What does the Bible say about SEX?

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Question: Is it sinful for a couple to have sex for pleasure alone? What does the Bible teach about sex if a couple doesn't or cannot have children?

Answer: The apostle Paul answers your question about sex rather succinctly in his letter to the church in Corinth:

"But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty (e.g. sex) to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

"Do not deprive each other (of sex) except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command." (1Corinthians 7:2-6, NIV)

There is nowhere in the Bible a commandment or admonition for a husband and wife to have sex only in the process of procreation. There is also no indication that any sex between a husband and wife would ever be sinful of itself. Paul calls the sexual relations between a married man and woman a "marital duty" and stresses that the husband and wife should not "deprive each other except by mutual consent".

In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul stresses the roles husbands and wives should play and how they should treat each other. So long as these guidelines in the Bible are followed, any relationship will flourish, even a childless one.

"Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

"After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church -- for we are members of his body. 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united (in sex) to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' " (Ephesians 5:22-31, NIV)