Biblical Sexuality: What Is Sexual Purity?

Morning address from the conference “The Bible & Sexuality”

We are living in the first era in British history where the most basic facts of human sexuality – that we are created male and female, that sex belongs within marriage, that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life – are treated as controversial opinions rather than self-evident truths. Even in supposedly Bible-believing churches, silence or compromise is common.

This must stop. And the only way it will stop is if the church recovers the positive, glorious, unembarrassed vision of sexual purity that God gave us in the opening chapters of Genesis.

1. Begin at the Very Beginning (Genesis 1–2)

Everything hinges on these foundational truths:

• There is one uncreated, all-sufficient God.

• He made the heavens and the earth in six literal days and declared every part of it “good.”

• The pinnacle of that creation was mankind, made in God’s own image — and explicitly made “male and female” (Gen 1:27).

• The very first command ever given to humanity was: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28).
  That command is biologically impossible without the sexual union of male and female. Therefore sexuality itself is not a regrettable necessity; it is part of the “very good” creation (Gen 1:31).

Then, in Genesis 2:24, God institutes marriage as the sole context for that sexual union:

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

Note the three non-negotiable elements:

1. Public leaving of prior family (the origin of “giving away the bride”).

2. Lifelong cleaving — an unbreakable covenant commitment.

3. One-flesh union — the sexual act that both consummates and continually renews the covenant.

And the text immediately adds: “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). In the presence of God and each other, sex was shameless. That is the Creator’s verdict.

2. The Fall: How Shame Entered the Bedroom (Genesis 3)

Satan’s strategy has never changed. He began with a half-truth question — “Did God actually say…?” — and promised enlightenment and freedom. The result was not liberty but shame: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen 3:7).

Every sexual temptation you and I face follows the same pattern: the enemy makes the forbidden fruit look desirable, modern, sophisticated, and liberating, while concealing the exposure, regret, and fractured relationships that always follow. The world calls it “sexual freedom”; the Bible calls it the ancient path to shame and death.

3. The Biblical Definition of Sexual Purity

Sexual purity is the glad confinement of all sexual thought, imagination, look, touch, and act to the marriage bed of one man and one woman who are covenanted together in marriage until death.

• Within that covenant, the bodies of husband and wife belong mutually to each other (1 Cor 7:3–5). Sexual intimacy is not merely permitted; it is commanded and celebrated.

• Outside that covenant, every sexual act — heterosexual or homosexual, with a person or with a screen — is a distortion of God’s design and brings shame rather than the promised fulfilment.

4. The Gospel: Redemption for Sexual Sinners

Here is the best news of all. The shame that entered in Genesis 3 is undone at the cross.

The entire Bible presents the relationship between Christ and His church as a marriage. Jesus is the perfect Bridegroom who lays down His life for a shameful, naked, undeserving bride — and then clothes her with His own righteousness (Eph 5:25–32; Rev 19:7–8).

Every Christian husband is an imperfect shadow of that Bridegroom. Every Christian wife is an imperfect shadow of that bride. Yet because we have been united to Christ, even the marriage bed of two redeemed sinners can be pure. Past pornography, past abuse, past fornication, past adultery — all can be brought to the cross and covered by the blood of the Lamb. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

5. An Urgent Call to the Church

Parents: if you do not teach your children God’s glorious design for sex and marriage, the world will teach them Satan’s distortion. Start young. Teach Genesis 1–2 before they ever hear the lies of Genesis 3.

Pastors: stop treating the “sex talk” as an awkward optional extra. Preach the positive vision of biblical marriage with joy and confidence.

Young people: the culture’s sexual revolution does not offer freedom; it offers slavery dressed up as liberation. Christ offers you something infinitely better — forgiveness for your past and power to live a life of joyful obedience.

Sexual purity is not prudish restriction. It is the path to the deepest joy, the safest vulnerability, and the clearest reflection of the gospel on earth.

May the Lord grant the British church — and every church — the courage to believe it, to teach it, and to live it without apology.

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Delivered on 22 November 2025 at the “The Bible & Sexuality” conference.

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