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How Brokenness Taught Me the Beauty of Sex
As a teenager, I wrestled with the fear that I might be missing out.
My peers treated sex not only as casual fun but almost as a rite of passage, something everyone was supposed to experience during those years. And though I knew what Scripture taught—sex is reserved for marriage—obedience sometimes felt like lonely self-denial that offered little comfort. I dreaded awkward conversations, knowing looks, and jokes at my expense. Every time the topic came up, I felt like I was on trial before a world that saw me as naive, repressed, or just strange. It’s easy to feel ungrateful in those moments.
Over time, those feelings stirred deeper questions in my heart. Was God being unreasonable? Was his call to wait until marriage just an arbitrary, joy-stealing rule I was expected to follow without understanding? After all, the reasons not to rob or murder seemed obvious to me. But sex? It felt too natural, too innocent, too harmless for God to be so strict about it. Everyone else seemed fine.
Was the world right to laugh at me? Had I denied myself for nothing? Quietly, I echoed the psalmist’s lament: “Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure” (Ps. 73:13, NIV).
Silent Witness of Unbelievers
As I watched the world around me, I began to notice something striking: Even while rejecting God’s design for sex, most people betrayed an unspoken agreement with it. Nowhere was this clearer than in hookup culture. None of the swipe-right Tinder hookups, hazy one-night stands after clubs, or campus situationships eased the emptiness, emotional pain, or loneliness plaguing my peers. If anything, it worsened them.
It was confusing. If sex were truly as liberating and empowering as our culture claimed, why did it leave so many people feeling more broken?
I found clarity when I went back to the Scriptures I’d been quietly questioning for so long. Genesis 1:28 reminded me that humans are made in God’s image—not just any god but the triune God, eternally existing in perfect, loving communion. As bearers of this image, we’re fundamentally created for love, intimacy, and self-giving. We’re designed to fully know and be fully known. Though the fall has damaged every part of us, it hasn’t erased this deep wiring for connection. At our core, we’re lovers and beloved—so everything we do in life is ultimately motivated by this reality, including our pursuit of sexual fulfillment.
If sex were truly as liberating and empowering as our culture claimed, why did it leave so many people feeling more broken?
This helped me make sense of the inconsistency around me. I kept hearing that sex could be casual and detached, but even in the most surface-level hookups, people were still engaging in deeply intimate acts—kissing, holding, touching—that naturally invite vulnerability. When these gestures are stripped of their true meaning and reduced to mere physical pleasure, something breaks inside us. I saw it in the confusion. The emptiness. The regret people carried without knowing how to name it.
And the problem didn’t end with hookup culture. Even in committed dating relationships, sex still can’t express what it’s meant to: a lifelong, covenantal self-giving. It makes little sense to fully give your body to someone without fully giving yourself. Because we’re embodied beings, sexual union is more than just a physical act—it’s a language that says, “I give you all of me, forever.”
It no longer surprised me that even the unmarried couples I knew—the ones who seemed so close—carried a persistent restlessness and unfulfillment. Their physical closeness said something that the rest of their relationship contradicted. Only within marriage, where a husband and wife have publicly committed their lives to one another, can sex become what it was always meant to be: whole, beautiful, true love.
Finally, I stopped seeing God’s boundaries as barriers and embraced them as wise protections for my good.
Hope Amid Sexual Brokenness
As creatures living in a fallen world, we’re constantly confronted with sexual sin not only around us but also within ourselves—even for Christians, who sincerely seek to obey God’s commands. Whether through the persistent pull of pornography, battles with lustful thoughts, or the scars left by broken relationships, sin haunts us all.
I stopped seeing God’s boundaries as barriers and embraced them as wise protections for my good.
Yet the faithful Husband hasn’t abandoned his unfaithful Bride—us. She has strayed and broken their vows, but he remains steadfast, offering forgiveness, restoration, and a covenant that will never be broken (Isa. 54:10). Though we deserve nothing but death for our sexual failures, God’s Son entered his own creation, lived a perfect life, and died as our substitute on Calvary to save us, from both condemnation and slavery to sin.
This is exactly what marriage was always designed to display—the union of Christ and his church (Eph. 5:32). Marriage isn’t an end in itself; it points beyond itself to Christ’s love for his people.
And this is why I’m grateful for what Scripture teaches about sexuality—grateful because I no longer have to be ashamed of following God’s wisdom. Grateful because, whether called to singleness or marriage, I don’t miss out on the gospel that marriage and sex point to. Grateful that in these truths, I see a Creator who loves me so deeply that he died my death and united himself to an unworthy rebel like me.
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