What had begun as a promise between the partners and the families involved was now “consummated”—made complete.
It was believed that a physical union was the exchange and bonding of blood. So those who engaged in sexual relations before marriage were forced to wed in order to normalize what had occurred.
This way may sound archaic to such a 'free' society of America, but it was more close with human realities than this contemporary lifestyle of recreational sex. Conjugal love is unique in that it is shared with only one partner and genital sexual relations, a physical bonding, shared with only one mate.
Within the context of the unselfishness, commitment and faithfulness of marriage, sex crowns the relationship with its own special glory.
Since sex encompasses the partners in their totality, it is the very language and embodiment of commitment between two people who have pledged to join their lives and create a new family.
“Marriage is not just for the control of sex,” writes Smedes, “it is for the liberation and fulfillment of sex.”
Sex encompasses the partners in their totality and is the language of commitment between to people who have pledged to join their lives and create a new family. This is why a sexual relationship was meant to have its greatest fulfillment in married love.
Just as the restrictions of the Japanese haiku form yield poetry of striking beauty and depth, so sexual love likewise reaches its zenith of power and beauty within and indeed because of the structure and boundaries of marriage. Let us explore in more detail eight aspects of the special role of sexual union in marriage.
Role of Sex in Marriage
Reverend Moon gives the speech in detail on the eight aspects of the special role of Sex in Marriage:
1. Strengthens the bond and sense of exclusivity
2. Helps mend rifts and revitalize the relationship
3. Substantiates love for perpetuity
4. Symbolizes the expansiveness and fruitfulness of love
5. Represents the harmonizing of opposites
6. Encapsulates the moral work of marriage
7. Represents mutual submission to a higher purpose
8. Invites God to participate in the marriage
"Strengthens the Bond and Sense of Exclusivity Sex intermingles hearts and minds in a powerful bond. It is both the manifestation and the reinforcement of the couple’s covenant with one another. Physical union fortifies the unique oneness of the spouses’ lives in all the other aspects—emotionally, financially, as parents and in destiny.
When daily life pulls the attention and energy towards children and other people in the home and community, sexual relations can reaffirm the central place the partner occupies in each spouse’s life. Physical intimacy calms and reassures in a way that complements verbal expressions of caring and gestures of thoughtfulness.
Because it is an exclusive experience, a secret shared between spouses, it fosters a potent sense of intimacy and emotional security. Sexual relations create a deep seated, non-rational attachment that grounds the marital commitment.
Even at times when there may be little else in common during the shifting seasons of marriage, sex can be a reassuring point of connection until emotional closeness can be reestablished.
2. Helps Mend Rifts and Revitalize the Relationship
Sex is uniquely relaxing. The intoxicating feeling of togetherness and physical release, the all-absorbing sense of time standing still and being at the center of the universe provides a welcome relief from the stresses of daily life and the sadness of inevitable losses.
Genesis speaks of Rebecca consoling Isaac after his mother’s death by making love in the same way that the Book of Samuel tells of King David comforting Bathsheba after their child’s death. Further, the nonverbal physical communion of sex can help defuse heated arguments and petty divisive issues by reminding the couple of their essential commitment and mutual need.
The playfulness of physical intimacy dispels the sense of threat that results from discord and nourishes the sense of friendship. Especially in the beginning of marriage when the spouses are learning to accommodate one another and many conflicts are arising, the excitement of exploring sex together can be a grounding experience that carries the couple through hard times.
3. Substantiates Love for Perpetuity
Through sexual union, the love that otherwise would remain largely an emotional and spiritual bond between the husband and wife can be made substantial in two senses of the word. On one hand, there is the simple bodily oneness.
On the other hand, there is the more important manifestation: through bearing children and perpetuating lineage. Sexuality is the means of participation in the circle of life, the great ongoing creativity and generativity of the universe and the legacy of one generation to another.
Lineage is the aspect of sexuality that allows love to endure for more than one generation, notes Reverend Moon, and to have its imprint on eternity. From the viewpoint of a spiritual afterlife, the interdependence of mind and body means that conjugal love is anchored and rendered more complete through physical\ substantiation into lineage.
Speaking from a physical standpoint, posterity represents material immortality. As this instrument of lineage, sex represents the hope of ancestors for their love and life to have continuing presence on the earth.
If a spouse’s body represents the culmination of all his or her ancestors’ bodies, and the reproductive organs represent the culmination of that individual’s material and spiritual existence, then conjugal union is the means by which entire ancestral lines meet and mix in a fundamental way. It is here where hope finds its most potent focus.
Through the mystery and miracle of love transmuting into new life, every generation looks to its newborns to represent a fresh beginning for the world, and hopes that somehow the distilled nobility of countless ancestors and the grace of God—might bring forth one or myriad saviors. Thus, sexual relations always hold this lineal significance and promise.
Symbolizes the Expansiveness and Fruitfulness of Love This same possibility of creating a new life—and perhaps many such lives—means that sexual intercourse represents the public quality of marital love that extends beyond the spouses themselves.
Parents celebrate each child as a blessing and opportunity to demonstrate the fruitfulness of their love. In a similar way, a couple’s sexual embrace symbolizes this basic receptivity to be used by providence to nurture the potential for goodness in the world and leave a productive legacy.
This is not to mention the simple fact that sexual bonding is the very real underpinning of society and the nation, since this coupling is the very substance of marriage, and thus is the foundation of the family and the sustenance of the next generation.
5. Represents Harmonizing of Opposites
The act of sex is the most obvious way that man and woman combine their complementary powers. Plus and minus energies come together in explosive joy, like lightning and thunder that seizes the spouses and ripples through them. In Earnest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, the lovers say that they feel the earth move when they make love.
Certainly the heart is moved; couples are left as refreshed and revitalized as the earth after a summer storm. The union of opposites is also potently conveyed in the fruit of sex—the offspring. Nothing so dramatizes that two genders have become one as seeing the parents’ faces blended into that of the son or daughter.
Moreover, sexual union is the object lesson in how to adapt to and support the opposite sex spouse in daily life. Intercourse is experienced so differently by men and women that it requires both genders to act contrary to their natural inclinations in order to accommodate one another.
For example, the husband must learn to resist his urgent and focused arousal to wait until his wife is aroused.
He has to learn to expand his focus beyond the genital act. The wife must learn to respond even when emotional connection is limited or other conditions are less than ideal. Both sexes have to give up the notion that the other is like themselves or should be.
A satisfying sexual relationship means they have to learn to understand each other’s differences, appreciate the value of these differences and see from the other’s perspective.
6. Encapsulates the Moral Work of Marriage
The deeply vulnerable, intimate and personal quality of sexual union brings out all the complexities of learning to love and be loved by one another. Practicing true love in marriage has many mundane manifestations, but sex is a special way.
In the words of Grenz:
[The] most expressive symbol of the willingness to give of self freely and totally for the sake of the pleasure and wellbeing of the spouse, is the sex act. In this act a person gives fully and unashamedly and becomes fully vulnerable and open to the other.
There must be humility and self-forgetfulness to learn how to satisfy the mate, yet there must be self-awareness and assertiveness to express one’s desires. Tensions within the larger relationship must be brought out regularly and resolved or they interfere with erotic feelings.
Communication must be frank yet sensitive. Differing needs and desires must be negotiated. Shifting moods, health and aging factors and the many seasons of the relationship itself must be taken into account, as do the changing duties of parenthood, work, caregiving and so on.
Accommodating each other in lovemaking in all these ways over the years teaches countless lessons and develops character in one another. In this way, sexual relations encapsulate all the moral demands and rewards of the spouse’s realm of heart.
Represents Mutual Submission to a Higher Purpose Sexual intercourse is a physical and spiritual experience beyond one’s control. Neither the husband nor the wife can fully manage either the sensations or the outcome.
In this sense, both partners ultimately surrender to being used by forces greater than themselves, to fortify love, to create life, to perpetuate lineage. This is a metaphor for the Biblical exhortation that partners “Submit to on another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5.21).
Further, it represents a certain vulnerability and naturalness with one another, like children before their parents, since both lay aside all facades in the moment of sexual climax. Perhaps this is a sense of the Biblical meaning of to “know” one another through making love.
8. Invites God to Participate in the Marriage
Sexual relations hold a special allure to the Creator, as described above, for its unique potential to symbolize so much of His nature at once. The coming together of spirit and flesh, male and female, joy and fecundity magnetizes Him to the marriage bed.
God enjoys the love and lovemaking between husband and wife so much that according to the Talmud, when God instructed the Hebrew people to build the temple, He specifically asked for the brass basin for the priests to be made from the metal mirrors that wives used when they groomed themselves for their husbands, because such humble objects that promote intimacy between husband and wife were most precious to Him.
Thus, sexual union invites God to participate in the marriage." SMM
Return for Tomorrow's Post: 7 Days of Holy Sex Day 3 Original Moral Code
This text was rewritten and derived from the Textbook: True Love, Chapter "The Meaning of Sexuality".
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