Introduction

The Christian church lives in a highly sexualized age. In every form of media, from television to the internet, and even children’s programming, people are bombarded with ideologies regarding gender roles and sexuality. The world’s messaging is a direct challenge to the Christian worldview, seeking personal fulfillment and affirmation as its highest good. Owen Strachan notes that the world’s ideology “Reads difference as discrimination, traditional sexual distinctiveness as a hostile reality, and hierarchy of any kind as evil abuse.”[1] The church must respond to this challenge in a manner that reflects God’s design for sexuality. This article will demonstrate that only Scripture is sufficient to establish a sexual ethic that both honors God as Lord and Savior and provides a loving relationship for his people. This will be done by looking at the nature of Scripture, how the world’s ideology devolves into irrationality, and revealing how Scripture has defined sex for man and woman in the bonds of covenantal marriage.

The Nature and Sufficiency of Scripture

In order to establish that Scripture is the only sufficient means of establishing a sexual ethic, it is necessary to understand the nature and sufficiency of Scripture. John Frame argues that “God’s word, in all its qualities and aspects, is a personal communication from him to us.”[2] In other words, God has specifically decreed that Scripture would be the means by which he communicates his revelation about himself and his intentions to humanity. Scripture carries with it the weight of all of God’s authority; therefore, as Frame further writes, “When God speaks, our role is to believe, obey, delight, repent, mourn—whatever he wants us to do.”[3] The very nature of Scripture is to reveal to mankind what God desires and commands of them.

God reveals his existence to mankind through his creation, as King David wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Ps. 19:1–2).[4] Through this general revelation, man can know of God’s existence, and his conscience speaks of God’s law written on his heart (Jer. 31:33). The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith 1.1 articulates that while general revelation leaves man without excuse, it lacks the means by which salvation can be obtained:

The light of nature and the works of creation and providence so clearly demonstrate the goodness, wisdom, and power of God that people are left without excuse; however, these demonstrations are not sufficient to give the knowledge of God and His will that is necessary for salvation.[5]

Therefore, God gave the Scriptures “to establish and comfort the church with greater certainty against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and the world.”[6] It is through this special revelation that God is glorified, and man finds the sole authority over “salvation, faith, and life,” for it is “either explicitly stated or by necessary inference contained in the Holy Scriptures” (1.6)[7]

The very words of Scripture, though penned by the hands of men, are the words of God himself. The apostle Paul makes this clear in writing to Timothy when he states, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). Therefore, whether one reads the commands of God in the Old or New Testament, one is to read with the understanding that God is speaking. B. B. Warfield addresses this unity of the Testaments and how the writers refer to Scripture as coming from God himself. He writes, “God and the Scriptures are brought into such conjunction as to show that in point of directness of authority no distinction was made between them.”[8] All of Scripture then carries with it the voice of God on any matter to which it speaks. And what it speaks to is sufficient for all mankind, be he plumber or scientist, and to all matters of life, from science to ethics.[9]

God’s word is sufficient first and foremost for salvation. Apart from the life-giving gospel found only in Scripture, all men are enslaved to their sins. But freedom is found in the gospel, as Paul wrote, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). It is through the Scriptures that those transformed by the gospel and indwelt by the Spirit are now illumined to understand the clear word of God (John 14:16–17). Through this illumination, believers in Christ comprehend that the only means of honoring God is to submit to his Scriptures, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word” (Ps. 119:9). Furthermore, this knowledge not only leads believers to know how to honor God, but it gives them joy and delight in doing so (Ps. 40:8). Therefore, the Scriptures not only save the sinner from damnation, but they are sufficient to order his life in a manner that honors God through obedience, which in turn brings great joy and beauty into his life.

Scripture is the only basis for establishing all manner of life and ethics because it reflects God’s goodness. As Frames notes, “For only [God] has the authority to define ethical norms for human beings.”[10] Scripture not only addresses the spiritual life of man, but it also provides the basis for a moral and civil society. John Calvin noted that God’s spiritual rule “allows us a first taste of the heavenly kingdom,” yet in man’s time on this earth, civil government has the purpose of making us “fit for human society for as long as we are a part of it…to reconcile us with one another and preserve public peace and calm.”[11] Calvin saw Scripture as foundational to the civil government and society, noting that “in short, that among Christians there should be an open expression of religion, and that in society humanity should prevail.”[12] Therefore, only Scripture can be sufficient for both the spiritual life of man and the ordering of society to live in accord with God’s will.

Scripture further provides man the means by which he may order his own life in such a way that he honors the Creator. Calvin explained that through Scripture, God drew his people to himself, exposing their lack of righteousness, causing them to cling to God and his holiness. Through that knowledge of God’s holiness, and due to his salvation of his people, the Scriptures teach man, “that he can have no dealing with iniquity and uncleanness, we must be like him for we are his.”[13] Therefore, Christians must look to the word of God as the sole authority and all-sufficient source by which matters of ethics in all areas of life may be addressed. Like the apostle Paul, the church must not trust in worldly ideologies that seem to rely on “plausible words of wisdom,” but in Scripture, “so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:4–5). As will be seen in the next section, when man trusts in his own wisdom, it inevitably ends in depravity and irrationality.

The Irrationality of the World’s Sexual Ethic

Having established the nature and sufficiency of Scripture, it is appropriate to examine how the world attempts to frame its own sexual ethics. God’s word allows for only one form of sexual union, a lifelong monogamous relationship between one man and one woman called marriage (Gen. 2:24). This will be addressed in more detail in the following section; however, Scripture clearly condemns sexual unions outside of God’s design. For example, Exodus 20:14 condemns adultery, and Leviticus 18:22–23 prohibits homosexuality and bestiality. Yet, the world has consistently rejected God’s design and sought after perverse forms of sexual intimacy, identity, and personal experience. The apostle Paul outlines this depravity in Romans 1:24–27, where “God gave them up in the lusts of the hearts…because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie,” which then leads to dishonorable acts of homosexuality. So given over is the world to this debased sexuality, that they “are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Pet. 4:4). This is the inevitable end of a sexual ethic not based on Scripture.

When Christians attempt to confront the world’s ideology of sexual intimacy, they meet with harsh resistance. In fact, the world attempts to isolate Christian voices and marginalize them vociferously. Voddie Baucham addresses this resistance when speaking to the broader topic of Cultural Marxism (which includes certain sexual groups as marginalized victims of Christian oppression). He writes, “There are issues we need to discuss. But this has been declared ground where we are not allowed to fight. Merely deciding to debate and argue these issues can disqualify you. For some people it even disqualifies you from being a Christian.”[14] From the very outset, the world treats its view of sexual ethics as sacrosanct, and it does so with a desire to overthrow the Christian ethic because it does not want to honor God (Rom. 1:21).

At the heart of the world’s ideology of sexual intimacy is the worship of self. Jared Longshore explains that the “religious root of our sexual perversion” is paganism.[15] He further explains, “Man will worship something. If he does not worship the Creator, then he will worship the creation…There is no middle ground. There is no neutrality.”[16] Therefore, because man has rejected God, he has placed himself, the creation, at the center of his pagan worship. As man worships his own desires, he is given over to a depraved mind that corrupts God’s design for sexual intimacy. This results in a downward spiral in which man, who knows God exists (Rom 1:21), continues to pursue the very sins he knows will bring about his wrath (v. 18). But he is not satisfied to remain worshipping and sinning alone; man must entice, and even demand, that others participate with him. As the apostle writes, “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Rom 1:32).

As man attempts to supplant God on his eternal throne, he lifts up his own plans, desires, and purposes as though they were divine decrees. His debased mind demands to be satisfied through various forms of sinful sexual unions, and he demands the world follow suit. According to Owen Strachan, “Humanity thus has no script for sexuality; we may all follow the lusts of the flesh, and in fact must be ironically compelled toward libertine sexuality, as such that sexual wildness becomes the law of the land.”[17] The world’s sexual ethic, therefore, is that mankind must pursue that which satisfies the flesh without restraint. God’s command that sex be confined to his institution of marriage is considered an obstruction to the world’s lusts and must be opposed. This assault on marriage mirrors the first attack on the institution in Genesis when Satan led Adam and Eve in rebellion against God. It was he who led mankind’s spiritual parents to attempt to overthrow God that they might satisfy their own desires.

This attack on marriage by Satan is intentional. As Strachan explains, “He wants every marriage to crumble because marriage is not only the means by which God’s creation is populated, but it is also the visible sign of Christ’s love for his church.”[18] The world is more than willing to push its corrupt form of sexuality in an effort to aid Satan in this cause, even if unknowingly. Secular authors Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay address one of the most extreme efforts in this area, Queer Theory. According to Pluckrose and Lindsay,

Queer Theory is a political project, and its aim is to disrupt any expectation that people should fit into a binary position with regard to sex or gender, and to undermine any assumptions that sex or gender are related to or dictate sexuality. Instead, they should simply defy categorization.[19]

In other words, it is the intended goal of Queer Theory to disrupt and overthrow God’s design for sex and sexuality. Proponents of this ideology are seeking to undo “many forms of black-and-white thinking in society.”[20] Therefore, the world’s pursuit of its own sexual ethic is an intentional effort to defy God, which results in a purposeful and willful embrace of irrationality. This is evidence of God giving up a people to the lusts of their hearts. Only a return to a biblical sexual ethic can restore and heal such depravity.

The Biblical Response

Where the world attempts to define sexuality through its own desires, God roots it in his created order. Genesis 1:27 tells us, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” The first man and woman, and all humanity thereafter, were created to reflect the image of God. As Owen Strachan and Gavin Peacock explain, “God made us specially for His glory. We exist because He wanted us to exist…We have dignity and purpose and worth—every single human being does—because God is our maker.”[21] The purpose of mankind is to use their existence to glorify God with and through their bodies. Therefore, the very basis for a sexual ethic is embracing Scripture when it specifically reveals that man was not made as a sexual being to be identified by his sensual preferences; rather, he was made to reflect the image and glory of God.[22]

When God made man and woman and gave them the covenant of marriage, he commanded them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). God gave sexual intimacy to man and woman not only as a pleasurable act, but for the purpose of taking dominion over the earth. As Strachan and Peacock state, “God made us this way in order to fulfill the purposes he set before us…a mission that includes numerous duties, including the population of this globe by marital procreation. Only a man and a woman can multiply after all.”[23] God receives glory from his creation when man and woman fulfill the purpose in consummating marriage and producing offspring by which the earth is filled. In turn, his people experience true joy and satisfaction when they experience biblical sexuality defined by Scripture. Where the world sees sexual intimacy as appeasing the flesh and affirming their preferred identity, God gives it a greater purpose in creating a world filled with people who will glorify his name.

God not only created marriage so that the world would be populated through sexual procreation, but also that it might reflect his relationship with his people. The apostle Paul reveals this when he writes, “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31–32). In marriage, God creates a picture for the world of his relationship with the church through Jesus, where Christ is the head, and his people are the bride. Strachan explains that this passage not only resolves the curse that befell the first marriage in Genesis 3, but it “reframes marriage in light of the teleological[24] purpose of the Creator God,” in which “man, redeemed humanity, was made for marriage—the marriage of Christ and his church at the end of time.”[25] It is in this joining of man and wife where they find their ultimate joy as they become one flesh in both a physical and spiritual union, whereby they glorify God by representing him to the world in a faithful, loving, covenantal marriage.[26]

Even with a robust understanding of a biblically based sexual ethic, mankind will still struggle and fail with sexual sin. When such a sin occurs, the Scriptures are the sole sufficient means of restoring a loving relationship between God and man. Strachan and Peacock remind Christians of this when they write, “Nothing in Scripture needs reworking…Our charge is to tell the truth about all sin, and point our hearers to Christ as the remedy.”[27] It is only in Scripture that the heart of man is revealed to be “deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9). It was the teaching of Jesus that declared that sin was not merely an outward act when he taught that lusting after a woman who was not one’s wife was to commit adultery in the heart (Matt. 5:27–28). Therefore, as Strachan explains, “If a desire is oriented to that which is sinful, we must treat the desire itself as sin.”[28] Pastors will find the only source by which they can not only rightly counsel their church members on the wickedness of sin but also seek to bring them to repentance and restoration in Scripture. Like Paul, they can restore their joy in obedience to God by reminding them, “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). Sexual sin runs hard and deep in the heart of man; it ruins lives, marriages, and relationships. There is only one sufficient means to redeem the heart of man and make his relationship right with God.

Jesus Christ himself provided the very message that all sinners must hear: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Through the message of the gospel, sinners learn that “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6) and that through repentance and faith alone, sinners will be made a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). Strachan notes the effect that the gospel had upon some of the most sexually depraved people in the ancient world, “The very people who lost their souls in pursuit of licentious pleasure were those whom Christ washed, sanctified, and justified through the Spirit’s operation.”[29] The Scriptures provide not only the sufficient means by which man may rightly understand and submit a God-honoring sexual ethic, but also the only means by which he may be forgiven for rejecting God’s commands regarding sexual intimacy. The church must be committed to submitting itself to the Scriptures alone to address both issues as it seeks to confront the world’s ideology on the matter of sexual intimacy.

Conclusion

Christians face a world that is proud of its sexual depravity. There are few places where unregenerate man has not sought to force his pursuit of sensual pleasure and affirmation into the public view. Christians must remember that the only means of addressing this onslaught is the very revelation of God himself, the Scriptures. They are the voice of God in this world, which carries his direct authority. The Scriptures provide the means of salvation from sin and how man may live a well-ordered life in this world. When sinful man rejects the rule of God, he pursues ever-increasing sexual pleasure and depravity. The ultimate end of this pursuit is an irrational mind that defies God and attempts to overthrow his rule. Christians, however, have the sure word of God, which reveals that man was created in God’s image to glorify him through covenantal marriages in which sexual intimacy brings joy to man and wife while taking dominion through child-rearing. This union reflects man’s relationship with Christ to the world at large. And when man falters, the Scriptures bring the only hope of redemption, the gospel of Jesus Christ. In all this, the church has been provided the only sufficient means which establishes and governs sexual ethics, the word of God himself.

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[1] Owen Strachan, Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel – and the Way to Stop It (Washington, DC: Salem Books, 2021), 73.

[2] John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God, A Theology of Lordship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010), 3.

[3] Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God, 4.

[4] All Scripture citations in this work are taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton,

IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016) unless otherwise noted.

[5] Stan Reeves, The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith in Modern English (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2017), 11.

[6] Reeves, The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith in Modern English, 11.

[7] Reeves, The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith in Modern English, 12.

[8] Benjamin B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948; repr., Louisville, KY: SBTS Press, 2014), 299.

[9] Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God, 221.

[10] Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God, 231.

[11] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. Robert White (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2014), 756.

[12] Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 757.

[13] Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 786.

[14] Voddie Baucham, “Cultural Marxism,” in By What Standard?: God’s World . . . God’s Rules., ed. Jared Longshore (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2020), 18.

[15] Ascol et al., By What Standard?, 32–33.

[16] Ascol et al., By What Standard?, 38.

[17] Strachan, Christianity and Wokeness, 127.

[18] Owen Strachan, Reenchanting Humanity: A Theology of Mankind (Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor, 2019), 149.

[19] Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody (Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 94.

[20] Pluckrose and Lindsay, Cynical Theories, 106.

[21] Gavin Peacock and Owen Strachan, What Does the Bible Teach about Homosexuality?: A Short Book on Biblical Sexuality (Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2020), 33.

[22] Peacock and Strachan, What Does the Bible Teach about Homosexuality?, 32.

[23] Peacock and Strachan, What Does the Bible Teach about Homosexuality?, 35.

[24] Teleology is a term created by Christian Wolff in 1728. It refers to that part of natural philosophy that has to do with ends or final causes, “More precisely the explanation or interpretation of natural phenomena in the light of the concept of end or final cause.” James Hastings, John A. Selbie, and Louis H. Gray, “Teleology,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, I–XIII (Edinburgh; New York: T. & T. Clark; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908).

[25] Strachan, Reenchanting Humanity, 155.

[26] Strachan, Reenchanting Humanity, 148.

[27] Owen Strachan and Gavin Peacock, The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them (Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2016), 138.

[28] Strachan, Reenchanting Humanity, 199.

[29] Strachan, Reenchanting Humanity, 205.