Revolutionary Sex

How the good news of Jesus changes everything

William Taylor

• Publisher: 10Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781910587485
• eBook ISBN: 9781910587485

This is the eBook version of Revolutionary Sex, the eBook can be downloaded onto a number of different devices including, Mac, PC, Kindle, etc. A help document can be found here explaining how to access your files.This eBook is available FREE with a purchase of the physical version of Revolutionary Sex, click here to buy.

Never before has the biblical stance on marriage, sex and sexuality been under such scrutiny. It's been undermined, criticised and ignored and yet the message of the Bible is liberating and practical – and sex the way God intended is not only the best sex, but also the safest!

Revolutionary Sex, based on talks by William Taylor, is a no–nonsense look at one of the biggest issues of our day. William walks us through what the Bible says and then with honesty, sensitivity and grace he teaches how it applies in the areas of singleness, marriage, same–sex attraction and the church community. The book concludes with a helpful question and answer section with contributions from Amy Wicks and Charlie Skrine.

REVOLUTIONARY SEX AND CREATION

GENESIS 1–2

GENESIS 1:26–31

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

²⁹ Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.³⁰ And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day.

GENESIS 2:15–25

¹⁵ The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

¹⁸ The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

¹⁹ Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found.²¹ So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh.²² Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

²³ The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called ‘woman’,

for she was taken out of man.”

²⁴ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

²⁵ The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Behind all texts on marriage and sexuality in the New Testament lie Genesis 1 and 2. So we must start there – and will continue to return to it – as we discover that God made sex, he understands sex and he knows how sex works best. In contrast the so-called ‘liquid love’ of our age is nothing less than a lie that is intensely damaging.

WE WERE CREATED MALE AND FEMALE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

This truth is stated clearly in Genesis 1:27: ‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’

The key point of all of Genesis 1 through to 2:3 is unmissable. You cannot fail to notice the following in those chapters: God said, God made, and it was so, it was good; God said, God made, it was good, it was so. The point is simple: it is God’s creation. He doesn’t tell us how he created everything but he tells us that he made everything.

The goal of God’s creation is also spelt out in 2:1–3, where on the seventh day God enjoys rest. He made his creation so that he can enjoy the work of his rest in his perfect garden paradise with his people and a perfect relationship with them. Furthermore, the pinnacle of his creation is to be found on day six. Notice how day six is given more attention than anything else. It runs from chapter 1 verse 24 right the way through to verse 30. At the height of the sixth day we find the creation of humankind: ‘in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them’ (1:27). Five verses give detail to humanity. We are created in the image of God, unlike any other being. Then we are described, along with everything else that God has created, as ‘very good’ (1:31). These then are the verses that tell us who we are; without them, we will always be lost and confused as we try to understand God’s world.

Humankind is made of the same stuff as animals. We share the same biblical day of creation as the animals. It shouldn’t surprise us then when biologists tell us that we share 98% of our DNA with a chimpanzee, though we might look at some of our friends and think that possibly it is a little bit more than that!

Nevertheless, we are distinct and different from the animals, and our distinctiveness is spelled out in terms of our unique identity and our specific responsibility.

Our unique identity

We are created in God’s image. Precisely what that means is not unpacked in great detail, though people like to engage in considerable speculation. What is spelled out is that he made us. Look again at verse 27: ‘in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female …’ Notice the singular ‘him’ together with the plural ‘male and female he created them’. This means that both male and female together make up the image of God. Two separate genders are created with all our differences and together we are created in the image of God. The reason for the two genders is not, as some people like to say, purely biological at this point, as the text and the context show. Some feminist writers suggest that God made us different, male and female, simply to make babies. But whilst that task of procreation is to be found in Genesis 1 and 2, it is not central in verse 27. Verse 27 tells us that we are created male and female to present the image of God. Yes, we have the responsibility of making babies, filling the earth and subduing it (v. 28), but biology alone is not the reason for our two different genders.

Robert Gagnon, who is amongst the leading biblical scholars on sexuality, has this to say: ‘God’s intent for human sexuality is embedded in the material creation of gendered beings, irrespective of the globe’s population.’¹ Here then is the unique identity of human beings: we are created in the image of God as male and female.

Our specific responsibility

We also find humans have a specific responsibility. Look at verse 26: ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ Verse 28 adds: ‘God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”’ Together, male and female in the image of God, we are given specific responsibilities to govern and to rule the earth, as well as to fill it.

Now that we’ve established our human distinctiveness, what does this mean for our understanding of ourselves? It affects both how we define or view ourselves and how we must treat each other with dignity.

Our human definition

We need to remind ourselves that these verses are to be found right at the start of the Bible and are designed to show us eternal, unalterable truths. Their lasting authority is highlighted by the fact that Jesus quotes from them (see Mt. 19:5) and states that they are the very words of God. Here is unchanging truth – not simply a culturally conditioned truth for a short period of time, but the foundational truth, at the beginning of the Bible, that God made us male and female. Therefore we are not to see ourselves as liquid self-inventing individuals, nor do we have an inalienable right to invent ourselves with lifestyle choices and human identities. Instead we were made by a Creator who created us male and female, and so we find our true identity – who we really are – in relation to the God who made us. Moreover, as we saw from Genesis 2:1–3, we are created by God for the purpose of enjoying his eternal rest in relationship with him and in relationship with each other under his loving rule. His eternal rest is what the rest of the Bible describes as ‘heaven’ or God’s New Creation. God made us, then, for an external existence under his perfect rule and in fellowship with him and his people.

So we ought not to find our human identity primarily in our sexuality. I remember boarding a plane in November 2012 and, when I went to my seat, the person sitting next to me, a middle-aged woman, held out her hand and announced, ‘Hi, I’m Jean. I’m gay.’ I didn’t reply, ‘Hi, I’m William and I’m heterosexual’ because we were never intended to identify ourselves like this, by our sexuality. Rather, we are creatures of the living God, who has made us with the purpose of enjoying eternity in rest with him. Perhaps I should have said, ‘Hi, I’m William. I’m a Christian.’

Furthermore, we are either male or female. God didn’t make us male and male in his image, or female and female in his image, or a combination of male and female in one being. He made two distinct genders and his image is displayed in the two different genders being brought together, as we shall see, in marriage, and not by a blurring of the genders.

Interestingly, even Germaine Greer recognises the distinctiveness of the two genders in her recent book, The Whole Woman. This begins with a chapter entitled ‘Recantation’ in which she says, ‘Women’s liberation did not see the female potential in terms of the male’s actual; the visionary feminists of the late sixties and early seventies knew that women could never find freedom by agreeing to live the lives of unfree men.’² Greer herself is stating that she never intended women’s identities to be blurred into an androgynous or mixed being. We are male, or female. Of course there are occasions when, as a result of the damage to our broken world from the Fall, we do discover certain gender anomalies. But this gender anomaly is purely that: an anomaly. God’s intention in creation was never for a blurring of genders or a mixing of genders: He made us male and female.

Our human dignity

It won’t surprise you to know that the human rights movement of Western Europe finds its original basis in Genesis 1:26–28. Without these verses and the Judeo-Christian faith there would be no human rights movement in the Western world because it is these verses that tell us that all humans are supremely dignified. We were created in the image of God. The reason we can have human rights is not simply because we claim, ‘I am an individual.’ Rather, our rights come from the fact that we are each created in the image of God as unique and privileged creatures of his creation.

Once in a while a story appears in the news of a person who purchases a picture for, say, £50 and later discovers that its true value exceeds £1 million because it was painted by a famous artist. It may be that you have never realised quite how valuable you are. Perhaps next time you look in the mirror you might remind yourself, ‘I am supremely dignified. I am of immense value. I am precious.’ This is not because of any innate quality within ourselves – because we can play grade 3 violin, or because we’ve achieved a particular accolade, or because of how we look, or because of which family we were born into. Rather, we should remember, ‘I am special because, whoever I am, God made me.’

The same applies to everyone we study or work with. We can look at every individual we ever meet, even the people we find a real pain in the neck, and remember that God made them. They are really special. As a result there should be no racism, no elitism and no sexism. There should be no euthanasia and no termination of life. All humans are special because God made them. Everyone has rights.

Another implication of our human dignity is that we are not free to treat others in a way that goes against what God has declared, such as in his perfect provision for safe sex. One of the lies that has crept into our culture in the last decades is that, providing two or more people are consenting adults, it is alright to engage in any sexual behaviour within the privacy of our own home. No, it isn’t. She is a created being, belonging to God. He is one of God’s creatures, belonging to God. If we treat anyone in a way that runs roughshod over God’s perfect provision for safe sex, then we are not only offending against God but also damaging one of God’s creatures. The suggestion that what we do in the privacy of our own home is for us to decide fails to recognise that what we do might impact both God’s command and God’s purposes for an individual, and indeed any number of additional human relationships.

How then ought we to treat the other sex? For that we turn to Genesis 2:4–25. As we do so, we move from looking at how we are made in the image of God to how our existence fits in with the purposes of God.

WE WERE CREATED MALE AND FEMALE FOR THE PURPOSE OF GOD

Genesis 2:4 is the start of a new section that runs through to 5:1. (The section divisions of Genesis are marked out by the author’s use of the phrase ‘These are the generations of’, as the ESV translation puts it, used in Gen. 2:4; 5:1 – albeit with slightly different wording; 6:9; 10:1; and so on.) In chapters 2, 3 and 4 then we have a distinct section of Genesis put together by the author. He recalls the purpose of the section in 2:4: ‘These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens’ (ESV). In other words, these are the building blocks of our creation. These are the tectonic plates, if you like, on which everything else rests. In chapter 1 the author establishes the eternal truth of the story of creation. Then, having told the creation story from God’s perspective, he now retells it with the pinnacle of creation, that is humanity, at the centre of his account.

Having described God’s perfect provision in 2:5–14, in verses 15–18 we find God commissioning Adam:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Call to Revolution
• Revolutionary Sex and Creation (Genesis 1 – 2)
• Revolutionary Sex and the Gospel (1 Corinthians 6:9–20)
• Revolutionary Sex and Same-Gender Sex (Romans 1:18–32)
• Singleness and Marriage and the Revolution (1 Corinthians 7:1–11)
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Notes