Proverbs 5:15-20. 15Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. 16Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? 17Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. 18Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, 19a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. 20Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
I’ve heard some people try to argue that men are biologically predisposed to needing multiple sexual partners. It’s simple evolution. If we want the species to survive, then we must mate as often as possible with as many women as possible. And, of course, the sexual revolution has taught women to just behave like men, so here we are.
Sure, it may be true that we desire many sexual experiences, and it may even be true for most men and many women that we are prone to being tempted by the blatant displays of sexuality that we see all around us, but these are best explained by sin, not biology or evolution. It is simply not true that we are engineered for a life of promiscuity. In the beginning God created man and placed him alone (not good) in the garden. So God took woman from man’s side and gave her to him. One to one. Bone of bone. Flesh of flesh.
Any desire we have for more than this is a rejection of God’s good design. It is the classic trap of choosing knowledge over faith – thinking that we know better than God.
When God tells the married man to avoid the seductress (v. 7-14) and to rather enjoy the wife of his youth, drinking water from his own cistern, he is simply telling him to live the normal life of wisdom. Wisdom is skill in navigating the complexities of life. Want a complicated life? Engage in sexual sin and fantasy. Just ask any polygamist in the Bible. Want to fear God and live well? Forsake the intoxication of the forbidden woman (even if she is on a screen).
When we seek after sexual pleasures outside of God’s ordained plan, the sex itself is not the root problem. The rejection of God is. Sexual sin is a failure to trust God with all our heart. It is leaning on our own understanding. And as such it is a path to turning others, including a spouse, into a commodity to use rather than a person to love.
In Christ we are married to him. We drink his water. We draw water from his well. All others are the adulteress, the forbidden woman, the stranger. Married or single let Christ be the one that satisfies your soul to the point of spiritual intoxication, a gladness in his love that makes all other lovers taste like the polluted water they are.
You: In regards to your sexuality have you chosen your own “knowledge” over faith in God?
You in Christ: How can the love of Christ allow you to reject sin at the temptation level and enjoy what God has given you (for example: married sex or celibacy)?
Christ in you: What “intoxicates” you? Is it Christ? If not, how can he be your delight today?
Pray: Jesus, may you alone satisfy my soul. Amen.
To Live is Christ 