Real Sex vs Faux Sex

Marriage (REAL MARRIAGE) puts it into perspective Christianity Today:

"The church, following the picture of sexuality throughout Scripture, has consistently taught that sex belongs smack dab in the middle of marriage. 'One can say that in Christianity's vocabulary the only real sex is the sex that happens in a marriage,' Lauren Winner wrote in Real Sex. 'The faux sex that goes on outside marriage is not really sex at all.' Thus, a distinctly Christian argument for premarital abstinence is ontological, not utilitarian. God keeps sex in marriage as an expression of the audacious covenant that two people make, in the context of community, to be bound together exclusively and eternally—an echo of the bond between the persons of the Trinity.

Against this backdrop, premarital abstinence is all about obeying God's statutes on sexuality, trusting that his statutes are anything but arbitrary—they're an expression of God's desire to protect the integrity of the family and to see his image-bearers experience true intimacy with each other. In the end, we can trust that abstinence really does "work," because STDs, rape, broken marriages, and souls in pain have no place in a world where everyone plays by God's rules."