Sexual Freedom and Pleasure Through Purity

Introduction

It is impossible to think about the Bible and sexual purity while avoiding the larger topic of pleasure. Since the Bible puts a high priority on sexual purity, pleasure matters. If we get pleasure wrong, we tend to misuse sex. All conversations about sexual purity need to address the core issue: pleasure.

The pleasures of life are everywhere. We could not escape pleasure if we tried. It is not an overstatement or a distant theological platitude to say that pleasure is from God. Legitimate pleasure of any type is God’s creation, and our ability to recognize and enjoy pleasure is the result of his design. With wisdom and purpose he created a world overflowing with pleasures of every kind. There are pleasures of sight, sound, taste, and touch. There are pleasures of thought and emotion. There are pleasures of location, situation, and relationship. Pleasure exists because it fits with God’s purpose for his creation. It is one of his chief gifts to us. But we need to understand the role of pleasure in God’s creation and how we are to respond to the pleasures that greet us every day.

God’s creative intention was to bring glory to himself through the pleasures he created. Each pleasurable thing was perfectly created and
designed to reflect and point to the greater glory of the one who had created it. These things were designed to induce pleasure but also to serve a spiritual purpose. They were meant to remind us of him. They were meant to amaze us not just with their existence but with the wisdom, power, and glory of the Creator. They were put on earth to be one of God’s means of getting our attention and capturing our heart.

We will never understand pleasure if we treat it as an end in itself. Pleasure is pleasurable, and we should never feel guilty for enjoying it or for wanting more of it. Our enjoyment of pleasure is all according to God’s design. But we must recognize that pleasure has a purpose beyond its momentary enjoyment, which exists as a sign of the one who alone can satisfy and give rest to my heart.

Pleasure exists to remind me that I was made by God and for him. Pleasure, like every other created thing, has been designed to put God at the center, not just of my physical joy but of the deepest thoughts and motives of my heart. Pleasure exists to stimulate worship of the Creator, not the created thing. The glory of every form of pleasure is meant to point me to the glory of God.

The pleasure of sex is meant to remind me of the glory of my intimate union with Christ, which only grace could produce. The pleasure of food is meant to motivate me to seek the heart-satisfying sustenance of the bread and wine that is Christ. The pleasure of all things beautiful is designed to cause me to gaze upon the Lord, who is perfect in beauty in every way. The pleasure of sound is meant to open my ears to the sounds of the one whose every utterance is a thing of beauty. The pleasure of touch is created to remind me of the glory of one whose touch alone has the power to comfort, heal, and transform. The pleasure of human affection is meant to move me to celebrate the glory of God’s eternal, undeserved, self-sacrificing love. The pleasure of rest is meant to draw my heart toward the one who in his life, death, and resurrection purchased for me an eternal Sabbath.

If God created pleasure, then pleasure is not the problem. The problem comes when we seek pleasure based on the wrong understanding.

Pleasure in Eden

God placed Adam and Eve, the first humans, in the garden of Eden: an environment of delicious pleasures they were free to enjoy. The garden was full of the pleasures of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. The garden introduced them to the pleasures of emotional and sexual love. It was a gloriously pleasurable place to live in which there was nothing inherently evil or dangerous. 

It is important, however, to recognize that the pleasures of the garden were not boundless. God set boundaries for Adam and Eve. He gifted them with glorious pleasures to be enjoyed but within his limits. Adam and Eve were not meant to have a self-centered, any time–any way relationship to pleasure. They were designed and called to live inside the purpose that God had in mind for them. Their lives did not belong to them, and neither did their pleasures. They were free to enjoy, but to do so in an attitude of submission and obedience. The boundaries were a protection. The rules themselves let Adam and Eve know that they were not in charge, and that they were created for the purposes of another.

The rules were not pleasure-destroying or enjoyment-inhibiting, but were given to protect the hearts of Adam and Eve so they would be free to enjoy the pleasures of the created world without being enslaved by them. The rules were there so that they would give themselves not to pleasure but to God, even as they enjoyed the beautiful things from him. 

Is this not precisely where our modern Western culture gets it wrong? We are told that authority destroys freedom and that rules wreck pleasure. According to this view, eating is no fun if someone is being told what to eat. Sex is not enjoyable if someone is being told how, when, and with whom one can have it. Creating things of beauty is not said to be satisfying and pleasurable if we have to think about the message they communicate. Eden was the most beautiful place that ever existed, filled with perfect pleasures of every kind, yet its continuance depended on Adam and Eve’s staying inside God’s protective boundaries. It is the horror of human existence that they decided not to do so. Boundless pleasure is a deception. By God’s design it does not exist on this earth—and, if it did, it could never work.

At some point in the conversation with the serpent Eve began to look at that which appealed to her sight. But the fruit of the forbidden tree with its temporary pleasure was not a good thing to consume. It opened a floodgate of destruction, judgment, and death. Pleasure can be incredibly seductive and deceptive. We must be warned: Our pleasures will tell us lies. Our pleasures will make promises they cannot fulfill. Our pleasures will seem to offer us life when in fact they will deliver the opposite.

When I am committing an act of gluttony, I do not see the idolatrous destructiveness of what I am doing. No, I see good—the smells, sights, textures, and flavors of the food. But what looks good is not in fact good. When I am looking at a sexual website I have no business viewing, I do not see the selfish destructiveness of what I am doing. I am too taken by the erotic beauty of the human form to see that what looks like a good thing is in fact a dangerous and destructive thing. When it comes to pleasure, what looks like a good thing may not be a good thing.

So, as we are dealing with the basic pleasures that greet us in everyday life, we must remember Eden. We must look at pleasure through the interpretive and protective lens of the garden. We must understand pleasure, be reminded of its purpose, celebrate its joys, be warned of its danger, and most of all guard our hearts.

The Pleasure of Obedient Purity

Sex is never just about physical pleasure. It is always about obedience. Our sex lives are shaped either by a willing submission to the authority of God or by taking a willful control over our lives and bodies. There is no other option.

This issue of obedience extends to the most intimate uses of the body. As Paul writes in Romans 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” It could not be stated more clearly and eloquently. This passage connects the body to worship and obedience. Worship of God means willingly giving our bodies to him. We forever forsake ownership of our bodies and what we do with them. We view the body as belonging to God—his for the using. And we commit ourselves to an obedient use of the body, that is, to doing with the body only that which is holy and acceptable in his sight, no matter what our passions, thoughts, or desires tell us. Sexual purity is found in the intentional sacrifice of our bodies to God—no longer for our desires and our ways but according to his will and for his glory.

And it is important to understand that the directive in Romans 12:1 is not God’s way of robbing us of life simply because he has the power to do so. Rather, Paul puts this in the context of God’s mercy. This is grace. In calling us to this voluntary bodily sacrifice God is rescuing us from ourselves and protecting us from the dangers of a world gone mad. All this reminds us that we need God’s law, but we must understand its limits. God’s law is effective in exposing our moral neediness; it works to give us moral tracks to run on, but it cannot transform us. The law has no ability to make our hearts willing and pure. If it could, the Redeemer, Christ Jesus, would not need to come to live and die and rise again in our place.

So sexual purity does not begin with a commitment to keep God’s law; it begins with a confession that we are unwilling and unable to do so. It requires the confession of the selfishness and rebellion of the heart, that we often find impurity more attractive than purity. If sexual impurity were just a matter of wrong behavior, then the move toward purity would be simply a change in behavior. If sexual impurity were just a matter of lust, then that would be the thing we need to address. But the reality is that sexual impurity is rooted in things that are vastly deeper than wrong thoughts and wrong actions. Sexual impurity grows in the soil of the fearsome condition of the sinful heart. I struggle with sexual impurity in the same way I struggle with materialism or gluttony, because ultimately I struggle with self-worship and self-rule. In my heart there are still ways in which I want to be at the center of my world, where my desires, feelings, or thoughts are more important to me than God’s will or the real needs of those around me. There are ways in which I am so busy loving and worshiping myself that I have little time or energy left to love God or others.

I grapple every day with self-worship: I want to rule my life and set up my own rules. I want to have what seems best to me, and I do not want God or others to get in the way. Sex exposes the condition of my heart, which I cannot escape. My sex life is always shaped by whom I worship and the one to whose rules I submit.

So, when I face the deeper struggle of sexual purity, I am not helped just by having a greater understanding of my sexual nature, a clearer awareness of my susceptibility to temptation, or a better system of accountability. Those things are helpful, but they easily become a way of asking the law to do what only grace can accomplish. My struggle with sexual purity reveals the degree to which I still need a fundamental renewal or transformation of my heart. It is only when I worship God above everything else, love my neighbor as myself, and willingly submit to God’s authority that I become pure. In the most basic sense, I am my own enemy when it comes to the sexual purity battle. I am the greatest sexual danger and the greatest source of temptation to myself. I am the source of my struggle. The self-worship and self-sovereignty that still live in my heart cause me to be attracted and susceptible to sexual temptations in a world that has gone sexually insane.

Conclusion

Does this leave me hopeless? No! God, who knows how deep my struggle is, has gifted me with the lavish provisions of his powerful saving and transforming grace. Where does purity begin? It begins in confessing our profound need and our profound helplessness to change that which needs to be changed. Sexual purity does not begin with setting up a regimen for behavioral change. It begins with mourning the condition of the heart; when we do, we can rest assured that we will be greeted with powerful grace, for our Savior has promised that he will never turn his back when we come to him with a broken and contrite heart. 

© 2027 by Paul David Tripp. All rights reserved. Adapted from the article “Sexual Freedom Through Purity” in ESV Everyday Gospel Bible © 2024 by Crossway. Published by Crossway. Printed in China. Bible references: English Standard Version® (ESV®).