Becoming “one flesh” is one of the truly unique features of a Christian understanding of marriage. Men and women are so very different from each other. This can be cause for frustration or cause for excitement and growth. It is a lifelong adventure to love and understand this woman I live with — so very different from me and yet one with me. We have such a differing sexuality as male and female, we who are one and yet must become one! We have so much to learn from each other that it will take a lifetime! Always when I meet with a couple for pre-marriage counseling, I will urge them to take their sense of humor along with them on their honeymoon, because blessed and few are the couples whose honeymoon reaches the heights of sexual communion. Most of us have a lot to learn, and that is good — it draws us out of ourselves. We lose ourselves to find ourselves. In the mystery of love, as God planned it, “no one can ever figure out who is doing the giving and who the receiving,” writes Thomas Howard. Real lovers “know that giving and receiving are a splendid and hilarious paradox in which, lo, the giving becomes receiving, the receiving giving until any efforts to sort it out collapse in merriment or adoration” (Howard, “God Before Birth: The Imagery Matters,” Christianity Today, December 17, 1976, 12-13). Thank You Genesis 3:16: the Fall fractures the sexual relationship of the man and the woman. The bearing of children will be painful, and her desire for her husband will be full of anguish and struggle. The marriage bed will become a battleground. The devil’s grand strategy against pleasure is to twist it, to get us to misuse it. “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s [God’s] ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula” (Ibid., 49, emphasis mine).

In the film, Mia Malkova delivers a monologue about her sexuality, the role of women in society and the matriarchal and ultrafeminist bonds that attempt to tie them. NIV): “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love. Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for NLT): “Kiss me again and again, for your love is sweeter than wine.” This has to be one of the most memorable opening lines in the Bible! Compare it with other famous beginnings: Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God . . .”; John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word . . .” And then we have the Song of Solomon: “Kiss me again and again.” The Hebrew is literally something like “Smother me with kisses.” The “love” referred to has strong, physically erotic connotations, as in the caresses of lovemaking. And it leaves her feeling more euphoric, headier, more “buzzed” than wine. The pleasures and goodness of sex are heightened, not lessened by proper restraint, in the same way the Colorado River is made more powerful by the walls of the Grand Canyon. The very narrowness of the river’s channel there makes for a greater river. Farther south, as the river flows through the deserts of California and Arizona, it is shallow, wide, and muddy, even stinky in spots. Wider boundaries diminish the river; sharper, stronger, and narrower boundaries strengthen it. Less is more. The boundaries and proscriptions of sex in the Bible are for the sake of sex. Again, less is more — at least less as understood by one man and one woman together exclusively till death parts them.This poem is by Andy Patterson, a senior at Westmont College, where I am the pastor. He is also my son, I am proud to say.)

Hosea’s bad marriage to a sexually promiscuous wife is a picture of God’s marriage to Israel. When the marriage is healed and God and his people are reconciled, the promise is, “No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah [my delight is in her], and your land Beulah [married]; for the LORD will take delight in you, and your land will be married. As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:4-5, NIV). A case was filed against Varma for obscenity, one day prior to the film's release, on a complaint by a social activist in Hyderabad. The complaint was registered against him for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form. [7] [8] Sequel [ edit ]Therefore, the more sex is enjoyed in ways redolent of its Creator, the better sex is for all involved — to God’s glory and our sanctification and joy. The church father Irenaeus nearly reduced it to a formula when he said, “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God” (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 4.20.7). The vision of God: that’s where the theological foundations come in. I think there are five. Theological Foundations

This is unique in the Old Testament. Because of its concern for the covenant, the Old Testament’s interest in sex is mainly with its relation to begetting. There are very few clues as to whether it should be fun. The Song of Solomon fills this gap. It says that along with having children, sex is for pleasure, joy, communion, and celebration. Pregnancy is not even mentioned in the book! Revelation 19:6-7, 9: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. . . . Then the angel said to me, ‘Write: “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!”’” (NIV). Mumbai court dismisses plea against Mamata over national anthem: Singing different from reciting certain words from it That’s what her lover is like to her. But he is not merely a symbol; he’s the real thing. His “shade” is his nearness, and the effect he has on her is like being brought to a banquet hall, literally a house of wine, another symbol of the ecstasy of lovemaking. The “banner” of love seems out of place, the banner being a military metaphor; perhaps it speaks of the ferocity of love. Whatever its meaning, it provides a dramatic picture of a woman swept up under the passion and protection of her man — his left arm under her head, his right arm embracing her.Then he did something astounding with what he made: he put us in charge of it, as stewards. What is a steward? A steward is someone entrusted with the management of someone else’s property and charged with managing it in the owner’s best interest. God’s great interest is his glory. I am faint with love. His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me. Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” Apples and raisins and other fruits were all ancient erotic symbols. Revelation 21:2: “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (NIV). God, Sex And Truth: Ram Gopal Varma booked for obscenity a day before the film's release". Hindustan Times. 25 January 2018 . Retrieved 10 November 2020. With all of this sexual obsession, one is tempted to downplay the pleasures and goodness of sex — to say they are overrated. But that might do the devil’s will as much as the obsession itself. Pleasure is God’s idea, and God is the devil’s Enemy. The devil actually hates pleasure, because he hates the God of pleasure.

I’ll never forget the pastoral visit I had with a woman whose husband had just died that morning. She had nursed him at home through a protracted and painful bout with cancer. When I walked into her living room, his corpse was still on the hospital bed she had wheeled beside the fireplace. I stood on one side of the bed, and she on the other, as I prayed for her. Before I finished praying I opened my eyes to see her massaging her husband’s feet, patting his cheeks, and rubbing his calves and hands as she must have done innumerable times in their marriage. I was deeply moved at what I saw, and as I drove home I thought, This is what sex is finally all about: one man and one woman to the end, loving and caring for each other’s bodies, with their bodies. God Sex and Truth controversy gets uglier!". The Times of India. 27 January 2018 . Retrieved 19 May 2020. What are the theological foundations for this celebration of sex — and what does it have to do with the glory of God? The gigantic secret of the joy of sex is this: Sex is good because the God who created sex is good. And God is glorified greatly when we receive his gift with thanksgiving and enjoy it the way he meant for it to be enjoyed. The reason we like sex so much is that it is a little bit like the God who created it. My lover is mine, and I am his” — this formula appears at key points in the Song to emphasize the exclusivity of the lovers’ commitment to each other. It is also a formula on the human level of what is true of God and his people (Hosea 2:23). In the context of this glorious, amorous, monogamous exclusivity her lover “feeds among the lilies!” The covenant promise has an erotic dimension: they belong to each other to the fullest, and they may and will enjoy each other to the fullest. Romans 1:21-24: the heart of our darkness is this: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Darkness leads to idolatry. “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images . . .” Idolatry shows itself first, and perhaps most tellingly, in our sexuality. “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another (NIV).”Hemanth Kumar (20 January 2018). "Ram Gopal Varma on God, Sex and Truth: "GST attempts to bring sex out into the open instead of hiding it under the bed sheets" ". First Post . Retrieved 10 November 2020.