Sex is Sacred: A Spiritual Perspective of Love & Sex

By Matthew S. Jones

Sex is Sacred is an ATTITUDE--an ennobling, spiritual attitude--and a wholesome, moral POSITION.

Sex is Sacred is also a voice for virtue as a spiritual rationale for the exercise of moral virtue.

​​​Sex is Sacred fuels moral sobriety by promoting spiritual sensibility.

Sex is Sacred will hopefully help you:
● Elevate your spiritual literacy
● Refine, respect, polish, and prize your spiritual self
● Improve your proficiency to differentiate between love and lust

Learn more about Sex is Sacred  at: http://www.MoralDirection.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew S. Jones
• Release date: Apr 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9780692612453

Book preview

Dedication

To Life, Liberty, and Love.

from the author

The cultural climate supporting moral sobriety and exemplifying sexual propriety is in dangerous decline in Western civilization, including the United States of America.  The Digital Age demarcates the frontier of information access and around-the-clock commerce with transactional immediacy, which unfortunately facilitates the proliferation of the profane with alarming alacrity.  Sex is Sacred counters cultural decadence by promoting spiritual literacy and by serving as a voice for virtue amidst an ostensibly precarious as well as a potentially perilous, cultural sea of moral subjectivity (or relativism) and sexual promiscuity.

Sex is Sacred promotes moral sobriety and spiritual sensibility while championing natural, conjugal, heterosexual intercourse.  A governing principle of this book is that human beings are corporeal, spiritual beings with a shared, albeit temporarily veiled, premortal past and an inevitable afterlife.  It would be incredible to think that the God of glory, who established the earth's exceptional biosphere and its life-sustaining, solar waltz, did so merely to sift through the souls of humankind for a few good harpists or to suppose that God panicked over the transition of our first parents, Adam and Eve from a static state of agency-centric, moral accountability and naive, immortal existence to a dynamic state of agency-centric, moral accountability and maturing, mortal existence.  Translation: The necessity for a universal, reconciling Atonement was no frantic afterthought.  For example, the Apostle Peter alluded to God's foreknowledge of Adam's transgressionary fall and subsequent, impending mortality when Peter emphatically proclaimed: "But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world . . ." (Italics added.  See the King James Version of the Bible [KJV] 1 Peter 1:19-20).

Additionally, heterosexual intercourse is not a necessary evil.  Heterosexual intercourse is normal and natural—and an essential, key element in the plan of our great Creator for the advancement of God's spirit sons and spirit daughters.  Sex matters.  Sex is a big deal.  Moreover, gender is a premortal endowment and a divine characteristic; premortal because each one of us possessed the characteristic of gender before we came to earth to be enveloped with mortal flesh; divine because our first parents were made in the express image of God, as recorded in holy writ: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Italics added.  See KJV Genesis 1:26-27).  Although human personality is malleable and modifiable, biological gender is fixed and binary.

By examining the nature of sacredness, we sojourn into the sphere of the spiritual, the supernatural, and the metaphysical—the realm of noetic insight and the customarily unseen (at least in the everyday sense of the word unseen).  Should you feel inclined to censure me, or want to tell me to Get lost!, you should be forewarned, for example, that although present-day, scientific investigation in the minds of some hasn't and may never conclusively and unequivocally corroborate the existence of the human soul, scientific research has already revealed, for instance, that our physical, human eyes have a limited scope or spectrum of perception, processing only a limited field of visible light, depending on its wavelength. Translation: Simply because you can't see something with your natural eyesight doesn't automatically mean that something not visually detected doesn't exist; it may mean that you don't see something simply because it's presently outside the range of your natural, visual spectrum of perception.  Agreed?  For example, have you ever seen a thought?  Seriously, have you ever seen a thought?  Think about it.  If you're like me, you've probably never seen a thought—even though you may have witnessed evidence of cerebral cognition or thought activity registering on an oscilloscope or appearing in a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI); nevertheless, you and I think them all the time.

The framework of this book essentially centers around a few ontological (a word from the Greek word ontos, meaning to be) constructs.  Like a three-act, theatrical performance, each act contains important, situational information underlying the overall storyline of the drama, which, for the purpose of better comprehending Sex is Sacred, is represented in the following three, straightforward, life-altering questions: Where did I come from, why am I here, and where am I going?  As you might imagine, the answer to any or to all three of these simple, yet colossal, questions could significantly impact the way you and I generally view ourselves and see other people.  As a result, this book attempts to put forward some pivotal, spiritual concepts as well as promote the practice of premarital celibacy, marital loyalty, and moral valiancy—both in the public and in the private arenas of our lives.

Sex is Sacred isn't necessarily replete in every particular; however, it will hopefully manage to serve as something of a valuable reference point for evaluating the relative magnitude of some of the competing factors that vigorously vie for the favor of your heart and which continuously contend for the fervor of your soul.  Furthermore, Sex is Sacred will hopefully also serve as something of a moral lifeline, a spiritual shield, and a constructive resource in your life—especially if you're actively seeking to either evade or escape from the debasing, ensnaring grasp of pornographic enticement (or similar morally marginalizing influences) or, and not least of which, if you're earnestly eschewing the spiritually anaesthetizing sway of soul-scuttling secularism and the insidious, self-centered, cultural inculcation of sexual permissiveness.  Had enough societal degeneracy and cultural Marxist insurgency?

Sex is Sacred is a spiritual rationale for the discipline of moral virtue.  Regardless of your initial take on the sanctity of heterosexual intercourse, Sex is Sacred will hopefully serve to enhance your heart and edify your soul in terms of:

•  Elevating your spiritual literacy

•  Improving your proficiency to differentiate between love and lust

•  Helping you refine, respect, polish, and prize your spiritual self

•  Promoting moral sobriety and sexual integrity

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And in case you don't savor or if you disagree with what you discover between the covers of this book, I invite you to simply place whatever you may find disconcerting herein on the bookshelf of your mind for future reference and review.  Remember, what matters most is what God thinks and values.

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Matthew S. Jones

Chapter 1

Human Identity: More than Molecular

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The assertion that heterosexual intercourse is a necessary evil is nothing more than a spiritually myopic, sectarian notion.  Heterosexual intercourse is congruent with the design and construct of human gender.  Is gender evil or trivial?  Or is gender premortally appointed and permanently retained?  Incredibly, revealed religion indicates that human gender is of premortal origin and therefore precedes mortal birth.

Listen, even if you happen to be someone who tends to dismiss spiritual beliefs as meaningless mysticism or who marginalizes religious genre by customarily associating religious ideology either with anecdotal hyperbole or with arcane antiquity, keep your eyes peeled and continue reading.  Why?  Because the odds are you're probably in for something of an unexpected, enlightening surprise since one of the upsides of inspired scripture is that sacred writ typically augments spiritual awakening as well as supplements moral anchoring and, among the honest in heart, instills a yearning for God.

Stay with me as I take this opportunity either to treat you to or to reacquaint you with some extraordinary, if not revolutionary, spiritual distinctions in selections of scriptural texts.  Sound good?

In a nutshell, human spirituality underscores human, spiritual health and pertains to the supernatural, vertical dimension of human existence.  Generally speaking, our own spirituality, at least in part, pivots on our awareness of matters of extratemporal importance as well as hinges on our sense of who we really are on the inside—the silent summit and center stage of our fundamental, albeit sometimes ambivalent or occasionally disarrayed, self-image.  Significantly, human spirituality not only potentially connects us to a latent consciousness of all things right and sacred but consequently also alerts us to an underlying awareness of our individual, indelible, indissoluble, spiritual identity.

Sacredness speaks to the soul, sustains the sublime, and serves as an inspirational springboard with profound promise.  Clearly, canonical scripture is a store of sacred instruction.  Accordingly, scripture preserves the dynamism of human spirituality, substantiating the validity of human immortality and attesting to the supernal value of moral virtue, which moral virtue preserves integral, moral wholeness of heart.

Hasn't the salient soliloquy of your soul ever attempted to tackle the quintessential question: Where did I come from?, which encapsulates one of the most principal aspects of human, mortal existence?  Understandably, both conception and pregnancy are generally seen as normative markers for the initiation and starting point of human identity.  Surprisingly, the mysterious, supernatural nature surrounding the ontological question concerned with human existence is cached and repeatedly alluded to within the canon of Judeo-Christian scripture.  For example, statements in the Old and New Covenant (or, in other words, the Old and New Testament) refer to the phenomenon of people existing as premortal, independent, gender-endowed, human, spirit entities in the society of other human, spirit entities prior to their being enrobed with human flesh in the miraculous process of prenatal gestation and birth into mortality on the earth.  Consequently, you and I—and everyone else for that matter—are more than molecular, multicellular beings.  All people everywhere are flesh-enrobed, spirit entities.

Take a moment to dampen your doubts and to quell your skepticism by immersing your mind in the light and illumination of the succeeding salvo of scriptural selections, presented in this chapter in order to spotlight the pivotal premise of humankind's premortal, spirit being existence.  Speaking of the categorical, inescapable event of physical death, the author of Ecclesiastes distinguishes between the disposition of the mortal body and the state of the immortal spirit in assuring:

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.  (Emphasis added.  See the King James Version of the Bible [KJV] Ecclesiastes 12:7.)

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The preceding verse separates the phenomenon of death into two, distinct dimensions—a physical dimension and a supernatural dimension.  The molecular self or, in other words, the corporeal, physical entity is reunited with the earth from whence it was assimilated as part of the mortal construct of natural decomposition whereas the particle self (or spirit entity), which is often referred to as the soul, returns to the realm of the God of human souls who fathered it in accordance with the immortal construct of moral accountancy and filial association.

Did you happen to notice that the author of Ecclesiastes places parallel emphasis on the use of the word return?  Why is this?  The answer is rooted in the definition of the word return and begs the rhetorical question: How can something or someone return someplace unless the thing or the person referred to had previously existed or formerly been situated there?  The logical corollary is: Neither a thing nor a person can return anywhere unless either the thing or the person referred to came from the place that it is said to return to.

Consider the following intriguing, one-sided interrogation recorded in the Book of Job:

THEN the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare if thou hast understanding.

Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Emphasis added.  See KJV Job 38:1-7.)

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Subsequently, we can ask ourselves: Where was Job when God forged the foundations of the earth and all the sons of God shouted for joy?  Was Job nonexistent before he was born?  Did Job's identity and personhood suddenly materialize during his mother's maternity?  Why would Job be a nonexistent entity if God already had sons who were shouting for joy at the shaping of the earth?  Wouldn't Job have been one of the premortal, spirit sons of God who shouted for joy?  Therefore, if God already has premortal, spirit sons before the time of the earth's formation, can't we logically deduce, for example, that God likewise has premortal, spirit daughters by then as well?

Similarly, the prophet Jeremiah solemnly attested of his personal, premortal association with God, an exalted, extra-temporal Being, in these words:

Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.  (Emphasis added.  See KJV Jeremiah 1:4-5.)

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Here, the prophet Jeremiah, perhaps even to his own personal astonishment, records God's straightforward acknowledgment of God's awareness of Jeremiah's existence, identity, and premortal association, affirming Jeremiah's premortal foreordination as a future prophet in the now ancient kingdom of Israel.

Segueing to the New Testament, the reportage of the Apostle John, the author of the only non-synoptic Gospel in the New Testament which primarily champions the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, provisions humanity with the following statement of the then recently resurrected Redeemer and Mediator of humankind (for scriptural confirmation of Jesus' divinely appointed right of mediation, refer to KJV 1 Timothy 2:5), revealing the nature of human origin in the following unmistakable words to a tenderhearted, conscientious female—the first disciple of the Lamb of God to visit Jesus' temporary tomb on Sunday, the initial day of the Hebrew week and the third calendar day after Jesus' crucifixion:

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.  (Emphasis added.  See KJV John 20:17.)

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Wow!  Did you hear that?  According to the resurrected Redeemer and Mediator of humankind, Jesus' Father is also Jesus' God as well as the Father and God of humankind.  Phenomenal!

Jesus' God fulfills the respective roles of Father and God for one and for all because Jesus' God is the Father of the human soul, meaning the soul of every man and every woman—your soul and my soul.  Moreover, the filial nature of humanity's premortal association with Deity is plainly preserved in what is popularly referred to as the Lord's Prayer, which commences with the familiar, oft-repeated phrase, "Our Father which art in heaven . . . (Italics added.  See KJV Matthew 6:9-13).  Tellingly, the phrase Our Father," as referred to above, succinctly conveys, without pomposity or pretension, the solemn reality of humanity's premortal kinship with God.

Not surprisingly, the Apostle Paul, previously known as Saul, the son of a Pharisee and an Hebrew of the Hebrews (See KJV Philippians 3:5), frankly confirmed the fact that God is the Father of our spirit selves in the following emphatic instruction pertaining to parental correction to some of his contemporaries when he rhetorically inquired:

Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of [human] spirits and live?

For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.  (Emphasis added.  See KJV Hebrews 12:9-10.)

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The fundamental distinction provided above by the Apostle Paul definitively differentiates between the siring of mortal sinew and the siring of premortal spirit, dispelling doctrinal uncertainty as to the elemental nature of human existence.  Isn't this wonderful news?  And by distinguishing between deferential regard for the fathers of our mortal bodies and the supernal respect we owe to the Father of our souls, the Apostle Paul candidly and concretely affirms the supernatural nature of human origin.

As spirit sons and spirit daughters of God, human beings not only typically possess temporal, gender identity, human beings also, and more importantly, inherently possess eternal, gender identity either as a human, male spirit entity or as a human, female spirit entity fathered by God.  In other words, each and every person on the planet possesses eternal maleness or eternal femaleness.

Notably, even the renowned John the Baptist attested of his own, premortal station in relation to Jesus of Nazareth when the Baptist stated, "This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me" (Emphasis added.  See KJV John 1:28-30).  However, John the Baptist was conceived in the flesh approximately six months prior to Jesus' corporeal conception (See KJV Luke 1:26-36).  How could Jesus possibly exist before John the Baptist since Jesus was born into mortality after John the Baptist, unless John the Baptist is referring to a prior, premortal, spirit birth order and spirit being existence?  Surprisingly, the Apostle Peter partially substantiates John the Baptist's above-mentioned affirmation by proclaiming, "But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world . . . (Emphasis added.  See KJV 1 Peter 1:19-20 and compare with KJV John 17:5, 24.  Note that the word predestined" is not present in this scriptural citation.  Rather, the word foreordained is employed, which neither negates nor nullifies the sacrosanct principle of humanity's moral agency).

Finally, components of the principle of premortal, spirit existence, individual identity, and gender endowment are also reflected in the following three scriptural selections pertaining to the manner of Lucifer's demonic metamorphosis.  For instance, the prophet Isaiah remarks:

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?  (Emphasis added.  See KJV Isaiah 14:12, 16-17.)

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Jesus the Christ parenthetically corroborates the prophet Isaiah's onerous observation of Lucifer the Fallen, Sore Loser and epitome of morally malignant, moral agency and implicitly testifies of his own personal, premortal, spirit existence as indicated in the following encounter:

And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.

And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.  (Emphasis added.  See KJV Luke 10:17-18.)

Additionally, John the Revelator records:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.  (Emphasis added.  See KJV Revelation 12:7-9.)

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These three scriptural references noted above repeatedly accentuate the personal attributes of gender endowment, identity and individuality, intrigue and agency.  First of all, the prophet Isaiah alludes to Lucifer's pre-terrestrial prominence by acknowledging Lucifer's prestigious status as a son of the morning (the distinction of which is insinuated in KJV Job 38:1-7 and the comparative preeminence of which is more particularly evidenced in KJV Revelation 22:16), who fell from heaven, eventually to be viewed with vermicular regard.  Next and unequivocally, the Jesus the Christ confirms and validates the prophet Isaiah's account in declaring his personal witness of Lucifer's fall from heaven.  Third, John the Revelator notes Lucifer's historic, unheavenly upheaval and indicts Lucifer with the literary device of metaphor in the didactic casts of premortal, menacing dragon and Edenic, duplicitous serpent.  Here, John the Revelator ascribes self-centered, cold-blooded, reptilian properties to Lucifer, a subtle, serpentine-styled renegade, who's actively menaced mankind with his fellow, fallen mutineers—agency-endowed, spirit-entity apostates (a third part of the stars or company of heaven, which were drawn after the tail of the dragon and subsequently cast to earth [See KJV Revelation 12:4 and compare with KJV Revelation 12:9]).

Heaven knows we humans are simple creatures; however, in light of the scriptural selections presented thus far, can't we figuratively connect the dots of human, supernatural, ontological nature and acknowledge that we're fundamentally spiritual beings, not mere, multicellular mortals?  Accordingly, can we not likewise declare that human beings are not mindless minions?  Indeed, as able-bodied beings, we've been granted the moral agency to commandeer our conduct and to construct our character.

The complementary power that males and females possess to procreate and to replenish the earth is a divine endowment and a corollary of personal, premortal, gender identity and constitutes a sacred stewardship.  Heterosexual intercourse suitably exemplifies the universal concept of form corresponding to function—an elementary example of Divine design and intelligent intention.  Moreover, heterosexual intercourse employs the fundamental endowment of gender to potentially outfit a fellow spirit son or spirit daughter of God with a corporeal, physical body—a necessary, developmental step in order for him or her to transition from the anticipatory, spirit-entity populous of premortality to the probationary, molecular dimension of mortality.

In consequence of the potential impact of our procreative capacity, which calls for solemn contemplation in terms of the formation of kinship, cognation, and intergenerational connection, we continually face the ongoing, everyday challenge of conscientiously and commendably charting the course of our lives.  For instance, we inevitably either resolve to subjugate our sensual appetites and orchestrate the overall symphony of our souls in respectful resonance with the divinely ordained order of our great Creator's plan of sexually reciprocal, heterosexual pairing for the procreation, parenting, and protection of God's spirit offspring the world over or we essentially settle for the moral deterioration, defiant cadence, and reckless cacophony accompanying the self-centered, subversive crusade of promiscuous appetency and narcissistic salacity.

Don't we need to rise above the sensual in order to realize what's essential?

You're not a sex object; you're a living soul.  You're not sexual fodder; you're a spirit son or a spirit daughter.  You're not only a unique, one-of-a-kind human being all the way down to the dual-purpose pattern of your fingerprints, you're partly divine because—by virtue of your premortal, spiritual birthright—you possess a spark of the supernatural.  Consequently, the spark of divinity within you may periodically spur your spirit or strum your heartstrings, prompting you to transcend the imposition of either a physical impairment or a circumstantial impediment.  And which spark may stir your soul to subdue the spiritually stifling stimulation as well as the emotionally seducing excitation of your physical senses.  And which spark may also occasionally encourage you to square and to re-center the axis of your soul by taking inventory of your values, by repositioning the epicenter of your sentiments, and by procuring sufficient space for the supremely inspirational in your heart—the solarium of your soul.

The most elemental aspect of our being and our