Devotion for Marriages – 26) Marital Responsibility
“The Holy Spirit leaves the room when a married couple has sex, even if they do it without passion” – Peter Lombard (A respected Irish archbishop and scholastic theologian).
Many Christians, like Peter Lombard, still feel that sex and holiness cannot co-exist.
Heb.13:4 – “Marriage bed is honourable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge”
Sex is created by God and is holy within the boundaries of marriage. Sex is defiled only if it is out of the marriage bed. And the word “defile” in the original Greek language indicates the potential for demonic activities. What it simply means is that sex outside marriage is wide open doors for the devil to defile our soul & spirit. For that reason, God says He will judge. This warning is repeated again in 1Thess.4:3-8
”For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.”
However, God has designed sex for our pleasure within the marriage bed.
Prov.5:18-19 – "Rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always. May you be ever enraptured (intoxicated) by her sex” - better reflect the actual Hebrew meaning of the passage.
To be intoxicated or “enraptured” (New King James Version) by a spouse’s love is something God wants us to enjoy throughout our marriages. In fact, this verse reminds us that when God designed the breast for women, it was not solely just to generate milk as food for the baby, but also for the husband’s pleasure.
Marital responsibility
Rejecting our spouse’s sexual initiatives is against the biblical teaching of Paul:
1Cor.7:3-5 - “Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control”.
Under general circumstances, it is wrong for us not to respond positively to our spouse’s sexual initiatives. The root is self-centredness. Nothing could ever be more deflating to a person’s ego than to have their sexual initiatives rejected by their spouse. There is only one provision under the Bible that allows us to abstain from sexual relations with our spouse.
However, even with this provision, these three conditions must be met:
- It must be for a consecrated purpose e.g. seeking God in fasting and prayer
- Both parties must agree and give consent
- It should only be for a short period of time (during the prayer and fasting period) in order to avoid temptation from the evil one
Saying “I do” at our wedding ceremony, is an agreement to an exchange of our own bodies as gifts. On the wedding night, there is a “gift exchange”, which is giving the authority and the ownership of our bodies to one another. If you don’t want your body to be owned by another person, don’t get married!
In Eph.4:27, we are warned not “to give place for the devil” and again in 1Pet.5:8, Peter warns us that the evil one is always hovering around us and therefore we need to “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour”. This is because he is always waiting for ‘opportunities’ to tempt us. Lk.4:13 – “Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time”
As a married couple we should not take our spouse’s sexual interest for granted. In God’s created order, there should be no sex outside of marriage, but lots of fulfilling and generous sex in marriage.