Basic HTML Version
32
How
to
Have a Happy Marriage
whatever number they feel best. But a couple should plan
to
have only those children that they can properly care for,
nurture and give their time
to.
Children should not be just numbers in a group, but
individuals who are planned and loved by both parents.
But Why Sex?
If
the planning and spacing of children is proper
in
God's
eyes, some then wonder why God created human sexuality.
Many have believed sexual relations are solely for the purpose
of human reproduction.
But that is not so. There is a deep and even more
important reason why God created male and female.
Human reproduction is made possible through sex. But
even before the human reproductive process, God made men
and women to share the greatest of all attributes-love-and
to
share it, in part, through sex in marriage.
Here's what the apostle Paul wrote about the marital rela–
tionship: "Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each
man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own
husband. Let the husband render
to
his wife the affection due
her, and likewise also the wife to her husband" (I Cor. 7:2-3).
To speak plainly, Paul tells married couples they must
fulfill their sexual responsibilities to each other-not for
procreation, but as an act of outgoing love and concern, and
to avoid the temptation of sexual immorality.
God designed into us the desire to care and share with
each other through the sexual relationship in marriage. The
culmination of affection and attention to each other is ex–
pressed
in
the sexual relationship.
To violate that sacred relationship is so awful that God has
labeled it sin! Two of the Ten Commandments deal with the
subject (Ex. 20:14, 17).
But in marriage, and only between partners in marriage,
sex is pure, clean and desirable.
It
is, first and foremost,
designed to draw and hold a husband and wife God has
bound together in love.
And Then Come Children
And then, through that expression of affection and love,