Ponderings on Jesus' sexuality...

[Pitah7]

Has anybody ever wondered about Jesus' sexuality? There is nothing recorded in the Bible to indicate he ever struggled with sexual temptations, and yet if he was fully man, he doubtless would have constantly been tempted, especially being celibate. And if he was sinless, that must mean he never thought sexually about a woman, right (as per his admonition that even thinking about having sex with a woman was tantamount to adultery). But as any man who has had a nocturnal emission will attest to, the unconscious id thinks of sex even if the conscious somehow wills it away. So Jesus must have had those too... thoughts?

[Magdalenbrother]

Some Church Fathers (notably Clement of Alexandria)said that Jesus did not eat like we do. He just went through the motions of eating to convince people that he had a body but he did not have any digestive process running inside his body and he did not defecate.

This is where "Jesus is God" leads one.

Jesus had many temptations and he openly said at in the last supper in Luke:

Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations.

That is why he was longing to die and resurrect. For then he would be completely free from the flesh and its temptations.

I think that Jesus' temptations must have been of another order than ours. Phil 2,6 says that Jesus was tempted to grab equality with God like Satan.

I doubt that he was ever tempted to masturbate or do other things like that. He had the spirit very early on, at least from his baptism in the Jordan.

Even if he was just like us before that, does it really matter? The fact is he became fully divine(not God) in the end. Just like Mary.

[Pitah7]

Are you suggesting that Jesus was not God but also not man? What do you say he was?

[Magdalenbrother]

Thank you for your question. Oftentimes, questions are better than arguments.

First of all I would like to say that for me the taxonomical question regarding Jesus (is he a god, God, an angel, a man/god, a plant etc.) is completely off the beam. Jesus said very clearly that only the Father knows the son (see Mat 11,27). This saying of Jesus' alone should have precluded any Christological conundrums. For me it means (what else could it mean?) that Jesus' identity is unknowable for ever. Only the Father is accessible to us. Something very similar is hinted at in the book of Revelation when Jesus says that each of the saved souls will be given a name written on a white pebble. And this name will only be known to that particular person and to Jesus. Noone else will have access to that name. Again, there is something inviolable, infinitely holy and therefore out of reach in each created person, something that cannot be understood and analysed, let alone manipulated. Jesus, the son of God, is outside the realm of human knowledge. Period.

Let me also say that Jesus didn't care at all how people described his identity. In the synoptic Gospels we see him forbidding his disciples to speak about it, which means that the supposedly salvific question of Jesus' identity was not a part of his preaching at all during his mission in Judea and the Galilee. Notice that when the disciples on the road to Emmaus spoke of him as a "mighty prophet before God", he did not rebuke them. He did not correct the blind who called him "son of david", a title which is very, very remote from a divine title.

As far as I know, he only rebuked the man who called him "good" because for him only God was good. And he insisted vehemently that the Father was the "person" who mattered, not him.

But since you ask me who Jesus is, I will volunteer an answer, which is purely based on my intellectual knowledge of the Scriptures:

He is the New Adam and as Adam "made in the image and likeness of God". To be in the image and the likeness of God means that one is divine. But not God. Jesus attained the full stature of Man, which was promised to the first Adam but which he did not realize because he was immature. He is also the Cosmic Person through whom God creates everything. This is very important to understand: Jesus is not the Creator. Only the Father creates but the Father does not create the universe alone and in the void: He creates through his son and in him as the Alpha Person. Finally, the "man Jesus-Christ" is the goal and entelechy of Creation. Paul says that everything was created for him. The whole cosmos is destined to become humanized in Christ and his brothers (no gender implied). That is the Omega point.

And Jesus is still "in construction" because He does not stand alone. The bride is an intimate part of Him. No man without wo-man. No Adam without his succor/mirror image. When the bride is ready and fully united with the bridegroom, the total Christ will appear.

So our knowledge of Christ is incomplete. We have only seen one half of his being. The female part is still "in construction". The Christ is male and female. Not God and male. That is the false hybrid put forward by mainstream Christianity in its horror of the feminine.

[Magdalenbrother]

Let me add also that for me Jesus was born from Joseph and Mary. If he had been conceived virginally, he would not have been a descendant of David since Joseph alone has David's blood in his veins. Besides Paul knows nothing of a virginal birth for he says that Jesus was born from a "woman".

4But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Gal 4,4

If he had believed in the virginal conception it is inconceivable (no pun intended) that he would have missed the opportunity to state it very clearly. But the truth is that for Paul it is the resurrection and not a virginal birth that makes Jesus into a son of God. This is stated unambiguously in the first verses of the epistle to the Romans.

and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.


Furthermore, the epistle to the Hebrews (chapter 5) makes it very clear that Jesus was not perfect and needed to learn to be totally obedient to God. Of course, this also deals a fatal blow to the theory of the virginal birth. And to the Anselmian theory of Redemption through the outpouring of divine blood.

8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10 and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

How difficult it was for him to surender his "will to live" (to use a term from XIXth century German philosophy) is shown by the preceding verse:

7 During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.


Yeah, when you realize what is really written in the Scriptures, you wonder how mainstream Christianity could be so wrong on so many points. It is a sad story, really...

[Findo]

what, so we just throw out the bits in the gosples where it says mary was virgin?

Pitah7, scripture teaches that Jesus spent time in the desert where he was tempted and proven. Not only does this mean he was able to be the sacrifice for sin, it means as a believer with the indwelling of Christ, we have a con fidence ot trust Him, as He has already fought the battles before us, so to speak.

In terms of our unconsious mind, we must realise that we are a fallen race.. we are born into sin, and as Paul says, we sometimes do things we don't want. However, Jesus, who was actually concieved via the Holy Spirit, not Joseph, as scripture teaches, was born without sin, in order that he should take the sins of the whole world.