Designed for a Purpose

“Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body” (I Corinthians 6:18 NKJV).

God made people sexual. He longs for us to find fulfillment in holy marriage, one man with one woman, in life-long covenantal love. His design is perfect, fulfilling, and rewarding. In our sin, we look for loopholes, alternatives, shortcuts. We want sexual fulfillment on our own terms. We sin, manipulate, control, cheat, lie, and steal to achieve our pleasure. But as Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones sang, “Can’t get no satisfaction.”

I worked construction with a man who said of sex, “If God made anything better, He kept it for Himself.” Sex is fulfilling when pursued within the Designer’s intent. But there is nothing more destructive to intimacy, individuality, and interpersonal relationships than sex when pursued for selfish gain.

“But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints...” (Ephesians 5:3 NKJV).

Years ago, I drove a 1988 Buick Park Avenue. It was a wonderful car. Opening day of deer season, I was hunting with some of my college students. After killing a deer and dragging it out of a mountain holler, I could not imagine carrying it out of the woods. I walked the mile to get the car and began driving it across the “four-wheel drive only” abandoned strip mining road to retrieve the deer. You know what happened. I mired the car is a greasy, slick mud hole, burying the front-wheel drivetrain up to the axle. A Buick Park Avenue was a perfectly wonderful car, but it was not an ATV!

God designed sex for holy marriage. Fulfillment with be obtained within His design and purpose. Outside of His design we mire our lives in enslaving sin and brokenness.

“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:9 NKJV).