1534AFC082115 – Supplement
Read it online here, please.
I hope you will pardon me for coming back so soon. There is something else I am led to share with you, so I hope you will take time to read this message as well. I am grateful for your willingness to read these messages. They come to me, and are sent to you, after prayerful reading of Scripture using the method some of you know as “Lectio Divino.” There is a lot going on in our lives, in our communities, in our nation, and in our world that requires watchful waiting, and that waiting must be faith-based. We who are in Christ know of his bountiful Graces that give hope to the World that even whose who ignore or abhor Christ and his Way are blessed by those Graces. Therefore, I respectfully ask you to return with me to this Sunday’s epistle and consider its implications.
Ephesians 5:25-33 – 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, 27 so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” * 32 This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. 33 Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband. *Genesis 2:24
The union of a man and woman in marriage is a prefiguring, a representation, of the relationship between Christ and the Church. It is right that it should be a sacrament because it was thus established by God to be so. Marriage is the foundation of all human community because it is the means by which we generate a family. “Family” is a word ill-used these days. As an example of how severely the concept of family has been corrupted, one has only to consider the “situation comedy” called Modern Family or to reflect on the recent Supreme Court Decisions regarding the Defense of Marriage Act and the “Constitutional right” of same-sex marriage. The sanctity of marriage is, nonetheless, untarnished because the aberrational union of two persons of the same sex is not a marriage per se; it is simply another evil promulgated by co-opting immorality as “truth and justice.” It is, in other words, a sugar-coating of evil for the sake of being “politically correct.” It is making out that a lie is instead a truth, and therefore good. Immorality can never be “good.” It is an affront against the divine requirement of virtuous living.
As surely as humankind has in its history all manner of immorality since the occurrence of Original Sin, immorality continues to divide and defile the relationships between men and women. The condoning of immorality has been growing unchecked for centuries, but in the past fifty years or so, it has become so much a part of our lives that we scarcely think of it as sin any more. In fact, there is such a lack of a sense of sin that we no longer seem to believe sin exists and blindly accept moral relativism – “What’s true for you might not be what’s true for me, and what’s right to you might not be what’s right to me.” Hogwash! Truth is Truth, as Mr. Frank Peretti pointed out, and you can’t call it by a different name and make it go away. Here are some quotes from various sources about determining truth.
“Sitting in a pew in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in an oven makes you a biscuit.” (or) “Sleeping in the garage doesn’t make you a car.”
“One Roman Tribune to another: ‘I’ve figured out how to solve the garbage problem here in Rome. We’ll just rename it “tribute” and then Caesar will want it all for himself!'”
“A fetus isn’t human until it draws its first breath. It’s just tissue.”
“We don’t have to get married. Love isn’t ratified by a piece of paper. Families come in all shapes and sizes. It’s love that matters, not religion. We love each other, and don’t need anyone or anything to be a family for each other.”
Living together, shacking-up, hooking-up, casual sex, unlimited partners, and other transient relationships are condoned – even encouraged – by many people the world around. Saying that’s OK doesn’t make it OK. If you call garbage tribute, it’s still garbage. What’s in a name? What’s in a word? “A rose by any other name …” And immorality by any other name is still immorality. There is another name used in the Bible for immorality – specifically the immorality of extramarital cohabitation. That word is fornication. Let me show you what the Apostle Paul said about it in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 – 9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. Here is another quote from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
Galatians 5:19-23 – 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21 envy,[a] drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
These sins are embraced in our “modern culture,” but it is a culture of death. In a true marriage between one man and one woman, they turn away from that kind of behavior and opened their lives to the fruit of the Spirit for now there is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
“But the concept of ‘marriage’ has changed before. Didn’t Abraham have relations with his wife’s servant, and didn’t ultra-wise King Solomon have 700 wives and 300 concubines?” Both statements are true. In 1 Kings 11:1-5, the passage states that Solomon’s errors led him astray from God. Our errors about marriage – and a host of other things ordained by God – are also leading us astray much to the delight of our ancient enemy, Satan. Our government (and other governments as well) have declared that heterosexual marriage is unimportant and that it is legal for same-sex partners to have legal standing as couples in the federal tax codes. Our “Supreme Court” (and the courts of many other nations) has repeatedly declared that it is legal to murder babies in the most heinous fashion. That is simply renaming garbage as treasure. Whatever is moral and right will always be moral and right because what determines the morality of a thing or action is not what we call it but what GOD calls it. It may be legal for a mother to kill her child or for a man or a woman to legally cohabitate with a person of the same gender, but both of these are immoral; they are depraved corruptions of the divinely instituted relationship upon which God gave his blessing as human community. The laws enacted by any human court cannot and do not supersede laws given to us in Truth, by Truth, and for Truth.
So, we see that – as Paul said – this is a great mystery, and an even greater mystery is that the caring relationship between a man and a woman in a valid marriage is the pattern of the relationship between Christ and his Bride, the Church. For now, the Church is espoused to Christ during this period of God’s great Grace. When the Bride and Groom are united at the wedding feast, they will “become one flesh.” And what God will join together then cannot and will not be separated. Whatever sort of changes we think we can make to marriage, nothing we do can alter what God decreed in the creation of man and woman – that they shall faithfully support each other in loving repect for their partner, for their God, and for their vows given before God and man.
1534AFC082115 – Supplement
Read it online here, please.
I hope you will pardon me for coming back so soon. There is something else I am led to share with you, so I hope you will take time to read this message as well. I am grateful for your willingness to read these messages. They come to me, and are sent to you, after prayerful reading of Scripture using the method some of you know as “Lectio Divino.” There is a lot going on in our lives, in our communities, in our nation, and in our world that requires watchful waiting, and that waiting must be faith-based. We who are in Christ know of his bountiful Graces that give hope to the World that even whose who ignore or abhor Christ and his Way are blessed by those Graces. Therefore, I respectfully ask you to return with me to this Sunday’s epistle and consider its implications.
Ephesians 5:25-33 – 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, 27 so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” * 32 This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. 33 Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband. *Genesis 2:24
The union of a man and woman in marriage is a prefiguring, a representation, of the relationship between Christ and the Church. It is right that it should be a sacrament because it was thus established by God to be so. Marriage is the foundation of all human community because it is the means by which we generate a family. “Family” is a word ill-used these days. As an example of how severely the concept of family has been corrupted, one has only to consider the “situation comedy” called Modern Family or to reflect on the recent Supreme Court Decisions regarding the Defense of Marriage Act and the “Constitutional right” of same-sex marriage. The sanctity of marriage is, nonetheless, untarnished because the aberrational union of two persons of the same sex is not a marriage per se; it is simply another evil promulgated by co-opting immorality as “truth and justice.” It is, in other words, a sugar-coating of evil for the sake of being “politically correct.” It is making out that a lie is instead a truth, and therefore good. Immorality can never be “good.” It is an affront against the divine requirement of virtuous living.
As surely as humankind has in its history all manner of immorality since the occurrence of Original Sin, immorality continues to divide and defile the relationships between men and women. The condoning of immorality has been growing unchecked for centuries, but in the past fifty years or so, it has become so much a part of our lives that we scarcely think of it as sin any more. In fact, there is such a lack of a sense of sin that we no longer seem to believe sin exists and blindly accept moral relativism – “What’s true for you might not be what’s true for me, and what’s right to you might not be what’s right to me.” Hogwash! Truth is Truth, as Mr. Frank Peretti pointed out, and you can’t call it by a different name and make it go away. Here are some quotes from various sources about determining truth.
“Sitting in a pew in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in an oven makes you a biscuit.” (or) “Sleeping in the garage doesn’t make you a car.”
“One Roman Tribune to another: ‘I’ve figured out how to solve the garbage problem here in Rome. We’ll just rename it “tribute” and then Caesar will want it all for himself!'”
“A fetus isn’t human until it draws its first breath. It’s just tissue.”
“We don’t have to get married. Love isn’t ratified by a piece of paper. Families come in all shapes and sizes. It’s love that matters, not religion. We love each other, and don’t need anyone or anything to be a family for each other.”
Living together, shacking-up, hooking-up, casual sex, unlimited partners, and other transient relationships are condoned – even encouraged – by many people the world around. Saying that’s OK doesn’t make it OK. If you call garbage tribute, it’s still garbage. What’s in a name? What’s in a word? “A rose by any other name …” And immorality by any other name is still immorality. There is another name used in the Bible for immorality – specifically the immorality of extramarital cohabitation. That word is fornication. Let me show you what the Apostle Paul said about it in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 – 9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. Here is another quote from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
Galatians 5:19-23 – 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21 envy,[a] drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
These sins are embraced in our “modern culture,” but it is a culture of death. In a true marriage between one man and one woman, they turn away from that kind of behavior and opened their lives to the fruit of the Spirit for now there is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
“But the concept of ‘marriage’ has changed before. Didn’t Abraham have relations with his wife’s servant, and didn’t ultra-wise King Solomon have 700 wives and 300 concubines?” Both statements are true. In 1 Kings 11:1-5, the passage states that Solomon’s errors led him astray from God. Our errors about marriage – and a host of other things ordained by God – are also leading us astray much to the delight of our ancient enemy, Satan. Our government (and other governments as well) have declared that heterosexual marriage is unimportant and that it is legal for same-sex partners to have legal standing as couples in the federal tax codes. Our “Supreme Court” (and the courts of many other nations) has repeatedly declared that it is legal to murder babies in the most heinous fashion. That is simply renaming garbage as treasure. Whatever is moral and right will always be moral and right because what determines the morality of a thing or action is not what we call it but what GOD calls it. It may be legal for a mother to kill her child or for a man or a woman to legally cohabitate with a person of the same gender, but both of these are immoral; they are depraved corruptions of the divinely instituted relationship upon which God gave his blessing as human community. The laws enacted by any human court cannot and do not supersede laws given to us in Truth, by Truth, and for Truth.
So, we see that – as Paul said – this is a great mystery, and an even greater mystery is that the caring relationship between a man and a woman in a valid marriage is the pattern of the relationship between Christ and his Bride, the Church. For now, the Church is espoused to Christ during this period of God’s great Grace. When the Bride and Groom are united at the wedding feast, they will “become one flesh.” And what God will join together then cannot and will not be separated. Whatever sort of changes we think we can make to marriage, nothing we do can alter what God decreed in the creation of man and woman – that they shall faithfully support each other in loving repect for their partner, for their God, and for their vows given before God and man.
