Christianity teaches that sex is a gift to be celebrated and received as God intended it to be expressed. Christians ground the meaning of sex in the doctrine of creation. God made human beings as the only creatures that would bear His image. Thus, humans are the only creatures to reflect on the meaning of sex in literature, poetry, and moral debates --- or in a forum like this.

According to the Bible, the first man and woman, once united in marriage, were naked before God, and not ashamed. There was no shame in their nakedness nor in the fulfillment of their sexual gift. God gave them that gift for pleasure, for procreation, and for many other purposes known and unknown to them. God is glorified when we enjoy the gifts He give us as he intended.

Sexual confusion arises only after the Fall, when God's good gifts are corrupted by human beings. Only then do we learn what happens when the sexual gift is removed from its intended context of faithful marriage and expressed elsewhere. This leads to all sorts of damage and distortion, and represents what the Bible straightforwardly calls sin.

The biblical pattern is that sex expressed within marriage between a husband and wife is holy, healthy, and good. Sex expressed elsewhere falls short of God's intention and violates His command.

Sex is such a powerful reality that, left to our own devices, we are likely to fall into patterns of gross misunderstanding. We may, for example, make sex an object of worship or denigrate it as inherently sinful. It is neither, of course -- but it takes a revealed instruction from God to make this known.