Marriage
Were the puritans really puritanical?
Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. She is a loving doe, a graceful deer. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love. Proverbs 5:18-19 I chuckle when people lambaste the Puritans for supposedly being sexually inhibited. The so-called puritanical attitude toward sex was actually quite progressive, overturning the more repressive notions that had dominated the church for at least a thousand years. One church leader, Ambrose, argued that "married people ought to blush at the state in which they are living." The church fathers Origen and Chrysostom believed that Adam and Eve could not have had sexual relations before the Fall. Therefore, if sin had not entered the world, the human race would reproduce itself by some means other than through intercourse. Eventually the church prohibited married couples from having sex on about half the days of the year. Some leaders recommended abstinence on five days out of seven every week. But the Puritans changed all this. When they taught from the Bible on marriage, they affirmed the goodness of marital sex. In fact, scholar Leland Ryken has documented a case in which a New England congregation excommunicated a husband who shirked his sexual responsibilities to his wife. Frustrated by her husband's refusal to engage in sexual intimacy with her, she complained to her pastor and then to her church family. Proverbs 5:18-19 endorses a robust sex life for married couples. The sage captures the exquisite grace of a woman by comparing her to a doe. Then, in words that may cause a blush or two, he prays that the wife's breasts may satisfy her husband and that he may be captivated by her love. The word captivated in this case actually means "intoxicated" in the original—so this is the one passage where Scripture condones intoxication! Sexual intimacy is a wonderful gift that God gives to husbands and wives, and the only thing that takes priority over it is intimacy with God himself. According to 1 Corinthians 7:5, spouses should not "deprive each other of sexual relations. The only exception to this rule would be the agreement of both husband and wife to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time, so they can give themselves more completely to prayer. As this verse suggests, couples have the privilege and responsibility of giving one another the gift of themselves in sexual intimacy. Steve Mathewson
Reflection
Prayer
Most Christian couples have never been taught what the Bible actually says about sex, nor, from the medical standpoint, how to fully enjoy what God has designed for man and wife."
—Ed Wheat, physician and author  share this page |             |
