The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love (35 page)

3.
Mental.
The mind is the most complex mechanism known to humanity. Some have called it the most complicated computer in the world. The memory bank of the mind registers the lifetime impressions that influence our prejudices, likes, and dislikes, thus indirectly producing our feelings. For example, those who display a continuing distaste for sex are not reflecting a bodily malfunction, but a mental distortion that inhibits their emotional feelings and prohibits normal physical expression. Incompatibility, for instance, hardly ever starts in the body; it almost invariably begins in the mind. For that reason, mental misconceptions replaced by good mental images usually unstop the flow of good emotions and enable the individual or couple to experience proper physical responses.

4.
Spiritual.
The least recognized side of a person’s nature is the spiritual. One ancient philosopher recognized the significance of this aspect when he declared that the “God-shaped vacuum” in the heart of every person can be satisfied by none other than God Himself. Unless that God-shaped vacuum is filled by a personal relationship with God, human beings are condemned throughout their lives to an endless treadmill of activity in an attempt to fill it. Some try to educate it out of existence, others attempt to ignore it, and still others seek a variety of self-gratifying experiences—but all to no avail. By ignoring the reality of that spiritual side of their nature, they compound the problem by violating the laws of God, which activate the conscience and heighten the recognition of futility and emptiness. Interestingly enough, this dilemma increases with age. It is no wonder that many in our culture resort to drugs, alcohol, and a host of other unproductive routes of escape from their own miseries.

Those who neglect the spiritual side of their nature do so at their peril, for God has implanted this vital part of their nature to stabilize their mind, heart, and body. People who ignore this mighty power station within them are like an eight-cylinder car trying to function on six cylinders. They will be capable of very limited operation and will never be the smooth-running, effective persons God designed them to be.

All human beings want happiness for themselves and those they love, but we believe that they are incapable of complete happiness unless they fill that spiritual void within their lives. Such an endeavor is really not difficult for them if they want it. Let us note five keys that make possible the filling of that void and the resultant happiness everyone desires.

	God loves you and has designed you with a spiritual side to your nature that has a capacity to enjoy fellowship with Him.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Above all else, people should know that God loves them, regardless of what the circumstances of life seemingly indicate. The gift of His Son on Calvary’s cross stands as a historical monument that God loves His human creatures. It is legitimate to personalize that fact and say that God loves
you!

God also desires that we enjoy fellowship with Him. “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship [fellowship with him] in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).

As we have already seen, we are empty if we do not enjoy that oneness of fellowship with God. The following diagrams illustrate the two views of humanity:

Mankind’s romance with intellectualism based on atheistic humanism pictures secular human beings in three parts as indicated in the diagram. The tragedy of this philosophy is that it limits mankind completely to human resources, producing a futility of life never intended by the Creator.

The modern concept of a person

People as God designed them

	The self-will and sin of human beings have destroyed their spiritual life, separating them from God and making them miserable.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).

In the spiritual quarter of a person’s nature we have pictured a throne to clarify that, unlike animals, we humans were given a free will at birth to choose the ruler of our lives. We may wish to enjoy fellowship with God, or we may assert our free will and pride (as most do) and live independent of God. With this decision, consequently, a person’s spiritual life dies, thus destroying his or her ability to produce lasting happiness.

Human Beings Are Separated from God

“For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Since God is holy, the day-to-day sins that people commit when self is in control of their lives separate them from God. The Bible teaches that those who commit sins “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21).

People usually try to restore their fellowship with God by good works, religion, philosophy, or church membership. However, they are helpless to save themselves. “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5). The best efforts of people will never restore either their fellowship with God or their happiness.

Although many expressions of sin are described in the Bible, all are caused by self-will in opposition to the will of God.

	Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for your sin, and through Him you can again have fellowship with God and experience the happiness He has for you. The Bible teaches that Christ died in man’s place.
“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the L ORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6).
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (Eph. 1:7).

Christ Is the Only Way to God

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He also said, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved” (John 10:9).

God has provided the perfect bridge to bring sinful human beings back into fellowship with Himself: the cross on which His own Son was crucified for the sins of the whole world. “Christ died for our sins … [and] was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3–4).