The Shape of Something Sacred

This is a follow-up to my last article, Ancient Words, Modern Questions, where I looked at what Scripture actually says about homosexuality, sexual behavior, and the gap between the biblical world and the way we think about sexual orientation today.

That article left me with a question I could not really shake.

If we are going to take the Bible's teaching on same-sex sexual behavior seriously, then we have to go deeper than simply asking whether certain verses prohibit certain acts.

We have to ask:

What does the Bible actually believe marriage is?

Because that question sits underneath almost everything else.

If marriage is mainly about love, covenant, faithfulness, consent, and commitment, then the argument for affirming same-sex marriage becomes much stronger.

But if Scripture presents marriage as something with a created form, something rooted not only in covenant, but also in male and female, one-flesh union, and the way human bodies are designed, then the conversation changes.

That is where I want to go next.

The Question Under the Question

In Ancient Words, Modern Questions, I spent time looking at the passages most often brought into the conversation about homosexuality.

I do not want to repeat all of that here.

The larger takeaway was that Scripture seems to speak much more clearly about same-sex sexual behavior than it does about the modern category of sexual orientation.

But that raised another issue.

Even if we conclude that biblical writers viewed same-sex intercourse negatively, why did they?

Was it because the forms of same-sex behavior they knew were exploitative, promiscuous, pagan, or unequal?

Or was there something deeper underneath it?

Something connected to what they believed sex and marriage were actually for?

That takes us back to Genesis.

Before There Was a Debate

Before Leviticus.

Before Romans.

Before denominations.

Before culture wars.

Before arguments about sexual identity.

There was Genesis.

And the opening chapters of Genesis are not trying to answer our twenty-first century questions directly.

They are telling us something more basic about humanity.

Genesis 1:27 says:

“Male and female he created them.”

Human beings enter the biblical story as embodied people.

Male and female.

Then Genesis 2 moves from humanity in general to something much more relational.

God says:

“It is not good that the man should be alone.”

That matters.

Human beings were not created for isolation.

Adam needs someone who corresponds to him.

Someone like him.

And yet someone different from him.

When the woman appears, Adam immediately recognizes that.

“Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

She shares his humanity.

But she is not identical to him.

Then comes one of the most important lines in the Bible when it comes to marriage:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

That word therefore matters.

The writer is not just telling us what happened to Adam and Eve.

He is taking their union and showing us a pattern.

A man leaves.

He holds fast.

The two become one flesh.

And that raises the real question.

Is the male and female part of that pattern simply descriptive, or is it part of the design itself?

Is Genesis Describing Marriage, or Defining It?

An affirming Christian might say something like this.

Of course Genesis describes a man and a woman. Humanity had to reproduce.

Maybe the point is not sexual difference.

Maybe the deeper point is companionship.

Adam was alone.

God gave him another person.

They became family.

If that is the heart of marriage, then marriage becomes something like:

companionship, covenant, intimacy, and permanence.

And if that is what marriage fundamentally is, then an obvious question follows.

Why could two men or two women not live that same reality?

They can love each other.

They can sacrifice for each other.

They can remain faithful.

They can build a home.

They can care for each other through sickness.

They can grow old together.

That is a serious question, and Christians should not dismiss it.

But Genesis seems to give us something more than companionship.

The woman is both like Adam and unlike Adam.

Same humanity.

Different sex.

And that difference appears right before the two are described as becoming one flesh.

That makes it difficult to treat sexual difference as something accidental or unimportant.

What Does “One Flesh” Actually Mean?

We often hear the phrase “one flesh” and immediately think about sex.

But Scripture seems to mean something bigger.

Marriage creates a new kind of family bond.

A man leaves one family structure and forms another.

Lives are joined.

Bodies are joined.

Futures are joined.

Sex belongs inside that union.

Then Paul says something interesting in 1 Corinthians 6.

He warns Christian men about prostitution and writes:

“He who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her. For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh.’”

They are not married.

There is no covenant.

There is no shared future.

There may not even be love.

And yet Paul still reaches back to Genesis 2.

That tells us something important.

Sex is not simply whatever meaning we decide to give it.

The Corinthian man might say:

It is just sex.

Paul’s answer is basically:

No, it is not.

Something happens when human bodies are sexually joined.

That does not mean sex automatically creates marriage.

But it does mean the sexual act carries a meaning that goes beyond what the people involved may intend.

The Body Belongs to Someone

This is where Christian sexual ethics starts sounding very different from modern Western sexual ethics.

Our culture often begins with questions like:

Is it consensual?

Are both people adults?

Is anyone being harmed?

Do they love each other?

Are they faithful?

Those are important questions.

Christians should care about consent, exploitation, abuse, faithfulness, and harm.

But Paul asks another question.

“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.”

And later:

“You are not your own.”

Modern Western thinking often begins with:

My body belongs to me.

Paul begins with:

My body belongs to Christ.

That changes the whole conversation.

Christian sexual ethics does not ultimately begin with:

What do I find meaningful?

It begins with:

What is my body for?

And that standard applies to heterosexual Christians just as much as it applies to gay Christians.

This Is Not Just About Same-Sex Relationships

Think about an unmarried heterosexual couple.

They have been together for years.

They are completely faithful.

They love each other.

They share a home.

Neither one is exploiting the other.

They intend to stay together for life.

Why would sex between them be wrong?

If Christian sexual ethics is only about love, consent, and monogamy, there is not much of an answer.

They already have all three.

Historic Christianity adds another category.

Covenant.

The issue is not whether their love is real.

The issue is whether their bodies are expressing a one-flesh union outside the covenant where Scripture places it.

That becomes important when we return to same-sex relationships.

Because the strongest affirming argument is not about promiscuity.

It is about two people who stay.

What About Two People Who Stay?

Imagine two men.

They love each other.

They are sexually exclusive.

There is no prostitution.

No abuse.

No coercion.

No pederasty.

No revolving door of partners.

They stay together for decades.

They care for each other through sickness.

They share finances.

They grieve together.

They laugh together.

They stay.

Christians should be able to acknowledge something here.

There can be real love in that relationship.

There can be sacrifice.

Faithfulness.

Patience.

Care.

Recognizing that does not settle the biblical question.

But denying it does not strengthen the traditional position either.

It just avoids reality.

So the question becomes more specific.

Are love, faithfulness, consent, commitment, and covenant enough to make a relationship a marriage according to Scripture?

Or does Scripture include something else?

Jesus Goes Back to the Beginning

This is where Matthew 19 becomes important.

Jesus is asked about divorce.

He could simply say:

Keep your promises.

Marriage is permanent.

Do not abandon your spouse.

Instead, he goes all the way back to creation.

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?”

Then:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

And then:

“What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

We need to be careful here.

Jesus was not answering a question about same-sex marriage.

That was not the controversy in front of him.

But he was explaining marriage.

And when he does, he appeals to:

Creator.

Male and female.

Man and wife.

One flesh.

God joining them together.

So a difficult question comes up.

If male and female are not important to the meaning of marriage, why does Jesus include that language when explaining marriage from creation?

That is harder to brush aside.

Maybe Marriage Has a Shape

This is where my thinking has increasingly gone.

Maybe marriage is not just a relationship we define by a collection of good qualities.

Maybe it has a shape.

Not simply:

two people who love each other.

But something more like:

a covenantal, one-flesh union between male and female, marked by faithfulness, permanence, self-giving love, and the forming of a new family.

If that is true, then the same-sex marriage conversation changes.

The traditional Christian argument is no longer simply:

“The Bible says homosexuality is wrong.”

The deeper argument becomes:

Sex belongs to marriage, and marriage itself has a created form.

That is a much more serious claim.

Monogamy Matters, But It Does Not Answer Everything

A monogamous same-sex relationship has something promiscuity does not.

Faithfulness.

That matters.

But faithfulness answers one question.

Are these people faithful to each other?

It does not necessarily answer another.

Is this the kind of sexual union Scripture calls marriage?

Those are different questions.

A relationship can contain real virtues without every part of the relationship fitting Christian sexual ethics.

Again, this is not unique to homosexuality.

Christianity has never taught:

If the love is sincere enough, the sexual relationship becomes morally acceptable.

Two people involved in an affair might genuinely love one another.

Their feelings could be real.

They might even be faithful to one another within the affair.

Christian ethics still says something else defines the boundary of sexual expression.

Love matters.

But love does not create that boundary by itself.

Paul Takes Marriage Somewhere Bigger

Ephesians 5 adds another layer.

Paul quotes Genesis 2 again.

“The two shall become one flesh.”

Then he says:

“This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

Marriage now points beyond itself.

It becomes a picture of something bigger.

Christ and the church.

Bridegroom and bride.

Two becoming one.

I do not think Ephesians 5 by itself answers every question about same-sex marriage.

But when we put the biblical pattern together, it starts to look intentional.

Genesis:
male and female become one flesh.

Jesus:
Creator, male and female, man and wife, one flesh.

Paul:
husband and wife, one flesh, Christ and the church.

At some point, we have to ask whether sexual difference is really just incidental to all of that.

What About Polygamy?

This is where the Bible gets messy.

If Genesis gives us God’s pattern for marriage, why does the Old Testament contain polygamy?

Abraham.

Jacob.

David.

Solomon.

That reminds us of something important.

The Bible records things that it does not necessarily present as God’s ideal.

Jesus gives us a useful principle for thinking about this.

When discussing divorce, he acknowledges that Moses allowed it because of hardness of heart.

Then he says:

“From the beginning it was not so.”

That is important.

Jesus distinguishes between what Scripture regulates within a fallen world and what he sees in the created order.

And when he wants to know the pattern, he goes back to Genesis.

Back to the beginning.

And This Is Where Women in Leadership Becomes a Useful Comparison

One of the questions that kept bothering me while working through all of this was whether Christians are being inconsistent.

We often argue that some of Paul’s restrictions involving women in ministry need to be understood in their historical context.

So why not say the same thing about same-sex relationships?

The difference is that Scripture itself creates tension on the women-in-ministry question.

Deborah leads.

Huldah prophesies.

Priscilla helps instruct Apollos.

Phoebe holds a significant ministry role.

Women pray and prophesy in the gathered church.

The Spirit is poured out on sons and daughters.

So Christians who reconsider restrictive passages are trying to reconcile those passages with other positive biblical examples.

Where is the equivalent with same-sex marriage?

Where does Scripture prohibit same-sex intercourse in one place and then positively portray a same-sex sexual covenant somewhere else?

It does not.

Instead, every positive presentation of marriage follows the same male and female pattern.

That does not make every interpretive question easy.

But it does mean the two issues are not exactly the same.

Modern Experience Still Matters

None of this means we can ignore what we have learned about sexual orientation.

As I argued in Ancient Words, Modern Questions, Scripture says far less about the modern psychological category of a gay person than Christians sometimes assume.

Many people do not experience same-sex attraction as something they chose.

Simply telling someone to “stop being gay” confuses orientation with behavior.

We should acknowledge that.

But an unchosen orientation does not automatically settle the question of sexual ethics.

Christianity has never taught that every deeply rooted desire must have a morally acceptable expression.

The question of discipleship becomes:

What does faithfulness to Christ ask me to do with the desires I experience?

That is a much harder question.

And if the traditional reading is correct, then for some gay Christians the answer may include lifelong celibacy.

We should not talk about that casually.

The Church Has to Answer for Its Side of This Too

If we are going to tell someone that following Jesus may mean giving up the possibility of a sexual relationship for life, then the church needs to seriously rethink what it means by community.

We cannot say:

Marriage is not necessary for a meaningful Christian life

and then organize almost everything around married couples and families.

We cannot tell gay Christians:

Jesus is enough

while communicating to single heterosexual Christians:

Your real life starts when you find your spouse.

If celibacy is truly a Christian calling, then the church has to recover something modern Western Christianity has often neglected.

Family beyond the nuclear family.

Friendship.

Shared life.

Hospitality.

Belonging.

People who show up.

People who stay.

Otherwise we are asking people to carry a costly sexual ethic while offering very little community in return.

Where This Follow-Up Leaves Me

The last article asked whether ancient biblical texts still speak truthfully into modern questions about sexuality.

This article has pushed that question one step further.

I do not think the strongest traditional Christian argument is simply:

“There are verses against homosexuality.”

The deeper argument is:

Scripture appears to give sex a home before it gives us a list of sexual prohibitions.

That home is marriage.

And marriage itself appears throughout the biblical story as a covenantal, one-flesh union involving male and female.

Genesis gives us the pattern.

Jesus returns to it.

Paul assumes it and eventually connects it to Christ and the church.

That does not mean every heterosexual marriage reflects God’s intention well.

Many do not.

It does not mean every same-sex relationship is characterized by promiscuity, selfishness, or abuse.

Many are not.

And it certainly does not give Christians permission to treat gay people like arguments instead of people.

But it does leave me with a difficult conclusion.

If marriage has a created shape, then love alone cannot redefine that shape.

Neither can consent.

Neither can monogamy.

Neither can permanence.

Those things matter deeply.

But the biblical question is whether they are enough.

At this point, I do not think they are.

Not because the love must be fake.

Not because someone chose their orientation.

Not because gay people are somehow uniquely sinful.

But because Christian sexual ethics appears to begin somewhere our modern culture often does not.

With a Creator.

With bodies.

With purpose.

And with a union Scripture calls one flesh.

But that raises another question we still need to answer.

If male and female bodies matter to the meaning of marriage, what exactly is the role of procreation?

What about infertility?

Old age?

Disability?

Couples who cannot have intercourse?

Couples who never have children?

If the male and female structure of marriage matters because it is oriented toward life, then we need to explain why those marriages remain fully marriages.

And if we cannot do that without changing the argument along the way, then we have not finished the conversation.

That is where I think we need to go next.