If you find this headline stunning, I apologize, but I was stunned too. At first, I had to really think about it. Could I be missing something here? Is this what people actually believe Paul was trying to say? Is this what people think? Is this normal? All these years, I thought the gospel image of marriage was about Christ’s love for us—but the Gospel Coalition here, in Pagan worldly fashion, reduces love to the act of sex.

Back in 2019, Jen Wilkin, a contributor to The Gospel Coalition and a lady-preacher at Matt Chandler’s The Village Church preached a sermon comparing women’s periods to the crucifixion. In typical neo-Evangelical fashion, Wilkin takes her illustration to an extreme that far exceeds anything revealed in Scripture.

“I want you to think for a second about what the implications might be about the way that women understand the gospel as a result of being embodied females,” Wilkin says, “women’s bodies every 28 days tell them a parable about the shedding of blood for the renewing of life.”

She then concludes her illustration by offering up that women now have some special insight into the gospel because of their natural bodily functions—again, making a point that exceeds anything in the Scriptures.

First off, gross. But more importantly, what’s wrong with these people? Yesterday, The Gospel Coalition released an article making a similarly asinine comparison that, once again, far exceeds what the Scriptures have to say about the gospel. In an article titled Sex Won’t Save You, the author, who describes himself as a formerly sex-obsessed young man who “used to look to sex for salvation,” compares a man ejaculating into his wife to Christ ejaculating his “seed” (the Word of God) into the Church.

The author writes, “Each brings something unique to the fusing of two bodies as one, and this distinction is iconic. On that honeymoon in Cabo, the groom goes into his bride. He is not only with his beloved but within his beloved. He enters the sanctuary of his spouse, where he pours out his deepest presence and bestows an offering, a gift, a sign of his pilgrimage, that has the potential to grow within her into new life.”

“This is a picture of the gospel,” the TGC author continues, graphically comparing this mental image and sexual act to Christ’s relationship with the church. “Christ arrives in salvation to be not only with his church but within his church. Christ gives himself to his beloved with extravagant generosity, showering his love upon us and imparting his very presence within us. Christ penetrates his church with the generative seed of his Word and the life-giving presence of his Spirit, which takes root within her and grows to bring new life into the world.”

The author then describes the bride of the man as “gladly receives the warmth of his presence and accepts the sacrificial offering he bestows upon the altar within her Most Holy Place” then compares this again to Christ:

Similarly, the church embraces Christ in salvation, celebrating his arrival with joy and delight. She has prepared and made herself ready, anticipating his advent in eager anticipation. She welcomes him into the most vulnerable place of her being, lavishing herself upon him with extravagant hospitality. She receives his generous gift within her—the seed of his Word and presence of his Spirit—partnering with him to bring children of God into the world.

In Ephesians 5, Paul uses the analogy of the two becoming one flesh as Christ’s Union with His Church, but he doesn’t go into any sort of graphic biological descriptive detail. I know there are people who are going to defend this, but those people need to ask themselves if this is really the point that Paul was trying to make. It isn’t, and this is just simply bizarre. What the author at TGC wrote sounds more like somebody obsessed with sex who is reading far too much into the Scriptures than it actually says. One would think that if this were the picture the Apostle Paul was trying to paint, he could have just done so—but thankfully, he didn’t.

The author of the article, Joshua Ryan Butler, also writes and provides resources for Preston Sprinkle’s Center for Faith, Gender, and Sexuality, a ministry that promotes “gay celibate Christianity” including man-to-man and woman-to-woman intimate relationships that stop short only of sexual intercourse. In one paper he published for Sprinkle, he argues that because we wouldn’t bar opposite-sex attracted people from membership, neither should we bar same-sex attracted people.