Dear friends,
As we continue to think about the creation of the man and the woman in the garden, we find marriage being introduced as the outcome of our sexual polarity. The woman is created to the joy of the man. Consequently, the man is to leave his parents to ‘cleave’ to his wife. The old-fashioned verb to cleave has been changed in most modern translations. But the concept of sex inside the marriage cannot be changed. So Peter and I wander into a discussion about sexual intimacy in and out of marriage.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Welcome again to Two Ways News.
If you want to email us, you can do so at respond@twm.email and we will certainly read it. We may or may not get back to you. If we have the opportunity, we'll discuss it together here. Don't forget to encourage others to listen or read and to subscribe to the podcast.
The last two episodes have been on Genesis 2 and man and woman in creation, which has led us to discuss marriage and parenting. When we think about marriage, Genesis 2 and Genesis 1 are foundational. Jesus is asked about marriage and divorce in Matthew 19. He discusses it not so much in the legislation that the Pharisees were disputing amongst themselves, but in the very foundation of marriage and family life by referring to Genesis 1 and 2. So, Peter, would you read Matthew 19:1-9, where Jesus speaks of marriage?
Peter Jensen:
Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Phillip: Last time we were discussing this, we reached the point of the verse of Genesis 2:24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." The older translations said ‘leave and cleave’. But of course, ‘cleave’ is a word that people don't use much these days. I think ‘cleaving’ has an opposite meaning these days in terms of separating when, in fact, the verb here is about uniting. The NIV has ‘is united to,’ but it's a verb. The ESV or Holman has ‘bonds with’ or the ESV has ‘holds with’. What's implied is that you cling to, remain close to, and hang on to, but it also has a sexual emphasis to it.
Peter: It's assumed that in marriage there will be a sexual part, and they become one flesh. A sexual encounter is not merely a physical thing; there's something deeply personal and relational in it. Every time you have sex with someone, you give something of yourself to the other person and receive something as well. And so the whole idea of having sex with many people is doing yourself great damage, because it's not merely some sort of physical exercise like going to the gym; it is deeply relational, and it fulfils the ‘one flesh’. In 1 Corinthians 6:16, the Apostle speaks about having sex with a prostitute, and he describes that as becoming one flesh with her. The sexual act itself is profound and deeply relational. On the other side is adultery, and that is why adultery is so devastating for people. For a man or for a woman to commit adultery goes to the very heart of the relationship.
Phillip: It's got to do with our relationship with our own body. I am not separate from my body. There's a dualism within the scriptures, between our bodies and our spirit, that the Lord has breathed the breath of life into us. But on the other hand, I am never separate. My body is me, and I am my body. It's not a functional thing alone but is deeply personal. That's why people use expressions like ‘intimate relationship’ when they're trying to avoid saying ‘sex’. But they're reinforcing the very nature of what it is—something deeply and profoundly intimate. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul goes on to say it's the one sin where you're sinning against your own self, against your own body.
Peter: A fascinating thing to say. Why do you think he says it’s to sin against your own body? What is the profound truth that he's enunciating there?
Phillip: If I shoot my neighbour, I hurt my neighbour, but not myself. But I cannot have sex without using my body. And so I'm shooting myself because I can't disengage this activity from myself and my body like I can if I steal or if I bear false witness against another person. They're sins against other people. But when I have sex with another person, it's not just the other person I'm hurting. It's my very self.
Peter: You would damage the other person too.
Phillip: You damage them and all their sets of relationships. Adultery is a very serious immorality that our society has decided not to make illegal. But what is illegal is not as bad as what is immoral. We tend to use the word ‘criminal’ as if it is worse than immoral. But ‘criminal' just means ‘against what the government says’.
Immoral is that which is evil. There are certain acts, like adultery, that are much worse than a criminal act. In adultery, I not only hurt myself and the person with whom I commit adultery, but also her spouse, their children, their parents, my spouse, my children, my parents, my cousins, my sisters, my aunts, and my uncles. It rips apart that which should never be ripped apart: the family. Marriage unites families, and adultery divides families. Malachi 2:16 talks about it in terms of ‘violence’. It is a violent thing to commit adultery. People talk about domestic violence and the horror of that. I don't want to diminish the horror of that physical violence by increasing the language. But the language was there many years ago in Malachi 2. To commit adultery is to be violent in the relationships of the family.
Peter: We have spoken about adultery, but what about fornication? Because fornication is surely even more prevalent than adultery.
Phillip: Yes, fornication is having sex where neither party is married, whereas adultery is when at least one, if not both people, are married to somebody else. Fornication has the same kinds of problems. In some ways, it is not as bad, in that the relationships have informally been made between different families that are going to then be ripped apart, and it usually happens outside the context of having children, whereas adultery often happens within the context of children. So adultery causes more damage, but fornication is already damaging yourself and the other person before they're married, before they've united to one person, and you carry that into the next relationship. Several times I've dealt with young men and women for whom this has been a major problem.
Peter: To sum up, the casualization of sex is profoundly damaging.
Phillip: In Proverbs 6:31-32, you know you'll be forgiven if you steal a loaf of bread because you're hungry, but you will not be forgiven if you steal another man's wife.
Peter: Now, to change the focus, let’s go from marriage to weddings. Why do we begin a marriage by exchanging public promises?
Phillip: Firstly, you've got to understand it's a covenant, not just a contract. A contract sets out the agreement. Prenuptial agreements have built into them the assumption that it could go wrong. The covenant we're talking about is an intentional binding obligation and promise of what you are going to do for the rest of your life. And that's important. For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, and in sickness and in health, I will do this by God's help. This is the intention of life. At one level, it's just consent. ‘Consent’ has become important lately. But if consent is the highest level of morality, the degenerates have won because consent is a basic assumption. The wedding allows everybody to see that the couple are each giving consent. She hasn't been kidnapped. This is her consent to enter into this sexual relationship, but it does much more than that. It articulates the nature of the relationship.
Here's one of the problems with the de facto relationships. People wander into these relationships assuming the other person has the same thoughts and intentions, which is rarely the case. I spoke to one couple and asked what their relationship was. She said it was for life; he said it was for the time they were at university. They had never discussed it. It was a horrible moment. Perhaps that's an extreme case, but it's in principle the case.
The wedding spells out the nature of this relationship. “For better or for worse, richer, poorer, in sickness and health till death us do part, staying only unto you.” It spells it out, and that means no one can be under a misapprehension as to what they are to expect. Weddings are more than just the couple; they're the family. With a marriage, two families are being united, not just the two individuals. And so, we have the consent of the families to this, especially, as history has it, protecting the bride. Women need more protection than men. And so “who gives this woman to be married to this man” is a public acceptance that the father of the bride is willing and consenting. So a whole new family has developed, with the people on either side of the aisle now in-laws. And when it comes to the children, the four grandparents all have this grandchild in common. Our life and our future are connected. And it's not just us; it's the whole neighbourhood as well. Everyone knows that this woman and this man are united as husband and wife and are to be treated that way.
As that passage you read says, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate,” because that couple has publicly been united by God through this wedding. It's a very important thing we're doing in weddings.
Peter: Sometimes the importance of it can be forgotten in all the palaver surrounding weddings, both ancient and modern. But the essence of the matter is that public declaration of promise, which is received by faith. Because every marriage is built upon promise and faith, you trust the person making the promise. I once met a lady who said that when she got married, she held her hand behind her back and crossed her fingers. It was a sign that she was not really making a promise. That's how it ended up; the marriage had broken down.
She was not saying, I am going to trust you and trust the way you behave. You're entering into a relationship in which faith is an essential and integral part; you've got to trust each other.
Phillip: "Essential" and "integral" slightly understate it. People think love and marriage go together, but it's faith and marriage that go together. The essence of marriage is not love. The essence of marriage is faith. It's making promises and keeping promises. In the Bible and in our Prayer Book as Anglicans, the husband promises to love in a way that is different from the wife's promise to love. It's a different character, but both promise to have faith; both promise to love, and love is a very important part of our Christian ethic and life. However, it is the husband who is “to love his wife as Christ loved the church”. The wife is not called upon to love the husband as Christ loved the church. But both are called to be faithful to the promises they've made. Faith is the stuff of marriage. We live, trusting the other person.
When adultery occurs, and sadly, I've spent time with people whose marriage has come unstuck due to adultery, the men who I can think of who have been guilty have been very worried about their wife's reaction to the sex. The women have been infuriated by the lack of trust. Their trust has been shattered. I read a book on marriage guidance many years ago, where it was said that trust can be regained, but it's like moving Bondi Beach with a fork. Men tend to assume that when they have said sorry and the wife has forgiven them, she will trust them. But no, she has forgiven, but trust doesn't return straightaway. It can't. It's been undermined. And a marriage where there's no trust doesn't work. So, it's a terrible thing.
The weddings are all about giving your word. And marriage is all about keeping your word. It's the trust.
By the way, there are people who don’t marry these days because weddings cost too much.
Peter: I can understand that they might think that, but of course that's complete nonsense.
Phillip: One girl spoke to me about the problem of wedding dresses costing $10,000. You don't have to wear a $10,000 wedding dress. In the Prayer Book, marriages were during Morning Prayer because it was just part of church life. But people just live together.
Peter: Is living together a marriage?
Phillip: Yes, but it's a silly marriage. It is not the wedding that makes you married; it is uniting your two bodies; it is God uniting you that makes you married. However, you wouldn't buy a car without doing the paperwork. You wouldn't buy a house without doing the paperwork. And marriage is infinitely more serious than either buying a car or buying a house. The consequence of marriage is far-reaching, much more than either of those engagements, and yet to enter into such a beautiful and such a perilous thing as a lifetime sexual relationship without the formalization is just sheer folly.
Peter: Sadly, violence can occur in marriages, and particularly violence by men against women. Men are called upon to love their wives as Christ loved the church. One of the promises that we make is that we will worship our wives. What is that all about?
Phillip: There has been quite a shift in the language because we're dealing with a 16th-century statement. To worship is to give something its worth, as I remember the word. So that is what I am to do too, to give my body for my wife, that is, give to her what she deserves, which is my everything, my love, my care, my devotion, and riches. That is not a 50-50 deal.
In Proverbs, the man is told to find his delight and his joy in his wife, in her body, in her breasts. He is to delight himself not in another woman's but in hers, and so it's still a sexual thing of bodily delight in your wife.
Peter: Men and women are equal but not the same, and we need to be more explicit about the differences.
Phillip: There are absolute differences between men and women. It's a creation difference, and the God who created us gave us principal differences too, in that the woman needs the man's love. She needs the security, the safety, and the certainty that he will be with her through thick and thin, whatever the circumstances. He is to lay down everything for her and her benefit because there's hardly anyone more vulnerable than a pregnant woman or a young mother with a baby. That vulnerability is great, and if there's no assurance that the husband will put his own life completely aside for her benefit, it is very hard for her to put her life aside for the benefit of her child, which she will have to do because that is the nature of being a mother. And so, what she does for her children needs the support of her husband in love. Just as he needs her to submit to him if he's going to do such a thing.
Peter: Submission is there in recognition of difference and the recognition of the man's role in loving her in the way that Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. It is an acknowledgement of the man's role in the marriage and an agreement that that is how the marriage will operate.
Phillip: I remember hearing John Stott saying that the hardest part he found about getting old was being dependent again and accepting help from somebody else. It actually requires humility.
Peter: Can I be terribly old-fashioned here? I spoke to a very progressive young lady who was in the media, not a Christian, and asked her if she believed in men proposing to women. She was outraged and said, “Of course the man proposes to the woman. It can't be the other way around”. Now a proposal gives immense power to the woman because she can say “no” or “yes” at that point.
He's really saying, “I intend to provide for you. I will protect you; I will have a house for you; I will make the necessary money.” Now that sounds old-fashioned and strange because these days both men and women work, and sometimes the woman earns more than the man. But there are moments when the man does have to provide, like the birth of a child. So, in the final analysis, the man has to provide. Unless he's sick or something like that, the man has to provide; that's his duty.
Phillip: A child changes the relationship and especially the woman in the relationship. Louise Perry, who wrote a book called The Case Against Sexual Revolution1, and Konstantin Kisin, that interesting co-host of the Triggernometry podcast2, have changed their minds about some of these issues because they have become parents. With the coming of the first child, the world looks different. It changes the perspective of everything in life. The tempo of life changes; your sense of responsibility changes; your sense of vulnerability changes. It's the reality of children, which marriage points to, that then helps us see how love and submission work. But while that's absolute, like who has the babies, a lot of the differences between men and women are comparative. That is, there are individual differences between couples as to how they put love and submission into effect. It's a general principle that, when applied in particularity, can look quite different.
Peter: This is an important point because we're not just talking about the 19th-century way of being married. It is the principles that matter.
Phillip: It’s the application of the principles that works out differently. We're in a free society, and so you choose how you run your family. What if the husband becomes handicapped? The nature of how they're going to relate together is going to be very different. Marriage is built on division of labour, and once you have division of labour, which I may say is a very profitable thing, you get much further than everybody having to do the same thing. It develops expertise. The division of labour can also be by abilities or by interests. But in general, you've got to expect the men will do the heavy work because, in general, men have bigger muscles.
Peter: The gardening or taking out the garbage.
Phillip: One of my dear female friends loves mowing grass. But in general, you'll see it's the men pushing the mower. That's that kind of work, and as you do it for 20-30 years, you get an expertise that your spouse doesn't have in certain areas, and the division changes over time. When there are small children, the mother may give up work for a few years, and once the children are at school, she may return to the workforce. When she and the husband work, the kind of division of housework can be changed. The division must reflect love and submission, though how it's reflected will be different from couple to couple.
Peter: Submission being a recognition of the role that the man has in serving her.
Phillip: I want to add another thing that’s cultural. When a couple comes together, they carry their family cultures with them. And that's different from household to household. So, in my wife's household, her father was a handyman who loved doing handiwork. Our father was not given to handiwork. Driving nails in that are straight, all the way in, is a trick that seems to have somehow avoided the Jensen gene. So, our marriage had this cultural clash until, in my wisdom, I invited my father-in-law to come and do the handiwork around our house as well as his own. Other couples don't have that culture. How it works out is going to be different in every marriage.
So what is the essence of marriage? It's God's creation of a binary, reproductive couple who, by covenant, are to live in such unity as to raise their children in godliness, reflect the relationship of Christ to the Church, and rejoice in their fellowship with each other.
Peter: Let me add one thing. As a man trained in psychology once said to me, “Christians have something that often non-Christians lack, and that is forgiveness”. There are many times in any marriage when forgiveness will be necessary. Restoration doesn't always follow from forgiveness, but forgiveness is a daily thing that we all need. And forgiveness is extraordinarily important in marriage, as well as, of course, the inestimable joy and privilege of calling on the name of the Lord together.
Louise Perry, The Case Against Sexual Revolution (Polity Press 2022)
Triggernometry podcast available at triggerpod.co.uk
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
