Sex, Sexuality, By Sandra Ostapowich
ur culture today is saturated with sexuality. Sexuality has become all about who you love, or at least lust after. Whether it’s the idea that affirmative consent is the only boundary placed on sexuality, or that sexuality should be tied up completely in heterosexual marriage, which people ideally enter into soon after puberty, following traditional sex roles to form nuclear families with as many children as possible, or singles being encouraged to cultivate an often idolatrous desire for a spouse who will end all their loneliness… it’s all still an inappropriate emphasis on sexuality for faithful Christians. And instead of resisting this superficial worldview, churches often just repeat it using spiritual terms.
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As if that weren’t enough, our culture now demands that we also identify ourselves according to our sexuality. People even introduce themselves with an assortment of new terminology and combinations of genders, orientations, preferences, and pronouns. It’s overwhelming! When it comes to questions of identity, as Christians we’ve been given the gift of having that all settled for us, so our first answer is always, “I am baptized.” What does this mean, though? To paraphrase Galatians 3:28, it means that in Christ, there is no Jew, no Greek, no Italian, no Kenyan, no Japanese. In Christ, there is neither slave, free, employer, employee, rich, poor, haves, or have-nots. No “in” crowd, no “out” crowd. In Christ, there is no male or female, gay or straight, cis or trans. Either you are in Christ…or you are not. The labels based on external differences we apply to ourselves and others are
not to be our primary identities. We, who are baptized, are all in Christ. That’s not just our primary identity, it is the only identity that ultimately and eternally matters. Galatians 3:28 is often misused to say that gender differences don’t matter. Ironically, all the sexuality talk in our society makes it clear that gender differences DO matter. A lot. We just want to be the ones to define and express our sexuality, and to define our gender. But there’s no getting around the fact that God created binary sexes for humanity and set apart heterosexual marriage to be the basis for community and procreation. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world. Every cell in our bodies, every action we take, every thought we think, every relationship we have in this life is tainted in one way or another by sin. We all get sick, we are all born with various defects and diseases, or we eventually develop them later
in life. We all do things we shouldn’t and don’t do things we should. And ultimately we all die. But your sins, no matter what they are, do not define you. You have a new identity. You are baptized! You have died and been raised again in Christ through Baptism. But our old nature still clings to us as long as we live on this side of Christ’s return and we will not be completely free of it until Jesus returns or we die, whichever happens first. So daily, remember your Baptism and put to death your sinful nature and the things it tempts you to do. How do we do that? Not just by not-giving-in to those temptations, but also by not-dwelling-in those sins when our weakness caves to them. Like when you are trying to eat in a more healthy manner...right up until you pass by that box of delicious and irresistible doughnuts. Don’t throw up your hands and say, “Well, I’ve blown it now, I might as well forget about my diet until next week and load up on the junk in the meantime.” Run the other direction from that kind of thinking! Confess your sin and hear once again who you are in Christ and that He gave His own life to forgive that sin… and you, the sinner. The world would have us divide ourselves according to our sexual desires, not even by our genetics or genitalia, but rather by how we subjectively feel about that. And if we feel like we don’t fit the accepted mold for our genetic gender, it must mean that we should just live as though we were the opposite gender. And if we feel romantically or sexually attracted to one type of person or another (or both, or neither), we should go wherever our
