The Biblical view of human sexuality
In this post, I want to explore God’s protective design for human sexuality and why it matters. I also want to examine compelling evidence that many of the world’s problems stem, directly or indirectly, from disregarding or abusing God’s design for sex.
Imagine a society without designed rules and laws!
Before we approach this topic, imagine just a few scenarios and consider how chaotic and dysfunctional life would become:
- Highways without speed limits or a designated side of the road for travel.
- Roads without directional signs.
- Airplanes flying without licensed pilots.
- “Professionals”—doctors, lawyers, teachers, and others—working without accreditation.
- No laws against theft, rape, violence, or other crimes.
- Competitive games played without rules.
- Orchestra members playing whatever they wanted instead of following their music director.
No doubt, we could imagine many more scenarios that would show what our world would look like without laws and rules to maintain order.
All things considered, I think we would agree that our world would descend into chaos and life would become unbearable without orderly rules and laws.
In fact, when I searched for what would happen if we had no rules or laws to govern society, the responses were remarkably similar. They emphasized that rules and laws are essential for maintaining order, protecting individuals, preventing conflict and harm, and allowing society to function properly.
Rules, Laws and Ethical Standards
It is important to realize that we need order, rules, laws, and ethics. These boundaries exist for our protection and, ultimately, for our safety and enjoyment of life.
Anne Witton asks in her article, “Have You Ever Wondered If We Could Live in a World Without Rules?” She rightly points out that “rules help us to cooperate and work well together.”
Of course, laws, rules, and ethical standards are necessary.
So, if we recognize the need for rules in virtually every area of life, why would we assume that human sexuality is the one area where rules are unnecessary?
The obvious answer is that we shouldn’t.
However, when it comes to the ethics of human sexuality, there is deep and often divisive disagreement about whose rules we should follow.
Is it possible that everyone can live according to their own rules/ethics for human sexuality behavior?
Indeed, when it comes to human sexuality, many people are living according to their own rules and ethical standards. The consequences for society have been, and continue to be, devastating. More on this shortly.
But we need to ask ourselves an important question:
Is there an objective moral reality that we can appeal to?
Anne Witton raises this very question.
My answer is an emphatic yes!
The truth is that we have a loving God who created us to flourish. Because He created us, He knows exactly what is best for us. As Psalm 139:15–16 reminds us, God knows us intimately—even before we were born.
He has also made His design for human sexuality known in the Bible. In Matthew 19:4–6, Jesus points us back to God’s original design for marriage and the complementary relationship between male and female.
Many people consider the Bible their “owner’s manual” for life—a source of guidance for how we should live. Proverbs 3:5–6 reminds us to trust in the Lord rather than relying solely on our own understanding.
“What Is a Biblical View of Sexuality?”
“Human sexuality, including all its physical, emotional, and spiritual intricacies, was God’s invention.”
Witton’s article as linked in a previous section above, goes on to explain that God gave sexuality to human beings as a gift with two purposes: to perpetuate the human race and to create an intimate bond between husband and wife. It also makes an important distinction: the right use of sexuality can deepen our understanding of intimacy with God, while the wrong use can damage that intimacy and ultimately place sexuality in God’s rightful place.
Devastating outcomes when God's design for human sexuality is perverted
An excerpt from the same article mentioned above describes the devastation that has occurred in our world as a result of our corruption of God’s design for human sexuality.
The author writes:
“A significant percentage of the world’s problems stems directly or indirectly from our abuse of God’s gift of sexuality. Imagine the world we would have if every human being followed God’s standards for sexuality. Abortions, divorce, STDs, AIDS, pornography, sex trafficking, fatherless children, single mothers, rape, abandoned babies, and pedophilia would all cease or be greatly reduced. The ripple effects of those changes alone would completely transform every continent, every nation, and every culture. Economies would rebound, disease would plummet, and mental hospitals would have empty beds.”
The author then offers an analogy that illustrates why boundaries matter:
“God knows what He is talking about when He includes boundaries with His gifts. Electricity is an incredible discovery and if used correctly benefits all mankind. Used wrongly, however, electricity can maim or kill. So it is with the power of human sexuality. When we seek to live within the healthy boundaries God instituted for our well-being, sexuality is once again a good gift.”
The point is worth considering: a gift does not become harmful simply because it has boundaries. In fact, boundaries can protect the very thing that makes the gift valuable.
The importance of the traditional family cannot be overstated. From a biblical perspective, this is God’s design—not an arbitrary set of restrictions, but a framework intended for human flourishing.
Protections provided by traditional family units
God’s Protective Design for Human Sexuality
God’s protective design for human sexuality provides a sacred “one-flesh” covenant between husband and wife. What a great gift!
The One-Flesh Union
Sexual union between a husband and wife provides a physical expression of their lifelong commitment. It creates a deep bond that goes beyond the physical act itself.
A Covenant
When a husband and wife reserve sexual intimacy for marriage, sex becomes a physical expression and seal of their covenant commitment to one another. Significantly, Scripture also uses marriage as a picture of the relationship between Christ and His Church.
Emotional and Spiritual Fulfillment
Fidelity within marriage allows husband and wife to develop a deep, committed, emotionally intimate relationship. Sexual intimacy becomes part of a broader relationship built on trust, faithfulness, commitment, and love.
Physical and Emotional Protection
God’s boundaries for sexuality also provide protection. Sexual intimacy outside a committed marriage can bring emotional pain, relational instability, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, and other consequences. God’s design provides boundaries intended to protect the people involved.
A Stable Environment for Children
It is also important to consider how family structure affects children.
Children generally flourish when they grow up with their biological mother and father in a stable, committed marriage. Such a family can provide not only stability and security but also a living model of covenant love.
Within this framework, children can also develop a clearer understanding of their biological identity—who they are and where they came from.
Better Outcomes for Children Raised by Their Married Biological Parents
Could this also be part of God’s protective design?
Research has repeatedly examined the relationship between family structure and children’s well-being. In Why Marriage Matters for Child Wellbeing, the author states:
“Reams of social science and medical research convincingly show that children who are raised by their married, biological parents enjoy better physical, cognitive and emotional outcomes, on average, than children raised in other circumstances…”
The author further state that researchers have found evidence of marriage affecting outcomes such as children’s schooling, social and emotional adjustment, and their employment, marriage, and mental health as adults.
David C. Ribar also discusses these findings in his work on marriage and child well-being.
These findings do not mean that every child raised outside a married biological-parent family will struggle, nor do they mean that every married family will thrive. Individual circumstances matter enormously.
They do, however, give us reason to take family structure seriously rather than assuming that all family arrangements produce the same outcomes.
If God designed marriage and family for human flourishing, perhaps these patterns in the research should not surprise us.
Social science and medical research show compelling evidence that God’s protective design for human sexuality is for our flourishing as human beings!
Human sexuality perverted - the detriments to children!
God’s Design and the Changing Approach to Sex and Gender
For a number of years, debates over sex and gender have increasingly entered the educational system. In many schools, children are being exposed to ideas about gender identity that differ significantly from the traditional understanding of biological sex—and from the biblical understanding of God’s design for humanity.
The following is an excerpt from the article Removing Gender Ideology from Education:
“When it comes to questions around gender identity, there is intense disagreement over what is true. The very concept of gender identity is ideologically loaded and deeply contested, yet it is portrayed as true in official curriculum, by third-party organizations, or through teachers’ opinions. Children are taught that a girl can be trapped in a boy’s body, or that a male adult human being can be a woman if he believes he is. Children are taught that sex is a mere label assigned to people at birth, when in fact it is an immutable and profoundly significant biological reality determined at conception. Children are taught that sex can be changed via what is euphemistically called ‘gender-affirming care’, when, in reality, human beings cannot change their sex through any amount of drugs or surgeries.”
The author concludes:
“Gender ideology is fundamentally false. It is not a scientifically accurate way to think about human sexual identity.”
From a biblical perspective, human sexual identity is not something we invent for ourselves.
Scripture tells us that God created humanity in His image as male and female:
“So God created mankind in his own image… male and female he created them.” — Genesis 1:27
This understanding begins with the recognition that God is our Creator. Our bodies are not accidental or meaningless. They are part of His design.
There are many aspects of our identity that we do not choose. We cannot choose our biological parents, our ancestry, or the species into which we are born. Likewise, our biological sex is not something we simply select according to our feelings or preferences.
This raises an important question: Should our feelings determine our understanding of biological reality?
Feelings are real and important, but they are not always reliable guides to truth.
Professors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt discuss this kind of emotional reasoning—relying on feelings rather than evidence to determine what is true—as one of the “great untruths” of our present age.
For Christians, this raises an even deeper issue.
If God designed us, should we not allow our Creator—not merely our feelings or cultural trends—to tell us how we were designed?
Summary
In the final analysis, we must recognize how far our culture has moved from God’s design for human sexuality.
Throughout this post, we have considered why God’s design can be understood as protective. Just as the laws and rules of society are intended to protect us from harm and provide order, God’s boundaries for human sexuality are intended for our good.
Here are some of the ways our culture has moved away from that design in recent years:
- Same-sex marriage
- Same-sex parent families through adoption
- Polyamorous families
- Single-parent families
- Surrogacy and sperm and egg banks, which can separate children from knowledge of their biological origins
- Cohabiting couples
- Gender-transition procedures for young people
These developments represent significant changes from the traditional biblical understanding of marriage, sexuality, and family.
As one writer observes, the dominant culture in practice, law, and rhetoric is increasingly pulling apart what God intended to belong together. In particular, the traditional Christian understanding holds together marriage, sexual intimacy, and childbearing.
The sexual revolution challenged that unity—not only intellectually, but also through technology, contraception, reproductive technologies, and changing social norms.
And perhaps this brings us back to the central question of this entire post:
What happens when we separate God’s gifts from the boundaries He designed to protect them?
If God truly created human sexuality as a good gift, then His boundaries are not intended to diminish our lives. They are intended to protect what He created and help us flourish within it.
We may disagree about God’s design. We may choose to reject it. But we should at least be willing to consider the possibility that the Creator knows what is best for His creation.
After everything we have considered, I don’t know of any better way to close this post than with a simple prayer:
God, help us.
Prayer
Father God, You are High and Mighty, You created everything and you said it was very good!
Sadly, as a culture, we have chosen to re-design your perfect design for the way we express our sexuality. We are seeing the destructive effects of these choices in so many lives.
We need your Holy Spirit to change the hearts and minds of those who oppose your perfect design and we understand from the teaching of Jesus that this can only happen as we come to the cross in repentance of our sin.
For this we pray in Jesus powerful name,
Amen
Further Reading:
