The Key to Understanding the Sexual Wisdom of Proverbs

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. (Prov. 5:15–17)

Ray Ortlund shared the following gem of wisdom in Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel on how freedom within proper restraints helps stoke the embers of a healthy marriage.

The key to understanding the sexual wisdom of Proverbs is to combine both form and freedom, both structure and liberation.

Conservative people love form and restraint and control. Progressive people love freedom and openness and choices. Both see part of the truth, but wisdom sees more.

Wisdom teaches us that God gave us our sexuality both to focus our romantic joy and to unleash our romantic joy. When our desires are both focused and unleashed—both form and freedom—our sexual experience becomes wonderfully intensified. A marriage can flourish within both form and freedom, because sex is like fire. In the fireplace, it keeps us warm. Outside the fireplace, it burns the house down. This passage in Proverbs 5 is saying, “Keep the fire within the marital fireplace, and stoke that fire as hot as you can.””**

Learn more about Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel (Short Studies in Biblical Theology)

**This was originally one paragraph I formatted for internet readers.

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