Well, it’s less than a week until my wedding. Like any normal man I’ve thought about my wedding night. Most husbands want to communicate love to their wives in sex. Couples also want to experience passion. But some couples think that means it’s okay to “lust” after their spouses. But after reflecting on the Book of Tobit, I see that there is a big difference between a pure passionate desire and lust. Lust takes but a pure desire gives.
I heard a story recently of a couple that was experiencing some difficulties in their marriage. One complaint from the wife was “I really don’t like how he grabs me in sex. I don’t know why, but I don’t like it.” This wife was sharing her struggle to a friend of hers. Her friend said, “Does it feel irreverent?” She said, “That’s it! Yes! It felt irreverent.”
If sexual desire is taking from the other, it misses the point of sex. Sex says, “I give everything to you.” Sex says, “I am married to you.” When a husband, for instance, tries to take instead of give, he is turning his wife into an object to satisfy his own desires.
But in the book of Tobit, on the night of Tobias and Sarah’s wedding, Tobias says to his wife, “My sister, come, let us pray and beg our Lord to grant us mercy and protection” (Tob. 8:4). He cares for and reverences Sarah as “his sister.” A weird term, I know. But… well… you don’t lust after your sister, do you? You protect and reverence your sister. That’s the idea. And you need to treat your wife that way – with reverence.
This doesn’t mean a Christian couple can’t experience passion, though. God made sex and sexual longing. The very language of the Song of Songs speaks to this passion – this longing for the beloved. A longing to “have and to hold,” but never to take.
As my longing for my own fiancée deepens, I ask God to continue to purify that longing. I ask that He might continue to deepen my reverence for my beloved, along with my desire for her. I pray that we might truly have and hold one another, rather than take one another.
Lust takes, but pure desire gives.
Gabriel Milano has his Master’s degree in Theology in Marriage and Family at the John Paul II Institute and is a content creator and speaker for TOBET. He also writes fantasy novels for children and young adults, under the pen name G. M. Dantes.
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This is a profound and powerful way of seeing marital relationships. Giving rather than taking. I wish I had known some of these truths when I was younger.