Book Review: Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

With contributions by: John Piper, Ben Patterson, David Powlison, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Mark Dever, Michael Lawrence, Matt Schmucker, Scott Croft, C. J. Mahaney, Carolyn McCulley, and Carolyn Mahaney.

Background
The title of this book does a very good job of communicating the theme that you will find everywhere throughout the book’s pages. Sex and the Supremacy of Christ is edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor and is an outworking of a conference that John Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, sponsored in 2004. That the title tends to strike the ear as unusual at best and shocking at worst is perhaps the biggest reason a book like this needs to be written.

The purpose statement for Desiring God ministries, a ministry of Bethlehem Baptist, is to “spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” At the core of this purpose is the belief that, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” These core beliefs are the driving force behind this work, which is a compilation of contributions from a number of writers.

Layout
The fundamental questions which the book seeks to answer is, “What do sex and the supremacy of Christ have to do with each other, and what implications should this have for our everyday lives?” The short answer, given in the introduction, is that sex cannot be rightly understood or practiced without seeing how sex relates to God and that our entire life and worldview – including our sex life and views on sexuality – are to be oriented around the glory of God.

To answer those questions, the book is divided into five parts: Part 1 – God and Sex, Part 2 – Sin and Sex, Part 3 – Men and Sex, Part 4 – Women and Sex, Part 5 – History and Sex. I will return to Part 1 momentarily, but first let me provide a review of the latter four parts.

Highlights
In part two, David Powlison opens with the challenge for Christians to recognize that sexual sin is only one manifestation of a deeper war for our heart’s primary love. “The goal of the battle is not ‘just say no’ and not just the ‘means of grace,’ but rather the goal is to see Jesus Christ himself. Al Mohler’s presents a powerful argument for why homosexual marriage is such a challenge for the church. The power of his argument comes from his recognition that there are larger issues at stake than homosexual unions. Mohler points out that the church’s opposition to homosexual marriage is not about the “yuck factor” or the usual concerns about the moral decay of society. Rather, his appeal is to the glory of God. “The normalizing of homosexual behavior will take the sinfulness of homosexuality to a new level of moral rebellion. God’s glory demonstrated through marriage and the covenant that he created will be corrupted so utterly that idolatry will be institutionalized and the truth will be suppressed in radical unrighteousness.”

Parts three and four of the book focus on men and women, respectively. Sex and its relation to the single man and single woman are thoughtfully and helpfully addressed in their individual sections. The Mahaneys offer some practical counsel to men and women regarding their calling as husbands and wives in their chapters titled, “Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God: What Every Christian Husband/Wife Needs to Know.”

The final section of the book presents two very interesting and different historical and cultural perspectives on sexuality and the glory of God, one from Martin Luther and one from the writings of the (much maligned) Puritans. Both Luther and the Puritans bring important contributions with Luther’s exaltation of marriage in a time when many viewed it as a necessary evil, and the Puritan call to “Turn all your passions into the right channel, and make them all holy, using them for God upon the greatest things.”

The Best Part
I saved the best for last, because the first two chapters of this book are worth the entire price of admission. In these chapters, Piper makes just two points, but in classic John Piper style, he makes his points very well (read: saturated with scripture) and in a way that focuses entirely on Christ. First, he says that “Sexuality is designed by God as a way to know God in Christ more fully.” That is to say, the ultimate reason that God made us sexual is so that God might be more deeply knowable.

Piper’s second point is that “Knowing God in Christ more fully is designed as a way of guarding and guiding our sexuality.” This is where Piper is far beyond any other book that I have read on the subject of sexuality. His treatment is not superficial as so many of those “moral strategy” type books tend to be. As he says, “There are many practical strategies for being sexually pure in mind and body. I don’t demean them. I use them! But with all my heart I know, and with the authority of Scripture I know, that the tiny spaceships of our moral strategies will be useless in nudging the planet of sexuality into orbit, unless the sun of our solar system is the supremacy of Christ.”