There are certain false teachers who preach that sex in marriage and eating foods freely are wrong and are good only for second-class Christianity.
Christian speaker and author John Piper said, however, that the Bible never said anything about these two things being wrong.
In an article written on his website Desiring God, Piper cited 1 Timothy 4:1-5, wherein the apostle Paul dismissed these false teachings as "demonic."
Verse 3, in particular, says that marriage and food were created by God "to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer."
Piper explained that those who know the truth of the Gospel, revel in God's Word, and pray and dedicate everything to God should enjoy these two things because they have been made holy by God.
"They are set apart from the sinful use of the world and made pure and precious and beautiful by participation in the goodness of God," he said.
Piper added that Christians should not be embarrassed by the "forthright sensuality of sexual love in marriage" since the Bible itself sometimes portrays it graphically.
"It is no shame that 'a man's ways are before the Lord' as her breasts fill him at all times with delight. This is why God made her that way and him that way. In fact, that this delight in her is 'before' the Lord — in the presence of the Lord — points to the truth that all our joy in what God has made is meant to be a delight in God. There is something of his glory in all the glories of the world," he said.
Piper warned that Christians might lose sight of this fact since Hollywood has "ripped the curtains off the sacred marriage bed and turned a luxuriant, holy pleasure into a cheap spectator sport."
But even though sex nowadays has been "sinfully misused," Christians should always see Christ's holiness in it. Sex belongs to Christians, added Piper, because sex belongs to God.
"The pleasures of sex are meant for believers. They are designed for their greatest expression by the children of God. He saves his richest gifts for his children. And as we enjoy his gift of sex, we say, by our covenant faithfulness to our spouse, that God is greater than sex. And the pleasures of sex are themselves an overflow of God's own goodness," he shared. "This pleasure is less than what we will know fully in him at his right hand. And in it, we taste something of his very exquisiteness."
