The pleasures of life are everywhere we turn. They greet us every day and all throughout the day. We could not escape pleasure if we tried. It is not an overstatement or a distant theological platitude to say that pleasure is in the mind of God. Legitimate pleasure of any form is God's creation, and our ability to recognize and enjoy pleasure is the result of his design. With wisdom and purpose, he created a world overflowing with pleasures of every kind. There are pleasures of sight, sound, taste, and touch. There are pleasures of thought and emotion. There are pleasures of location, situation, and relationship.

Pleasure exists because it fits with God's purpose for his creation. It is one of his chief gifts to us. But we need to understand the role of pleasure in God's creation and how we are to respond to the pleasures that greet us every day.

God's creative intention was to bring glory to himself through the pleasures he created. Each pleasurable thing was perfectly created and designed to reflect and point to the greater glory of the One who had created it. These things were intended to induce pleasure but also to serve a deeply spiritual purpose: they were meant to remind us of him. They were meant to amaze us not just with their pleasurable existence but by amazing us with the existence, wisdom, power, and glory of the One who made them and existed before time began. The pleasures of earth were put on earth to be one of God's tools to get our attention and capture our hearts in worship of him.

We will never understand pleasure if we think it is an end in itself. Pleasure is pleasurable, and we should never feel guilty for enjoying it or for wanting more of it. Our enjoyment of pleasure is all according to God's design. But we must recognize that pleasure has a purpose beyond the momentary pleasure it gives us.

Pleasure exists as a sign of the One in whose arms I will enjoy the only pleasure that can satisfy and give rest to my heart. Pleasure exists to put God in my face and to remind me that I was made by him and for him. Pleasure, like every other created thing, has been designed to put God at the center. Pleasure exists to stimulate worship, not of the pleasurable thing but of the One who created the pleasurable thing. The glory of every form of pleasure is meant to point me to the glory of God.

The pleasure of food is meant to motivate me to seek the heart-satisfying sustenance of the bread and wine that is Christ. The pleasure of sex is meant to remind me of the glory of my intimate union with Christ, which only grace could produce. The pleasure of all things beautiful is designed to cause me to gaze upon the Lord, who is perfect in beauty in every way. The pleasure of sound is meant to cause me to listen to the sounds of the One whose every utterance is a thing of beauty. The pleasure of touch was created to remind me of the glory of One whose touch alone has the power to comfort, heal, and transform. The pleasure of human affection is meant to induce me to celebrate the glory of God's eternal, undeserved, self-sacrificing love. The pleasure of rest is meant to draw my heart toward the One who, by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, purchased for me an eternal Sabbath of rest.

The Problem with Pleasure

If God created pleasure, then pleasure is not the problem. The problem comes when we understand pleasure wrongly and then engage in pleasure in ways that result directly from the wrong interpretations we have made.

God did not place Adam and Eve in an environment of dangerous and evil pleasure and then require them to avoid it in fear of their destruction and his judgment. He did not require abstinence as a true test of the loyalty and godliness of their hearts. In fact, the opposite is true. He placed them in an environment of delicious pleasures and set them free to enjoy. The garden was full of the pleasures of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. The garden introduced them to the pleasures of emotional and sexual love. It was a gloriously pleasurable place to live, and there was simply nothing inherently evil or dangerous in any of it.

It is essential, however, to recognize that the pleasures of the garden were not boundless. God set boundaries for Adam and Eve. He gifted them with glorious pleasures to be enjoyed, but within the limits he set. Adam and Eve were not to have a self-centered, "any time, any way" relationship to pleasure. They were designed and called to live inside the purpose that God had in mind when he made them. Their lives did not belong to them, and neither did their pleasures. They were free to enjoy, but their enjoyment was to be done in an attitude of submission and obedience.

The boundaries were a protection. The rules themselves let Adam and Eve know that they were not in charge. The rules reminded them that they were created for the purposes of Another.

These rules were not pleasure-destroying or enjoyment-inhibiting. These rules were given to protect the hearts of Adam and Eve so they would be free to enjoy the pleasures of the created world liberally without being dominated, addicted, or controlled by them. The rules were there so that they would give themselves not to pleasure but to God, as they enjoyed the pleasurable things he had provided.

Eden was the most beautiful place that ever existed, filled with perfect pleasures of every kind, yet its continuance depended on Adam and Eve's staying inside God's protective boundaries.

The Pleasure of Sexual Worship

I want to spend the second half of this article applying pleasure to sex, although it could be applied to a variety of other areas of life: food, leisure, entertainment, shopping, you name it. Sex is never just about physical pleasure. Sex is never just about intimacy with the person with whom you are in a horizontal earthly relationship. Sex is always about spiritual pleasure and vertical obedience.

In a word, sex is about worship.

Our sexuality is shaped either by a willing, worshipful submission to the authority of God or by our taking authority over our lives and bodies as though they belonged to us. There is no other option.

This issue of obedience and worship extends to the most intimate uses of the body. Consider the words of Romans 12:1. "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."

It could not be stated more clearly and eloquently. This passage connects the body and sex to worship and obedience. Worship of God means willingly giving our bodies to him in the most intimate acts of life: sex. We forever forsake ownership of our bodies and what we do with them. We view the body as belonging to God, and we commit ourselves to an obedient use of the body; that is, to doing with the body only that which is holy and acceptable in his sight, no matter what our passions, thoughts, or desires tell us.

Sexual purity is found in the intentional sacrifice of our bodies to God--no longer for our desires and our ways but according to his will and for his glory.

And again, it is essential to remember that the directive in Romans 12:1 is not God's way of robbing us of sexual pleasure simply because he is in charge and has the power. In calling us to make this intentional bodily sacrifice, God is rescuing us from ourselves and protecting us from danger.

The Biggest Danger of Sex

I don't need to point out the fact that our world has gone sexually insane. From the disintegration of what constitutes a marriage, the definitions of gender, and the bombardment of sexually explicit material on every device and everywhere we look, it's wise to protect yourself from the sexual temptation and insane influence of the world.

Yet, that's not our biggest problem. Romans 12:1 highlights our key word as well: worship.

My biggest problem with sexual impurity is rooted in the soil of the scary condition of my sinful heart. I struggle with sexual impurity in the same way I struggle with materialism or gluttony because I struggle with something more profound. What is this deeper thing? I struggle with self-worship, self-rule, and self-sacrifice. In my heart, there are still ways in which I want to be at the center of my world, where that which I want, feel, or think that I need is more important to me than God's will and the real needs of those around me. There are ways in which I am so busy loving and worshiping myself that I have little time or energy left to love God or sacrifice for others.

If sexual purity was just a matter of running far enough away from sexual temptation, we could change our location, run faster and farther, and set up better filters. But sexual purity is first and foremost spiritual warfare about worship.

Sexual purity begins with a confession that we do not want to and cannot do so. It requires the confession of the selfishness and rebellion of the heart. It owns that we often find impurity more attractive than purity.

I grapple every day with self-worship, and, because I do, I want to be sovereign over my own life. I want to rule my life and set up my own rules. I want to have what seems best to me, and I do not want God or others to get in the way. I cannot escape how sex exposes both of these things in my heart. My sex life is always shaped by whom I worship and the one to whose rules I submit.

So, when I face the deeper struggle of sexual purity, I am not helped just by a clearer awareness of where I am susceptible to temptation or a better system of accountability. Those things are helpful, but they easily become a way of asking the law to do what only grace can accomplish. My struggle with sexual purity reveals the degree to which I still need a fundamental renewal or transformation of my heart. It is only when I worship God above everything else, love my neighbor as myself, and willingly submit to God's authority that I will be pure.

In the most basic sense, when it comes to the sexual purity battle, I have met the enemy, and it is I. I am the greatest sexual danger to me. I am my greatest source of temptation. I am the source of my struggle. The self-worship and self-sovereignty that still live in my heart cause me to be attracted and susceptible to the sexual temptations everywhere around me in this world that has gone sexually insane.

Does this leave me hopeless? No! God, who knows how deep my struggle is, has gifted me with the lavish provisions of his powerful rescuing and transforming grace. Romans 12:1 presents God as being merciful! We can rest assured that we will be greeted with powerful grace, for our Savior has promised that he will never turn his back when we come to him with a broken and contrite heart.