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?…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?
Over the years, some people have tried to argue that men are biologically predisposed to needing multiple sexual partners. It’s simple evolution, they say. If the species was to survive, then there needed to be as much mating as possible. Since men are animals (literally) they of course naturally want to mate with as many partners as possible over the course of their lives. Add to this idea that the sexual revolution has taught women to behave just like men, and we are left with a society that is full of sexual immorality.
Sure, it may be true that we desire many sexual experiences, and it is definitely 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 in the garden, and that was not good. So God took woman from man’s side and gave her to him. One to one. Bone of bone. Flesh of flesh. A whole life union meant to display the unity of the Godhead.
Any desire we have for more than this whole life union with a single partner of the opposite sex is a rejection of God’s good design. It is the classic trap of choosing foolishness over wisdom – thinking that we know better than God.
When God tells the married man to avoid the forbidden woman, and to rather enjoy the wife of his youth, drinking water from his own cistern, he is telling him to live the life of wisdom in the fear of the Lord. Wisdom is skill in navigating the complexities of life. Want a complicated life? Engage in sexual sin and fantasy. Be promiscuous. Fulfill your lusts. Just ask any polygamist in the Bible how that went for them. Want to fear God and live well instead? Forsake the intoxication of the forbidden woman, even the one on your 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 our whole heart. It is leaning on our own understanding, and as such it becomes a path to turning others, even 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. 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 lusts of the flesh taste like the polluted water they are. Then, as we find our satisfaction in Christ in this way, we can engage the opposite sex, especially in the body of Christ, with the dignity and respect that they deserve. Never avoiding another person as a temptation simply by their existence, or blaming innocent women for being the forbidden fruit when in reality they are your sister in Christ.
You: In regards to your sexuality have you chosen your own “wisdom” over the wisdom of 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: Does Christ intoxicate you? If not, how can he be your delight today?
Pray: Jesus, may you alone satisfy my soul. Amen.
To Live is Christ 