Moreover, the fact that God has established marriage means that you and I are to get our ideas about it, not from the books we may read or from the movies, but from God Himself and from the Bible. I suppose that over the years I have read perhaps ten or twenty books about marriage and sexual problems, and the general impression I have had from the non-Christian books (and sometimes from the Christian ones) is that marriage is primarily a matter of sexual compatibility and adjustment. This is part of the truth, of course. But at best it is one-sided, and by itself it is only slightly less misleading than the marriages in movies, where marriage is either a farce or else the institutionalization of romantic love. Neither of these is right. And what the Bible teaches about marriage is quite different. 

In the final analysis, however, even running is not the solution. For although it will help for the moment, it will not do so permanently. Real and lasting victory requires a more powerful and more vigorous philosophy to defeat it. Is there such a philosophy? Certainly there is—only we should say "theology" for it is tied up, as it must be, with the nature and the purposes of God.

Given the pervasiveness of the world’s perversion of sex, what are we to do in this situation? We cannot escape. That is monasticism, and it is unbiblical. We cannot retreat into celibacy, for God created sex and gave marriage. And we certainly cannot give vent to promiscuity or even genteel experimentation. The only answer is that we must fight a debased and perverted morality with a pure one. And we must live and teach what Christ taught as the true way to happiness. 

The positive side of the Lord Jesus Christ's second great example of Christian conduct is marriage—Christian marriage—and the perversion that is opposed to it is lust. Jesus said, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matt. 5:27-28). According to Jesus, lust is the equivalent of adultery, just as anger is the equivalent of murder. The standard for His followers is to be, quite simply, chastity before marriage and fidelity afterwards. In this, Jesus reinforces the whole of the biblical teaching.

The second step for those who wish to overcome their anger is to correct the injustice, for there is always injustice on both sides in any normal dispute. Thus, Jesus said, "Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee: leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift" (Matt. 5:23-24).