One thing that has puzzled me is the Bible’s attitude toward sex. Paul says that marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled, but the OT treats sex as somewhat dirty. If a man or woman had an emission, they were to bathe and be unclean until evening. The woman was unclean during her cycle and had to purify herself afterwards. Men were not to have relations with their wives before battle in order that their vessels might be clean. Women were unclean after childbirth. Sex was forbidden on the Sabbath. Since the OT is a type of other things of God, the uncleanness factor might be representative of something else. Why might God have treated sex in this way?
Israel, its history, religion, and ceremonies are types of things of God (Heb 8:5, 9:9, 10:1, Col 2:17, I Pet 3:21, Gal 4:24). If you look at what God did to Adam and Eve after they sinned, He cursed both of them. Eve was cursed in her childbearing and all that goes with it. Adam was cursed in his seed in that all that proceeded from him were doomed to death (I Cor 15:22). Therefore, both Adam and Eve were cursed in their reproductive organs. Since God cursed both the reproduction of man and woman, the sexual vessels were polluted by God’s curse. When God pronounced uncleanness on the use and operation of these vessels, it was not reproduction itself that He was typifying as unclean, for He had commanded man and woman to reproduce (Gen 1:28). What was typified by the uncleaness associated with emissions was the pollution of Adam’s seed and woman’s childbearing. Sex in marriage itself is, as Paul said, “Honorable in all and the bed undefiled”. It’s just Adam’s seed and woman’s child bearing that have a curse on them and are thereby unclean.
The curse on Adam’s seed is of fundamental importance. Because all of us are of Adam’s seed, we are born doomed to die, because we are part of Adam and inherit his curse of death. Since we are doomed to die at conception, our death is already obligated, and it therefore does not pay the penalty for our sins, nor can we offer an innocent baby for sin, because neither we nor that baby have a free life to give. We are all doomed to death from conception by the curse on Adam’s seed. Because Jesus was not born of Adam’s seed, He was free from the curse, and had a life to give. Because He did not sin, when He came to the cross, His life was His to give or not, as He chose. Because He was Creator, His life was worth more than His creation. When He offered His life as a sacrifice for sin, God accepted life for life as a just payment for the wages of sin. The Virgin Birth was extremely important, because it brought into the world another Adam (I Cor 15:45); one that was free from the curse of God and one therefore that could potentially have a life free of sin that could be offered as atonement.
When Christ died, the Devil took Jesus to Hades into the Devil’s stronghold, or as Jesus put it during His ministry, the strong man’s house (Mt 12:19, Mk 3:27). The Devil had no right to Jesus at all. He had no right to kill Him because He was an innocent man. He had no right to take His soul, because Jesus was not a son of Adam and had not come under the Devil’s sovereignty (Jn 14:30). Jesus soul was essentially kidnapped by the Devil. Because the Devil took Jesus into Hades into the Devil’s house, the Devil commited an act of war against God. Before that day, God could not justly enter into the Devil’s house and spoil him, because what the Devil had, he obtained legally. However, when the Devil took Jesus’ soul without any justification whatever, God was justified in taking Jesus back by force, and Jesus was justified in spoiling Hades of whatever He wanted as an act of war. In that manner, Jesus obtained the souls of the righteous that were in Hades, the title to the earth, and the keys of death and Hades.
