Home	Three Sides of Sex: Unity, Symbol of Love, Reserved for Marriage
The Best Family Life
Forgiveness Can Save and Transform a Marriage
The Husband, Protector and Provider

1 Corinthians 7:3,4.

3 "Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but he husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does."

Sexual intercourse is an intimate expression of affection between a husband and wife. The apostle underscores its importance in marriage by declaring that it is in fact a duty: a husband is to be available for his wife at her request, and a wife for her husband at his request. It is more than an act of biological mating. The Bible calls it a privileged "mystery" by which two people, a man and a woman, become one (Ephesians 5:31,32 - "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery...). The privilege is abused when people not married to each other have intercourse (see 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:16); then that which God meant for blessing becomes a cause of judgement (Ephesians 5:5 - "For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person...has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."). Marriage is the one and the only place that God has provided for sexual union to take place. In that setting it becomes a powerful symbol of the love between Christ and the church, a pure sharing of joy and delight in one another that is a gift from the hand of God. Outside those boundaries, it eventually becomes destructive.

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