Yeshua Explored
24th July 2023
Adultery
What is the purpose of marriage?
“You shall not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20:14)
This has become …
Be discreet in your relationships, so that as few people as possible would be affected by your actions. Of course, society has no right to judge on these personal issues.
Adultery has no stigma attached to it these days; it is very much a feature of our “progressive” liberated culture. For Christians it is a much bigger issue, as there are spiritual implications.
Jesus reiterates the origin of marriage in Matthew 19:4-5, but he adds the following observation in verse 6: “So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
One flesh is thus not just a random coupling, but a lifelong commitment. From God’s perspective every true marriage will be that which He alone has ‘joined together’. He sets the terms, He does the matchmaking. The terms and reasons are summarised in Ephesians 5:22-33:
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
Here we are given another reason for one flesh and that it is one of God’s mysteries, one of those things we accept rather than analyse or meddle with. The complicated bit is that Christian marriage, one flesh, is a model of Christ and his Church. This has the air of something very important indeed, using the physical to describe the spiritual.
So the wife submits to the husband, not because the man is stronger or more important, but because it is a picture of the Church submitting to Christ. Although this concept is an affront to feminists and “progressives” it is mysteriously bound up in the relationship we have with our Messiah. It is a principle, not an expression of masculine abuse. The husband is called to be the head of his wife, to act on her behalf in decision making. This he must do out of love for her, not as a power trip. But again, it is a picture, this time of Christ as head of the Church, as loving saviour.
Christian marriage is therefore a union of one flesh as ordained by God with two aims, or functions. Firstly, as the mechanism for producing offspring and therefore ensuring that the human race doesn’t die out. Secondly, to demonstrate in some mysterious way the relationship that Christ has with his Church and reminding the husband and wife of their responsibilities within this arrangement. Also, God has ensured that masculine and feminine physical attributes correspond to these roles, to ensure they are best equipped to carry them out.
And this brings us to an important point. To explain it best we will again look at the difference between form and function. Our Greek mindset, which is predominant in the Church as well as in society, concentrates on forms, on objects and concepts, without paying attention to any meaning attached to said objects. A Hebraic mindset, as typified by Jesus and Jews of Bible times, would consider the function, the purpose behind the object. In our society marriage is a form, an all-purpose term for people who wish to make an official commitment to each other. This should not bother us Christians if the context is outside of our jurisdiction. It will be just a form with a function of making a general commitment, even if this is in a single sex context. But the rubber really hits the road if the context is Christian.
The function of a Christian marriage is for it to be acceptable to God, not the Church. If God is not honoured, then He is being mocked, whatever a denomination may decide to do for the sake of “unity”. What is more important is unity with God and His word and if one flesh is not for the purpose of producing offspring (if possible) and modelling the relationship between Christ and his Church, then it is not a Christian marriage and God most certainly isn’t the matchmaker.
Christian marriage ought to be the shining beacon of Church living, as a wonderful example of commitment between two people for life, as well as their joint dedication to God. There are many such marriages that do just this but, for various reasons, there are many that do not. The worst-case scenarios headlines like these:
Popular evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, under church investigation reportedly for adultery, tearfully confessed Sunday that he had sinned and he will leave the pulpit for an indefinite period – marking the second major blow to television evangelism within a year. (LA Times Feb 22 1968)
It’s been three decades since the world found out about the 15 minutes she spent in a Florida hotel room with televangelist Jim Bakker. But Jessica Hahn says it’s only been in the last two years that she’s finally confronted her anger about what happened, and how it’s affected the rest of her life. She says she’s angry at Bakker, founder of the onetime PTL empire near Charlotte, for using his power and his image as a man of God to manipulate her, then a 21-year-old church secretary, into having sex. “He just believed that everybody should serve him because he was serving God,” she said of Bakker. (Charlotte Observer Dec 16 2017)
These were very high-profile fallings-from-grace. It is interesting to know that both evangelists have been fully restored and their “empires” continue!
And closer to home …
An Anglican vicar has been banned for life for having an intimate affair with a married parishioner who came to him for pastoral support. The Rev. Simon Sayers, who was a vicar for over 30 years, received a permanent ban from the Church of England through a disciplinary tribunal in the Diocese of Portsmouth last week. Sayers, who pastored at a parish in Warblington with Emsworth, was already serving a six-year suspension in 2016 for two “sexual incidents” with a 16-year-old girl in 1995, which drew a police investigation at the time but no criminal charges were filed. (Christian Post Aug 5th 2019)
The World’s press loves these stories. It helps them to sneer at the Church and declare that you’re really no different from the rest of us, so stop preaching to us! Every story like these serves to undermine hundreds of positive stories of faithful and fruitful Christian marriages. Well, Jesus didn’t say it was going to be easy!
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19)
Remember what I said earlier: the function of a Christian marriage is for it to be acceptable to God, not the Church. For it to be acceptable to God then surely it should be as the Maker’s instructions? If Christian marriages model Christ and his relationship with the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33) then, any deviation from the very best is going to do considerable harm to the Body of Christ.
It is time to get back to basics.
This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp
