Response by Standerinfamilycourt
Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. – James 3:1
A covenant marriage stander recently posted an urgent request to a marriage permanence Facebook group to “set her straight”, referring to a young lady with close to 2,000 followers who posted a “Note” entitled as above. Most of us know that no other topic on the face of the planet today generates more instant theologians. The transformative power of this topic on just about anybody and everybody is legendary, to say the very least.
It’s not that “standerinfamilycourt” believes someone must attend or graduate from bible school or seminary to write authoritatively on the indissolubility of holy matrimony. On the contrary, the more typical experience, over the past 150 years or so, is that such an educational component actually ruins its graduates and steers them far away from the Spirit-driven biblical truth, unless the Holy Spirit is very persistent in pursuing them and changing their heart. However, it seems reasonable that a person needs to either come from an exceptionally excellent discipling home in their youth, or they need to have lived long enough in adult life to have taken on some significant discipleship challenges before they are very likely to know whereof they speak. A fair impression concerning a young person, therefore, who has 2,000 followers and no other disclosed connection to ministry or background is, more likely than not, she’s doing a whole bunch of ear-tickling. The last thing we need in Christendom is an Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez personality creating a fifth gospel, lecturing and labeling as “legalist” anyone who declines to adopt it!
SIFC told this complaining stander that, after having read the Note, it is indeed erroneous on most of its points, but with no prior connection with this young lady, and no indication (since she lists herself as “single”) that her soul is in imminent peril from being herself in an adulterous legalized union, it does not seem appropriate to invade her wall for the purpose of spanking her in front of her followers. Now, somebody with a very public ministry and half a million followers, which merchandizes heresy and pockets the proceeds, is definitely a different kind of case. In this complained-of case, this open letter will need to suffice.
Dear Amateur Theologian:
Social media is a wonderful thing, affording opportunities that many of us would never have, otherwise, to make our voice heard to the masses. “Standerinfamilycourt” is not going to say that’s a bad thing, necessarily, but rather, that when it comes to our parallel life in the kingdom of God, it is a fearsomely responsible thing.
Our response to your Note of January 1, 2019 will linger in Luke, chapter 12 where Jesus says this:
“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
One advantage of youth and lack of experience is that more often than not, youthful exegetes will fit into the second grace category, but not indefinitely. That you can persuade close to 2,000 people to read your personal Note on your Facebook wall is very impressive, indeed. It would be even more impressive if that influence could be harnessed for the kingdom of God to pull people from the broad path that everyone wants to be on, but whose destination (Christ tells us) is destruction, over to the narrow path which requires us to lay our own lives down in this life, so consequently few want to be on that path but nevertheless its destination is eternal life. Even so, you clearly have a bright future as (perhaps) a writer for a “Christian” publication like Crosstalk where you can secure an even larger audience, as you hone your excellent writing skills and increase their commercial circulation. Indeed, most of us would say that you have been given much.
“I’m not writing this note to espouse an opinion. My heart is simply to bring some clarity to what the Scripture actually says, means, and requires of us”, you say.
You’re way ahead, my dear, perceiving already that popular Christian writers aren’t so presumptuous as to share truths or, even worse, moral absolutes. No, they’re endlessly humble and so they share “hearts”. That alone, will take you much further than someone who says, “thus saith the Lord.” However, we’d respectfully challenge that anything that doesn’t actually line up with “thus saith the Lord” is by definition…an opinion. Clarity is as clarity does, after all.
In addition to your very correct observation that … “It is too important a matter to leave to some surface, passive reading of scripture and neglect the diligent study required to come to an accurate understanding of God’s original intent”, you deserve additional kudos for recognizing the continuum between antinomianism and legalism (“So, it was no surprise to see both legalism and antinomianism manifested in many views concerning marriage. “) This (accused) “legalist’s” main contribution to this conversation will be to hopefully bring your understanding of legalism more into alignment with what Christ told us the spirit of Phariseeism is. We’re quite sure that you wouldn’t want to fall into antinomianism unintentionally, by misunderstanding what actually constitutes “legalism” in the kingdom of God!
If it won’t overly offend you, we won’t directly link to that Note of yours, since attempting to refute hermeneutical errors point-by-point would make this post very long and boring , but we would like to give our readers a rough overall outline of its contents and, speaking as an unabashed “legalist” by your measuring stick, answer a few of your main points. Fair enough?
“Note” High-Level Outline:
(1) SAMT’s notion of covenant, and assertion that the marriage covenant is conditional and can be “broken”
(2) SAMT’s notion of marriage rights & duties / Failure to fulfill these
(3) SAMT’s notion of “biblical grounds for divorce”
(4) SAMT’s application of Deuteronomy and other Mosaic laws to marriage and divorce today
(5) SAMT’s assertion that there’s a difference between biblical references to divorces and “sending away”
(6) SAMT’s inferences from Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well
CONCERNING BIBLICAL COVENANT (Point 1):
Our young Note-writer (hereafter, let’s call you “SAMT” : self-appointed marriage theologian) spends considerable time in the Garden of Eden recounting the creation basis of the first wedding, and asserts that the essential element of covenant is, therefore “do not be unequally yoked”, citing 2 Corinthians 6:14-18. You show in your version of this, “SAMT” that you profoundly misunderstand who the respective parties to the biblical marriage covenant actually are. “SAMT”, you imagine that the parties are simply the husband and the wife, which is the humanist view and is natural enough if you weren’t paying any attention to what Jesus, and the prophet Malachi said about that.
Jesus told us that entrance by consent into a holy matrimony union by witnessed vows results in God’s hand creating a new entity, declaring they are never again two but one-flesh, and closing off any human’s ability to dissolve or sever that entity other than by physical death. This new entity is the inferior party to the holy matrimony covenant. So then, who exactly is the superior party? Malachi informs us that the superior party is God Himself.
So where, then, does the notion come from that there’s a superior and an inferior party to every biblical covenant? It actually comes from ancient near-eastern culture, where covenants were absolutely binding on the more powerful of the two parties, even if the less powerful party had difficulty honoring their end. In fact, that was the whole point in making a covenant in the first place, there was a weaker party who might not keep up his or her end. In Genesis 15, Moses gives the account of how God illustrated this to Abram, just before he got his new name, Abraham:
And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” He said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age….It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying,
“To your descendants I have given this land,
From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates…”
Obviously, God deliberately yoked Himself with an unequal covenant mate here. He did not require terrified Abram to walk between the split carcasses – He had to do so Himself! Later, He commanded Hosea to be unequally yoked to a prostitute in holy matrimony, although the walked-out marriage was anything but holy until Hosea redeemed Gomer, his God-joined one-flesh off the slave block. Hosea serves as a type, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ role. “SAMT”, if you’d like to learn more in-depth about biblical covenant, and about the nature of the God-joined one-flesh entity, please click here, and here. Your version is taken out of context, “SAMT” and in fact is a subtle mix of Christo-feminism, and long-winded excuses not to obey Christ’s most basic commandments, which do not actually exempt our one-flesh spouse and which include:
– do not take your own revenge
– do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
– if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven
– do not live for self
– do not drag a fellow believer before a pagan court
The upshot of all of this, “SAMT”: since God is one of the parties to the marriage covenant of our youth, and He has never once, in all of biblical history, ever failed to uphold His end of an unconditional covenant He was a party to, the marriage covenant can certainly be violated by the inferior party (and perhaps even by both husband and wife), but it is absolutely not possible for the marriage covenant to be broken, contrary to your humanistic assertion. You say you are “single”, and do you plan to exchange conditional wedding vows someday? “I might”, rather than “I do”? If that’s your plan, you are not actually consenting to holy matrimony, and as a consequence, God who knows your heart, will not create sarx mia , the supernatural one-flesh entity of holy matrimony. That might sound good to you, since you’d apparently rather shuck an unsatisfactory spouse in the name of Jesus, but your union will be no better than married gays or than today’s abundance of remarriage adulterers. If this is “harsh” and “judgmental” to you, then take it up with Him. The people you disagree with didn’t write the bible!
Picture Credit: Sharon Henry
MARRIAGE RIGHTS, DUTIES AND DEFAULTS (Point 2)
Says “SAMT” of this topic:
“God’s intent for marriage is that the two become one, and that they love and care for their spouse. Under the old covenant law, a husband had the responsibility to provide for the basic needs for his wife. If he did not do so, but he withheld any of these things from her she was free to go. She was released from the covenant because he did not keep it.”
As if Jesus never bothered to deliver the sermon on the mount, “SAMT” you look to the Mosaic law to define the rights, duties and remedies for defaults in marriage, and you insist that this remains the standard for Christ-followers. Your theory shows a considerable misunderstanding, even of Mosaic law. The above quote, taking scripture seriously out context, does not refer at all to God-joined holy matrimony. What you have latched onto refers to Moses’ attempt to regulate the practice of taking a concubine slave in addition to a God-joined covenant wife, in other words, the concurrent form of polygamy. You quote Exodus 21:10-11 :
If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. If he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
What was the “money” involved? Her usual slave price to go free was waived. Our budding theologian somehow infers from this that a contemporary covenant wife may divorce her husband, despite everything both Christ and Paul clearly, specifically and repeatedly said to the contrary, after Jesus completely abrogated the Mosaic regulations for His higher law, and despite the fact that no woman under the Hebrew patriarchy ever had any right to divorce her husband for any reason. In doing this, “SAMT”, you ignore the effects of testing your theory by applying the hermeneutical principles of Culture and Comparison, and you twist the Content to suit your desired outcome. You did not Consult the writings of the early church fathers to see what they said to the contrary because they were echoing Christ and Paul. “SAMT”, it can’t be said often enough, that anything at all written about MDR isn’t even worth reading unless it is written in such a way that it demonstrates that these principles have been faithfully applied. Otherwise, the integrity of this topic soon gives way to feelings, emotions, lust and ideologies, typically humanism and feminism.
Do we have something that resembles the concubinage situation described in Exodus 21 today? Yes, indeed we do! It’s the consecutive polygamy of remarriage adultery, in fact. Today’s equivalent instruction for regulating this immorality, with the exception of “conjugal rights” (since Jesus made clear that such relations were continuously sinful): voluntarily provide for this adultery partner and any non-covenant children when you must separate from him or her to end the ongoing sexual sin.
We have to agree with you, “SAMT” in what you say next. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 7 is the “go-to” chapter in the New Testament for the rights and duties of marriage, with three important caveats, which we hope you didn’t miss:
(1) the rights and duties are strictly to one’s own spouse, the one God inseverably joined you to for life, not somebody else’s
(2) there is a male and female in each status being addressed, with this symmetry continuing throughout the chapter and four or five different statuses. We must not attempt to transfer the advice from one group to the other for our own convenience. Not one of these statuses addressed, however is a “divorced” category, only “married but estranged”. Paul believed Jesus that all divorce was man-made, and not only immoral, but impossible between a one-flesh covenant couple.
(3) any separation between God-joined spouses was to be aimed at reconciliation when possible, not permanent severance.
You dish out some pretty good marriage advice from this point in your Note, “SAMT” (for a single person, anyway). But then you launch into a fiery manifesto on domestic abuse, with the peculiar bias that it’s always the man beating on the woman, and you declare:
“Many women who seek counsel from the church regarding their abusive situations at home are told that they still need to submit, or they are accused of being the cause of the abuse because they must have failed to be submissive enough. The stories of what women have been instructed to endure and sent back home to in the name of holiness is honestly disgusting.”
(Any chance that you go around beating up on pastors who don’t toe your ideological mark, “SAMT”?)
Instead of lingering on 1 Corinthians 7:11, where you just were, as the biblical remedy for an unsafe home, you’re then diving back into Mosaic law faster than you can say “Zipporah”! Your tone and ideology sound identical to the subject of an earlier blog of ours. In case it isn’t clear from scripture, nowhere does Christ or any of the Apostles give any permission to divorce for abuse or adultery or abandonment, but more about that when we get to your theories about “biblical grounds”.
Says “SAMT”…
“God designed marriage to be a blessing to both the husband and wife. It is really sad that we have reduced it to some obligation to live under the same roof regardless of how the other party treats us.”
Says “SIFC”:
God designed His relationship with us to be a blessing to Him and to everyone around us. It’s really sad that we have reduced it to some obligation for God to let us into heaven anyway regardless of how we treat Him.
And, oh “SAMT”, what have you done to the context and tone of Malachi 2, my dear? You have stood this poor prophet on his head! You drill right in on verse 16, “God hates divorce”, but this context of this is impossible to get right without starting at verse 13 and understanding who exactly the prophet was addressing when he spoke for the Lord in declaring that fellowship was broken with the priest of God who had divorced his wife and married another. You go into a litany of reasons why God hates divorce, but skip right over the one He forthrightly declares: it corrupts our offspring and our generations. You do this because you speak as more of a feminist than a disciple. No form of humanism is ever compatible with discipleship. They are polar opposites!
Next you say:
“However, when one party has broken covenant, God does not hold the innocent party to a broken covenant, and God does not call them a sinner for issuing a bill of divorce to someone who has broken covenant with them.
We’ve already covered the biblical fact that the marriage covenant can be violated but never broken due to who the covenant parties to holy matrimony actually are. So, let us ask you this, “SAMT”: does God ever call someone a sinner for disobeying Him?
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate.
– Matt. 19:6
But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.
– 1 Corinthians 7:10-11
No, He actually likens the rebellious to a witch or a sorcerer, my dear.
“So, we can’t accuse everyone who has been through a divorce of being a sinner for having gone through it!” say you.
Very true, “SAMT”, but only if the person did not initiate the lawsuit before the pagan court, and did not even consent to it. If they did, they have practiced the sin of witchcraft and they need to repent. Even then, unless the marriage was biblically invalid from the beginning because of the existence of a prior living estranged spouse, they are still married in God’s eyes. If that seems like an “accusation” to you, then there’s something very wrong with your heart toward God.
God hates divorce but He Himself had one! “
No, “SAMT”. If you trouble to read just a bit further in Jeremiah 3, you soon find God saying, “return to Me, for I am married to you.” For more about the rampant abuse and proper exegesis of that particular scripture, please click here.
PRESUMED “GROUNDS” FOR DIVORCE , ATTEMPTS TO APPLY MOSAIC LAW TO CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE, WITH OR WITHOUT “PAPERWORK”
(Points 3 , 4, and 5)
From here, we’re about to dive into some heavy-duty scripture abuse debunking, “SAMT”. Scripture abuse always results when anyone fails to apply all five principles of disciplined hermeneutics before they make personal decisions and, even worse, presume to teach others: Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation. There’s nothing worse than treating the word of God like a bag of trail mix, latching on to things out of context and discarding or ignoring the bits you don’t like. Next you say….
“This verse [referring to Matthew 19:3-10] is often quoted to claim that divorce is only permitted in cases of adultery. Others claim it means divorce is only permitted in cases of fornication, meaning only when a man discovers his bride was not a virgin when they married. Some claim that even if divorce is permitted in the case of adultery or fornication, remarriage is never permitted. All of these opinions are wrong.”
Just as your own opinion is equally wrong, “SAMT”. Unfortunately, all of the above is both unsupported and directly contradicted by scripture, and more specifically, by the very words of Christ which we’ve already cited above, in verse 6, which is the only verse that deserves any focus in this passage, until we get to verse 12, where Jesus speaks of living as a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God, after forbidding anyone to marry a divorced person. This, “SAMT”, makes everything you go on to say about what question the Pharisees actually asked amount to a total red herring. It doesn’t matter what they asked, only what Jesus said in response. Ditto for your leap back into Deuteronomy 24, since Jesus chose instead to quote Moses’ better word in Genesis 2:21-24, rather than Moses’ ill-fated attempt to regulate sin and hard-heartedness on the trail to the Promised Land.
Contrary to your assertion, adultery has never been biblical grounds for divorce from a God-joined union either in the New Testament, nor the Old Testament. Under Mosaic law, sexual sins against betrothal and marriage were punishable by stoning, not divorce. That’s because the one-flesh entity had to be severed somehow to allow for remarriage. Nobody can say with certainty what Moses wrote Deuteronomy 24:1-4 concerning, but it’s far more likely that this regulation was covering one of the many non-capital reason why a betrothal contract could not be consummated under Jewish rules of ceremonial cleanness (“some indecency”)–and so, the reason for defilement of the land existed both before and after the severed union. Whatever the reason for the Deuteronomy 24 passage, there is not a single Christian today to whom it applies, because Jesus abrogated all of the Mosaic regulations when He said of several things where the prior moral law was simply not worthy of the kingdom of God, “it is written, BUT I SAY UNTO YOU…” He also clearly commanded us to live reconciled lives.
This really gets people’s knickers in a twist throughout Christendom, but no other context is possible after the sermon on the mount, except that Jesus was disagreeing with both Hillel and Shammai. And it’s not a matter of “paperwork”, either!
“….MOSES allowed you to divorce your wives, BUT FROM THE BEGINNING, IT WAS NOT EVER SO!”– Matthew 19:8
Which brings us to debunking the definition of “legalism”…. The first thing to understand, “SAMT”, is that this is not a biblical term any more than, say, “homophobia” is. You will not find it in any translation, because it is the jargon of “Churchianity” . When Christ and Paul rebuked the behavior of the Pharisees, there are four key points:
(1) they were the ones pushing man-legalized immoral abandonment of covenant
(2) they were the hangers-on to Mosaic regulation after Jesus abrogated all 613 of them in favor of a higher moral standard
(3) Per Jesus, the 10 Commandments remain in full effect
(4) If the word of God makes clear that dying in a certain state of sexual sin will cost us our inheritance in the kingdom of God, obeying is never “legalism”.
“Legalism” to Christ is applying any part of the Mosaic regulation that lies outside the 10 Commandments (you know, stuff like Deuteronomy 24:4). “Legalism”, therefore, excludes urging obedience to the direct commandments from Christ’s ministry. Around here, we call “legalism” Judaizing heresies, such as Paul spoke of to the Galatians. So, the solution to antinomianism is obedience to Christ’s commandments, not accusing those who do obey and who urge others to obey, of somehow holding people to (inferior) Mosaic standards. In fact, it’s usually the very same accusers like yourself who want to do that, in lieu of obeying Christ. Moses after all, was considerably more lenient in matters of marriage than is Christ. Almost everyone instinctively knows this, and that’s why they can’t seem to let go of Moses.
READING INTO JESUS’ CONVERSATION WITH THE SAMARITAN WOMAN AT THE WELL
“It is sad that so many so often misrepresent the heart of God. They read things in Scripture that are actually full of love and grace and the beauty of God’s heart towards the hurting with such jaded eyes. The story of the woman at the well is a prime example of this. “
What’s really sad is that some who would deign to teach others imagine that God’s “heart” is any different than what repeatedly came out of His Son’s mouth. That’s either blaspheming the Father or it’s accusing the Son. Which brings us to another red flag “no-no” of unsound hermeneutics — the negative inference, or what Jesus “didn’t say”. In this young lady’s defense, though, it’s quite common to see middle-aged seminarians do the same thing, though they should certainly know better.
In the case of the other scarlet lady with whom Jesus was merciful, the woman taken in adultery, here’s what Jesus didn’t say: “neither do I condemn you because nobody is without sin, and it’s impossible to live a holy life which is why I’m about to die for you. Stay away from those hypocritical Pharisees next time.” No, Jesus gave her a commandment: “Go and sin no more.”
Why would we imagine, that just because we don’t see the words captured in John’s account of the exchange at the well, Jesus did not tell this woman who was shacking up with a boyfriend the same thing He told the other adulteress? What Jesus supposedly “didn’t say” is no proof of anything! For a more in-depth discussion of what was actually going on at the well, click here.
“SAMT”, we’re just about done here. You spend the rest of your Note in righteous indignation, accusing biblical truth-tellers of “picking up stones” when they tell people what scripture says, while it’s clear that feminist ideology has a stone or two in your own hands. You make it sound pious by going on and on about God’s “heart” and your “heart” as if He’s schizophrenic and you’re not delusional. We hope you learn one day that words like “grace” and “love” cannot be limited to temporal matters and people’s feelings – since that’s actually not very “loving”. If your definition of “love”, “grace”, “mercy” doesn’t include an eternal dimension, you are at risk of “loving” people straight into hell. If you don’t believe us, try substituting other sins, ones that make you recoil, and see if it’s “unloving” or lacking “grace” to urge them to repent with their feet, at the risk of their feeling “shamed” and “condemnation”.
Here’s another side of God’s “heart”, SAMT… back to Luke 12:
I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.But I willwarn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!
Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
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