Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Sex and the End of Loneliness

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

When Christianity burst onto the scene, the early Romans were amazed and astounded in two particulars: that Christians were radically generous, giving away large portions of income, and that Christians were radically pure, believing in no sex outside of marriage. This unique understanding transformed the Roman world. At that time, there were two major philosophies about sex. The first was the platonic view: that the soul is good, the body is bad, and sex is kind of dirty. The second was the mystery religions’ view: that sex is an appetite that is unhealthy to repress. The prudes and the pagans. And in 1 Corinthians, Paul vividly and incisively shows that Christians are neither. Instead, Christians have the most glorious and lofty possible understanding of sex that there is. Let’s look at what this passage shows us about 1) how God says sex is supposed to function in a life, and 2) in looking at how to order our lives in accord to that, we see two things: 3) the only real cure for loneliness is the thing that sex points to, and 4) when you misuse sex, it works backwards. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 10, 1989. Series: Ten Commandments 1989. Scripture: 1 Corinthians 6:15-7:5. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel and Life. During January, we're inviting our listeners to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Monthly partners are an important part in helping us to plan for how we can be the most effective in reaching people all over the world with the gospel. If you'd like to become a monthly partner, just visit gospelonlife.com slash partner. That's gospelonlife.com slash partner. What comes to mind when you hear about the Ten Commandments? For many people, they bring up feelings of guilt and shame, or they seem like a list of rules that are impossible to follow. In today's sermon, Tim Keller shows us how God didn't give us the Ten Commandments to crush us with unattainable moral standards,

but to appoint us to Jesus Christ, the only one who perfectly fulfills God's law. Let me read from 1 Corinthians chapter 6, and I'm going to read from verses 15 of chapter 6 to chapter 7 verse 6. 5. 1 Corinthians 16, verse 15 to chapter 7, verse 5. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never. Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said the two will become one flesh. But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality.

All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. Now, for the matters you wrote about, it's good for a man not to be able to be. marry, but since there's much immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman,

her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband, for the wife's body does not belong to her, but to her husband. And in the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him, but to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent, and only for a time, so that you may devote yourselves perhaps to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Here ends the reading of God's Word. People have been waiting for this for weeks. They continually say, with that view of sex that you have, they say to me, with that view of sex that you have, I can't wait until you start

preaching about it in New York. Listen, the early Romans, when Christianity was first bursting onto the scene, the early Romans were amazed and astounded. about Christianity in two particulars. They were absolutely astonished by two things in particular. One is that Christians were radically generous, and the other is they were radically pure. One is, on the one hand, they believed in giving away large proportions of their income to the poor.

And secondly, they believed in no sex outside of marriage. And in those two ways, the Romans thought Christians were extremely strange. And in particular, in the second way, They said, not only is that unhealthy, but it's impossible. And you can read how the early Romans responded to Christianity, and you can see that the generosity and the purity of Christians astonished the Romans. And yet, Christianity won the day.

As people finally gave it a hearing, as more and more people experienced it firsthand, Christianity swept the modern world of the time. today I found around New York that when you lay out the Christian faith that people are astonished about the same things that the Romans were just as astonished

on the one hand they're cynical about the first one the generosity they say yeah I gay on but they're nonplussed by the second one and I've had many people say to me you know this must be a very strange sectarian thing this idea of no sex outside of marriage You evangelical Christians are a fringe group to believe that. And I always have to point out, wait a minute, wait a minute, all Protestants, all Roman Catholics, all Orthodox Christians,

even Judaism in all of Islam has always taught the same sex ethic. So before you start hanging around my neck, the sign, Looney Fringe, you know, think about it. Well, then the second, you know, after I say that for a little bit, then there's the second response. and it goes like this. People will say, all right, all right, but times have changed. Wise up. Get with it. It's time for Christianity to change with the times and with society.

So why don't you? Why don't you? Does that sound logical? When Christians first burst onto the scene, they were more out of step than they were, than they are today. Why didn't they change? I'll tell you why they didn't change back then, because you see this unique understanding of purity was one of the sources of its power

and one of the sources of its appeal because it did sweep the society. Besides that, if somebody says, why don't you change? If I say, oh, yeah, okay, let's change. That proves what some people thought all along, and that is Christianity is my idea, and that it's all right for me to change it when I decide. It's time to change it. The real question is, what is it that God says about sex? and also what is the concept of sex that is embedded in the heart of Christianity

that was part of its original triumph over the world. And my goodness, if it could transform Rome, maybe gasp, it could even transform New York. It's possible. If we look at this text, we see that even though it's a case study, even though it's actually geared to a particular situation, all the principles, the scriptural principles, the Christian understanding of sex is there, and you can see it. Look, first of all, the first thing you see is that Paul is responding to the two other philosophies of sex that were ascendant in the Greek-O-Roman world of the time. Besides Christianity, there were two other approaches to sex, and this is what they were.

On the one hand, there was the platonic view. Plato, you know, even today we've got the word platonic, which has come down to it. to meet sexless relationships. Doesn't that what it means now? But still, there was Plato and the Platonists, and on the other hand, you had the approach of the mystery religions. Now, for the sake of the sermon, let me greatly oversimplify those two views. On the one hand, Plato said, and the Platonist said, the body is bad, the soul is good. Sex has to do with a body, therefore sex always drags you down. It's always kind of dirty. It's always, it pulls you away. And spiritually minded people will have as little to do with it as possible. And that was the platonic view.

And then there was the mystery religion's view. And the mystery religion's view goes like this. Look, when you get hungry, you eat. When you get sexy, you sex. Of course, just like food, it's an appetite. And of course, an appetite, you know, you have to have some control of your appetite. You can eat too much. And so you have to have some control of your appetite. When you fall in love with somebody, you feel the appetite to have sex, so you do it. And anything else is repression. It's unhealthy. And those are the two views, the prudes and the pagans. And you see, we've always had them. We've always had those two. We still have them today. And Paul very, very carefully and very vividly and incisively shows that Christians are

neither. You see, on the one hand, against the prudes, let me show you how Christianity has a very different philosophy of sex than the platonic or the prudish one. You see down in chapter 7 in which Paul's talking about marriage, essentially somebody has said that you could translate verses 1 to 5 in modern English by going like this. Go to it. What is saying here is that sex inside marriage is not just permitted, but it's commitment. And the idea that God would command something that was tainted in the platonic way is ridiculous. In fact, the Bible's attitude towards sex is almost in a comical way, extremely forthright in Frank. You know, you've got the Song of Solomon that people have not known what to do about for years.

It's right there. It's a whole book of the Bible. Nobody ever preaches out of it. And what it is, it's a celebration of sexual love. You can go to places like Proverbs 518 and 19 where commands men to be right. ravished with their wives' breasts, see. And, you know, I thought what was interesting, I was talking to a man that teaches,

I think he's retired now, teaches, this is a sidelight, but interesting. It teaches American history at Yale. And he said in the 1950s, he was doing a study of what the early American Puritans taught about sex. Now, one thing he showed me, this man showed me,

was that whereas Victorians were repressed about sex, Puritans were not. Puritans were strict about sex, but they were not repressed because they were quite willing. When they read the Bible, they saw the Bible talk about sex in extremely frank terms, very open, you know, happy terms. And as a result, the Puritan sermons are very, very graphic. And when this man tried, he wrote an article about American Puritan's views of sex, he wrote the article and gave it to the Yale Review in the mid-1950s, and the Yale Review would not publish. it. And the reason for that was the quotes from the Puritans were too graphic and risque, and they felt that it would offend the taste of many of its readers. You know what's going on here.

The Puritan's understanding of sex, which was very biblical, was far more liberated, unrepressed than that of the typical reader of the Yale Review in the 1950s. But you know, let me tell you this. The Bible goes beyond frankness and even fun when it talks about sex. It goes to glory. in Romans chapter 7 we're told that God relates to us the way a husband relates to a wife and it says that we put ourselves in God's arms spiritually and he bears fruit into the world through our body. That's in Romans 7 and it says married love. It says the sexual act and the reproduction that comes from the sexual act is a picture of God's relationship to us. In the Old Testament, God is constantly saying I'm the husband and Israel is my bride. In the New Testament, Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride. And let me tell you what this is meaning. Let me tell you what this means. Listen, the Bible says that sex is a model and a foretaste of the ecstasy of knowing him perfectly. That in heaven when we know him face to face and we enter into a union of love with him and all other people who love him, on that great day, there's going to be a deep delight and a

a towering joy and a deep security of such nature that the most rapturous sex between a man and a woman is just an echo of it. It's like bread and water compared to a feast. And that's what the Bible teaches. That goes way beyond frankness, doesn't it? That goes way beyond fun. Now look, you've got to bear with me here. I'm not from Mars. I know what it's like, and I know this.

I know that for so many of you, you have been whipsawed back and forth between the prude and the pagan, prudish and the paganism. You were raised probably in an atmosphere that said sex is dangerous and kind of dirty and we don't talk about it. So you're raised with the platonic view, right? At some point, somebody somewhere tried to bring you over out into liberation. And to one degree or another, you became sexually active or maybe got very, very active. and you moved out into absolute liberation, and yet it hasn't been what you thought. There's been confusion.

There's been pain, right? There's been all kinds of problems, and when the problems show up, the trouble is, though you have intellectually a liberated mindset, you can't forget all those awful things that your aunts and grandparents and your parents said, and so the old statements from your childhood come back to haunt you, and you're whipsawed.

And it's awfully hard, isn't it, because of what a mess sex is for us in our lives? It's awfully hard for us to actually hear what the Bible says about the glory of it. And yet I would hope that at least you understand enough of the joy of sex to realize that this is what the Bible is saying. Don't you see now why the Bible says that sex is for an absolutely permanent and fully committed relationship in which your whole self, mind, will, and emotions is completely committed to someone else. You see why the Bible says sex has no place outside of a fully committed relationship?

Why? Because sex is a model of our relationship with God. The total love and the total submission of a complete relationship with God, total union with him, and the joy that results from it on that day in which we know him face to face. Will that day be fun? Of course it will be fun. And that's why sex is fun, the earthly analogy. But if you understand what the Bible says here about the glory of sex, you can't be a prude or a pagan. Because like a prude, you can't despise sex,

but like a pagan, you can't deify it. Because a Christian knows that sex is a signpost only. And even when you're having guilt-free, wonderful sexual experience with somebody that you're totally committed to, even those of us who have experienced beautiful sex in a beautiful marriage, realize, if you read the Bible, that it doesn't actually satisfy the deepest longings for intimacy. Sex is a signpost.

Why do you think there's, you know, remember that, is it Jim Crocey, that song that goes, no, it's not him? Remember that song that goes deeper than the oceans? No, it goes, Dan Fogelberg. But he sounds a little bit like Jim Croce. Higher then. Yeah.

Longer than there have been fishes in the ocean. Remember this? It's sort of silly, but let me say it to you. And you'll see the point. Longer than there have been fishes in the ocean, higher than any bird ever flew, longer than there have been stars up in heaven, I've been in love with you.

Now, is that just silly sentimentalism or what? Why is that there's so many love poems and songs that go to these ridiculous lengths? The reason for it is because real love always is trying to get at eternity. And the best sex never really gets there. And those of you who think if I could just have this rapturous relationship with this person, if I could finally get there, I'd be happy. Friends, what you'd be doing like is you're coming to a signpost that says, this way to glory, which is what sex is, and camping under it and saying,

I've finally arrived, and you'll never get anywhere that way. So sex is marvelous, sex is wonderful, and the Bible acts like it, and nobody can quite figure that out. You know, a Christian who really understands what the Bible says about sex is just doesn't blush about it, you see, and it can laugh about it, and you take it very, very seriously. It's demystified, see? It's demystified. But on the other hand, don't forget this side, on the other hand, Paul not only moves against the prudes, he also moves against the pagans. Up in a couple of verses that we didn't read earlier in the

chapter, he says, food is for the stomach and the stomach for food, but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord. What do you think he means there? He is talking about the people that say, hey, food is meant for the stomach, and sex is meant for the body, and when you get hungry, you have food, and when you feel sexy, you go and have sex, and what's the big deal? And he's coming again. And he's coming again. that and he says flee sexual immorality. So suddenly, though he's talking about how good and wonderful it is, he says on the other hand, no, sex is not just an appetite to be satisfied. You see, for example, what if you go to your doctor and the doctor says, you know, your

trouble is the way in which you've been eating for the last 30 years, you are about to have a heart attack any minute. You have to radically change what you eat. All these foods that you want, you better not eat them because if you do, you're going to be, you're going to die. So the first time you go out to eat, here's a great big steak full of, you know, of all the stuff you're not supposed to have on it. Here's a great big potato full of butter and sour cream. And here's all the things you're not supposed to eat. And you say, I'm going to eat it anyway. So you sit down and you eat it. You sit down and you eat it. Right away, you say, oh, do you say, this is poison? It tastes like poison. Of course it doesn't taste like poison.

It tastes wonderful. It tastes as wonderful as there's always taste. But it is poison. Your appetite is completely out of accord with what you need. And the Bible says that is really what's happened to sex. And the reason for that is because unlike your body, unlike a hunger, excuse me, unlike your appetite for food, sex is a glorious thing. Remember? It gets close to the ultimate reality. Sex is so, it's a signpost to the ultimate reality. And therefore, when sin disordered it, and who can deny the fact that our selfishness and pride has made us disordered?

that we are not what we ought to be. So when the sin came into our lives, it disorders that place in a very, very serious way. Because look, what would you rather deal with? What would you rather confront? A rabid, crazed insane horse or a rabid crazed insane mouse? You tell me. Well, you say, I mean, they're both equally insane.

Now, which one would you rather deal with? They say, well, the horse, why? Because the greater something is, in its essence, the more dangerous it is when it's disordered. Right? You take the mouse any day, not the horse. And the same way, oh yes, I'm sure there's other appetites that are disordered, but sex, because it's such a great thing. And because it comes so close to the heart of ultimate reality, the problems that we've experienced there, as Paul says, it's a bad sin in a sense because it's closer to the body.

You sin against yourself, he says in verse 19. You sin in deep. We all chase things like success, true love, or the perfect life. Good things that can easily become ultimate things. When we put our faith in them, deep down, we know they can't satisfy our deepest longings. The truth is that we've made lesser gods of good things, things that can't give us what we really need. In his book, Counterfeit Gods, The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters, Tim Keller shows us how a proper understanding of the Bible reveals the truth about societal ideals and our own hearts,

and shows us that there is only one God who can wholly satisfy our desires. This month, we'll send you counterfeit gods as our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. You can request your copy at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. For example, can you imagine if you came to a country where you were getting to know people and you say,

I'm trying to figure out something about the customs of this country. And you find out that when all the young men go away to college, the first thing they do when they get into their college dorm room and when they finally have freedom from their parents in the eyes of outsiders, the first thing to do is they put up these incredibly big, beautiful posters of apple pie, spinach, hot dogs. You know, they look so succulent. They're up close, you know, and they always put water on.

When they photograph food, they always put water on it, and then they put the light on it, and then they, boy, And they just sit around, they just sit around, and they look at it. And they say, incredible. And they go around each other's rooms and look at them. What would you say about a country like that? This is serious, almost. What if you went to a place where you found that people paid a lot of money to go into these little clubs?

And in the clubs, everybody sat around a stage. And the lights were low, and there was this bumping and grinding music, you see. And everybody paid a lot of money to come in, and they watched that out in the center, somebody was slowly bit by bit pulling in time to the music, in stages, the cover off of a hamburger. And everybody says, wow. And every night they go out and do it, and what you would say is this, either this is a country where the people are starving. Starving.

Who would treat food like that? Don't you get, I mean, what's going on? Either a place where people are starving or a place where their appetite is severely disordered and out of whack or both. Now, friends, if somebody came from some other planet where they did not have their entire life and their minds and their sexual appetite disorder by sin, they'd come and they'd wonder the same thing. That's how we act. And for anybody to say, well, sexual appetite is just like, you know, appetite for food. Anybody who has an appetite for food, the way we have an appetite for sex, would be locked up. And the reason for it is because God says, and Paul says, your sexual appetite does not really work in accord with your nature

anymore. And therefore, you can't just do what feels good any more than that person who is going to die if they eat the steak can eat the steak. And so Paul says, on the one hand, oh, friends, sex is a marvelous thing, it's a glorious thing. And on the other hand, flee sexual immorality. Don't you see that we've demystified sex? We don't get scared about it. We don't talk about it in hushed terms. On the other hand, we don't deify it. And we don't think that the sexual impulse that you naturally feel is one of the most noble impulses.

A Christian is not a prude or a pagan. Now, the question comes down to then, okay, if sex is that good, but if sex is that weird, what guidelines have I got, if I'm walking through a kind of mind feel on the basis of what you said? What guidelines do I have? And Paul gives us the guideline and explains how sex is supposed to function in the life and how, therefore, you can order your life in accord with that design principle. And he says that right here, he uses a case study. This is what the case study is. He uses prostitution. And he says here in verse 16 and 15, shall I take the members of Christ, that's his body, and unite them with a prostitute. Never. Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body, for it is said the two will become one flesh. Now listen, sex is God's ordained and designed way to say to another human being, I belong completely and exclusively to you.

See, Paul doesn't say here, don't go out with a prostitute because you should only have sex with somebody you love. that it's degrading to have sex with somebody for money. He doesn't say that, does he? He says the reason you shouldn't have sex with a prostitute is because anybody you have sex with you have become one with. Sex is a way to say to somebody else, I belong completely and exclusively to you. And if you use it to say anything else, it's a lie.

It's a nonverbal piece of communication that God designed. And it's meant to carry a message. It's a communication mode. And if you use it in any other context, you destroy its usefulness. Let me give you an example. Do you remember, I came down for effect, so I'll come back. You remember Star Trek? There was one of the most famous episodes on the old TV series called The Trouble with Tribbles.

Any remember that? And in it, there's a man who's a governor of a planet, and he has with him a shipment of Quadro Triticali, which is some kind of... Remember quadrotriticali? Sure. It's some kind of hybrid grain. And he's afraid somebody is going to steal it

so he wants a starship to guard it. That's right. So he puts out a priority one distress signal. He pushes a button and out it goes across the galaxy and all the starships come. And they say, what's going on? Because a starship knows that a priority one distress call always means...

What, you Trekkies? Do you remember what it means? It means... invasion, or nothing less than that. It means some kind of incredible galactic catastrophe. And they show up. And the governor says, well, the reason I called you is, I want somebody to watch my grain.

And I knew that if I pushed that priority one to stress call, that you would certainly come. And, you know, the officers of the Starship Enterprise look at him and say, listen, do you realize that that is illegal? Do you realize why that's so bad? Because if you begin to use a nonverbal signal that means something like this to mean something else, you destroy its ability to be used. It becomes meaningless.

It becomes useless, right? Because who will know what it means? Same principle. God said, sex is a way to give yourself totally to somebody else and to say, I belong completely and totally and exclusively to you. Now, listen, that's the reason why the Bible says adultery, thou shalt not commit adultery. Of course it means that if you're married to somebody else, you shouldn't have sex with someone else to whom you're not married. But adultery in the Bible really means no sex outside of a marriage covenant.

What is a covenant? A covenant is a life commitment. It's a personal life commitment. And here I tell you what it is. A marriage covenant is coming to somebody else that you want to marry and saying this, a Christian comes into marriage like this. This is the wrong person. Any Christian who comes into marriage with a biblical mindset comes in and says, I know this is the wrong person for me.

Now, I'm exaggerating a little bit of course, but the point is a Christian comes in and says, this person's a sinner and I'm a sinner. This person tends to be selfish and I tend to be selfish. That's the nature of our hearts. And therefore, there is no way that I will ever get married to somebody who's compatible to me. I'm going to find someone who's fairly compatible, but there's no such thing as a person who's completely compatible.

Not only that, that person's going to change, and I'm going to change. Therefore, in a marriage covenant, you're doing this. You give yourself to a personal identity in the face of an uncertain future. You say, I'm going to be your spouse no matter what happens. You see, modern culture says define yourself, define your identity in terms of your present needs, which means today I can say, because of my needs, I'm your spouse, but tomorrow because of my needs, I'm not. and Christianity says no, you do not define your identity in terms of your present needs.

You define your identity in terms of your past commitments. You come to that person and you say, I am your spouse and I will be your spouse because in spite of all the uncertainty of the future, I make a vow that creates a place of security so that you have the freedom so that you have the power to make yourself a moral world. vulnerable to me. By my vow, I create a place of security so it's safe for you to be totally vulnerable and naked to me. That is what a marriage covenant is. The Bible says marriage is like a gem tumbler. You know what a gem tumbler is? You put two diamonds that are all rough into a gem tumbler, and the tumbler moves them around, and they are constantly put into conflict with each other,

and they slowly, bit by bit by bit, by bit, do what? They knock all the rough edges off of each other until they become two beautiful smooth stones. The Marriage Covenant is the walls of the Tumblr. If it wasn't for the walls of the Tumblr, the first one or two conflicts, and the gems would just go away from each other and never come back, but the Tumblr keeps them back into this creative conflict, you see.

But the gems, I was told by somebody who knew about this, the gems will crack and break unless you put compound in there. And the compound in marriage is sex. Because in sex, you're saying to somebody else, I belong completely and exclusively to you, you make yourself totally vulnerable. And what it does, it's a cement that continually re-strengthens your covenant, your commitment, your life covenant.

Sex in marriage is a unitive act in which you say, I belong to you. Every part of me is you. you see totally and if you use it in another context if you use it outside of a covenant what happens is instead of it actually strengthening your ability to trust yourself and be vulnerable and commit yourself it destroys your ability to trust yourself to somebody else and be vulnerable it destroys it and i listen it's not just what the bible says i appeal to your own experience surely you remember that when you first had sex with somebody when you were not married

to them if that's been your experience and i know it has been in plenty of people. How do I know that? Because it's America, because it's New York, because I got 200 people here. And I know it has been your experience. You remember this. You remember that you felt so given, that it felt completely incongruous to have been so given to somebody else and to be so one and then not have that other person have any real obligation to make decisions with you. In other words, there was a unity there, and it seemed so incongruous that it didn't just spill out into the rest of your life, right? The fact that other person could decide to go anywhere he or she wanted, the fact this person was not accountable to have unity, social unity with you,

or economic unity with you, or decision-making unity with you. But just in this one area you had unity, you felt married and you couldn't be. And that's why Paul says, don't you see, when you unite with a prostitute, unity in this physical area without unity in every other area is a monstrosity. And everybody, everybody realizes it at first. But what happens is you begin to harden yourself. And as you begin to harden yourself, it makes it harder and harder for you to feel vulnerable. And you lose the ability that sex was there to, the role that sex was there to have in your life. And that role was to enable you to more and more trust, more and more commit, more and more make yourself vulnerable. Instead, what you're doing is you're getting harder and less able to

trust people, and that's because sex will work backward outside of a covenant. Don't you see now why? Many times in counseling over the years, I would talk to people who were not, who were married, and they were having trouble with jealousy. Whenever I talk to somebody who was having so much trouble with jealousy and trusting the other person in their marriage, I would often say, have you ever betrayed your spouse in the area of sex? And almost inevitably, they'd say, yeah. And then you begin to realize why they're having trouble because their trust apparatus or commitment apparatus has been damaged. It's hard. It's tough. Outside of the covenant, it operates backwards. Inside the covenant, it makes it more and more possible to entrust yourself, to commit yourself,

to give yourself, because that's what sex is. It's God's ordained way to say to somebody else, I belong completely and exclusively to you. Now, how do we apply this? to our lives. You know, here's the doctrine, here's the teaching, here's a marvelous concept of sex. It's not mystified. It's not a pagan or the prudish approach. It's the most glorious and lofty possible understanding of sex there is. You see, it's not repressed at all.

Now, the question is, how do we apply it to our lives? And here's what I would just suggest in closing. This is New York, right? And at this point, I'm just going to really address single people because that's where so many folks are. Number one, one of the reasons why you feel so lonely is because of sex. On the other hand, one of the reasons that sex was invented was because of loneliness. You know, back in Genesis, when God had created Adam, God looks at Adam and it says it is not good for man to be alone.

And he creates woman. Sex was originally invented to deal with loneliness. And so it's absolutely natural for you to have tried to deal with your own loneliness through that. But let me say that when, there's two things you've got to keep in mind. Number one, the only real cure for loneliness is the thing that sex points to, and that's intimacy with a father. And secondly, when you misuse sex, it works backwards. Just always remember that.

Instead of making you less lonely, which is how it's supposed to work, it always makes you more lonely. It always does. I doubt there's anybody who'll deny it who's being honest. People tell me this all the time. Number one, remember that sex is only a signpost to what really will fulfill you, the intimacy you really want. And number two, if you use it improperly, it makes you even more lonely. And one of the reasons for that is because very often sex is part of an idolatry for a single person.

Some single people worship the idea of freedom. You might say I'm a Christian, but what you really worship is freedom. You don't want anybody to be possessive. You don't like commitments. You don't want to have to have somebody else to make decisions with, right? You don't want to have somebody else that you have to be accountable to. And you never want to be. And as a result of that, need for freedom, you have to have sex with people outside of marriage

because you don't want the whole package, but that's only making you more lonely. On the other hand, there are some people, some singles who worship not freedom, but they desperately, so desperately want to be married. and they believe that their lives will not ever be whole until they are, that they'll use sex as a way to get that. Don't you see in both cases God is not your real goal? It's not the thing you're really worshipping. But independence or dependence,

even making marriage into a goal and idol, will actually just lead to more idolatry and more loneliness because there's nothing. If you think it's lonely not being married, it's far lonely or being unhappily married. If you think that life without sex is lonely, it's far lonelier to use sex outside of a covenant. So what are we to do?

Go to him. You know, R.C. Sprole, my old mentor, has this great quote from his book on marriage. He says, the marriage state is an image of my relationship to God in a profound way. Both my relationship to God and my relationship to my wife involve a covenant structure in which mutual parties are bound to each other by commitments sealed with oaths. both involve knowing in intimacy, both create a place where I can be naked and unashamed. In marriage, I enter the most intimate of all human relationships. It involves risk.

But if it's to work, I must be naked. And if I expose myself utterly and discover that my wife is seen all that I am, spiritually, emotionally and physically, and understands who I am and still loves me, then I experience at the human level something of the most deep and profound love of all. God has seen all of me. In Christ, He accepts me and gives himself to me. You see, what he's saying here is on the one hand, even the best sex, in a marriage covenant where somebody knows you completely.

You see, that's the way a covenant is supposed to work. You're completely exposed to that person. You're totally vulnerable, and the person loves you anyway. way. R.C. says, you're experiencing on a human level just a hint of what it's like to know that through Jesus Christ you are completely received by God. And not only that, God gives himself to you. You don't just give yourself to God. That's why you can call him my God. And friends, what is somebody saying? What happens if you have abused it? What happens if you've taken, and what happens if this morning you can say, I have seen sex work backwards in my life? Now what are

I do? And the answer is to remember Mary Magdalene, to remember people that Jesus Christ just received, no matter what the past was, and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. But don't you see, Jesus says, I love you now, and I can heal you, and I will touch you, and I will receive you, and not only that, I will use you as you are now. Even with your past, in fact, because of your past, I can overwhelm the sin in your life, and I can actually make you into something beautiful now that even incorporates all the problems of your past so that you're not on plan B, you see, so that you're not a sub-Christian, so that you haven't really missed my best for your life. If you give yourself to me, you will have the best.

You are not your own. You're bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. Let's pray. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelonlif.com.

There, you can subscribe to The Life in the Gospel Quarterly Journal. When you do, you will also receive pre-article sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelonlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. Today's sermon was recorded in 1989. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.