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The Bible, Sex, And This
Generation
Chapter Three
SEX IS COVENANT
In the passage from Malachi that we looked at in the last chapter, we notice towards the end the word ‘covenant.’ “...She is your wife by covenant...” says Malachi (2:14). Many people assume that the word ‘covenant’ here has to do with a wedding ceremony or contract. However, if we look at covenants throughout the Bible, we see that they follow certain patterns:
The concept of covenant is central to many Biblical doctrines where we often see people being ‘bound’ to God. In fact, the word ‘covenant’ itself means ‘to bind.’2
Besides these things, we find that most Biblical covenants are marked by outward signs. Water baptism is the sign of the new covenant, circumcision was the sign of the covenant God made with Abraham, and rainbows are the sign of the covenant God made with all life on earth after the flood (Genesis 9:17).
While the outward signs marked covenants, and were not entirely necessary for the covenant to begin, the blood sacrifice actually started the covenant, and for the covenant to begin, blood sacrifice was entirely necessary. Covenants are even said to be ‘cut’ rather than ‘made’ - and this refers to the ‘cut’ bringing the blood necessary for covenant to begin.
With the covenant God made to all life on earth after the flood, the blood sacrifice was the deaths of many people under the waters of the flood. The blood of Jesus is the sacrifice of the New Covenant.3
In a marriage covenant, sex is the blood sacrifice. But when I say this, I also wish to emphasize that it’s not the blood that may come from the vagina as it is penetrated for the first time. The blood that is sacrificed when two people have sex is not just a little blood from the genital region! The blood sacrifice is made as the lives of two people experience an ending or death to their two single lives.4
People enter into the marriage covenant as they join their bodies sexually to another person, becoming ‘one flesh’ with that other person. Their single lives have died and been sacrificed to form a new life - married life - an ending of two separate persons, and the birth of a new oneness. Paul called this a mystery (Eph 5:32), and it is difficult to believe! But when two bodies join in sex, they do become one (see Eph 5:28-32). Sex itself is self-sacrifice - blood sacrifice - death of the single person. And so marriage is constant self-sacrifice; it’s a lifelong relationship, a ‘living’ with another for many days (cf. Hosea 3:3).
A wedding is the outward sign that marks this covenantal relationship that has begun. Neither a wedding nor vows nor a contract has initiated this bonding. Sex is the blood sacrifice, initiator, and beginning of marriage. A couple is not married in God’s eyes until they have had sex with each other. Even in modern times, a marriage is not said to be ‘consummated’ or completed until the couple have had sex.
In the covenant that the Lord made with Abraham to bless him with many descendents and much land recorded in Genesis 15, a heifer, a goat and a ram were sacrificed.
“Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other... a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram...” (Gen 15:10, 17-18).
God Himself passed between the meat that had been sacrificed to make the covenant we see here. Hence, Strongs Concordance says that the Hebrew word ‘beriyth’ (which we translate as ‘covenant’) actually means a ‘compact - made by passing between pieces of flesh.’
In the marriage covenant, man is described as the ‘stronger’ party, whom, like God in the example above, passes between the flesh of the other to ‘cut’ the covenant. By being called the ‘stronger’ party, I only mean that the male has a greater responsibility in marriage as God has a greater responsibility than we do in our relationship with him (cf. Eph 5:25, 1 Pet 3:7). Man is not ‘better’ than woman; he has a differing role. This is the same as God the Father is not ‘better’ than God the Son or the Holy Spirit, even though He is said to be ‘stronger.’ Man is equal to woman as the three persons of the trinity are equal to each other. When a woman submits to a man in marriage, she is no less than he is - in the same way as Jesus submitted to His Father, and was no less than Him. In marriage, man and woman have differing roles - just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit perform different roles. In marriage, man and woman are both bound to one another, both must remain with each other for life. Man is the ‘stronger’ party but is not the ‘better’ party.
Let’s look at the passage from Malachi again:
“...you cover the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping and crying; so He does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with goodwill from your hands. Yet you say, “For what reason?” Because the LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. “For the LORD God of Israel says that He hates divorce, for it covers one’s garment with violence,” says the LORD of hosts. “Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously”” (Mal 2:13-16 NKJ).
In this passage, people are weeping and crying out to God, wondering why He will not answer them. God finally speaks to them and says that He had seen the covenant they made with a woman in their youth. Furthermore, God has seen them deal treacherously with this woman - perhaps divorcing her.
God says that He hates divorce, and asks: “Did I not make you both one?” God says, “...let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth....” When a man has sex with a woman, he should never put her away and forget the fact that he has made a covenant with her - for this is dealing treacherously.
And just as God sees us whenever we have sex, God also knows our intentions, motivations and thoughts. He knows if we are committed to our sexual partner, just as He only knows if we are truly committed to Him. Only God can truly judge whether a person is righteously married, and why any marriage breaks down.
The people weeping and crying in the Malachi passage above had been at fault. They had forgotten that a woman they had sex with in their youth was supposed to be theirs now. Perhaps this was because of what we may call a ‘one-night stand?’ Perhaps the couple had never intended on being married? Whatever the intention was - the couple had sex, and had not continued to fulfill the obligations that the action required.
People forgot they were supposed to be married - perhaps because a wedding ceremony or contract had never been affected? No one else may have known that the couple had sex, and so there was no pressure on them to stay together. Obviously, we are getting to one of the reasons why wedding ceremonies were instituted in the first place - to protect sexual relationships, and to hold them together.
The outward signs of the marriage covenant (a wedding and/or contract) were performed to remind and to teach the people of what they had done. The wedding ceremony is a reminder and a witness to the world that a marriage has taken place. Do we really need this? Not exactly. But being reminded of something as important as sex is never wrong! When Joshua and the people that he led made a covenant with the Lord to serve and obey Him, Joshua took a large stone and made it a marker, or witness, to what the people had done. Whenever the people saw the marking stone, they remembered that they had agreed to the covenant (Joshua 24:24-27).
The problem with the wedding is that in this day and age, among many people, the outward sign of the wedding has grown to be seen as the marriage itself, and sex has become meaningless. People respect weddings more than they respect sex (yet even weddings and marriage contracts are hardly respected). We have allowed the outward sign to take precedence in importance over the reality of what that outward sign shows.
And this sad reality has happened many times, with many covenants.
Let’s look at how this happened with another of the most important covenants that a person can enter into - the covenant of entering into a relationship with God.
Back in the times of Genesis, the Lord called out to Abraham and announced the exact same gospel to him as what we can also respond to today.
Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you” (Gal 3:6-8 emphasis mine).
Abraham simply replied to God in faith and was saved just as Christians are today - through faith in the same gospel and the shed blood of Jesus.
Abraham never went to church. He had no official certificates or church membership status. He didn’t know that he was born-again, and he wasn’t water baptized. He didn’t even know what the blood sacrifice of the covenant was - that of Jesus dying for him. However, Abraham trusted God and was saved by Him.5 Abraham entered into a relationship with God via the blood sacrifice of Jesus - and not by any of the usual outward signs of this covenant.
However, many of you will know that Abraham did, in fact, perform a ceremony - circumcision. God tells Abraham:
“You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you” (Gen 17:11 emphasis mine).
The ceremony was only a sign of the covenant relationship between Abraham and God.
Abraham was not saved because he was circumcised. Abraham did not enter into relationship with God because he was circumcised or when he was circumcised.
However, many years after the time of Abraham, in the time of Jesus, this understanding had been changed by men. They had begun to rely on the fact that they were circumcised for their salvation, and they thought that everyone who was circumcised was automatically saved (see Acts 15). They believed that without circumcision, a person could not be saved.
But Jesus came and taught that this was wrong. He proclaimed that faith in Him6 (and in His work) was what saves a person, and not any external sign.
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Gal 5:6).
Can you see the similarities here between circumcision, water baptism and weddings?
Today, many Christians rely on the fact that they have been baptized in water for their salvation. And many have also believed that if a person was not water baptized, then they were not saved. However outward signs such as circumcision or water baptism have never saved a person or been the basis for their true faith. Abraham was saved without water baptism, so too can we be saved without it. It is only faith, faith in God and the blood sacrifice of Jesus, that allows a person to be saved and to enter into relationship with their creator. The signs of water baptism and circumcision were only there to remind people of the step they had taken and the relationship that they had entered into. People can most definitely be saved without having been water baptized.7
In the same way as false thoughts around circumcision and baptism have arisen among people of God, many Christians today have false thoughts about the wedding ceremony. Many believe that if a couple have not had a wedding ceremony, then they are not married. In this way, marriage is being bound by its outward signs, and is not recognized unless it submits to them.
To explain this point a bit more: Just as many believe that a couple are not married without a wedding, many also seem to think that a person is not saved unless they have been water baptized. If these things were true, then God himself would be bound by the actions of humans. Salvation would be by human works, as would marriage!
The wedding is a human action which only symbolizes the fully divine work of a couple being joined together in marriage (cf. Matt 19:6), in just the same way as water baptism or circumcision are human actions symbolizing the fully divine work of salvation.
Just as circumcision or water baptism is not necessary for salvation, neither is a wedding necessary for God to join a couple together in marriage. These are just outward signs. I’m not saying these signs are either bad or to be dismissed. What I am saying is that we should know what the signs symbolize, and that they are signs rather than reality. God sees our actions and knows what is in our hearts; He does not need us to perform signs so that He will know what we really think and believe.
In Jer 9:25-26 we read: “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh - Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab and all who live in the desert in distant places. For all these nations are really uncircumcised, and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”
Just being circumcised on the outside is not what God really wanted - He desired inner commitment. Having been water baptized means nothing if a person no longer loves and follows God. No wedding ceremony can make a marriage righteous or a couple truly committed to each other either. The sign means nothing if it is not reflected by the inner condition of the heart and mind. True commitment to God or to our partner can exist even where there has been no water baptism or wedding. Just as people have no right to feel saved just because they are circumcised or water baptized, a person should not automatically believe that their marriage is truly righteous just because they have been ‘married’ via a wedding ceremony. Righteousness in marriage comes from a deep internal commitment to being with the partner for life.8 Righteousness is not granted when we perform a particular ceremony or sign a particular piece of paper.
At this point, we can look back to the story the pastor told me of the woman named Sally, related in the introduction to this book. When the pastor spoke to me, it sounded as if Sally was already born-again. She should have been allowed to be water baptized, as this would only have symbolized the relationship with God that she had already entered into. Water baptism is not the deciding factor of a person’s relationship with God. Also, the relationship she had with her de facto partner was stable and committed. Again, the lack of the outward sign of a wedding ceremony was not the deciding factor of the righteousness of her relationship. And, in the eyes of God, Sally was already married to this man - living in a covenant relationship. Rather than telling her to leave him, she should have been encouraged to stay with him - the man with whom she had become ‘one flesh.’
Before moving on from the subject of covenant, we need to look at one last aspect. As with other Biblical covenants, in marriage God also sets the terms. These mainly consist of lifelong commitment, love, care and companionship. We are expected to accept these terms when the blood of the covenant is sacrificed.
Where the people involved refuse to accept the terms required of the marriage covenant they have made, the covenant is violated even before it has a chance to properly begin.9 I say ‘violated’ here, because covenants, being permanent, cannot be broken or dissolved by human actions. Rather, human actions violate or defile covenants. With the New Covenant Jesus sealed for us in His blood (Matt 26:27-28, 2 Cor 5:15), we can often see an example of covenant violation. Many people refuse to accept the terms of this covenant - even though the terms of this covenant are called ‘good news.’ And think of the punishment that violation of this covenant brings…. Violation of any covenant is a very serious offence against God (see Jer 34:18-19).
So what of adultery, rape and fornication? These are violations of the marriage covenant. In many cases, there are victims to this violation. Over the next chapters we will address these issues.
Deut 24:1-4 talks about men divorcing their wives. This is the passage which Jesus talks about when He says “...Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” (Matt 19:8) Just before saying this, Jesus had quoted Gen 2:24, stating that two will become one, and must not be separated. Jesus Himself stated that divorce was sinful - permitted under duress - it was not meant to be. In 1 Cor 7:11 we read: “...a husband must not divorce his wife.” Men should never give up their responsibility, love and companionship to their wives - once a couple has had sex with one another, they are both bound together to each other for life.
After Jesus clearly confirmed the fact that in marriage two become one and should never be separated, “His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry” (Matt 19:10 KJV). Many of us would agree here with the disciples! If all people knew that having sex with someone bound them together for life - many may think a bit harder before having sex in the first place!…oooOOOooo…
Jesus highly respected the bond between couples who have had sex with each other. In Luke 12:53 He says “They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” Husbands will not be divided against wives... Jesus never suggests that couples in sexual relationship should ever be divided - two become one. (cf. Matt 10:37-38, 19:29)
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Scripture in the book is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973,
1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. All rights reserved.
FOOTNOTES:
1 The information here on covenants is from the book by Tom Marshall “Explaining Covenants”, 1992 Sovereign World Limited, England. Return
2 Ibid. p. 8 Return
3 The blood of Jesus was also the sacrifice of the covenant God made with Abraham - God said, “I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendancts after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you... I will be their God.” (Gen 17:7-8) God did this through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross - the only way ever to the Father. The death of Jesus transcended time - Jesus died for the sins of all humans - not only the ones who died after the time that He lived and died as a man on earth. Circumcision was not the blood sacrifice of this covenant, as then there would be a separate covenant with each person circumcised, and female people would then not be included. The cut of the circumcision, although bringing blood, was just a symbol of the real blood of the covenant (that of Jesus). See also the next footnote. Return
4 Death and blood are two highly related terms in the Bible. For instance, when we look at the word ‘blood’ in the New Testament, in almost every case it refers to death. Return
5 This is a highly debatable point, however I personally do not believe that the gospel message that Abraham received included the details of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Rather, I believe that Abraham responded to the message that God would save him, even though he was a sinner! Abraham didn’t need to know how God would do this - only that God would be able to do this. Accordingly, the good news that we can respond to today is that God can save us if we turn to Him in faith and repentance for our sins! Jesus is the only way that God saves us, however, I do not personally believe that we need to have any intellectual knowledge of this atonement before we can receive it. The knowledge of the work of Jesus is a great blessing that we have over Abraham and others like him, they only knew that God would save, whereas we are so blessed to actually know how. (See also the next footnote). Return
6 Remember here that Jesus is actually God. When people in the OT had faith in God, they had a faith in Jesus even though they did not know his name or the details of his life on earth. So, they were putting their trust in God and His works just as we do. We however, are more blessed by knowing more about what these great works of God actually were. (See also the last footnote). Return
7 When a person is baptized in water, they ‘act out’ death (by drowning), they are washed by the water (a symbol of the blood) and they rise up out of the water to show their new life. This water baptism is a symbol of the inner baptism that God does in the life of the person! The word ‘baptism’ means ‘new life’, and when a person is water baptized, they receive new spiritual life - spiritual baptism. The spiritual baptism is also called being ‘born again’, and is entirely necessary for salvation. Real spiritual baptism is a divine action, whereas water baptism is something physical that we do to symbolize our acceptance of spiritual baptism (new birth) that God has promised to give us when we turn to Him in repentance and faith. I believe that spiritual baptism is necessary for a person to be saved, however a baptism ceremony in water is not crucial to a persons salvation. (See the next footnote also). Return
8 Assuming of course that the relationship was not adutlerous, or against any of the unlawful relationships mentioned in Leviticus 18. We will discuss these relationships at a later point in the book. Return
9 As was previously mentioned, the stronger party to the marriage (the male) has a much greater responsibility towards the marriage than the female. In cases of rape, the victim is not at fault due to the fact that there has been no consent in the first place to the sex, and also because the stronger party has not had any intention of being righteously married to the woman in the first place. I believe that ‘righteously’ would include allowing the other party to consent. We will speak in a later chapter about breaking unrighteous sexual bondages, and in that chapter, rape will be included. There is much hope that victims who have been raped can be restored and healed by God from this terrible crime. Return
