1982 Premier Issue Part 3

From Discipline; The glad surrender

The bodies we are given are sexual bodies, equipped for sexual intercourse. Modern advertising never lets us forget about this. Popular songs refer to nothing else. The fashion business thrives on sexual provocation through dress. But being sexually equipped is not a license for us to use the equipment in any way we choose. Like every other good gift which comes down from the Father of Lights, the gift of sexual activity is meant to be used as He intended, within the clearly defined limits of His purpose, which is marriage. If marriage is not included in God’s will for any individual, then sexual activity is not included either.

“What am I supposed to do, then, with all this? I’ve got so much to give – what if nobody takes it?”

Give it to God.

“Now the body is not made for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (1 Cor 6:13)

To offer my body to the Lord as a living sacrifice includes offering to Him my sexuality and all that that entails, even my unfulfilled longings.

Today this advice will be laughed out of court by most. Sexual control is regarded as a “hang-up”, from which the truly mature have been liberated. There are those still, however, as there have been in every age, who hold as Holy the intimate relationship between a man and a woman, recognizing in it a type of Christ’s love for His own bride, His church. As such it is not to be profaned.

This attitude can only be held by the mind’s being captive to Christ. It is a miracle of grace. Let us not imagine it is anything else.

Malcolm Muggeridge notes in his diary, March 26-27 (published by Collins, London, 1981), that Tolstoy* “tried to receive virtue, and particularly continence, through the exercise of his will; St Augustine saw that, for Man, there is no virtue without a miracle. Thus St Augustine’s asceticism brought him serenity, and Tolstoy’s anguish, conflict and final collapse of his life into tragic buffoonery.”

This body, remember is to be resurrected. As John Donne pointed out long ago, the immortality of the soul is acceptable to man’s natural reason, but the resurrection of the body must be a matter of faith.

*Tolstoy was a Russian writer. Novels include; War and Peace, Anna Karenina.