The Bible is Sexy

Celebrating Sexuality through the Song of Songs

Sex. Say that word in Christian community, and you’ll be met with uneasy glances and a few gasps. It makes parents nervous and teenagers curious. It shows up all the time in the media and almost never in a sermon.

Despite Church teaching to the contrary, many of us have grown up sensing the Church’s disapproval of sex and sexuality, even within the proper context of marriage. Such has been the prevailing attitude for a number of years. But this simply isn’t Biblical!

Sheltered within the Old Testament books of wisdom and prophecy is a love poem, Solomon’s Song of Songs. It’s erotic, it’s specific, it’s incredibly juicy—even for the modern reader. Particularly sensual bits include an invitation to “Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits” (1). The Lover in the poem later proclaims to his Beloved, “Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit’” (2).

This is unmistakably sexy stuff. It can’t be explained away as mere metaphor. While Song of Songs is certainly a forward-looking text, illuminating the New Testament lover imagery between Christ and the Church, it’s also a celebration of the raw joy of sexual love between husband and wife.

It isn’t an instance of private sexy pillow talk either. The friends of the Lover and Beloved are present, too, encouraging the couple, “Drink your fill, o Lovers” (3).

It’s sexy, it’s direct, it’s public, and it’s celebrated.

Quite different from the tame and thoughtful speeches given at wedding receptions. The presence of the friends, though, opens our eyes to two important facts. The first is that this couple is part of a community in which they openly proclaim their love. The second is that the relationship between this couple and their friends is a nurturing and caring one. The friends both encourage the lovers and challenge them to make sure their love is true. Similarly, the lovers invite their friends to rejoice with them, but also caution often, “Do not awaken love until it so desires” (4). In this erotic, sensual, scriptural poem, sexual love is to be revered and celebrated within the marital relationship.

The presence of the Song of Songs in Scripture, the divinely inspired Word of God, is proof that we serve a God who deeply values and respects the pleasure of human sexual love. In fact, our experience of earthly love is a real participation in the love of God. In the proper context, “Sharing of pleasure itself, the pure erotic energy between two people and their carnal delight in each other’s bodies, is itself a communion in grace” (5). The abandonment to love between two humans is an analogue and an inspiration for abandonment to love of God.

Sadly, the Church has had a hard time recognizing this. Historically, virgins and celibates were canonized, while married Christians received no recognition for their holiness; they did not walk that “narrow road” of sacrifice. Many felt sex’s only redeeming quality was that it brings children—future Christians—into the world. It wasn’t until the movement of the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II’s teachings that the Church began to unveil the positive aspects of human sexuality through educating Christians about God's plan for sexuality. Vatican II refused to make the statement that sex was intended solely, or even primarily, for procreation. John Paul II, earlier in his ministry, had even written of the value of married couples learning to achieve simultaneous orgasm!

But this wasn’t just a response to an increasingly sex-saturated society. This attitude of joy and excitement about the pleasures of marital sexual love existed long before the Church was formed, before Christ even began His ministry. It’s an enthusiasm we clearly see in Song of Songs.

Sex is not to be condemned or feared, as we’ve often seen in historical Christianity and in the Church today. God is perfect love, and He designed us to love, and to be able to love sexually. Sexual love is something to be revered, respected, and celebrated, as we see in Song of Songs—written proof that the Bible is sexy.

by Cayce L. Lista


(1) Song of Songs 4:16, NIV.
(2) Song of Songs 7:7-8.
(3) Song of Songs 5:1
(4) Verse first found in Song of Songs 2:7.
(5) Historical information from: Gaillardetz, Richard. A Daring Promise: A Spirituality of Christian Marriage. Crossroad General Interest: Liguori, Mo, 2007. Chapter 5: “Marriage and Sexuality.” (This quotation p. 93).