When Christians use the phrases “sexual from birth” or “sexual beings,” we’re simply describing our maleness or femaleness, aren’t we?

This is likely how many sincere Christians understand it.  Remember, however, that male or female describes the kind of human we are.  You may never have heard it explained this way before, so it bears repeating.  Male or female has more than a sexual connotation; it is our divinely appointed vocation.  It is a way to engage life.  The vocations of male and female are God-given roles rooted in God’s creation of each individual human, as opposed to the kinds of vocations that men and women choose or take up later in life (such as father, mother, teacher, or pastor).  Those who oppose God don’t care about this because, like Kinsey, they have no respect for male or female.  God does.  So, let’s consider this in light of His Word.

God did not make male and female at the same time, in the same way or for the same purpose (Gn. 2:7, 15, 18-22).  Their differences did not conflict, but were complementary.  As husband and wife, Adam and Eve were lovers, that is, they were sexually intimate.  The human race came from their procreative sexual union; Eve because the “mother of all the living” (Gn. 3:20).  But, not every complementary man or woman marries and thus, becomes a lover or sexually active.

There is sexual love and there is agape love.  Husbands and wives share sexual intimacy, but all males and females of any age can share (and practice) agape love.  Scripture says it is the “will of God, your sanctification,” that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his [or her] own boy in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like [those] who do not know God” (1 Thes. 4:3-5).  Scripture is clear.  The sexual part of us is designed for use within the parameters of marriage.

To be lovers or, in other words, to share sexual intimacy and literally fit together in the procreational act of sex, is reserved for marriage between one man and one woman.  To be male or female, however, is a design and vocation for daily use in glorifying God.  God does not tell us to abstain from being male or female.  God does not tell us to abstain from being the human beings He created us to be, but He does tell us to abstain from sexual activity except within marriage.  Sexual activity is not an intrinsic part of what it means to be human.  We don’t do battle with the attributes of maleness or femaleness, but with “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry . . . [T]hose who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:19-24).  Unmarried males and females, of any age, are not to be lovers, but they are free to practice agape love which is this:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Co. 13:4-).

From The Failure of Sex Education in the Church:
Mistaken Identity, Compromised Purity (pp. 94-95)
by Linda Bartlett (Amazon)