A Biblical Catechism on Sex and Marriage: Marriage and Sexual Appetite

[This post continues a series of posts entitled 'A Biblical Catechism on Sex and Marriage'.  The intention is to provide basic material for further instruction by a trusted teacher of God's Word in a church that is committed to Biblical authority.  The Church’s mission is to invite all people to live under God’s righteous rule.]

Question 6. What are the purposes of marriage?

Answer: The purposes of marriage are procreational, familial, relational, and to satisfy sexual appetite.

[Previous comments: Marriage and Procreation; Marriage and Family; Marital Relationship]

Comment 5: Marriage is, fourthly, the appropriate union to satisfy sexual appetite.  The Song of Solomon warns the reader not to awaken love before its time (2:7; 3:5; 8:4)—which Biblical teaching declares is within marriage—but it does celebrate romantic intimacy between a man and a woman.

Proverbs 5:15-20 Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.  ¹⁶ Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?  ¹⁷ Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.  ¹⁸ Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,  ¹⁹ a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.  ²⁰ Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

1 Corinthians 7:2-5 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.  ³ The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.  ⁴ For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.  ⁵ Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

1 Corinthians 7:8-9 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am.  ⁹ But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

1 Corinthians 7:36 If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry- it is no sin.

1 Timothy 5:11-12 But refuse to enroll younger widows [on a list of widows supported by the church], for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry  ¹² and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith.