Sex by the Designer

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13; Genesis 2.18-25

I once heard someone summarize the whole Bible story with these words:

Good News, Bad News, Good News.

I’m going to borrow that framework as we begin a series called “Sex by the Designer.” As you might guess, we will look at what God intends for us as human beings versus what has become accepted as a normal view of sexuality in these times.

This week we will start with the good news, that is how we were created in God’s image. We can’t understand sex until we understand who we are created to be. The beginning of the human story is a good one, according to the Book of Genesis.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. . .and behold it was very good.” (Genesis 1.27-28, 31b)

Chapter two of Genesis gives more detailed accounts of how the man and woman were created.

“Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Genesis 2.7

Sometimes I hold my sons close to me so their face is right up in my face. I look into their eyes. I can feel them breathing on me. I know whether they’ve recently brushed their teeth. . .or not.

That’s the kind of intimate picture that Genesis gives us of the man’s creation. The Lord God holds the lifeless man right up to his face, breathes his breath into him, the breath of life, and man lives for the first time. There is an echo of this John’s Gospel. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me so I send you.” And breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

At our making, the pattern has begun, “God so loved the world that He gave. . .”

So man is created and immediately becomes clear that “It is not good for him to be alone.” Apparently, even in such close physical and spiritual proximity to God that man has, it is not enough. Man is made not for power, but for fellowship. “He will not yet live until he loves. He will not yet love until he gives himself away.”



But the search for another like him proves fruitless. Man discerns the natures of the other creatures in the garden by his naming them. There is a void in Adam that is human-shaped. It cannot be filled by anything or anyone else.

So woman is created. She is the very stuff of Adam. She is presented as his partner. Nothing is yet said of her as childbearer. She is valued for herself alone.

The story is told of a woman who meant to call a local record store but dialed the wrong number and got a private home instead.

“Do you have ‘Eyes of Blue’ and ‘A Love Supreme’?” she asked.

“Well, no,” answered the puzzled homeowner. “But I have got a wife and 11 children.”

“Is that a record?” she inquired.

“I don’t think so,” replied the man, “but it’s as close as I want to get.”

As important and beautiful an event as having children is, note at the beginning of their life in God, man and woman are simply valuable for who they are in relationship to each other and to God.

This is not an unimportant point. Some would have us believe that the only purpose of sex is to make babies. But there is a deeper cadence here, a more foundational music and art. In fact the union of Adam and Eve produces the first poetry in the Bible and Hallmark has not improved upon it.

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

The end of chapter two in Genesis makes it clear that this union is to be exclusive and permanent. “a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

In God’s true pattern they are perfectly at ease with each other. They are naked and unashamed. There is no deceit, no delusion, no hidden agendas. They have told each other no lies. They have no reason to. It hasn’t even occurred to them. In John Ortberg’s fine description, “they literally have nothing to hide.”

I was reading an article in which it was mentioned Dustin Hoffman once asked the great Sir Laurence Olivier what acting was all about. Olivier replied, “Look at me, look at me, look at me.” But actors, at least the very good ones, only show you what they want you to see.

Adam said to Eve, “Look at me.”
Eve said to Adam, “Look at me.” And they did. And it brought them unqualified joy and delight.


The language of sexual love is the most intimate language available to human beings. In Hebrew, the act of sexual love is referred to as “knowing someone.” It is an act of vulnerability and self-giving. That’s why in some of the classic marriage rites the groom and bride would declare to each other, “With my body I do thee worship.”

What does it mean to be created in the image of God? To have the capacity for relationship. To give yourself to another with complete self-abandon. To dare to know and be known. Here is the deeper music. As we love each other we are expressing Life in God’s pattern – the pattern of a holy circle, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He made them two and yet they are capable of achieving a kind of oneness. God, who is three yet one, creates human beings and says the two shall become one.

Sexual love is about giving and knowing another physically and spiritually. The two cannot be divorced from one another without great pain and consequence. That’s why marriage is God’s design for a man and a woman who are ready to give of themselves that completely. Anything else but marriage doesn’t do justice to the beauty, the holiness, and the divine character of what a man and a woman are capable of.

There is a new show on television. It’s about three guys, two of whom are married and one is single. In the previews the jokes come at the married guys expense:

Married guy: My wife wanted a cat. I didn’t want a cat. We compromised and we got a cat.

There is another scene where the married couples are out for dinner, apparently with their single friend. The single guy gets up from the meal and says something like, “Now I’m going to go do whatever I feel like doing for as long as I feel like doing it.” It is a taunt at his married friends. In effect, he saying, “So long chumps.”

It’s good for a laugh. But here’s the thing. It doesn’t really tell the truth. I’ve been the single guy. I got tired of doing “whatever I wanted for as long as I wanted.” I got lonely. Don’t misunderstand. I’ve said this before. Not everyone should be married, but everyone should be in relationship. Everyone should have friends. Everyone should make themselves accountable to community for what they do as long as they do it – for who they are.

Remember, no one is meant to be alone. We all have a human-shaped void in us, whether we are single or married.

The gift of marriage is in one sense a gift to everyone in that it reminds us all of this great truth. It reminds us that we are not here to just please ourselves. God’s will for us is that we love and serve one another.
“Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. . . Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5.22,28)

“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I Corinthians 13.4-8a



We are made for each other and in discovering that we discover that we are made for God. Much has gone wrong with us and what is considered normal in our world in regards to sex. Next week we will turn a critical eye to the problems we face.