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Hollywood has given us all the wrong ideas about sex. Unfortunately, the church hasn’t really done a good job of correcting that. This past weekend, in an effort to reverse that trend, Colleen and I together addressed the final topic in our Elephant in the Pew series: Sex and Marriage.

Reading Proverbs 5:15-19, it’s quite evident that God’s telling us that sex is reserved for marriage. From the very beginning, going all the way back to Genesis, He wants the man and the woman to come together and become one flesh. However, the enemy has perverted this, bringing a lot of shame and guilt. And our culture is rife with impure and unholy ideas about sex, leading many to think of sex as something dirty or a forbidden pleasure. Yet, God wants us to think about sex in a godly fashion, the way He talks about it in the Bible…a lot.

So here’s the elephant: God wants us to have a fulfilling sexual life. Yes, that’s what I said. God created sex, after all, and everything He does is good. As I’ve said previously, sex is a gift from God. However, the only place a fulfilling sexual life can truly happen is between a married man and woman who share spiritual, soul and physical oneness.

Sex was meant to go so far beyond a few moments of immediate pleasure. It’s not just a physical act, it’s a spiritual act – we are spiritual beings. That’s why spiritual compatibility is the #1 stabilizer in a relationship. It’s very rare for spiritually incompatible people to have a fulfilling sexual relationship. If one partner is not being filled spiritually in God, they will look to their partner to meet their needs – something they cannot do. In order to be spiritually one, we must be mutually committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, to sharing a prayer life together, to the authority of the Word of God and to keeping ourselves pure.

Soul oneness is oneness of mind, will and emotions. It doesn’t mean that the two people just stop being who they are individually. If we’re truly in a relationship, disagreements are inevitable. It’s not important that we think alike, but rather, that we both think like God. That means being ever ready to believe the best about our spouses, not giving in to feelings of futility or hopelessness. It means constantly reaffirming our commitment – emotionally and otherwise – to our marriage – and keeping our heart in the relationship. Wives especially need to exercise patience with their husbands in this area. Oneness of soul requires humility, forgiveness, commitment and openness.

Physical oneness, at first glance, seems like the easiest and most natural part. Yet, we’ve already seen how intricately it is bound up with oneness of spirit and soul. Actually, there are a lot of things that can be tremendous hindrances to physical oneness in marriage, like pornography, infidelity, abuse, pre-marital sex, stresses of life, physical changes and selfishness.

In order to have physical oneness, we need to protect and perpetuate romance. We need to keep ourselves attractive and protect our time together. It is essential that we keep an open dialogue. And here, just as wives need to be patient with their husbands in the emotional oneness, husbands need to be patient with their wives in the physical oneness.

So, contrary to all the misinformation in our culture, the simple truth about sex is this: God intends that we have fulfilling sexual lives in a loving marriage relationship that is characterized by oneness of spirit, soul and body.

(Listen to or watch this past weekend’s message here.)