things I’ve given up for him, and the joy I’ve received in exchange. I love telling people how I’ve experienced the faithfulness of God to look out for my well-being in the moments I stop putting myself first. I want to be remarkable, not because of my sexuality, but because of the all-consuming way in which I love Jesus.”

I have lost a marriage. But I have not lost The Marriage. The Bridegroom still holds his bride. He still holds me.

And this is where the gospel—the good news—lands.

The good news is that all who are rescued by Jesus—married, single, widowed, same-sex or opposite-sex attracted—will discover that every true longing will only be fulfilled at the true Wedding Feast.

Let’s live our stories in the light of the Greater Story we’re in.