Category Archives: Discipleship

I Don’t Know My ‘Deo’ From My ‘Douloo’ – (Do You?) Stop Abusing 1 Cor. 7:15: The “Debunk” Series – Part 3

RevAllWet8by Standerinfamilycourt

‘…Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called [a]us [b]to peace.

 …A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband [a]is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.
1  Corinthians 7:15 and 39

We began this series of blogs by first establishing Jesus Christ’s core truth in Matthew 19:6 about the lifelong indissolubility of the covenant marriage of our youth, and rigorously applying each of the five basic principles of sound hermeneutics to that scripture passage:  Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation.    If you missed that installment, please start there.

Having done that, we will now do the same with each of the most egregiously mishandled passages that apostate theologians and church leaders seek to water down or refute that unpalatable truth with.    You may see these same scholars dutifully applying these principles to other biblical topics,  but when it comes to this one, they’ve never heard of “Herman”.      We will tackle these in subjective order of damage to the church and society, doing the worst of them first, the ones that trap people in a life that the bible makes clear will send them to hell if they don’t repent and sever the illicit “marriages”.

Of all the verses profoundly abused by contemporary me-evangelicaldom, this one had SIFC itching to start the series.   Part of it is purely visceral, based on a personal experience some 40 years ago, when a well-meaning church lady laid this one on her, and told her that she wasn’t accountable for the vows she had made as a very young bride, now that she had given her life to the Lord but had an unsaved prodigal husband.   The Holy Spirit spoke up loudly, and to the contrary in that moment, praise God!   It was many, many years before the knowledge came to surface as to why this woman was speaking for satan, but there was no doubt in that earlier moment that she was.    (A few years later, the young groom involved also surrendered his life to the Lord and became a new creation in Christ, which sealed him with the Holy Spirit, according to the word of God. )…..The other part of the itch to address this in a methodic and disciplined way is the total lack of excuse for the widespread dishonesty in handling this particular passage.    Unconscionable!

The benders of this verse would like to use the surface translation to justify divorce with a presumed “right” to remarry upon abandonment and “abuse” (leaving is certainly abusive, causing cruel anguish, after all, as evil things are indeed said), as well as for the purported “obeying the commandment” not to be yoked with unbelievers.

The Principle of CONTENT:
Is leaving effectively divorce in this verse?   What exactly does it mean to not be under bondage?   What is the consequence if God has called us to peace  — what is that supposed to look like?   How much scripture-bending has occurred in our contemporary English translation?    Let’s just go back to the Greek text and find out!

de ho apistos chōrizetai chōrizesthō ou DEDOULōTAI (douloo) ho
δὲ ὁ ἄπιστος χωρίζεται χωριζέσθω οὐδεδούλωται
If moreover the unbeliever separates [puts distance between]
himself, let him separate himself – not is UNDER BONDAGE

adelphos ē hē     adelphē      en tois toioutois 
ὁἀδελφὸς ἢ          ἡἀδελφὴ ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις
the brother or the sister       in  such [cases]

en de                        eirēnē …   keklēken     hymas     ho Theos
ἐν                              δὲεἰρήνῃ    κέκληκεν      ὑμᾶς       ὁ    Θεός 
into moreover    peace       has called           us               God.

A few questions:
(1) Does “unbeliever”  (apistos, ἄπιστος) in this case include once-saved backsliders, or just the unsaved?

(2) Does this “separation” (chōrizetai χωρίζεται) mean civil divorce or just abandonment?   Are there more specific Greek words for divorce (apoluo ἀπολύω /  aphiemi ἀφίημι) ?   If there are, why weren’t they used here?

(3)  Is “under bondage”  DEDOULōTAI (douloo)  the same as being “bound” (dedetai (deo) verse 39) ?

(4) What is this peace (εἰρήνη (eirēnē) we’re called to?

With the exception of “separates himself” (present indicative – continuous ongoing state), there’s a lot of perfect indicative verb tense used here – “not under bondage” , “called us into peace”, indicating a state of completion, something that has taken place in the past.   It seems, then that the latter two states have more to do with being a brother or sister in Christ, than a prodigal’s ongoing action of staying away from home.    Chorizetai is also much weaker word than apoluo, which is used in Matthew 19:9, “whoever divorces his wife….”    The marriage revisionists appear to want to take a passage about standing for one’s marriage and turn it into a license to take the matter into one’s own hands and pursue a vengeful remedy against sundry violations of the marriage covenant.   That said, we’ve started to segue into our discussion of ….

The Principle of CONTEXT:
Paul was writing in response to a letter full of questions from the Corinthian church body about the place of marriage in the church.    He’s doing so after dealing with immorality, specifically the use of prostitutes in chapter 6, and the fornication between a young man and his stepmother in chapter 5 necessitating church discipline.  In dramatic fashion Paul has just ended chapter 6 by reminding us that in Christ our bodies do not belong to us;  we used to be fornicators, adulterers, sodomists and idolators, but now we are justified and are being purified,   Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit with which we’ve been permanently sealed once we accepted the bride price of that justification.    Keeping in mind that there were originally no chapter breaks in Paul’s letter (added by bible editors), he then seques into chapter 7 by also reminding us that when the Lord made us permanently one-flesh (Matt. 19:6) our bodies also came to belong to our husband or wife.

Paul proceeds to answer those marriage questions by partitioning off and addressing each status group very specifically.    Therefore, as we read 1 Corinthians 7, we must pay attention in each section to who he’s talking to.   We also must keep our cornerstone verse firmly in mind, (Matthew 19:6) and the one-flesh joining that can only be unjoined by death (as Paul confirms in ending this very passage, verse 39, as well as Romans 7:2-3).   For example, when Paul says “to the married“,  he would be referring to that one-flesh relationship, whether or not there was a purported dissolution under civil law.

In the surrounding verses, Paul had stated emphatically that separation and divorce should not occur for any reason (verse 10), but if it does for some reason, the Christ-following spouse is to stand for their marriage — that is, to remain celibate and seek reconciliation.    He then went on to say that the believing spouse sanctifies the unbelieving spouse, without really saying how this happens, but leaving a presumption that it’s day-to-day interaction in the difference of attitude.  But certainly, prayers of intercession play a part, as might the one-flesh relationship itself.   The latter two of these might not necessarily require day-to-day proximity since the battle is in the spirit realm for the soul of that spouse.   Countless restored couples can attest to the Lord working behind the scenes for years to defend the marriage covenant and pursue the prodigal spouse by the power of the Holy Spirit bringing him or her to the end of themselves and back into the kingdom of God.   Note that while Jesus refers directly to “the divorced person” (using the term ἀπολελυμένην (apolelymenēn) three different times in forbidding anyone to marry them, Paul never once addresses the deserted that way in this passage.

Before moving on to another group, Paul assures the believing spouse whose unbelieving spouse has separated from them (a form of persecution for the sake of the kingdom of God), that their rebirth into the kingdom left them free to follow Christ in the absence of their spouse, and rendered them a full recipient of the peace of God.    It is important to remind that verse 11 applies to these married for the duration, as long as their absent spouse remains alive.    Any other rendering that permits remarriage is quite simply out-of-context, with verse 11 as well as with verse 39, causing this passage to contradict itself, which cannot be.

The Principle of CULTURE
Corinth was just the sort of hyper-sexualized culture that our Western culture has degenerated to in the past few decades.   Premarital fornication, especially prostitution was rampant.   Serial polygamy due to free and easy civil divorce was also epidemic.   Some in the church were pushing a reactionary asceticism, even for the married.   There were also those in the church who were of Jewish background who were betrothed under the traditional Hebrew kiddushin contract and were questioning whether it was  less godly to carry out the contracted marriage.   There were also those who became Christ-followers while already married, and they wondered if they could be a true disciple while unequally-yoked.    Paul addresses each of these groups in turn in his letter, in response to the questions he had received.

A single temple in Corinth was reported to have 1,000 legal prostitutes, both male and female, while a young Corinthian man typically did not marry until age 30.   Using prostitutes until that time was legal and considered a normal expectation .   Quoting from Sharon L. Fitzhenry’s book, Jewish Marriage, Biblical Divorce and Remarriage, page 30,

Idol worshippers believed that they could join with the gods through sex with sacred prostitutes. Greco-Roman society encouraged young men with no other outlet to resort to prostitutes and slaves, but Paul warned, “Abstain! Avoid!” What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot [porne] is one body? . . . Flee fornication(1Co 6:16-18).

In chapter 5, Paul rebukes a young man for living with his father’s wife (apparently, his stepmother).   It is unknown whether the father’s absence was due to death or divorce, nor whether the father’s marriage to this woman was also adulterous because it followed a previous divorce, all possibilities.   What is said is that there was such “fornication as was not found even among the pagans”, and Paul demanded that they put this man out of the church (which seemed not to realize the need to administer church discipline, and had to be told to do it.)

 

The Principle of COMPARISON
Scripture must always be interpreted in light of all other scripture on the same topic, and accomplished in such a way that there is no contradiction.    All canonized scripture is equally-inspired.  The Holy Spirit cannot contradict Himself.    Where there appears to be an inconsistency, disciplined investigation must continue until the source of the error is proven, and until scripture again aligns.   All of the relevant Old and New Testament scripture passages must be considered, and appropriate rigor demands that none be ignored as “analogy”, or dismissed as “hyperbole”.

We established earlier Matthew 19:6 as the cornerstone scripture for comparison (Part 1 of our series) before accepting a particular interpretation of any other other scripture.

So they [that is, the man who leaves FATHER and MOTHER to be joined by GOD to the wife of his youth] are no longer two, but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

In the same disciplined, hermeneutic approach as we’re pursuing here, we substantiated the following unchangeable facts from this passage:

(1)  from the point God joins husband and wife, they cannot be unjoined as long as both live

(2) God actively and instantly creates the joining

(3)  God commands and decrees that no act or law of men has any power or authority to unjoin holy matrimony.

Therefore,  we must reject any interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:15 that conflicts with these three immutable truths.    This alone should immediately rule out remarriage while having a living, estranged spouse as part of the mix.    Our holy, righteous God does not participate in a “marriage” where one of the spouses is still joined and covenanted with the spouse of their youth.    In other words,  the “joining” (gluing) of Matthew 19:6 is not replicated for legalized adultery even if a pastor performs the ceremony, any more than He would “join” two homosexuals as one-flesh who stand up in front of a pastor.

Hence, when we say,   “the brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases,” and we’re talking about their original first marriage where neither partner had a prior living spouse,  this departure of the unbelieving spouse cannot be interpreted as a release from the covenant marriage bond.   (It might, however, be a release from an adulterous, subsequent remarriage tie, enabling reconciliation with one’s true one-flesh spouse.)    In the earlier section on CONTENT, we also proved directly that the actual Greek word used means something else, and does not mean “marriage bond”.

Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39  –  Two pronouncements of Paul, echoing each other, that only death dissolves the covenant of holy matrimony and frees a previously married person to marry another.    On what basis was Paul saying this, if not Matthew 19:6, and the other exceptionless instances where Jesus is calling marriage to a divorced person adultery?     We add that it is in these two verses that the actual Greek word  (dedetai (deo) for marriage bond IS used:

A wife is bound for as long as time may live the husband of her if however shall have died the husband free she is to whom she wills to be married only in the Lord.  7:39

Gynē DEDETAI (deo) eph’ hoson chronon zē ho anēr autēs ean
de koimēthē ho anēr eleuthera estin hō thelei
gamēthēnai monon en Kyriō

Γυνὴ δέδεται ἐφ’ ὅσον χρόνον ζῇ ὁ ἀνὴρ αὐτῆς ἐὰν
δὲ κοιμηθῇ ὁ ἀνήρ ἐλευθέρα ἐστὶν ᾧ θέλει
γαμηθῆναι μόνον ἐν Κυρίῳ .
(1 Cor. 7:39)

1 Cor 6:1-8; 15-20 –  In addition to flatly stating that ongoing, unrepentant adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God,
1 Corinthians 6 forbids using the pagan civil court system to avoid the godly authority of church leadership, and very importantly, it contrasts the constitutional differences between the permanent, supernatural God-joining of holy matrimony with the transitory carnal joining of an unlawful, immoral relationship.   It describes slavery to the wrong thing, lust and idolatry, as well as the sin of bodily dragging Jesus into the immorality.   If we’re bought with a price by the Bridegroom, and our bodies are not our own to do as we please,  the basis for this is also Matthew 19:6.

1 Corinthians 7:10-16 –  This chapter addresses various groups in the church body, including “the married”,  reiterating that separation and divorce is not an option, but if separation occurs, the spouses are to remain celibate or they are to reconcile.   They are not to seek separation due to a difference in faith,  For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband.”   This is as much an allusion to the one-flesh state that exists between them as it is to godly daily influence.   The instruction not to obstruct a spouse from departing who cannot abide the believing spouse’s discipleship has little to do with other causes of marital rupture, and the reference to the believing spouse not being bound refers to their freedom to follow Christ rather than a dissolution of the marriage bond.    All of this is perfectly consistent with Matthew 19:6.

1 Corinthians 7: 26-27 –  Another commonly-abused scripture in the same passage is used to justify remaining in a civil marriage that Jesus called adulterous.    Paul instructed those in the Corinthian church, in light of the persecution they were suffering, to remain as they were “called”,  meaning the state they were in when converted to Christ, also referring to slavery a few verses above.   However, verse 25 specifically addresses this to the virgins, and is once again referring to the kiddushin betrothal.    Therefore, his references to “wife” are mixed.    In the case of an indissoluble covenant with the wife of one’s youth, one is always “called” in the married state and required to cease and repudiate any accompanying state of sin.     The foundation for saying that one is called in the married state, not to a spouse of serial polygamy but to the covenant one-flesh spouse is, of course, Matthew 19:6 (also Luke 16:18  and Mark 10:11-12).

Matthew 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18 –   Citing the King James version here, because virtually all modern English translations wrongfully omit the phrases, “whoever marries one who has been put away commits adultery” and “causes her to commit adulteryfrom Matthew 19:9, due to the deliberate choice of the bible translation team to translate a faulty and incomplete manuscript.   These are three separate occasions where Jesus redefined the popular understanding of adultery from the patriarchal view (going into somebody else’s civil current wife) to marrying anyone’s divorced partner of either gender under any circumstances.

2 Corinthians 6:14-17 –  When it comes to disputing the indissolubility of holy matrimony, this scripture passage has been abused by no less than several Roman Catholic popes throughout history, the worst being Innocent III who instituted the vile practice of marriage “annulment” partially on that basis in the 13th century, and paired it with an abusive rendering of 1 Corinthians 7:15.  It’s also been repeatedly abused by Protestant evangelical pastors with the education to know better.   In addition to the direct conflict with 1 Corinthians 7:14 and 39 that results from attempting to do this, it is clear that God was honoring the covenant one-flesh marriages He had joined, respectively, of Herod and Herodias when they were rebuked by John the Baptist for their adulterous remarriage.    Luke notes twice in Acts 16:1-3 that Timothy’s mother was a believer and his father was a Greek unbeliever, whom God had also joined as one-flesh.    Because one-flesh is inseverable except by death, and a covenant in which God is a party cannot be dissolved, 2 Corinthians 6:14 simply cannot be retroactively applied.   Even if this passage justified separation, it does not follow that marrying another while this put away spouse is alive would not be hell-bound adultery.

Luke 14:26 –  Although chapter 7 begins with the counsel that to avoid sexual immorality, every believer should possess their own one-flesh covenant spouse [literally, the one “that is theirs / of them“], it does not follow that anyone is entitled to a sexual relationship.   Whether in an intact marriage or not, Christ-followers must each take up their cross and follow Him, loving Him most and their spouse second after that.   Central to loving Him is obeying His commandments.   Anything or anyone else put ahead of that is idolatry, which will also cause a believer not to inherit the kingdom of God, if unrepented.

Galatians 4:30-5:1 –  We have freedom in Christ; we are free to act and obey only Him, from our heart.   If our spouse refuses to be subject to Christ, they are out of order, but our one-flesh state is not severed by that.   Christ will be our spouse (Isaiah 54) during this time.   Our only duty is to stay celibate and to intercede faithfully for them,  leaving the door open always for reconciliation and realizing that their eternity and redemption depend on it.

As always, we’ve endeavored to bring all of the directly relevant scriptures into the COMPARISON exercise for the one being examined.   If we happened to miss one, please use the blog Comments to bring it to our attention.

 

The Principle of CONSULTATION
Whom is it most appropriate to consult on the authority of scripture which seeks to “sanctify” marriage to another while still having a living one-flesh spouse?     Due to the carnality of man which tends to escalate over time, that is a very important question which requires a strong knowledge of church history to reliably answer.    Hopefully, we’ve made it clear with indisputable evidence up to this point exactly where Jesus and the Apostles (including Paul) stood.   They discipled the next generation of followers of The Way, who in turn discipled the successive generations of the ante-Nicene church fathers.   It makes sense therefore to start the consultation with the writings of those who knew the Apostles (for example, Luke and Mark), and with those whom the next generation  discipled.

We need to be a bit skeptical while consulting theologian commentators from the time  of the Reformation forward when it comes to this topic.    Some will be biased in defense of the heretical Westminster Confession of Faith, which dominated mainline Protestant Churches from the 17th century, and others will be swayed by the tampering with word translations that began to occur in the lexicons published after the latter half of the 19th century.    On this basis, an equal number of later scholars will refute and discredit the many writings of the disciples of the Apostles, literally lapsing into “Reverend All-Wet” mode, and only superficially applying the  principles of disciplined hermeneutics  that we’ve just stepped through together.    Two free downloadable scholarly books are available, here and here, that will be very helpful in carrying out the CONSULTATION step for almost every scripture we’ll be examining in this series.   Our Church Fathers and Church Wolves series will also be historically helpful.        What follows below is intended to be a sampling and not exhaustive.

Justin Martyr (100-165 A.D)
And, “Whoever shall marry her who is divorced from another husband, commits adultery.”   And, “There are some who have been made eunuchs of men, and some who were born eunuchs, and some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake; but all cannot receive this saying.”  So that all who by human law, are twice married, are in the eye of our Master sinners, and those who look upon a woman to lust after her.

Athenagoras (177 A.D.)
For we bestow our attention; not on the study of words, but on the exhibition and teaching of actions, that a person should either remain as he was born, or be content with one marriage; for a second marriage is only a specious adultery.   “For whoever puts away his wife,” says He, “and marries another commits adultery;” not permitting a man to send her away whose virginity he has brought to an end, nor to marry again.

Clement of Alexandria (circa 215 A.D.)
Now that the scripture counsels marriage, and allows no release from the union, is expressly contained in the law, “You shall not put away your wife except for the cause of fornication,” and it regards as adultery the marriage of those separated while the other is alive.   The Church cannot marry another, having obtained a bridegroom;  each of us individually has a right to marry the woman he wishes according to the law; I mean here first marriage.

Gregory Nanzianzen (circa 325-389 A.D.)
For I think the word here seems to deprecate second marriage.  For, if there were two Christs, there may be two husbands or two wives; but if Christ is One, one Head of the Church, let there also be one flesh, let the second be rejected…now the [civil] Law grants divorce for every cause, but Christ not for every cause; but He allows only separation from the whore; and in all other things He commands patience.

Ambrose of Milan (333-397 A.D.)
Therefore, the right to marry is given you, lest ye fall into a snare and sin with a strange woman.  Ye are bound to your wife; do not seek release because you are not permitted to marry another while your wife lives.

John Chrysostom (circa 347-407 A.D.)
‘Let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.’….’What then if he will never be reconciled?’ one may ask.   You have one more mode of release and deliverance.  What is that?  Await his death.  For as the (consecrated) virgin may not marry because her Spouse always lives, and is immortal; so to her who has been married it is then only lawful [to remarry] when her husband is dead.

Innocent I  (417 A.D.)
It is manifest that when persons who have been divorced marry again both parties are adulterers.   And moreover, although the former marriage is supposed to be broken, yet if they marry again they themselves are adulterers, but the parties whom they marry are equally with them guilty of adultery; as we read in the gospel:
He who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery; and likewise, He who marries her that is put away from her husband commits adultery.

Jerome (circa 340-420 A.D.)
The apostle has cut away every plea and has clearly declared that, if a woman marries again while her husband is living, she is an adulteress.   You must not speak to me of the violence of a ravisher,  a mother’s pleading, a father’s bidding, the influence of relatives, the insolence and the intrigues of servants, household losses.   A husband may be an adulterer,  a sodomite, he may be stained with every crime and may have been left by his wife for his sins; yet he is still her husband as long as he lives; she may not marry another.

 

Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.)
It cannot be correctly affirmed either that the husband who puts away his wife because of immorality and marries another does not commit adultery.   For there is adultery, also, on the part of those who marry others after the repudiation of their former wives because of immorality…If everyone who marries another woman after the dismissal of his wife commits adultery, this includes one who puts away his wife without cause of immorality and the one who puts away his wife for this reason.

“Ambrosiaster” (370 A.D. – rogue scholar emulated by Erasmus)
The reason why Paul does not add, as he does in the case of the woman, but if he departs he should remain as he is because a man is allowed to remarry if he has divorced a sinful wife.   The husband is not restricted by law as a woman is, for the head of the woman is the husband.

Peter Lombard (prior to 1160 A.D.)
The marriage bond still exists between those who, even if departing from one another, having joined themselves to others.

Pope Innocent III (circa 1200 A.D. who instituted “annulment”)
Be not willing to cohabit without blasphemy of the Divine name, or without drawing him onto mortal sin, he who is thus deserted may pass over to a second marriage if he will…

Thomas Aquinas (circa 1225-1274 A.D.)
Nothing happening after a marriage can dissolve it: wherefore adultery does not make a marriage cease to be valid.  For according to Augustine, “as long as they live they are bound by the marriage tie, which neither divorce nor union with another can destroy.

The Westminster Confession of Faith – 1649 (observed by most mainline Protestant denominations and adopted by popular vote of clergy and Members of (British) Parliament)
V.  Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments, unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage; yet nothing but adultery, or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the Church or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage; wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it, not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case.

Isaac Williams (1802-1865)
‘What therefore God has joined let not man put asunder.’   Here our Lord sets aside the letter of Holy Scripture, in one case, in the passage in Deuteronomy, (which He speaks of as the command of Moses,) on account of the higher law of Christian holiness and perfection…and therefore this passage in the book of Genesis not only is spoken, as St Paul says it is, of the Sacramental union betwixt Christ and His Church, but also does signify that marriage is itself of Divine sanction, and the union formed by God, and necessarily indissoluble as such…for if God has joined, man cannot put asunder.

The Assemblies of God (1973) -DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE Application of General Scriptural Principles (also adopted by popular vote of clergy following the enactment of unilateral divorce in several U.S. states, and removing 60 years’ by-laws that required pastors to be disfellowshipped for performing weddings where either the bride or groom had an estranged living spouse.)
Point 5 – Paul forbade Christians to take the initiative in divorce simply because their partner was an unbeliever….pages 4-5)… “While making every effort to preserve the marriage, when the unbelieving spouse was definitely unwilling to continue, the believer should not, at all costs, attempt to restrain him/her. In these cases, abandonment, by implication, may be interpreted as grounds for divorce and remarriage.”
Point 7 – The Right to Remarry…  “Paul has already addressed the problem of abandonment in verse 15 and shown that “A believing man or woman is not bound [that is, free to remarry] in such circumstances.”     

Dr. James Dobson (circa 1990)
There are three occasions when divorce and remarriage appear to be justified in scripture….3. When one mate is an unbeliever and willfully and permanently deserts the believing partner

Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers
But if the unbelieving depart.
—Supposing, however, the desire for separation arises from the unbelieving partner, how is the Christian partner to act? If the married life, for example, be made intolerable by the unbeliever urging the believer to join in such religious acts as conscience cannot approve, the Apostle’s previous commands for continued union do not hold good: a brother or a sister, in such cases, is not bound to insist upon the continuation of the union. “Let the unbeliever, if he so desire, depart.”

This permission is in no way contrary to our Lord’s permission of divorce on only one ground, for the Apostle has carefully reminded his readers that our Lord’s command does not apply to the case of a marriage between a believer and a heathen. In ouch cases we have no command from Him.

A brother or a sister.—That is, a Christian. In such cases, when the unbelieving partner wishes to depart, let him or her do so. The Christian partner is not, under such circumstances, bound by the marriage to continue together. Their doing so might destroy that very peace in which (not “to peace” as in the English) God has called us.

Benson Commentary
1 Corinthians 7:15-17
. But if the unbelieving party depart, let him, or her depart — And take the course they think best. A brother or sister — A Christian man or woman; is not under bondage — Is at full liberty; in such cases: but — Let it be always remembered; God hath called us to peace — To live peaceably with them, if it be possible: and therefore it ought to be our care to behave in as inoffensive a manner as may be, in all the relations of life; that so, if there must be a breach, the blame may not be chargeable upon the Christian. For what knowest thou, &c. — As if he had said, It is of great importance that you should conduct yourselves properly toward those who thus make, as it were, a part of yourselves, and that you should adorn the gospel by the most amiable and engaging behaviour possible, that thereby the unbeliever may be gained over to Christianity. And surely the everlasting happiness of the person, now the companion of your life, will be more than an equivalent for all the self-denial to which you may be required at present to submit. See on 1 Peter 3:1-2. But — However it be, whether the unbeliever be converted or not; as God hath distributed to every man — The various stations of life, and various relations, let him take care to discharge his duty therein; for the gospel disannuls none of them: And as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk — “By declaring here, and 1 Corinthians 7:20; 1 Corinthians 7:24, that men were bound, after their conversion, to continue under all the moral and just political obligations, which lay on them before their conversion, the apostle condemned the error of Judaizers, who taught, that, by embracing the true religion, all the former obligations, under which the convert lay, were dissolved. The gospel, instead of weakening any moral or just political obligation, strengthens them all.” This I ordain in all churches — This I lay down as a general rule for all Christians to observe, and insist on it, as a matter of the greatest importance.

Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary
7:10-16 Man and wife must not separate for any other cause than what Christ allows. Divorce, at that time, was very common among both Jews and Gentiles, on very slight pretexts. Marriage is a Divine institution; and is an engagement for life, by God’s appointment. We are bound, as much as in us lies, to live peaceably with all men, Ro 12:18, therefore to promote the peace and comfort of our nearest relatives, though unbelievers. It should be the labour and study of those who are married, to make each other as easy and happy as possible. Should a Christian desert a husband or wife, when there is opportunity to give the greatest proof of love? Stay, and labour heartily for the conversion of thy relative. In every state and relation the Lord has called us to peace; and every thing should be done to promote harmony, as far as truth and holiness will permit.

Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
But if the unbelieving depart – If they choose to leave you.

Let him depart – You cannot prevent it, and you are to submit to it patiently, and bear it as a Christian.

A brother or a sister is not under bondage … – Many have supposed that this means that they would be at liberty to marry again when the unbelieving wife or husband had gone away; as Calvin, Grotius, Rosenmuller, etc. But this is contrary to the strain of the argument of the apostle. The sense of the expression “is not bound,” etc. is, that if they forcibly depart, the one that is left is not bound by the marriage tie to make provision for the one that departed; to do acts that might be prejudicial to religion by a violent effort to compel the departing husband or wife to live with the one that is forsaken; but is at liberty to live separate, and should regard it as proper so to do.

God hath called us to peace – Religion is peaceful. It would prevent contentions and broils. This is to be a grand principle. If it cannot be obtained by living together, there should be a peaceful separation; and “where” such a separation has taken place, the one which has departed should be suffered to remain separate in peace. God has called us to live in peace with all if we can. This is the general principle of religion on which we are always to act. In our relation to our partners in life, as well as in all other relations and circumstances, this is to guide us. Calvin supposes that this declaration pertains to the former part of this verse; and that Paul means to say, that if the unbelieving depart, he is to be suffered to do so peaceably rather than to have contention and strife, for God has called us to a life of peace.

 So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman.  It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
GALATIANS 4:31-5:1

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!




The “Indecency” of Abusing Deuteronomy 24: “Debunk” Series – Part 2

RevAllWet7by Standerinfamilycourt

Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.   Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.     –  2 Timothy 2:14-15

 

We began this series of blogs by first establishing Jesus Christ’s core truth in Matthew 19:6 about the lifelong indissolubility of the covenant marriage of our youth, and rigorously applying each of the five basic principles of sound hermeneutics to that scripture passage:  Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation.    If you missed that installment, please start there.

Having done that, we will now do the same with each of the most egregiously mishandled passages that apostate theologians and church leaders seek to water down or refute that unpalatable truth with.    You may see these same scholars dutifully applying these principles to other biblical topics,  but when it comes to this one, they’ve never heard of “Herman”.      We will tackle these in subjective order of damage to the church and society, doing the worst of them first, the ones that trap people in a life that the bible makes clear will send them to hell if they don’t repent and sever the illicit “marriages”.

In our view, the most abused scripture on marriage in the Old Testament is purported to “prove” that God instituted divorce through Moses for adultery and other sundry causes, and that once a divorced spouse “remarries”,  they can never be reconciled with the one-flesh partner of their youth.    But is this actually so?

The Principle of CONTENT
As we did with our core truth, Matthew 19:6 we will take Deut. 24: 1-4 back to the original Hebrew manuscript and literal syntax to strip away any bias about what it actually says on the surface.     We will rely on the Hebrew interlinear text tools and the literal syntax for our analysis of content, in order to remove any translation bias that may have occurred in your favorite bible version in more contemporary times.    The text of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 reads (NASB):

When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house,  and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife,  then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

Naturally, the surface conflict with Matthew 19:6 and some other scriptures is that according to Jesus and Paul, men have no power or authority to dissolve holy matrimony, nor to unjoin a one-flesh entity joined by God.   If Moses was speaking by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, how can he be contradicting the Word Incarnate?     And what exactly was the “indecency” that justified a certificate of divorce (rather than Deuteronomy 22 stoning)?

Deut24one_4

Young’s Literal translation (YLT) reads:

`When a man doth take a wife, and hath married her, and it hath been, if she doth not find grace in his eyes (for he hath found in her nakedness of anything), and he hath written for her a writing of divorce, and given [it] into her hand, and sent her out of his house,

and she hath gone out of his house, and hath gone and been another man’s,

and the latter man hath hated her, and written for her a writing of divorce, and given [it] into her hand, and sent her out of his house, or when the latter man dieth, who hath taken her to himself for a wife:

`Her former husband who sent her away is not able to turn back to take her to be to him for a wife, after that she hath become defiled; for an abomination it [is] before Jehovah, and thou dost not cause the land to sin which Jehovah thy God is giving to thee — an inheritance.

A few key words need a bit of a deep dive in this passage:

כְּרִיתוּת    kerithuth: divorcement  –  from the Hebrew word karath which means “a cutting”, which in the Mosaic usage functioned like a sort of “quit-claim” deed so that such a woman could survive by marrying another man, perhaps also protecting her from being stoned as an adulteress under the law in Deuteronomy 22 if she did so.     This word is used in just two other scriptures Jeremiah 3:8 and Isaiah 50:1,  and it differs from the other Hebrew word for severing a spouse,  the more generic word, shalach  שָׁלַח  meaning “send (or put) away”.  The latter word was more often used in the post-exile days when stoning was not available to dispose of fully- consummated wives of many years standing, such as in Malachi 2:16.  

 דָּבָר   dabar:  word, saying, commandment, law Many different meanings and 1441 OT occurrences.

עֶרְוָה    ervah / erwat: nakedness, shame, uncleanness

From arah; nudity, literally (especially the pudenda – female genitals) or figuratively (disgrace, blemish) — nakedness, shame, unclean(-ness).   This word has 54 total occurrences throughout the Levitical moral laws and the Genesis account of Noah’s drunkenness.

The Principle of CONTEXT
 The major context for Deuteronomy 24 is the 40-year extended trek through the wilderness under the often embattled leadership of Moses, following the Israelites’  release from captivity in Egypt.   A major biblical covenant was established between God and His people on Mount Sinai.   Bible teacher Ray Vander Laan called that momentous occasion a Divine “wedding” of sorts.   It was the only conditional covenant God made, and it was from the beginning designed to be replaced by the Messianic covenant at the commencement of Christ’s ministry.   After the Ten Commandments were given to Moses near the start of the journey, it wasn’t long before they had to be interpreted and specifically applied to real life stuff.   That Serpent, whose favorite sport was (and still is) saying “Did God REALLY say…??”  had slithered from the Garden to the desert plains.

Moses was constantly putting down large and small uprisings.    He had been given a gig that he would have been the last man on earth to sign up for.    He was leading something like 4 million men, women and children and the various plunder they removed from Egypt, but that wasn’t all they carried out of Egypt with them, as the golden calf incident vividly illustrates.    They had just spent some 400 years learning from the Egyptians how to build marriage around anything but covenant.    In a bit of a double-standard, the descendants of Isaac and Jacob had also carried some distinctive things into Egypt with them, including the custom of kiddushin betrothal with its bride price, which they also carried back out of Egypt into the wilderness.  How amazing was it to hear from Moses that animal sacrifice done daily could atone for living however they chose, despite the Lord’s commandment?   How much of a relief to  Moses, the reluctantly-drafted leader of this multitude  to learn that this system  would allow him to manage sin rather seek to eradicate it  and promote holiness instead?   How disheartening must it have been for the Pharisees to stomach Christ’s New Covenant announcement that obedience to God must now flow from devotion to Christ and gratefulness for His appearing to take away the sins of the world, to such an extent that we begin to emulate Him?    No wonder they (and modern-day Pharisees) hanker again for the days of Moses, but this time with the siren song of Luther and Calvin playing in the background, “Christ died for your past, present and future sins!”    Those bent on justifying their fleshly lusts are indeed comforted by the (false) notion that one cannot wander from their salvation, even though Paul repeatedly warns that adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God.

How, specifically, does kiddushin (Hebrew betrothal) factor into the context of Deuteronomy 24:1-4?   Once a ketubah marriage contract proposal was accepted and the bride price paid, the bride became the legal wife of the groom approximately 12 months before the groom returned for his bride and consummated the marriage.   If the bride committed fornication (played the harlot) during this time, or lied about her virginity and it was discovered on the wedding night, she was brought before the priests and stoned to death unless her parents could produce the “tokens of her virginity” in the form of bloody bed sheets.    However, harlotry was not the only cause for seeking dissolution of the binding arrangement.   Other reasons may have included disease such as leprosy developing during the betrothal period, discovery of too-close a consanguinity, a bleeding disorder, and other causes short of provable infidelity.    The only way in those cases to legally dissolve a ketubah was a writ of divorcement.    Under Moses, this was not an open-ended opportunity to unilaterally divorce a one-flesh spouse (with or without due cause) after God had joined them as one-flesh, but rather a legal way to dissolve the betrothal for a cause other than a capital cause.

To ensure survival of the family lines throughout the deprivations,  as well as the wars in reaching and settling in the Promised Land, Moses also laid down laws that cultivated concurrent polygamy, a practice unrighteously deviating from the holy principle of one-flesh, and a practice that carried over in the Hebrew race from the time of Abraham’s grandsons Jacob and Esau, actually traceable to his concubinage with Hagar.     For example, Moses required the brother of a widow of childbearing age to marry that widow to give her a son, and he did not set aside an exception if that brother was already one-flesh with the living  wife of his own youth.     Moses’ example for that went back several generations to an incident in the family of Judah.    Moses also permitted men to take more than one wife if the first (one-flesh) wife did not produce a son.   That being the case, some sort of writ was likely necessary to prevent a woman not guilty of a capital offense from being stoned as an adulteress if her one-flesh or polygamous husband abandoned her in the wilderness and she had no son or birth family.    Verse 4 specifically prevented men from engaging a sort of arbitrage of the bride price of kiddushin through divorce and remarriage to a materially-enriched widow, but this civil system did not dissolve the one-flesh state that God had created in a wife of a man’s youth.

While studying CONTEXT of this scripture, it is also important to consider the difference in the nature of the presence of the Holy Spirit before and after Jesus was resurrected, and Pentecost arrived 40 days later.    There may legitimately be a difference in the inspired nature of an Old Testament passage, especially one that was later explicitly repudiated by Jesus.    Unlike the provision for the sealing and  constant indwelling of the Holy Spirit that came with the New Covenant, scripture tells us that the presence of the Holy Spirit rested on and departed from God’s Old Testament spokespersons at various times.    We know that Moses was far from infallible because he built his altars and offered sacrifices for his own sins, including the murder of a man.    We know that he was disqualified from entering into the Promised Land despite all that he had accomplished because he committed the sin of unknowingly transgressing a holy symbol of God which stood for Jesus Christ’s crucifixion  when he disobeyed God and struck the rock instead of speaking to it as instructed by God.    If the Holy Spirit revealed this to him, he evidently ignored Him.  Those who quote Jesus’ saying “not one jot or tittle of the Law shall pass away”,  and construe it as authority that everything Moses ever pronounced is still binding as inspired instruction during the New Covenant, are missing the much larger context of the historic overlap or phasing of the major covenants of God.


The Principle of  CULTURE

Hebrew culture was patriarchal and valued virginity enough to pay a bride price for it, so that the bloodlines and inheritance would be uncorrupted and genealogies would be as pure as possible.   Even so, this was not the only law of ceremonial cleanness stringently observed by the Jews of Moses’ day and of Jesus’ day.    Additional laws in Deuteronomy and Leviticus deal with the ceremonial uncleanness produced by blood, semen, excrement, disease, touching a dead body, types of animals that could be used for food, etc.  that would exclude a man from the temple of God for a season.   It’s not hard to see how some of these laws, intended mostly for public health and hygienic purposes under the conditions of the time  also tended to encourage polygamy in a misguided effort to maintain a sort hypocritical “holiness”,  not too unlike the civil and ecclesiastical stronghold around serial polygamy today.    When Jesus came along knowing that He would take the place of animal sacrifice, would usher in the age of direction by the Holy Spirit, and a new order where obedience would flow from the heart,  the context of what He said in Mark 7:20-23 gains an incredible power:

And He was saying, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.   For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.   All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.”

These things were now true precisely because the Messianic Covenant had suddenly arrived 1400 years since these rules had been promulgated, and was now an unconditional, superior covenant to replace the conditional Mosaic Covenant, with its former dependence on animal sacrifice and stringent regulation of cleanness and uncleanness,  which was never intended to be permanent.

Therefore, when Jesus had His confrontation with the Pharisees in Matthew 19,  if going back to Deuteronomy 24 in agreement with them was appropriate to the kingdom of God, He would have done so.   However under the Messianic Covenant, where His bride was to be purified, as so vividly described by Paul in Ephesians 5, it was necessary to go all the way back to the Garden, and repudiate this transitory law of Moses that only endeavored to “manage” sin.

The Principle of COMPARISON:
By this fourth basic principle of sound hermeneutics, scripture interprets scripture, with the clearest passages helping to answer any ambiguity remaining after an honest analysis of CONTENT, CONTEXT and CULTURE.   Since  God’s word tells us that all scripture is God-breathed, that is,  equally inspired by the Holy Spirit, then if its seems that one scripture contradicts another, it’s a sign of bias or that the analysis is not complete enough.   In other words, we don’t just run with it as the “Reverend All-Wets” of our day are all too prone to do, but we keep studying until the conflict is resolved, and we err on the side of holiness, out of love and gratitude toward the Bridegroom in the meantime!

Part 1 of our series, on Matthew 19:6 built a strong case for this verse (and its counterpart verse, Mark 10:8-9 from the same historical occasion) being the cornerstone verse for this comparison, but as also shown, there are many others.

Matthew 19:6 / Mark 10:8-9  –  established by the divine, instantaneous act the irrevocable reality of the one-flesh relationship, and its permanent inseverability by any act of man.   What came directly out of the mouth of Jesus Christ is in direct conflict with Deuteronomy 24: 1-4, at least as it applied to the still-living husband or wife of our youth, but not necessarily is it in conflict with dissolving subsequent, non-widowed civil remarriage which actually lacks the characteristic of one-flesh joining by God, as was also the case for the instances of sequential and concurrent polygamy of Moses’ day .

Matthew 5:23-25, 6:14-15, 18:21-35; 1 Corinthians 7:11; 2 Corinthians 5:18  –  Jesus and Paul both instructed us that insofar as it depends on us, we are never to leave our relationships unreconciled, much less our sole and exclusive one-flesh relationship.    

Matthew 18:7, 23:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Hebrews 13:4 – Neither are we to interfere in any way with another person’s entry into the kingdom of God through maintaining an ongoing state of sin by willful direct violation of God’s law.  (Speaking of stumbling blocks, we’re citing the King James version here because virtually all modern English translations wrongfully omit adultery from Galatians 5:19 due to the deliberate choice of the Westcott & Hort late 19th century bible translation team to translate a faulty and incomplete manuscript, and to merge the separate single / married sins of fornication and adultery into the far more fungible “sexual immorality” in order to appear to justify civil divorce with remarriage while having a living covenant spouse.)

Matthew 15:8-9,19-20; Mark 7:6-7, 20-22 –  God indeed “knows our heart” and sets the record straight on moral defilement, not by Deut. 24:4, nor by the letter of any other Mosaic law, other than the Ten Commandments.

Matthew 22:35-40 –  Jesus pared down the 613 laws of Moses to just two easy-to-follow commandments, which actually fully encompass all of the Ten Commandments.   If we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, there’s no excuse for disobeying Him when His Son declares three different times that marrying and staying civilly married to a divorced person is adultery, and refusing to remain celibate, as explicitly instructed by Paul in the name of the Lord, in order leave room to reconcile with our sole one-flesh partner, is living and walking in the state of ongoing unforgiveness,.   Moreover,  the first greatest law encompasses the first four commandments, and the second greatest law encompasses all of the last six, as well as the Golden Rule of treating others as we would like to be treated, but with eternal destinations firmly in mind for all persons involved.

Deuteronomy 21:10 -14 –  The situation of taking a captive woman as a wife as a result of war spoils, perhaps polygamously, which might also have required a writ of divorcement if she wanted to go free, where there wasn’t necessarily a one-flesh relationship joined by God.    This is because this was essentially an unlawful marriage, of the type repented of in Ezra, chapters 9 and 10, where a holy God forbid the taking of pagan wives and presumably would not have participated.   It seems a bit unclear why Moses permitted it.

Deuteronomy 22: 13-28 –  The penalty for both fornication by a betrothed wife, for whom a bride-price has been paid under a ketubah, and a fully-consummated wife of some years was always stoning under the Mosaic law.   In the latter case, this law was ripe for possible abuse and false witness, and for this reason, it is possible or even likely that the scope of Deuteronomy 24:1 was expanded over time.    Jesus was likely referring to this when He talked about the hardness of the Pharisees’ hearts.

1 Samuel 25:44 / 2 Samuel 3:13-15 –  Saul gave Michal, David’s betrothed wife to another man;  he later recovered her, even though they were not yet one-flesh.   In this case, the ketubah governed (apparently God chose not to join her with Paltiel)  and Michal was not tainted by the immoral union because she was a valid wife for David to begin with so he was able to take her back.    (That said, David was apparently only supernaturally joined by God with Ahinoam, the first wife he actually took in consummation.)

Isaiah 50:1 / Jeremiah 3:1 –  Aside from Deuteronomy 24, these are the only two instances where reference to a writ of divorcement (also known as a “get”) was used instead of the far more common variations of the word “shalach“, which is putting away, sending away, dismissing, and never with God’s approval if the marriage was consummated and lawful to begin with.     In both of these two instances, He is speaking to Judah or Israel in rhetorical fashion, saying quite emphatically in the first instance that He did not issue such a writ (due to the nature of His character in covenant), and in the second instance, He’s beginning a long rhetorical discourse that actually ends up to Jeremiah 4:1 with God urging His bride to return 5 different times, and declaring Himself to be her Husband.   The point is that Deuteronomy 24 can never be used as conclusive evidence that anyone but Moses permitted the attempted severing of God-joined holy matrimony.    It does not appear that God ever approved of the issuing of a writ of divorcement to any one-flesh spouse.

Jeremiah 3: 8-14 –  Another pervasively-abused passage, typically mentioned almost in the same breath by the Rev. All-Wets of our churches, will be the subject of an upcoming blog in the series.   For now the discussion above suffices, except to note that we had to shift between versions again because of some documentable translation hanky-panky around the word “husband” in verse 14.

Malachi 2: 10-14 –  Some 1,000 years after the bones of Moses had returned to dust, (and about the time of the purge of unlawful wives and children from what remained of Judah after a remnant returned from 70 years’ exile in Babylon), here’s a prophet of the Lord thoroughly dressing down the remarriage adulterer, whose one-flesh wife presumably had been issued a writ of divorcement, since she was evidently still alive for the Lord to stand as a witness with.  Among other graphic rebukes, the Lord makes clear that man’s paper never dissolves a covenant in which God is a party.

Matthew 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18 –   Citing the King James version here, because virtually all modern English translations wrongfully omit the phrases, “whoever marries one who has been put away commits adultery” and “causes her to commit adulteryfrom Matthew 19:9, due to the deliberate choice of the bible translation team to translate a faulty and incomplete manuscript.   These are three separate occasions where Jesus redefined the popular understanding of adultery from the patriarchal view (going into somebody else’s civil current wife) to marrying anyone’s divorced partner of either gender under any circumstances.    Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is wrongfully applied to the covenant spouse of our youth because one-flesh joined by GOD is inseverable by man’s paper, and does not even exist with man’s remarriage where there is a prior living spouse.

 

The Principle of CONSULTATION:
Whom is it most appropriate to consult on the authority of scripture which seeks to “sanctify” marriage to another while still having a living one-flesh spouse?     Due to the carnality of man which tends to escalate over time, that is a very important question which requires a strong knowledge of church history to reliably answer.    Hopefully, we’ve made it clear with indisputable evidence up to this point exactly where Jesus and the Apostles (including Paul) stood.   They discipled the next generation of followers of The Way, who in turn discipled the successive generations of the ante-Nicene church fathers.   It makes sense therefore to start the consultation with the writings of those who knew the Apostles (for example, Luke and Mark), and with those whom the next generation  discipled.

We need to be a bit skeptical while consulting theologian commentators from the time  of the Reformation forward when it comes to this topic.    Some will be biased in defense of the heretical Westminster Confession of Faith, which dominated mainline Protestant Churches from the 17th century, and others will be swayed by the tampering with word translations that began to occur in the lexicons published after the latter half of the 19th century.    On this basis, an equal number of later scholars will refute and discredit the many writings of the disciples of the Apostles, literally lapsing into “Reverend All-Wet” mode, and only superficially applying the  principles of disciplined hermeneutics  that we’ve just stepped through together.    For example, in convoluted fashion they’ll say that “scripture cannot contradict itself”,  so since “most scholars agree” (a presumption based on confirmation bias — and a weakened, distorted application of the COMPARISON principle that completely bypasses application of both the CONTEXT and  CULTURE principles) …that porneia “should always be” translated as “sexual immorality”,  all of the many scriptures that refute this must therefore be interpreted as not universally authoritative, and the church fathers should be dismissed as “flawed” asceticists.   Two free downloadable scholarly books are available, here and here, that will be very helpful in carrying out the CONSULTATION step for almost every scripture we’ll be examining in this series.   Our Church Fathers and Church Wolves series will also be historically helpful.        What follows below is intended to be a sampling and not exhaustive.    Once again, it shows that the proponents of the heretical view did not surface for centuries after the first disciples of the apostles were unanimous in the faithful gospel.

Clement of Alexandria (circa 215 A.D.)
Now that the scripture counsels marriage, and allows no release from the union, is expressly contained in the law, “You shall not put away your wife except for the cause of fornication,” and it regards as adultery the marriage of those separated while the other is alive.   The Church cannot marry another, having obtained a bridegroom;  each of us individually has a right to marry the woman he wishes according to the law; I mean here first marriage.

Tertullian ( circa 160-220 A.D.)
A divorced woman cannot even marry legitimately; and if she commits any such act without the name of marriage, does it not fall under the category of adultery, in that adultery is crime in the way of marriage?    Such is God’s verdict, within narrower limits than men’s, that universally, whether through marriage or promiscuously, the admission of a second man to intercourse is pronounced adultery to Him...so true, moreover, is it that divorce “was not from the beginning,” that among the Romans it is not until the six hundredth year from the building of the city that this kind of “hard heartedness” is set down as having been committed.  But they indulge in promiscuous adulteries, even without divorcing their partners: to us, even if we do divorce them, even marriage will not be lawful.

Innocent I  (417 A.D.)
It is manifest that when persons who have been divorced marry again both parties are adulterers.   And moreover, although the former marriage is supposed to be broken, yet if they marry again they themselves are adulterers, but the parties whom they marry are equally with them guilty of adultery; as we read in the gospel:
He who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery; and likewise, He who marries her that is put away from her husband commits adultery.

Peter Lombard (prior to 1160 A.D.)
The marriage bond still exists between those who, even if departing from one another, having joined themselves to others.

Thomas Aquinas (circa 1225-1274 A.D.)
Nothing happening after a marriage can dissolve it: wherefore adultery does not make a marriage cease to be valid.  For according to Augustine, “as long as they live they are bound by the marriage tie, which neither divorce nor union with another can destroy.

Isaac Williams (1802-1865)
‘What therefore God has joined let not man put asunder.’   Here our Lord sets aside the letter of Holy Scripture, in one case, in the passage in Deuteronomy, (which He speaks of as the command of Moses,) on account of the higher law of Christian holiness and perfection…and therefore this passage in the book of Genesis not only is spoken, as St Paul says it is, of the Sacramental union betwixt Christ and His Church, but also does signify that marriage is itself of Divine sanction, and the union formed by God, and necessarily indissoluble as such…for if God has joined, man cannot put asunder.

FB profile 7xtjw   SIFC Note:   All of the above quotes are from  Daniel R. Jennings, “Except for Fornication – Why Evangelicals Must Reevaluate Their Interpretation of Matthew’s Divorce Exception Clause” (2011)
Sean Multimedia (www.seanmultimedia.com).

R.A. Torrey (circa 1890)  – Moody Bible Institute
“Look at this legalized adultery we call divorce.  Men marry one wife after another, and are still admitted in good society, and women do likewise.  There are thousands of supposedly respectable men married to other men’s wives, and thousands of supposedly respectable women married to other women’s husbands.”

Bill Gothard (circa 1983)  – (morally-discredited evangelist who was forced to step down from the bible institute he founded)

“….God has expressly forbidden a divorced woman who has remarried to return to her first husband — even if the second husband dies. (See Deut. 24:4 and Jeremiah 3:1)…”

Dr. John MacArthur (circa 2009) – President and founder, Masters Theological Seminary in Sun Valley, CA (a multi-point inspiration for “Rev. All-Wet”)

“…As a matter of fact, in the same passage where Moses permitted husbands to issue a certificate of divorce, the law added this restriction:  ‘When she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of the house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD.   Clearly, the second marriage — whether biblically-justified or not becomes as binding as the original marriage was supposed to be.   A return to the original spouse is strictly forbidden.”

The remainder of the citations are from biblehub.com :

Benson Commentary  Her former husband may not take her again — This is the punishment of his levity and injustice in putting her away without sufficient cause, which, by this offer, he now acknowledgeth. Defiled — Not absolutely, as if her second marriage were a sin, but with respect to her first husband, to whom she is as a defiled or unclean woman; that is, forbidden; for things forbidden are accounted and called unclean, (Jdg 13:7,) because they may no more be touched or used than an unclean thing. Thou shalt not cause the land to sin — Thou shalt not suffer such lightness to be practised, lest the people be polluted, and the land defiled and accursed by that means.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
4
. after that she is defiled] Ambiguous indeed, as the most carefully chosen terms of some laws often are. But the natural meaning is that she is unclean to the former husband by her union with the latter. It cannot be a matter of indifference to him that she has been another’s, as (presumably) the popular humour took it. Such easy passage of a woman from one man to another did defile her: it is an abomination before Jehovah (notice the peculiar construction before and the absence of thy God after the divine name). She was, therefore, taboo, or unlawful to her first husband. Marti suggests that the uncleanness may have a demonistic origin (cp. Deuteronomy 22:9-11). This, of course, may have been the motive of the original law, but if so, it has disappeared from its present form.

thou shalt not cause the land to sin] Sam., LXX ye shall not, etc. Cp. Deuteronomy 22:9.

which the Lord thy God is to give thee, etc.] See on Deuteronomy 4:21.

Matthew Poole’s Commentary
This is the punishment of his levity and injustice in putting her away without sufficient cause, which by this offer he now acknowledgeth.

After that she is defiled; not simply and absolutely, as if her second marriage were a sin, but respectively, or as to her first husband, to whom she is as a defiled or unclean woman, that is, forbidden; for things forbidden are accounted and called unclean, Judges 13:7, because they may no more be touched or used than an unclean thing.

Thou shalt not cause the land to sin, i.e. thou shalt not suffer such abominable lightness and lewdness to be practised, lest the people be polluted, and the land defiled and accursed by that means.

Geneva Study Bible
Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is {b} defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

(b) Seeing that by divorcing her he judged her to be unclean and defiled.

 

FB profile 7xtjw   SIFC Note:  The most faithful of the commentators above carefully note that the defilement existed prior to the first marriage and divorce (functioning more like an annulment, actually),  hence it was not the second marriage that defiled her.

Father God, in Jesus’ holy name, may the Person of the Holy Spirit be faithful to carry this message to at least that one (hopefully many) prodigal husband or wife who now feels trapped and ensnared, indeed who sees no way out of what he or she knows is a wrongful, non-covenant marriage, and who longs with all their heart to make their covenant family whole again, redeeming the generations from repeating this debilitating pattern of sin.   May Your holy anointing rest on these words and that person, and may you make them a level path back to their inheritance in the kingdom of God.   May  You, O God, open their eyes to the only act of true eternal love that will restore their non-covenant spouse to a chance to inherit the kingdom of God, and may You give them the holy resolve to do it, blessing their righteous obedience to Your commandment.

We ask these things in Jesus’ name, thanking You in advance for the extra measure of grace you are pouring out over them.    Amen.

(Next blog in the series:  Part 3, “I Don’t Know My ‘Deo‘   From My ‘Douloo’  –  (Do You?)   Stop Abusing 1 Cor. 7:15″ )

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall   |   Let’s  Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s Stop Popular Scripture Abuse: The “Debunk” Series – Part 1

Part 1 - What Hill...by Standerinfamilycourt

Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.   Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.     –  2 Timothy 2:14-15

Fans of our Facebook page “Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional” have been regaled recently with the foibles of a church leader many of us would unmistakably recognize (even if, like the “Proverbs 31 Woman“, he’s a composite),  one “Reverend All-Wet“.    Our cartoon evangelical hireling isn’t intended merely to skewer the post-“no fault” clergy, but use a bit of winsome humor, or outright sarcasm if necessary, to point out the considerable scripture-bending that has caused church-salt to lose its savor over the past 40 years.    We also aim to teach the basics of hermeneutics along the way,  and get our fans to start thinking systematically in those terms for purposes of testing the various doctrines that blow their way from the harlot church.

There’s only so much that can be accomplished with a meme, however.    A blog series seemed like a good idea to expand on effective antidotes to the perilous misadventures of “Rev. All-Wet”.    If dying in a state of remarriage adultery were not a heaven-or-hell issue according to 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, Hebrews 13:4 and Revelation 21:8,  we’d indeed be more loving to stay quiet about it, but since it is, it behooves us to prove it in a disciplined way that gets to the “why” this is so, and more loving to undertake the effort.     Upon the June 26, 2015 total melt-down of the U.S. Supreme Court, Barak Obama brazenly crowed over 50-state-sanctified sodomy (man’s futile attempt to join what only God can join) , “#LoveWins”.   We are faithfully pronouncing over serial polygamy (man’s futile and violent attempt to unjoin what God refuses to unjoin) , #LoveWarns!  

You may be asking, what do you mean by “hermeneutics” ?     Merriam-Webster’s dictionary lists the following definition:

Definition of hermeneutics:

  1.  plural but sing or plural in constr :  the study of the methodological principles of interpretation (as of the Bible)

  2.   a method or principle of interpretation

    When we attempt to “rightly divide” the word of God, we must cross languages (sometimes more than once), cultures and centuries or millennia to do so while preserving the original meaning of a scripture passage, all  the while keeping in mind what Paul found it necessary to remind his protégé Timothy of:

     All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,  so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
    2 Timothy 3:16-17

     

If we are neither disciplined nor conscientious in our workmanship of understanding God’s word, it will affirm sin rather than rebuke it, and the training we will receive will be in self-will rather than righteousness.   Humanistic impulses will take over, as the prophet Jeremiah described:

The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it?    (Jer. 17:9)

Faithful application of hermeneutics has a very interesting effect on the self-interested enemies of God’s truth.   This either shuts their mouths and causes them to retreat (hopefully to ponder, study further and eventually repent), or it causes them to act like an angry parrot with a repertoire of one or two unsupportable biases, repeated in an incessant loop, sometimes accompanied by ad hominem personal attacks.    It’s a painful exercise, but if refuted courteously, others will be reading and benefitting.

RevAllWet5

In successive installments, we will be applying a framework of five of the most basic concepts to each of the most-abused scriptures commonly mis-rendered to justify performing / entering, or remaining in marriages following man’s divorce that Jesus and Paul repeatedly called adulterous.    However, in this introduction, it seems right to apply the very same rigor to the most central of the scripture passages that formed the basis for what both Jesus and Paul had to say on the matter.   The purpose is not merely to affirm the belief and actions of the already-obedient, but to give them effective tools to start changing the culture in the church and perhaps in their own families or other sphere of close personal influence.    Learning this discipline is the most respectful way to approach the Rev. All-Wets in our lives.

How does one choose wisely “the hill to die on” when it comes to the indissolubility of holy matrimony?    These are only this blogger’s reflections, submitted for the reader’s consideration:

(1) we imitate Jesus, as best we can
(2) we examine what scripture the truth-opponents most avoid, “like kryptonite”
(3) we make sure it’s foundational to the creation, just as Jesus did.

In SIFC’s opinion, the scripture passage that best fulfills all three of these criteria is indeed the very definition of marriage given by Jesus in Matthew 19:4-6 (echoed in Mark 10:7-9, and by Paul in Ephesians 5:28-31):

And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female,  and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?   So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

With regard to considerations (1) and (3),  if this is the “hill to die on”,  we are imitating Jesus as He confronted the Rabbi “All-Wets” of His day, taking them back to the Garden and the Creation, just as He actually did.

To be sure, there are a quartet of scriptures universally dismissed, ignored, avoided and explained away by the remarriage apologists per consideration (2) that our cartoon series parodies, two by the mouth of Jesus, and two by the mouth of Paul.   Three of these represent the “what” more than they do the “why“, because they do not take us back to the Garden the way Matthew 19:6 does.    They are corroborating evidence under the COMPARISON principle.

We will therefore rigorously apply the framework of the hermeneutical basics (Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation) to Matthew 19:6 in this installment, and once having done so, the nuggets of truth we pull out of that passage should trump all conflicting arguments around interpretations of other scriptures since by principle Holy Spirit-breathed scripture cannot contradict itself, and in fact, heretical interpretations of those scriptures readily fall apart when the same rigor is applied to those, as we’ll do in upcoming installments.

Our Hill to Die On:   Matthew 19:6

The Principle of CONTENT:
We must first agree with certainty on what Matthew 19:6 actually says on the surface.   This is a function primarily of accurate manuscript / text selection, and accurate language translation.   One of the difficulties with the book of Matthew in general is that it was most likely originally written in Hebrew, then later translated into Greek before it was translated into English.   While Greek texts of Matthew were circulated and are available in many versions, only one such manuscript written in the original Hebrew has reportedly survived.   It is reportedly on display in Jerusalem, and is disputed.    We will rely on the Greek interlinear text tools and the literal syntax for our analysis of content, in order to remove any translation bias that may have occurred in your favorite bible version in more contemporary times.

Part 1 - Matt 19six

Source:  www.scripture4all.org   Greek Interlinear Bible

We must be accurate and faithful, not only with word translation but also with the parts of speech including verb tense, active or passive, imperative voice, etc.  that can greatly impact the meaning.

BiblehubFullParseKey
As a point of awareness, our scripture4all.org source above is the “Authorized Version” (also known as the Received Text) derived from the Antioch manuscripts which were translated by Dutch Catholic Humanist, Erasmus Desiderius (who was no actual “fan” of marriage permanence, according to the bulk of his various writings).    This translation went on to become the basis for the King James Bible, Geneva Bible and most other reliable older versions.   It is of note that this manuscript is NOT the basis for any of the contemporary English translations, because  occultist  / universalist scholars Westcott & Hort  rejected the Antioch manuscripts in favor of the weaker and less complete Alexandrian manuscripts which became the foundation of NIV, NASB (and other Revised Standard Versions), CEB, etc.     With some passages, notably Matthew 19:9, this is a really big deal due to missing or omitted crucial phrases, but with Matthew 19:6, all the manuscripts appear to agree with one another.

All of the above being the case, we are ready to look again at the translated Greek text, word by word, in literal syntax and merge the scripture4all.org  translation with the biblehub.com translation, taking the parts of speech into proper account:

Biblehub_Matt19_6

We’re almost finished with our analysis of CONTENT, but there are some key words highlighted in yellow where it’s useful to look at alternative words that appear elsewhere in the New Testament which Jesus did not choose to use, and also see where else (what context) the words He did use appear in scripture.    We’ve covered this in detail in two previous blogs,  May, 2015 and November, 2015.   Our takeaway from this part of the exercise is that the words for “joining” and “one-flesh” are used exclusively  in connection with God’s active role in supernaturally making them one (otherwise they could be two again, as contemporary man vainly imagines God, through His Son, to be a liar),  and covenanting with them in holy matrimony, but only where the bride and groom both meet the criteria in Matthew 19:4, alluding to Genesis 2:21-24 – opposite gender and leaving father and mother, that is, not already (still) joined to another because death has not occurred to sever the prior union.

Therefore, from our thorough analysis of  CONTENT, we can conclude with authority that all three of the “truth nuggets” identified above were communicated infallibly by the mouth of Jesus:

(1)  from the point God joins husband and wife, they cannot be unjoined as long as both live
(2) God actively and instantly creates the joining
(3)  God commands and decrees that no act or law of men has any power or authority to unjoin holy matrimony.

By extension, (and supported by the strong evidence of the unique words used, as contrasted with those used later by Paul in 1 Cor. 6:16),  joining that is withheld by God and therefore accomplished only by the carnal means of men, is immoral regardless of men’s civil laws, and it constitutes either adultery or fornication (or sodomy, more recently).    Unless repented of by terminating the relationship, there is forfeiture of entry or inheritance in the kingdom of God.    We can plainly see from this the basis for all of the other strong statements about the indissolubility of holy matrimony, as we’ll develop when we talk later about COMPARISON with other scriptures.   This is the “why” to the “what” of all those other scriptures.   It is foundational to the Creation, as Jesus Himself pointed out in voicing them.

The Principle of CONTEXT:
Most heretical interpretation of marriage scriptures flunk this test when closely examined.   Those that attempt to fit context around their particular theory draw it far too narrowly, which is hard not to do with the topic of marriage.    After all, holy matrimony is God’s first and His most sacred symbol, not only  for His relationship with His people, but also for His call to holiness itself.   This symbolism threads its way through every book of the Old and New Testaments, is reflected in each of the successive covenants God made with His people, and culminates in the last verses of Revelation:

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.”….He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.        REVELATION 22:17,20

God Most High cast His Son as the Bridegroom, both in prophecy and in His self-proclamations as He walked out His ministry on earth, but not just any sort of bridegroom.   Jesus was cast as the specific sort of Bridegroom that pays the price for a pure, virgin bride as part of the Hebrew betrothal custom called kiddushin.   Our justification upon agreeing to accept the offer of betrothal is our ketubah.    Though the consummation is in the future, we are the legal “wife” with full inheritance rights, unless we choose not to show up for the marriage supper.   However, even if we make that choice, He doesn’t tear up the ketubah.    We always have the option to seek forgiveness after again forsaking all others, and resume our journey toward that marriage supper spoken of in Revelation, and spoken of by Jesus in the Upper Room.    This is the broader context of Matthew 19:6, along with the Genesis account of the first wedding, and Paul’s explicit analogy in Ephesians 5: 31-32.

The narrower context of the exchange in Matthew 19, leading up to the definitive words that begin in verse 6 and culminate in verse 12, reaffirming the total indissolubility of covenant holy matrimony, and shutting the door on the prior acceptability of all deviations, including polygamy and divorce, is His confrontation by the Pharisees, following three or four important events that had preceded:

(1) The Roman occupation had removed the ability of the Jews to carry out the Mosaic law for stoning that applied to porneia  and moicheia under Deuteronomy 22.    This upped the ante on civil divorce as a substitute means of disposing of unwanted wives.

(2) Jesus had just publicly lauded His cousin John the Baptist, who had recently been beheaded by Heriod after rebuking his adulterous mutual divorce and remarriage to Herodias, saying “return your brother’s wife — it is not lawful for you to have her.”

(3) A recent attempt by the Pharisees to entrap him had failed when He was brought the woman taken in adultery — related to (1) above.

(4) Jesus had previously delivered the Sermon on the Mount, where He had informed his audience that He was raising the moral standard on a host of Mosaic laws, not the least of which was marriage.   He began by warning them that to lust after another man’s wife, and not be content with one’s own wife would send them to hell if they acted on it.   (There was really no indication that this wasn’t the case all along, even under Moses, but under the New Covenant, there would no longer be atonement available through animal sacrifices, so obedience to Him must begin to come from the heart.)  
Furthermore, He was redefining adultery, no longer to be based solely on an act of the woman, but now it would be based on either gender marrying somebody else’s one-flesh spouse while that person was still living.  This was the first of three recorded occasions where He repeated the identical message without any exceptions that pertained to the 3rd party involved.

For the Pharisees, there was also no mistaking, due to the Hebrew betrothal custom and (1) above that when Jesus spoke in Matthew 5:32 of “except for a report  of unchastity” [logou  porneias],  He was not speaking of a consummated wife by any stretch of the imagination.   This could only be applied to the betrothed legal wife who was the subject of an unconsummated  ketubah.    Speaking as God, He was, in effect slamming the door on “Plan B” which at various earlier points in their history following Moses’ death, they accustomed themselves to resorting to when periodically deprived of the power to carry out stoning.    All of the above created the incendiary backdrop for another Pharisaical attempt to trap and incriminate Jesus, hoping Herod would be motivated to do to Jesus what he had just done to John the Baptist.

Most contemporary Protestant commentaries fixate on the running dispute between the Hillel and Shammai camps of the Pharisees, while presuming in a weakly-supported manner that Jesus sided with the Shammai’s  because of the “exception” He mentioned in  Matthew 5.   This is not only an inept analysis, it is also a total red herring!    Full context shows that Jesus flatly rebuked both schools, and Moses along with them!   Jesus brushed aside their dispute and moved the whole conversation to a place of impact in the kingdom of God, as can be seen in the private discussion with His disciples in the house afterward, verses 10-12:

The disciples said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.   But He said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given.  For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.   He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”

Sometimes the context that immediately follows the passage being interpreted is just as important as the context that preceded it.   In this instance, if Jesus were merely agreeing with the “conservative” Shammais, verses 10-12, the discussion of becoming a eunuch for the kingdom of God would have no context, nor would the incredulous statement of dismay by the disciples.    But the parallel account in Mark 10 strengthens it even further because Mark, who was not there but spent years ministering with Peter among the Roman Gentiles, was impressed enough with the strength and firmness of what Jesus said that day to drop the gender distinction, indicating that was only relevant in the patriarchal Hebrew culture:

In the house the disciples began questioning Him about this again. And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her;  and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”

The Principle of CULTURE:
Much has already been covered concerning the cultural considerations in interpreting Matthew 19:6 as rendering holy matrimony altogether indissoluble by any act of men.   The central element is without question the tradition of the Hebrew betrothal, and well as the politics around the on-again, off-again stoning law established by Moses.    Other elements that factor in include the long history of polygamyespecially among the great patriarchs of Israel, the divorce practices learned from among the Egyptians and other pagans prior to and during the Exodus that corrupted the Hebrews and multiplied their adulteries.   The final element is the ritual animal sacrifice that atoned for personal iniquity on a daily basis, which ended shortly after the Mosaic covenant gave way to the Messianic covenant which shifted men’s moral responsibility to maintaining a pure heart in taking up their personal cross and following Him.    Not to love Jesus more than any possession or family relationship was now deemed to be idolatry, which was another for which one forfeited their inheritance in the kingdom of God.

The Principle of COMPARISON:
Scripture must always be interpreted in light of all other scripture on the same topic, and accomplished in such a way that there is no contradiction.    All canonized scripture is equally-inspired.  The Holy Spirit cannot contradict Himself.    Where there appears to be an inconsistency, disciplined investigation must continue until the source of the error is proven, and until scripture again aligns.   All of the relevant Old and New Testament scripture passages must be considered, and appropriate rigor demands that none be ignored as “analogy”, or dismissed as “hyperbole”.

The most relevant scriptures from Genesis to Revelation are:

Genesis 2:21-24  –  Matthew 19:6 is verbatim Genesis 2:24, but verses 21-23 give us even richer context.   The covenant wife of a man’s youth is “flesh of his flesh” and “bone of his bones” precisely because of God’s supernatural role in every holy matrimony joining.   God did not take a slab of ribs out of Adam, nor did He send Adam into a second sleep to supply a replacement when Eve did not turn out to be perfect.   There was no provision whatsoever for severing their one-flesh relationship except death.   That’s precisely why Jesus took the Pharisees back to the Garden, and why it wasn’t even necessary to say in the Pharisees’ hearing (because they already knew) the private elaboration He saved for His disciples, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her;  and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”

Exodus 20:14, 17  – the Ten Commandments were in effect a ketubah, the written evidence of an enduring covenant between Elohim and His chosen people.    In light of how Jesus redefined man’s notion of adultery, the seventh and tenth commandments also echo our understanding of Matthew 19:6.

Deuteronomy 22:13-22  – Under Mosaic law, the penalty for either adultery by a fully-consummated wife (verse 22), or fornication by a betrothed wife (verses 13-21) under a ketubah, was stoning, not dissolution of the marriage by dismissal.   This is fully consistent with the truth that death was required to unjoin one-flesh, which Moses fully understood.

Deuteronomy 22:23-29 – This passage demonstrates a situation where justice required that an unbetrothed virgin who was raped was made legally equivalent to a consummated wife, necessary because would now never be offered a ketubah, therefore was robbed of her opportunity to become one-flesh with a future husband.   Not only was her rapist required to marry her, but he could not divorce her all his days.   This was necessary because of the possibility that her rapist was already married, so without this provision, she might otherwise not be made equal with the one-flesh wife, but instead subject to the law in Deuteronomy 24:1-4.

Deuteronomy 24:1-4 –   Although the Pharisaical controversy with Jesus (and also the text of Malachi 2) shows that the system had broken down at some point, but under Moses, “divorce” constituted release from the ketubah, and was reserved for situations where supernaturally God-joined one-flesh did not yet exist, or could never exist (and not situations involving sexual immorality because that was defined in Deuteronomy 22).   Examples included:  “some indecency” or “some nakedness” such as an undisclosed disease in the bride that resulted in ongoing ritual uncleanness – such as leprosy or bleeding;  an unhappy concubine who had been captured in war;  subsequent spouses in polygamy;  too-close consanguinity, and the like.    The reason the husband could not take such a divorced wife back was because the marriage could never be lawful either before or after it occurred.   The obvious analogy with today is the non-covenant wife of remarriage adultery  who must be relinquished permanently in order for both spouses to have a chance to enter heaven.    [This is one passage that is rampantly abused by commentators and ministry leaders, and will be the subject of our next blog in the series.]

Jeremiah 3:1-14 –  This is the passage where the prophet draws an analogy between the covenant violation of adultery and the covenant violation of worshipping other gods (idolatry).   Because it seems to imply in verse 8 that God “divorced” Israel,  this is another widely-abused passage, both in terms of claims that God instituted and / or allows divorce,  and to justify replacement theology, our series will address this passage as well.   There is much to get into with word translation and context that we will cover at that time.   For now,  suffice it to say that the book of Revelation, as well as the march of 20th century history clearly demonstrates that God’s covenant marriage bond with Israel and Judah were violated but certainly not dissolved, and verse 14 is quite explicit in its corroboration of our understanding of indissolubility described in Matthew 19:6,
“Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion….”

Hosea 1, 2 – In another prophetic analogy similar to Jeremiah, this prophet was told by God to marry a known prostitute.   The one-flesh joining occurred, despite her past, due to their vows before God.  Her return to prostitution after taking those vows did not dissolve their covenant, despite his anguished declaration (2:2),
For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband...”  nor did he have her stoned under Mosaic law, as he could have.   Instead, he buys her back from off the slave auction block, saying (2:14, 16, 19-20),

“…Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
Bring her into the wilderness
And speak kindly to her…….It will come about in that day,” declares the Lord,   “That you will call Me Ishi  [husband]
And will no longer call Me Baali [master]….I will betroth you to Me forever;  Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice,
In lovingkindness and in compassion,
And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness.
Then you will know the Lord.”

It is as if God set the extreme story of Hosea to show that no act of men dissolves the marriage covenant of our youth, nor unjoins one-flesh.

Ezra, chapters 9 and 10 –  Over 100 priests were found to have entered into prohibited marriages (perhaps even polygamously) to pagan women with whom they had many children.   The Lord commanded that they be sent away in order to purify the people and have the nation restored.   When a nation, and especially with the involvement of its spiritual leaders, becomes so evil as to trample the sanctity of life and marriage, God begins to demand drastic cleansing measures.  Some cite this passage as evidence that God allows divorce, especially if the spouse of one’s youth is not a believer.   The problem with that is Paul’s instruction in 1 Corinthians 7: 12-13 to the contrary.   That instruction is based on the foundational fact that only  God can unjoin one-flesh.   However, in the instance of a prohibited marriage, it is not holy matrimony and God does not perform a one-flesh joining even if there are children born of the union.

Malachi 2:10-17 –  The Amplified Version brings in some important context that is not otherwise evident in the prophet’s rebuke of the adulterous priest(s) who were indeed guilty of remarriage adultery, of sending away an innocent one-flesh wife of their youth in order to “marry” a pagan woman, the identical situation that is so pervasive today.   God makes clear in verse 14 that He does not covenant with this second marriage, nor did he join them as one-flesh.   He is graphic about the human attempt to tear away,  or violently sever the one-flesh that Jesus says in Matthew 19:6 that only God can sever.   It is possible, as well, that Malachi is referring to false accusation that may have resulted in the wrongful stoning of an innocent covenant wife when Malachi speaks of “covering your garment with violence”,  and Jesus might have been alluding to the abuse of stoning when He spoke of hard hearts.   The term “shalach” used in 2:16 is literally “sending / putting away”,  but as we see in Deuteronomy,  the “get” (bill of divorcement) was reserved for other purposes than to dispose of a consummated one-flesh wife.
It is clear in this passage, that when God says He hates divorce (sending away),  He is speaking specifically of only the one-flesh spouse of our youth.

(Before turning to our comparison of New Testament passages, we pause to note what we’ve seen from scripture interpreting scripture,  the Pharisees who challenged Jesus were violating  God’s law from the beginning, as Jesus points out to them in Matthew 19:8.   Even in the Old Testament, there was never any true provision for sending away or abandoning a one-flesh spouse of one’s youth, consistently with all three “truth nuggets” gleaned above from  Matthew 19:6.   This is further supported by the fact that in all of the books of the Old Testament, we see a certain amount of polygamy, but we do not see one instance of “shalach” of a one-flesh consummated wife among those of any of the named figures of bible history except Vashti, the wife of the pagan King Xerxes in the book of Esther, until we come to the New Testament, where we see Herod directly rebuked by the Holy Spirit as an adulterer.)

Matthew 1:24-25 –   Mary was a betrothed wife under ketubah during the Roman occupation of Palestine, during which stoning for adultery or fornication was deprived of the Jews to carry out, so his option according to the post-Mosaic rabbinical tradition was “shalach“, which he purposed to do quietly, not wanting to disgrace her.   When the angel of the Lord commanded him to take her as his wife rather than issue her a “get” sending her away, he obeyed but kept her a virgin until Jesus was born.   As a result, though the ceremony took place, it is possible the one-flesh joining was delayed by God in this instance.   But why did God choose a betrothed mother and not an unattached virgin?    Perhaps it was so that we would have a well-known example through the ages to understand the importance of Hebrew betrothal to Jesus’ role as our unconditionally faithful Bridegroom.   Jesus subsequently gained several brothers whose biological father was Joseph.

Matthew 5:27-32 –  the key theme of the Sermon on the Mount was that Jesus was ushering in a new covenant, where no longer would there be animal sacrifices and external atonement for sin, nor the law to grudgingly fall short of, but obedience was to flow from the heart out of love and gratitude for His taking our place, and suffering the punishment we deserved.   Therefore, the Mosaic law was being superseded, especially the 613 sundry Pharisaical rules and the bulk of the Mosaic laws, in favor of a much higher standard:  love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves.    No more eye for an eye , tooth for a tooth.  No more taking our own revenge or loving only those who love us.   We were no longer to allow sin to form even in our hearts.   Jesus redefined adultery as lustful thoughts, and murder as hateful, angry thoughts.   Against this backdrop, how is it even possible to seek to terminate a one-flesh God-joining for any reason?   How could such hate be committed against one’s own children?    A word of clarity is necessary concerning verse 32:

ἐγὼ δὲ   λέγω  ὑμῖν     ὅτι     πᾶς   ὁ       ἀπολύων                            τὴν
I however say to you that everyone “from-loosing”[dismissing] the

γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ  παρεκτὸς         λόγου       πορνείας
wife     of him      except for     a report of prostitution / whoredom

ποιεῖ   αὐτὴν      μοιχευθῆναι                        καὶ      ὃς         ἐὰν
causes   her      to commit adultery              and   whoever if

ἀπολελυμένην                                 γαμήσῃ               μοιχᾶται
her having been divorced        shall marry     commits adultery.

Why did Jesus say it was entering into a state of adultery  for a man to marry a woman who had been put away?    Was it not because she was still joined as one-flesh to her true husband, a condition that only God, not men, could unjoin?    Why does putting her away cause her to commit adultery?   Is it not for the very same reason Jesus stated in Matthew 19:6, that they would never again be two, once joined by God?     Note, too, that contemporary English translations make an unsupported word substitution for “porneia” (rendering it as “sexual immorality”)  when the original usage was much more specific than that.   Lastly, it should be noted Jesus referred to  “porneia”  (whoredom) and “moicheia” (adultery) as two separate and distinct sexual sins, not only here, but also in  Matthew 15:19 and Mark 7:21, as well as Matthew 19:9.    Paul did likewise in
1 Corinthian 6:9-10  and Galatians 5:19-21.    All of the above is consistent with the truth Jesus stated in Matthew 19:6, that man has no power to dissolve holy matrimony for any reason, by any act short of dying, and cannot unjoin what God has joined.   We can see that construing Matthew 5:32 as creating an adultery exception permitting one to divorce and remarry  causes the verse to contradict all other marriage scriptures except (on the surface) Matthew 19:9.

Matthew 14:3-4; Mark 6:17-18  –  These are the two  accounts of John the Baptist openly rebuking the adulterous divorces and remarriage of Herod and Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip.    On what basis was John justified in making that charge if either civil divorce or adultery dissolved holy matrimony?    Note that even though they were both pagans, as presumably both of their true spouses were, God still irrevocably joined them as one-flesh to their respective true spouses.   Jesus highly commended John the Baptist for taking the stand that he did.

Matthew 19:8 –  “…Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so….”     Jesus is reiterating exactly what He said two verses earlier, that flesh-of-a-man’s-flesh and bone-of-his-bones cannot be unjoined by man,  a foundational truth from the Creation account, Genesis 2:21-23.

Matthew 19:9  –  This is the second most abused scripture in the New Testament when it comes to the sanctity of marriage, right after 1 Corinthians 7:15 (see below).   Both will be the subject of future installments to come.  If you click on the scripture’s link, please pay very careful attention to the footnotes at bottom.    These “manuscripts”, almost dismissively referred to, are the very ones rejected by revisionist translators Westcott & Hort.   Added back to Matthew 19:9 they cause this passage to read the same as Matt. 5:32 and Luke 16:18, with the concluding phrase casting serious doubt on the notion that “except for fornication” reasonably refers to a post-wedding state of sin.   The footnotes also show that “fornication” (“prostitution” or “whoredom” in pre-1800’s translations) was changed to the more fungible “immorality” in this version.

Matthew 19: 10-12 –  After Jesus offended the Pharisees’ carnal line of questioning by slamming the door shut on divorce and remarriage as being something tolerable in the kingdom of God, His incredulous and stunned disciples confronted Him privately in the house, where He delivered the hard word in Matthew 19:9 / Mark 10:10-12.   We know that Jesus was not stating an exception for adultery because this was the accepted position of the school of Shammai, and would have triggered no controversy whatsoever with the twelve.   Their response, “it is better not to marry”  (if there’s no way holy matrimony can be dissolved by men) is once again perfectly consistent with our understanding of Matthew 19:6.     Jesus then spoke of three types of eunuchs:  those born that way, those who have been emasculated, and those separated from a one-flesh spouse who may not remarry for the sake of the kingdom of God, which directly follows from His straightforward message in Matthew 19:6.

Mark 10: 1-12 – This is the parallel account of the same event as Matthew 19: 1-12, but addressed to a mixed-gender Gentile audience.    The key verse is 10:11-12,  “And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”     John Mark, nephew of Barnabas was not present for this event,  but was Peter’s companion and ministry partner, thereby learning of it from Peter who was present.   Whatever Jesus said in that house following the exchange with the Pharisees was obviously made so strong an impression on Peter that his young disciple felt it applied equally to both genders, overcoming the traditional patriarchal bias of the Mosaic law, and dispensing with any exception whatsoever.  

Luke 16:16-31 –  This is one of the two passages where Jesus is commending John the Baptist, martyr and rebuker of remarriage adultery, just before He delivers an exceptionless rebuke of divorce and remarriage, stating for the third time that to marry a person who has been put away by a spouse is entering into an ongoing state of adultery.    On what basis?   On the basis that they are attempting to marry someone who is still joined as one-flesh to their true spouse, and violating an indissoluble covenant according to what He said in Matthew 19:6.    Immediately following this, Jesus goes into a vivid description of hell, describing the rich man who lived for self and received his reward in full during his life on earth while others suffered under his feet.   Coincidence or design, is Jesus’ account?

Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39  –  Two pronouncements of Paul, echoing each other, that only death dissolves the covenant of holy matrimony and frees a previously married person to marry another.    On what basis was Paul saying this, if not Matthew 19:6, and the other exceptionless instances where Jesus is calling marriage to a divorced person adultery?

1 Cor 6:1-8; 15-20 –  In addition to flatly stating that ongoing, unrepentant adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God,
1 Corinthians 6 forbids using the pagan civil court system to avoid the godly authority of church leadership, and very importantly, it contrasts the constitutional differences between the permanent, supernatural God-joining of holy matrimony with the transitory carnal joining of an unlawful, immoral relationship.   It describes slavery to the wrong thing, lust and idolatry, as well as the sin of bodily dragging Jesus into the immorality.   If we’re bought with a price by the Bridegroom, and our bodies are not our own to do as we please,  the basis is also Matthew 19:6.

1 Corinthians 7:10-16 –  This chapter addresses various groups in the church body, including “the married”,  reiterating that separation and divorce is not an option, but if separation occurs, the spouses are to remain celibate or they are to reconcile.   They are not to seek separation due to a difference in faith,  For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband.”   This is as much an allusion to the one-flesh state that exists between them as it is to godly daily influence.   The instruction not to obstruct a spouse from departing who cannot abide the believing spouse’s discipleship has little to do with other causes of marital rupture, and the reference to the believing spouse not being bound refers to their freedom to follow Christ rather than a dissolution of the marriage bond.    All of this is perfectly consistent with Matthew 19:6.   (The pervasive abuse of verse 15 will be the subject of another blog in the series.)

1 Corinthians 7: 26-27 –  Another commonly-abused scripture in the same passage is used to justify remaining in a civil marriage that Jesus called adulterous.    Paul instructed those in the Corinthian church, in light of the persecution they were suffering, to remain as they were “called”,  meaning the state they were in when converted to Christ, also referring to slavery a few verses above.   However, verse 25 specifically addresses this to the virgins, and is once again referring to the kiddushin betrothal.    Therefore, his references to “wife” are mixed.    In the case of an indissoluble covenant with the wife of one’s youth, one is always “called” in the married state and required to cease and repudiate any accompanying state of sin.     The foundation for saying that one is called in the married state, not to a spouse of serial polygamy but to the covenant one-flesh spouse is, of course, Matthew 19:6 (also Luke 16:18  and Mark 10:11-12).

Eph 5:28-32 –   This passage is one of the clearest possible elaborations of the one-flesh relationship that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 19:6.   Paul goes so far to say that however a man treats his one-flesh companion, he is treating his own body.   From there Paul reiterates the symbolism of holy matrimony as depicting Christ’s relationship with His body, the church.

1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6 –  Both of these passages forbid a man from serving in church leadership who is the husband of more than one wife, that is, one who has married another after putting away a wife, since Jesus defined this practice in Matt. 5:32b, Matt. 19:9b and Luke 16:18b as adultery.    Allowing a remarriage adulterer to serve as a pastor sets an immoral example which then attacks the families of that church who would emulate the pastor’s example.   Violating Paul’s clear instruction has also has historically polluted official church doctrine, from the Anglicans to the Assemblies of God, as humanistic impulses put the Matthew 19:6 commandment of Christ to a popular vote of the clergy in the 17th and 20th centuries, respectively.

Romans 13:1-2, 6-7Matthew 16:19; Acts 5:28-30 –  Some Christians will refute our disciplined interpretation of Matt. 19:6 by using Romans 13 to argue for the “validity” of civil divorce as “dissolving” holy matrimony.    They are correct that civil divorce dissolves unions of whatever type that God did not join and covenant with.   “For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God….for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.  Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.”        But did God ever grant the regulation of holy matrimony into civil government’s remit?   Matthew 19:6 directly states otherwise, by the mouth of Jesus!

The Roman Catholic Church claims authority to “annul” marriages, citing Matthew 16:19,  “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”     Yet, Jesus could not have been plainer, “therefore what God has joined, let NO MAN separate.”

As now with the legalization of both sodomous and serially-polygamous /  adulterous unions by the civil authorities, there arises a need for fearing and obeying God above men, even to the extent of civil disobedience and suffering civil consequences.    Peter and the apostles were rebuked and threatened for preaching the gospel:
“We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name, and yet, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.”  But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.  The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross.”   
In
deed, the rebuked adulterer Herod was the governing authority,  yet John the Baptist put his and his adulteress’ souls above the civil law, fully willing to suffer for doing right, and was highly commended by Jesus for it .    Are we going recognize homosexual “marriages”, along with adulterous ones because “there’s no authority except as established by God?”   St. Augustine (echoed by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail)  stated, “an immoral law is no law at all.”

[“Standerinfamilycourt”  has endeavored to include in the COMPARISON step all of the scriptures commonly used (misused, actually) to negate or undermine the unpalatable message from Jesus in Matthew 19:6, however if such a scripture has been overlooked,  the reader is encouraged to use the Comments section of this blog to bring it to our attention.]

 

The Principle of CONSULTATION
Whom is it most appropriate to consult on the authority of scripture which condemns man’s attempts to dissolve holy matrimony and to “sanctify” marriage to another while still having a living one-flesh spouse?     Due to the carnality of man which tends to escalate over time, that is a very important question which requires a strong knowledge of church history to reliably answer.    Hopefully, we’ve made it clear with indisputable evidence up to this point exactly where Jesus and the Apostles (including Paul) stood.   They discipled the next generation of followers of The Way, who in turn discipled the successive generations of the ante-Nicene church fathers.   It makes sense therefore to start the consultation with the writings of those who knew the Apostles (for example, Luke and Mark), and with those whom the next generation  discipled.

We need to be a bit skeptical while consulting theologian commentators from the time  of the Reformation forward when it comes to this topic.    Some will be biased in defense of the heretical Westminster Confession of Faith, which dominated mainline Protestant Churches from the 17th century, and others will be swayed by the tampering with word translations that began to occur in the lexicons published after the latter half of the 19th century.    On this basis, an equal number of later scholars will refute and discredit the many writings of the disciples of the Apostles, literally lapsing into “Reverend All-Wet” mode, and only superficially applying the  principles of disciplined hermeneutics  that we’ve just stepped through together.    For example, in convoluted fashion they’ll say that “scripture cannot contradict itself”,  so since “most scholars agree” (a presumption based on confirmation bias — and a weakened, distorted application of the COMPARISON principle that completely bypasses application of both the CONTEXT and  CULTURE principles) …that porneia “should always be” translated as “sexual immorality”,  all of the many scriptures that refute this must therefore be interpreted as not universally authoritative, and the church fathers should be dismissed as “flawed” asceticists.   Two free downloadable scholarly books are available, here and here, that will be very helpful in carrying out the CONSULTATION step for almost every scripture we’ll be examining in this series.   Our Church Fathers and Church Wolves series will also be historically helpful.

Here’s what several of the early church fathers and other bible commentators had to say on this topic of the indissolubility of holy matrimony:

Justin Martyr (100-165 A.D)
And, “Whoever shall marry her who is divorced from another husband, commits adultery.”   And, “There are some who have been made eunuchs of men, and some who were born eunuchs, and some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake; but all cannot receive this saying.”  So that all who by human law, are twice married, are in the eye of our Master sinners, and those who look upon a woman to lust after her.

Hermas (circa 160 A.D.)
And I said to him, “Sir, if any one has a wife who trusts in the Lord, and if he detect her in adultery, does the man sin if he continues to live with her?”  And he said to me, “As long as he remains ignorant of her sin, the husband commits no transgression in living with her.  But if the husband knows that his wife has gone astray, and if the woman does not repent, but persists in her sin, and the husband continues to live with her, he also is guilty of her crime, and a sharer in her adultery.”  And I said to him, “What then, sir, is the husband to do if she continues in her vicious practices?”  And he said, “The husband should put her away and remain by himself.  But if he put her away and marries another, he also commits adultery.”

Theophilus (circa 170-190 A.D.)
“And he that marries”, says [the Gospel] , “her that is divorced from her husband commits adultery; and whoever puts away his wife**, saving for the cause of fornication, cause her to commit adultery.”   Because Solomon says: “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?  Or can one walk across hot coals and his feet not be burned?  So he that goes into a married woman will not be innocent.”      (**Recall that “wife” in the Gospel also referred to a betrothed legal wife who was the only type of “wife” who could commit fornication rather than adultery.)

Athenagoras (177 A.D.)
For we bestow our attention; not on the study of words, but on the exhibition and teaching of actions, that a person should either remain as he was born, or be content with one marriage; for a second marriage is only a specious adultery.   “For whoever puts away his wife,” says He, “and marries another commits adultery;” not permitting a man to send her away whose virginity he has brought to an end, nor to marry again.

Clement of Alexandria (circa 215 A.D.)
Now that the scripture counsels marriage, and allows no release from the union, is expressly contained in the law, “You shall not put away your wife except for the cause of fornication,” and it regards as adultery the marriage of those separated while the other is alive.   The Church cannot marry another, having obtained a bridegroom;  each of us individually has a right to marry the woman he wishes according to the law; I mean here first marriage.

Tertullian ( circa 160-220 A.D.)
A divorced woman cannot even marry legitimately; and if she commits any such act without the name of marriage, does it not fall under the category of adultery, in that adultery is crime in the way of marriage?    Such is God’s verdict, within narrower limits than men’s, that universally, whether through marriage or promiscuously, the admission of a second man to intercourse is pronounced adultery to Him...so true, moreover, is it that divorce “was not from the beginning,” that among the Romans it is not until the six hundredth year from the building of the city that this kind of “hard heartedness” is set down as having been committed.  But they indulge in promiscuous adulteries, even without divorcing their partners: to us, even if we do divorce them, even marriage will not be lawful.

Council of Arles, 314 A.D.
Of those who discover their wives in adultery and are young Christians and are forbidden to marry, it was determined that they be most strongly advised not to take other wives while their own live, though they be adulterous.

Gregory Nanzianzen (circa 325-389 A.D.)
For I think the word here seems to deprecate second marriage.  For, if there were two Christs, there may be two husbands or two wives; but if Christ is One, one Head of the Church, let there also be one flesh, let the second be rejected…now the [civil] Law grants divorce for every cause, but Christ not for every cause; but He allows only separation from the whore; and in all other things He commands patience.

Ambrose of Milan (333-397 A.D.)
Therefore, the right to marry is given you, lest ye fall into a snare and sin with a strange woman.  Ye are bound to your wife; do not seek release because you are not permitted to marry another while your wife lives.

John Chrysostom (circa 347-407 A.D.)
‘Let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.’….’What then if he will never be reconciled?’ one may ask.   You have one more mode of release and deliverance.  What is that?  Await his death.  For as the (consecrated) virgin may not marry because her Spouse always lives, and is immortal; so to her who has been married it is then only lawful [to remarry] when her husband is dead.

Innocent I  (417 A.D.)
It is manifest that when persons who have been divorced marry again both parties are adulterers.   And moreover, although the former marriage is supposed to be broken, yet if they marry again they themselves are adulterers, but the parties whom they marry are equally with them guilty of adultery; as we read in the gospel:
He who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery; and likewise, He who marries her that is put away from her husband commits adultery.

Jerome (circa 340-420 A.D.)
The apostle has cut away every plea and has clearly declared that, if a woman marries again while her husband is living, she is an adulteress.   You must not speak to me of the violence of a ravisher,  a mother’s pleading, a father’s bidding, the influence of relatives, the insolence and the intrigues of servants, household losses.   A husband may be an adulterer,  a sodomite, he may be stained with every crime and may have been left by his wife for his sins; yet he is still her husband as long as he lives; she may not marry another.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.)
It cannot be correctly affirmed either that the husband who puts away his wife because of immorality and marries another does not commit adultery.   For there is adultery, also, on the part of those who marry others after the repudiation of their former wives because of immorality…If everyone who marries another woman after the dismissal of his wife commits adultery, this includes one who puts away his wife without cause of immorality and the one who puts away his wife for this reason.

Peter Lombard (prior to 1160 A.D.)
The marriage bond still exists between those who, even if departing from one another, having joined themselves to others.

Thomas Aquinas (circa 1225-1274 A.D.)
Nothing happening after a marriage can dissolve it: wherefore adultery does not make a marriage cease to be valid.  For according to Augustine, “as long as they live they are bound by the marriage tie, which neither divorce nor union with another can destroy.

Isaac Williams (1802-1865)
‘What therefore God has joined let not man put asunder.’   Here our Lord sets aside the letter of Holy Scripture, in one case, in the passage in Deuteronomy, (which He speaks of as the command of Moses,) on account of the higher law of Christian holiness and perfection…and therefore this passage in the book of Genesis not only is spoken, as St Paul says it is, of the Sacramental union betwixt Christ and His Church, but also does signify that marriage is itself of Divine sanction, and the union formed by God, and necessarily indissoluble as such…for if God has joined, man cannot put asunder.

FB profile 7xtjw   SIFC Note:   All of the above quotes are from  Daniel R. Jennings, “Except for Fornication – Why Evangelicals Must Reevaluate Their Interpretation of Matthew’s Divorce Exception Clause” (2011)
Sean Multimedia (www.seanmultimedia.com).
The remainder of the commentaries, cited below, are courtesy of www. biblehub.com.

R.A. Torrey (circa 1890)  – Moody Bible Institute
RATorrey

Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Wherefore they are no more twain,…. They were two before marriage, but now no more so; not but that they remain two distinct persons,

but one flesh; or, as the Syriac, Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic versions read, “one body”: hence the wife is to beloved by the husband as his own body, as himself, as his own flesh, Ephesians 5:28.

what therefore God hath joined together; or, by the first institution of marriage, has declared to be so closely united together, as to be, as it were, one flesh, and one body, as husband and wife are;

let no man put asunder; break the bond of union, dissolve the relation, and separate them from each other, for every trivial thing, upon any slight occasion, or for anything; but what is hereafter mentioned. The sense is, that the bond of marriage being made by God himself, is so sacred and inviolable, as that it ought not to be dissolved by any man; not by the husband himself, or any other for him; nor by any state or government, by any prince or potentate, by any legislator whatever; no, not by Moses himself, who is, at least, included, if not chiefly designed here, though not named, to avoid offence: and God and man being opposed in this passage, shows, that marriage is an institution and appointment of God, and therefore not to be changed and altered by man at his pleasure; this not merely a civil, but a sacred affair, in which God is concerned.

Pulpit Commentary
Verse 6.
Wherefore (ὥστε); so that. This follows from the quotation just given. Our Lord explains and confirms the original dictum by an assertion of his own and a general law. What God hath joined together. The institution of marriage is God’s appointment. Christ says ο{, what, neuter singular, not “those whom,” plural and concrete, that he may make it clear that he is here speaking in the abstract, not specially of Adam and Eve. What he enunciates is true of all wedlock, not simply of the case of our first parents. Let not man put asunder. Man does thus infringe the primitive rule when he divorces his with. Herein he opposes God and acts against nature. He and his wife are one; they can no more separate from one another than they can from themselves. If we regard our Lord’s language in this passage without prejudice, and not reading into it modern notions, we must consider that he here decrees the indissolubility of the marriage tie. His hearers plainly understood him so to speak, as we see from the objection which they urged.

Bengel’s Gnomen
Matthew 19:6. οὐκ ἔτι εἰσὶ, they are no more) They are now no longer two, as they were before.—δύο, two) We should not understand σάρκες, fleshes (carnes): for in Matthew 19:5 we find οἱ δύο (the two, they twain).—, that which (quod), not , those which (quae): for they are now one flesh.—συνέζευεξεν, hath joined together) hath made one.—ἄνθρωπος, man) see Matthew 19:3.—μὴ, κ.τ.λ., let not, etc.) The principle here involved admits of a widely extended application: what GOD hath separated, commanded, conceded, prohibited, blessed, praised, loosed, bound, etc., let not Man join together, prohibit, forbid, command, curse, blame, bind, loose, etc., not even in his own case; see Acts 10:15; Numbers 23:8; Romans 14:3; Romans 14:20.—χωριζέτω, put asunder) In every case of sexual connection, either God hath joined the two, or He hath not joined them: if He hath not joined them, their connection is unlawful; if He hath joined them, why are they separated?

To be sure, there are commentaries, Ellicott’s and Meyers’ for two examples, on Matthew 19:6 that comport with the Lutheran / Calvinist  (revisionist) view of holy matrimony being an “ideal” rather than a commandment, and with it being dissolved by the act of adultery, and by the decree of men.   However, this view as we’ve shown, is not supported by either church history nor by the vast body of scripture, nor by what the Lord repeatedly stated.

The United States of America was established, with the Lord’s help, as a nation dedicated to the freedom of men to pursue the kingdom of God, beginning in their homes.   Unlike Europe, to whom the Protestant Reformers handed off to the state the power to regulate that which belonged exclusively to God, civil marriage licenses did not begin to be instituted by state and local governments for nearly 100 years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified.    Morality was elevated and there developed a tradition that the family was sovereign and sacrosanct, and as a result,  God’s extreme favor rested on our nation.    Our forefathers likewise established their  hill to die on, the alienable right of conscience and to the free exercise of religious conviction in awe-filled reverence toward the word of God.

 

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;   Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.    1 Peter 2:9

 

 

 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

 

 


From the Book, “Looking Back 25 Years” by Bob Steinkamp

SteinkampBook
transcribed by Standerinfamilycourt

This has been a favorite devotional from the returned prodigal husband who remarried his covenant wife, Charlyne, then founded Rejoice Marriage Ministries with her nearly 30 years ago.   The Steinkamps  have sustained, prayed for and coached thousands of covenant couples, seeing a very large percentage of them through to reconciled and restored marriages.   Bob graduated to heaven in December, 2010.   To the best of our knowledge, this devotional has not been featured so far in Charlyne Cares, perhaps because it’s more of a commentary than a devotional.   We think it’s still worth sharing.

(Rev. Steinkamp, who served as an auxiliary police officer:)

…One of the great fears of many standers is their prodigal spouse will never be obedient to God.   That can be illustrated by another law enforcement device, spike strips.

Almost weekly on the new we see police pursuits.  Let’s compare a prodigal on the run from God to a felon on the run from the police.

The first contact with a fleeing felon might be when a police officer pulls in behind a suspect vehicle, turns on the lights and attempts to make a stop.

Every prodigal who has left home does so while looking in the emotional rear view mirror.    They want to know who has seen what they just did.   An officer “lighting up” a suspect might be compared to God signaling a prodigal to stop what they are doing.

Even though it cannot be done, fleeing felons and fleeing prodigals often think they can do so without being caught.  As the pursuit increases, both felons and prodigals feel they will not be caught.  Watching a police chase on television from an aerial view as the subject drives without knowing where they are going is the same as many prodigals.

A major concern in a police chase is not to endanger the lives of innocent people.   Fleeing prodigals, just like fleeing felons show a total disregard for the welfare of others, namely their spouse and children.  God must look on the actions of us prodigals with a broken heart as we refuse to stop.

Finally someone makes a decision that the police chase must end.  Some distance ahead of the pursuit, the road is cleared and spike strips are readied.   A sturdy rope-type device holds multiple sharp spikes, designed to flatten the tires on the subject vehicle.  The spike strip is deployed just in front of the approaching vehicle.

God also has spiritual spike strips that He allows to be deployed in front of prodigals, if other efforts to have them stopped have failed.  I dare not give illustrations lest someone feel I am using their family as an example.

In police chases, we often see a vehicle driving on the rims, with all four tires flattened and even the rubber on the tire gone.  Prodigals can hit the spike strips of life and then continue running on the rims in the far country.

It is not uncommon to see a police chase coming to an end with the suspect starting to run on foot, and then suddenly surrendering to authorities.  We  know prodigals who run and run, and then suddenly give up.   In fact, that is what happened to me.    My running came to an end as I surrendered to my God and came home to my stander.

What is the real deal of a stander?   Someone just like you who, regardless of what today brought, is ready to put that all behind them by the shed Blood of Jesus, spend time with God, and then get up tomorrow as certain as ever that God is going to do just as He promised and restore your marriage.  To God be the glory!

Real deal standers are not Christians who are perfect.   They are people who can admit they are imperfect but who love and serve a God Who is always perfect.    Real deal standers depend not on Bob or Charlyne, nor on this or any Ministry to keep them standing strong.   They depend on God.

Dear stander, go fight the spiritual battle one more day with the weapons of God.   After that, fight the next battle and the one after that, always keeping one eye on your front walk to see if your prodigal is on the way home.

Your family restored, with everyone loving and serving Jesus, prepared to be with Him for eternity, is the real deal.

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |   Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www. standerinfamilycourt.com

 

 

Same Doctrine, Same Denomination, Far Different Spirit

by Standerinfamilycourt

Our last blog gathered and critiqued in its entirety the overall-excellent autumn 2013 video series by David Sproule of the Palm Beach Lakes Church of Christ.     This more recent series, although it agrees doctrinally with the other series, is a good example of the need to exercise our spiritual gifts in these last days, especially the discerning of spirits.    (Indeed, in this first video, this Canadian pastor claims that all spiritual gifts passed away as a result of the scripture manuscripts being completed, as if the Lord would not have forseen an even greater need for the power of the Holy Spirit in the prophesied “days of Noah”, when persecutions of true Christ followers would multiply far beyond anything the Church ever faced in her first centuries, and the escalating theft of the purity of God’s word would also occur in our times, with the bible actually ending on that note.)

The purpose of this blog is to remind us all of the need to emulate Jesus in treating individuals individually, when the temptation to stereotype is almost insurmountable.    Nicodemus, Caiaphas, and Joseph of Arimathea were all Pharisees, an obnoxious, self-righteous bunch who were clearly out to get Jesus.    He could have treated Nicodemus and Joseph as indistinct members of that group, guilt-by-association, if you will.   Instead, He chose to listen to and speak to their hearts.   The covenant marriage stander community receives many opportunities from the Lord to interact with public voices of varying prominence and diverse doctrines.   We must do the same with individual discernment if we want to effectively challenge people to seek the undiluted biblical truth.   If we fail in this, we act in the flesh rather than the Spirit, and we wind up being far more heat than light, far more noise than persuasion.

SIFC posts two 8 -10 minute audios dated November, 2015 by an unnamed pastor* of the East End Church of Christ in Toronto, Ontario.    We do so with heavy disclaimer, noting that this speaker, unlike Brother Sproule, clearly lacks the intellectual curiosity and intellectual integrity in his arguments (off-topic, ignoring context, etc.), and  even worse, the sense of the fear of God seems absent that ought to be present whenever publicly discussing a heaven-or-hell topic.

(*according to the church website, they have only one “evangelist” [preacher],  Jeremy Diestelkamp who is described on the site as being the son of the former “evangelist”, and a substitute school teacher prior to taking up the church role.)

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC NOTE:  Our comments are not intended to be a disparagement of the Church of Christ per se.    In Revelation, chapters 2 and 3, Jesus had a little something individual to say to  each of the seven churches, again, discerning the spirit of each.    Anyone who follows this blog is aware that SIFC  vigorously disagrees with the current marriage doctrine and practice of her own church, but agrees with the former doctrine as it had been established for 60+ years from inception until in 1973, the leadership under pressure from a group of pastors voted to drastically revise it and publish a “position paper” — to “clarify” existing practice, assuring us that nothing was fundamentally changing despite the new permission granted to perform adulterous weddings and grant pulpits to pastors in adulterous remarriages – but I digress.    Our comments are always intended to be a challenge to be unrelenting in moving toward (or back toward, as the case may be),  undiluted biblical truth.    In other words, to become those churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia, toward whom the Lord had only commendations.   He was addressing locations under specific shepherds, let’s not forget, and not denominations.

Part 1, Searching the Scriptures, What Does “Except for Fornication” Mean?  –  November 2, 2015

(Speaker was addressing a question from a commenter to his site:
“Does someone in an adulterous marriage have to divorce?”)

“No opinion, just bible“, the speaker insists, as if we are to take the scriptural text, as translated, at face value.   That is equivalent to saying “we’re not interested in applying the harsh fluorescent light of hermeneutic principles or analysis to our dogma.”     Bible version?    He doesn’t tell us, but since the word “fornication” (rather than generic, interchangeable “sexual immorality”) has been translated into a few of the contemporary English versions that were derived from the faulty Westcott & Hort Greek translations, and his supporting arguments go far off into left field in Part 1, we’re not at too much of a disadvantage not knowing.    But, did this expositor actually answer the person’s question by the end of these two audio files?  Indeed, did he even perceive correctly what the question actually was?

Part 2, Searching the Scriptures, What Does “Except for Fornication” Mean?  –  November 2, 2015

(Speaker was continuing to address a question from a commenter to his site:
“Does someone in an adulterous marriage have to divorce?”)

To “detox” from the from the shallow and misguided definition of fornication found in this audio, we recommend the scholarly research by  Rev. Dan Jennings, Except for Fornication“,  and by Sharon Henry, Jewish Marriage, Biblical Divorce and Remarriage” (both also available in paperback book form).   We also remind that the definition of the Greek “porneia” (fornication) only address one law of hermeneutics (Content) out of at least five essential laws, the remainder of which include Context, Culture (History), Comparison, and Consultation, not addressed in either of these two audios.    Once these are honestly and carefully applied, it matters very little whether “porneia” includes adultery.   It becomes very clear to the honest scholar that Jesus was not using porneia in the context that this expositor wishes.

This speaker goes on to declare that “we must not put limits on people that ‘God didn’t require’, and we must not call ‘sin’ anything He didn’t call sin.”   He says this without even showing nominal awareness of the supernatural joining of the one-flesh state, nor of God’s role in the covenant vows of the marriage of our youth (unlike David Sproule, same denomination).  Given the heaven-or-hell nature of getting this matter wrong, there should be clarity beyond any reasonable doubt from the evidence that is abundantly available and cost-free, even online.    Even an erroneously-divorced second marriage to reconcile with an adulterous  true spouse is far less of a costly gamble than an eternity in hell.   You cannot go to hell for using a purely man-made device to undo the ill effects of wrongly availing of that same man-made device!   As a practical matter, nobody makes that kind of a life-correction without being led and overwhelmingly convicted by the Holy Spirit, and we daresay, without extensive research of their own until firmly convinced.    It is far more common for most to take their comfort from what a man says, and abort any further investigation of their own.    Every covenant stander prays fervently that the Holy Spirit will intervene and keep their dazed, deceived prodigal far away from such men!

All that said, there’s something very odd about his perception of the question being asked, given that he says up front that the inquirer presented him with some of the missing hermeneutical “C”‘s (which he proceeds to dismiss– with little or no valid support).     This strongly implies that his question was from a person in a second “marriage” of the sort that Jesus explicitly defined as adultery on three separate occasions –  Matt. 5:32(b), Matt. 19:9(b) and Luke 16:18, where He addresses the third party who would presume to marry someone’s one-flesh spouse after man’s divorce.    He proceeds instead to answer the very different question,
“If my spouse is committing adultery, must I divorce them?”

He does this after expending tremendous energy convincing us of the utmost importance of the definition of fornication, which is in reality completely irrelevant to the question he perceives to answer, and only nominally relevant to the question that is apparently being asked.    This, folks, is mindlessly parroting denominational dogma without personal examination, and it’s shepherdly cowardice.  Contrast this with Brother Sproule who very forthrightly addressed the correct question in videos 8 and 9 of his series, and did so with a significant level of biblical integrity, even though he would agree with an “exception” (wrong in our view) for the so-called “innocent party” or “non-fornicating spouse”, as he puts it.   (We would argue that married folk who are still one-flesh with someone by irreversible act of God never “fornicate” – they commit adultery.)

We wrap up with this simple question for both of our Christ of Christ “evangelists”:

Does it make sense to you that the One who told us [Matt. 5:38-39],  “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also”….

….would explicitly and repeatedly define adultery as marrying the one-flesh covenant spouse of another person, then proceed to “allow” the ongoing state of further adultery as the remedy for an act or season of adultery?

We think not!

Praise be to God that He is being merciful and bringing some men of God to the restored truth in this area, as well as emptying them of their fear of men, compelling them to speak out in power and forcefulness!    For a time, even the best of them will bring some Erasmean, Lutheran or Calvinist denominational biases with them, sometimes even at the cost of contradicting key points in their own message, by the time they come to the wrap-up.     In the most forceful rebuke we’ve yet to encounter of “exception clauses” and of pastors who perform weddings over people who have a living, estranged spouse, this Baptist pastor nevertheless tries to reconcile at the end with the false doctrine of “once saved, always saved”,  and implies that marriages Jesus called adulterous can be “confessed” and “repented” without actually severing them.    Just as the Lord has called standers of many denominations  into fellowship with one another, and into a better understanding of God’s word, may He build cross-denominational fellowship with His remnant of true shepherds, in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Is the Tide Turning in God’s House? One Courageous Shepherd

by Standerinfamilycourt

Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.  I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord,” declares the Lord God, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight.   For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land.   Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.   Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.     Ezekiel 36

 

And have mercy on some, who are doubting;  save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.    Jude 1

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC Note:  [Late edits have been made to this piece due to the kind advice from a stander who is a Church of Christ member, that ministers in this denomination do not approve of being addressed by a title, such as Reverend.   This was done quite inadvertently, with no offense intended.    Our sincere apologies to David Sproule. ]

 

In the fall of 2013, a pastor in a very large Florida church did something unheard of in our age that put a huge smile on the face of the Master.   To the very best of his knowledge and comprehension, he stood up for 10 weeks and preached a 97% accurate series on covenant marriage, civil-only divorce and civil-only “remarriage”.    He did so with so much uncommon depth of biblical understanding that it could only have been done in the power of the Holy Spirit, and with so much fearlessness that it’s hard to watch the videos that follow without being reminded of the oratories of Peter or Paul or Stephen.   This shepherd clearly fears God and labors to snatch real souls from the hell-flames.   If our nation is to survive as divinely founded, we need every pastor who calls himself by the name of Jesus Christ to emulate this man!

To be sure, there are other pastors stepping up to the plate to try and shore up “the culture of marriage” in the wake of the horrifying Obergefell ruling last June, and a handful of them are beginning to do so with some degree of introspection because they are beginning to see the “handwriting on the wall” (so to speak).     However, the worst of these are urging adulterously-remarried couples to “remain faithful to your current marriage”,  which is contrary to the word of God which says they are living in ongoing adultery, as specifically defined on three separate occasions by Jesus Himself.    Many are preaching a 90% accurate sermon, but covering their tails by saying something at the end that effectively negates what they’ve just preached, and are stopping short of urging the only action that will help such spouses recover their inheritance in the kingdom of God.   Most likely, the majority of them continue to solemnize weddings that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous.   No wuss, this pastor sees the message all the way through to its moral and logical conclusion.

Why do we say David Sproule of the Palm Beach Lake Church of Christ is preaching only a 97% accurate call to action?  
This is an excellent question.     Brother Sproule repeatedly refers to Jesus making an “exception”  in Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9 which he asserts was Jesus’  “permission” for a believer to initiate a divorce (1 Cor. 6:1-8 notwithstanding ) and to remarry if their covenant spouse has committed “sexual immorality”.

At the time Brother Sproule delivered these teachings, he was presumably unaware that his contemporary English bible translation (he tells us he’s reading from the New King James Version) had been tampered with by the manuscript selection / bible translation team led by Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort  who in the 1880’s altered the translation of the Greek word porneia from its traditional rendering of “prostitution or whoredom” to “fornication”,  then successors changed it to the far more interchangeable “sexual immorality”.     Throughout the series, in a false argument that the innocent spouse may remarry,  he has used the word “fornication” interchangeably with “adultery”,  perhaps not considering scholarly evidence that these two separate sins were not at all used interchangeably by Jesus in those verses, nor several others.   Brother Sproule has also frequently interjected “sexual immorality” in the remarriage discussion without recognizing the key point that Jesus was specifically referring to in both of the Matthew passages, that is,  undisclosed premarital immorality while a legally binding bride-purchase agreement, predicated on the bride’s virginity, was in force – the betrothal ketubah.    We are in the process of writing to Brother Sproule to commend him and to send him an excellent book by Rev. Daniel Jennings,  “Except For Fornication“.   Please pray that it is received with favor and direction of the Holy Spirit.

FB profile 7xtjwAn excerpt from our letter where we write to commend Brother Sproule for his series:

Here’s where we feel you are very much on target with your teaching in a way that is truly rare, courageous and biblically-faithful:

  1. Crucially, you recognize and publicly acknowledge that there is a unique one-flesh joining that is supernatural and accomplished by God that is never an element of adulterous remarriage.
  2. You are unequivocally clear that only God can unjoin what He was joined, but the only act of men that does this is death.    
  3. You further recognize that God remains in covenant with that one-flesh entity He joined, even when a mountain of man’s civil paper says otherwise.   (You are, therefore, more truthful than Dr. John MacArthur).
  4. You deal faithfully with Greek verb tenses in a way that some national ministry leaders who certainly have the education to do likewise can’t seem to muster the courage to do. (You are more accountable than Drs. Voddie Baucham and Russell Moore).

5. To the best of your own knowledge and awareness, you seem to also be very faithful with word translation, and rightly dividing some passages of scripture that most others abuse.

6. You capably debunk the notion that baptism washes away inconvenient marriage covenants. (You are more accountable than Dr. James Dobson and host of other international voices).

7. You are honest about the heaven-or-hell issue involved, and that 1 Cor. 6:9-10 applies to respectable, church-going people whose pastor presided over their second or third wedding.

8. You are forceful instead of wishy-washy in urging people to act on the biblical truth and exit their immoral unions, even when there are children, as if real souls and eternal destinations ARE indeed at stake. (You are more concerned about those souls than Dr. John Piper and most of the stander community’s own pastors.)

9. You refrain from the cowardly and intellectually lazy device of covering the story of the Samaritan woman at the well with unsupported inferences.   (You are, therefore, more truthful than Drs. Russell Moore and Robert A. G. Gagnon.)

10. You have quite capably recognized and called out, in an easy-to-understand fashion, several of the more pernicious heresies out there in evangelicaldom (some of which, sadly, appear in my denomination’s 1973 position paper, a cowardly document written in the wake of unilateral divorce enactment, given 60 years of sound prior doctrine that it drastically revised)….

 

We herewith bring you the entire series, to the extent we could round it up from Youtube.     We give a couple of brief highlights or caveats for each video.    Most of the videos are 40-45 minutes long, but with minimal overlap, and each one very much worth the time investment to listen.

 

Introductory Matters on Marriage, Divorce & Remarriage – September 16, 2013
FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s Observations:
(+)  
Rightly gives context to the future of our nation depends on obeying God’s marriage law
(+)  Points out that the believers’ choice to obey or not obey affects our relationship with God, and is a matter of salvation.
(+)  Despite the 21 different views MDR, only God’s commandment matters
(+)  Diplomatically acknowledges the sensitivity of the topic without pandering or back-pedaling
( + )  
Our love for God must supercede our love for everyone else.
( + )  Puts forward the true view of repentance
( + )  Exposes the wrongful invoking of God’s love, mercy and grace while in a sinful relationship and unrepentant state
( + )  Cautions about emotions overriding obedience; refers to Ezra purge of unlawful marriages

 

God’s OVER-view of Marriage and Divorce – September 16, 2013
FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  God is the only One with authority to regulate marriage
(+)  Civil law never supercedes God’s law
(+)  Emphasizes “1 + 1 = 1”  (but see below*)
(+)  Points out one of the purposes is to help each other make it to heaven
(+)  
Astutely quips that if Rom. 7:2 and 1 Cor. 7:39 were taken seriously    it would be considered “hate speech” in our culture
( – ) Erroneously claims a “divorced” victim of adultery may remarry            
( – ) Erroneously implies a civil marriage license is necessary in God’s eyes
( – )  *Erroneously implies that human action is necessary to create the
one-flesh state,  rather than God’s supernatural, instantaneous act.

Special encouragement to standers at approximately 28:00, where a permanent marker analogy applies to man-made “permanence” – it does eventually dissipate despite early resistance, but it’s God’s participation in true covenant matrimony that creates the actual permanence; His lack of participation that dooms permanence in the church-sanctioned counterfeit.

 

Matthew 19 in God’s Original Plan – September 17, 2013
FB profile 7xtjw SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  Provides insightful context to Matthew 19
(+)  Discusses John the Baptist’s martyrdom for rebuking remarriage adultery and does not wimp out by claiming the problem was “incest”
(+) Unequivocally states that God did not design or provide for marriage dissolution while spouses are alive
(+)  Calls out the imperative tense in Matt. 19:6 “let not man separate”
( – ) 
 Equated “uncleanness” in Deut. 24 with adultery – no support offered
( – ) Erroneously claims a “divorced” victim of adultery may remarry                   
( – )  Erroneously implies a civil marriage license is necessary as a godly citizen (when that license does not reflect God’s law in any aspect)

The Authority and Amenability of Matthew 19:9   – Oct 23, 2013
FB profile 7xtjw SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  Points out that God’s marriage law applies regardless of spiritual condition of either spouse at the time of vows
(+) Appropriately emphasizes Christ’s authority to override Moses
(+) Points out that Christ had a role in the Creation – He was there
( – ) Claims Matthew 19:9 as the “core” of Christ’s teaching on divorce and remarriage, instead of the same-occasion, no-exception, mixed-gender passage in Mark 10
( – )  Erroneously repeats that  a divorced victim of adultery may remarry
( – )  Appears to be unaware of the relevance of Hebrew betrothal to correctly interpreting Matthew 5:32 and 19:9

 


Adultery and Jesus’ One ExceptionOct 21, 2013
FB profile 7xtjw SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  Points out that there was no gender difference in the way Jesus applied his teaching
(+)  Addresses annulment as unbiblical and beyond men’s authority
(+) Calls out that the Church doesn’t join or regulate marriage; God does
(+)  Points out that God does not join ineligible marriages
(+)  Debunks (instead of appealing to) the Samaritan woman encounter
(+) Calls out the present tense usage in the Mark 6 account of Herod’s remarriage adultery – “nothing Herod could do to ever lawfully have Herodias”
(+) Calls out other pastors who rationalize keeping adulterous marriages intact based on “loopholes”
( – )  Misstated Matthew 19:9 as the “core” of Christ’s teaching on divorce and remarriage, instead of the same-occasion passage in Mark 10
( – )  Repeats (wrongly) that  a “divorced” victim of adultery may remarry            
( – )  Discussion of “adultery redefinition” discussion seems more complicated in this video than strictly necessary
( – ) Skips discussion of Matthew 19:12 while arriving at a position equivalent to Shammai.   Agreeing with one of the two false choices presented by the Pharisees would cause the disciples’ extreme reaction?  This would lead into a discussion about becoming a eunuch?

 

The Put-Away Fornicator May Not Remarry –  November 18, 2013
FB profile 7xtjw   SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  Refers to the full content Matthew 19:9 including the commonly-omitted prohibition on marrying a divorced person
(+) Calls out the false justifications for remarriage by the adulterous party
( – ) Fails to discern the “slippery slope” of claiming one party is “released” from the marriage bond while the other is not 
( – ) 
 Inappropriately conflates fornication with adultery
( – )  Reads from NKJV, inserting “sexual immorality” for the more accurate, specific translation of porneia  as a premarital sin as Jesus stated it
( – ) Erroneously repeats that a “divorced” victim of adultery may remarry
( – )   Inappropriately limits Christ’s  absolute prohibition against marrying any divorced person to marrying the “fornicator” so divorced 
( – )  Relies on an inappropriate inference, which the Greek sentence structure and article usage in Matthew 19:9 does not support
( – )  Neglects to reconcile this theory to Luke 16:18, the exceptionless third occasion where Jesus prohibits everyone  from marrying any divorced person.    

(Presumably, for the widowed  “put-away fornicator”, it is better to remarry than burn !)

 

 


The Deserted Believer May Not Remarry – November 18, 2013

FB profile 7xtjw   SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  Debunks 1 Cor. 7:15 unequivocally and very effectively. 
(+) Debunks the related heresy that Christ’s marriage commandments only apply to believers.
(+) Accurately traces Church history back to the 4th century and Catholic apostasy.
(+)  Accurate care made to the different audiences for the various instructions in 1 Corinthians 7
(+)  Calls out that every part of 1 Corinthians7 is equally inspired
(+)  Calls out that Greek choridzo (depart) is not equivalent to apoluo (put away), and that divorce and remarriage are out of context
(+) Calls out that “not under bondage” means not required to choose allegiance to spouse over allegiance to God

 

Adulterous Marriages Are Sinful and Must Be Severed – November 18, 2013

FB profile 7xtjw   SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  Acknowledges the emotions that conflict with God’s law, and the need to set aside own prejudices
(+) Calls out the false doctrines that have been raised up in the church
(+)  Refutes the heresy that salvation and baptism dissolve pre-salvation covenants or that God’s law does not apply to non-Christians
(+)  Debunks the abuse of 1 Cor. 7:20 and 1 Cor. 7:14 to justify staying in legalized adultery 
(+)  
Debunks the idea that repentance from a state of adultery is satisfied by confession without requiring severing and termination of the relationship
(+)  Affirms that God’s word does not contradict itself
(+)  Calls out that elders / shepherds are responsible for the souls of their members
( – ) Refers (wrongly) to “one exception” that permits divorce and remarriage – discussed in a previous video.

 

Adulterous Marriages Are Sinful and Must Be Severed (Part 2) – November 25, 2013

FB profile 7xtjw   SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  Points out that we will be judged according to God’s word alone, not what a church, pastor, friends or others teach or practice
(+) Revisits in-depth the heresy that baptism washes away prior marriages and “sanctifies” the existing adulterous relationship
(+) Clarifies that baptism forgives repented (discontinued) sins
(+) Correctly points out the Matt.19:9 present-tense verb that makes the definition of adultery an ongoing state of sin
(+) Correctly emphasizes God-joining, only in a righteous marriage
(+) Truthful definition of repentance, contrasting with false repentance
(+) 
Courageously relates the story of the purging of illicit marriages (with children) in the book of Ezra, elevating God’s instructions above emotional arguments
( – ) Refers (wrongly) to “one exception” that permits divorce and remarriage – discussed in a previous video
( – )  Omits discussion of Hebrew betrothal’s connection with the Matthean exception

FB profile 7xtjw  Concluding remarks:    In the book of Ezra, chapters 9 and 10, the priests of Israel were amazingly quick to agree with the Spirit-anointed, bookish prophet of God even though he told them they must saw off the immoral branches of their own families in order to recover the sovereignty of their nation after decades of exile.   Deep-down they knew they had willfully and knowingly violated God’s clear commandment, and the fact that there were children involved wasn’t going to deter God’s directive to purify their community and to purge the immorality from their midst.    In many cases, this was polygamy that competed with an existing God-joined covenant marriage between two Jewish spouses whose marriage remained intact and blessed.   The separation and severance did not happen without provision for those separated concubines and their children, nor did it happen without a solid plan.

In the same fashion,  separating and civilly-divorcing out of a subsequent non-covenant marriage (undertaken while a covenant spouse remains alive) must be led by the Holy Spirit and motivated by an authentic desire to put nothing ahead of our relationship with the Holy One.   The plan of severing must treat the children and severed spouse as we would want to be treated if the roles were reversed.    It must encourage the severed spouse to make changes in their own life, such as seeking reconciliation with their own covenant spouse, that will recover or attain their inheritance in the kingdom of God, and it must be undertaken with firm finality.   (There are many “standers” who are currently standing for restoration of an adulterous remarriage who are hostile to the idea of reconciling with their true spouse for various reasons).

A few of those in an adulterous remarriage now have covenant spouses who are deceased.   The death of that true spouse does not instantly transform an immoral union into holy matrimony without taking a few deliberate steps of repentance.   Is there a living, estranged covenant spouse on the other side of the union?   If so, the adultery continues and your remarriage needs to be terminated.
If not, a season of separation is still a good idea to get alone with God and purge the idolatry that originally motivated entry into the non-covenant union.   If and only if Jesus is our first love are we ever qualified to take a spouse.     Are there estranged relations with covenant children, and / or are they also living in a state of immorality due to emulating your example?    Fix those relations while separated and celibate – confess your wrong choice to them and seek to make restitution to them as best you can.
Will you be unequally yoked if you attempt to undertake holy matrimony?   Under those conditions, you will be renewing a relationship with idolatry if you do.   If and when you are in a place where it makes sense for the whole of your family,  and you can do so with a clear conscience before God, take new covenant vows before godly witnesses and pastor so that the supernatural one-flesh joining that was precluded from occurring in the adulterous prior vows can now occur by God’s hand, and His irrevocable covenant will attach, transforming the union into holy matrimony if there are no remaining impediments.

“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”    –  Luke 14:26

 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |   Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!
www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Mary and Joseph: Why Protestant Theologians Downplay Their Betrothal

MaryAndJosephby Standerinfamilycourt

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.    And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.   But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit”…… And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife,  but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son…    Matthew 1:18-24

 

They said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father: God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word.
John 8:41

Even before the time God met with the Israelites on the mountain in the wilderness, gave them the Ten Commandments and told them they would be His people and He would be their God (effectively vowing an indissoluble wedded state on an unconditional basis),  we see the analogy of indissoluble holy matrimony woven through virtually every book of the bible from Genesis to Revelation, with some particularly powerful examples, such as the books of Hosea, Malachi and Ezra.   Arguably,  holy matrimony is the first and holiest symbol He has chosen for His purpose and plan for human families in His creation.   We see also throughout scripture how jealous God Most High is of His chosen symbols.   Woe to anyone who would mock and trample them in Old Testament times, how much more so after the Bridegroom has laid down His life for His bride and solemnly promised to return for her!  

[….Promised to return for her…]    At  some point, perhaps just a few months prior to her conception by the Holy Spirit, Joseph paid a bride price for Mary as part of the traditional Hebrew kiddushin, the engagement ceremony that resulted in a legally-binding contract to marry a year or so in the future, called a ketubah.    Just as Jesus had recited these words to his disciples at the last supper, Joseph had ceremoniously recited them to his Mary:

“In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.   If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”     John 14:2-3

Joseph was going about his business preparing a place for Mary when he learned of Mary’s pregnancy and before he was visited by the angel.    At that point, the law uniquely regarded Mary as his wife, even though the marriage was not yet consummated.   Had Joseph died before returning for Mary, she would have all the rights in Joseph’s family prescribed by the Law of Moses that a consummated wife would have.    Had the Romans continued to permit the Jews to carry out capital punishment by stoning, he could have exercised those consequences for her pregnancy, but in the years since that option was withdrawn, a legal document called a “get” or a writ of divorcement was required to dissolve the ketubah, and free him to seek another wife, but only up to and including the wedding night.   However, as stoning became unavailable, the remedy for “some uncleanness” found in Deuteronomy 24 was expanded by the rabbis in the centuries between Moses and Ezra or Malachi to unilaterally dispose of betrothed wives such as Mary, as well as wives of long standing.   An ugly example was thereby established that would prove troublesome sixteen centuries later.

Even with the most biblically-faithful exegesis of God’s marriage laws, rarely is this important piece of context mentioned or discussed in Protestant churches, despite the heavy emphasis Jesus gave it while instituting the sacrament of holy communion.    But why not?   When members of the community of covenant marriage standers engage online with various theologians concerning divorce and remarriage based on the culture and context of Hebrew betrothal in understanding Matthew 19:9 and Matthew 5:32, most become uncomfortable and dismissive, as if an annoyingly irrelevant point has been interjected into the “scholarly” discussion.    Why?

Many of the writings of Protestant Reformers indicated that they chafed at the idea of divorce and remarriage not being a readily available option in the church of their day.    Annulments (extremely rare and costly, though they never should have existed at all in defiance of  Matthew 19:6 and Exodus 20:16),  had only been conceived of and available for about 300 years at that point, and marriage, God’s holiest symbol, was quite reasonably considered a sacrament otherwise, since holy communion was.    The Reformers were recoiling at two basic circumstances: one supremely legitimate as laid down by Jesus, and the other a legalism later contrived by misguided clerics of the 3th and 4th centuries in response to the waves of sexual immorality attacking the church in the form of Gnosticism and similar cults.

Jesus said all of the following:   (a) anyone who marries a divorced person commits ongoing adultery, (b) anyone who divorces a consummated wife causes her to commit ongoing adultery, and (c) anyone who marries another after divorcing their spouse commits ongoing adultery.   (In other words, holy matrimony is unconditionally indissoluble by men, echoing what He said in Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9).

Ascetic clerics such as Tertulian, Origen and Jerome went beyond what Jesus said, and started to teach that celibacy was holier than God’s most sacred symbol.   They further argued that sacramental treatment of marriage was essential to cover the  resulting “sin” of the marital act, and that married couples should refrain from sexual intimacy except to procreate (thereby contradicting Paul in 1 Cor. 7:3-5,  while over-emphasizing verse 1…”it is good for a man not to touch a woman. “)   One source attributes to Origen (185-254) the strange assertion that during marital sexual intercourse, the indwelling Holy Spirit departs the bodily temples of the spouses.
Even during an act of adultery or sodomy or pornographic activity, scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is a Person who is grieved or quenched, but not that He departs a regenerated person’s body.
(Of course, the Holy Spirit is never present during any activity of an unregenerated person who has never surrendered to Christ’s lordship.)

The historian Eusebius also reported that Origen castrated himself in order to embody Matthew 19:12, apparently misconstruing what Jesus said (and Paul echoed in 1 Corinthians 7:11) about remaining celibate if deserted or divorced by a one-flesh spouse.    This self-castration account was widely believed during the Middle Ages, and no doubt also influenced the Reformers to ignore the powerful witness intended by Jesus, reducing it to just another “legalism”.
 
Satan has, from that bite of the apple in the Garden of Eden, constantly attacked the indissolubility and stability of God’s holy ordinance from multiple directions while stirring up the humanistic rebellion of men against it.   Erasmus, at the turn of the 16th century wrote of the “harshness” of Christ’s commandment, in his estimation (though this is far from the worst of Erasmus’ direct contradictions of both Jesus and Paul):

Eulalia:   Let your Husband be as bad as bad can be, think upon this, That there is no changing.   Heretofore, indeed,  Divorce was a Remedy for irreconcilable Disagreements, but now this is entirely taken away: He must be your Husband and you his Wife to the very last Day of Life.

Xantippe:  The Gods did very wrong that depriv’d us of this Privilege.

Eulalia:  Have a Care what you say.    It was the Will of Christ.

Xantippe:  I can scarce believe it.

(The Uneasy Wife). Nathan Bailey & E. Johnson. The Colloquies of Erasmus, Vol. 1 (London: Reeves and Turner, 1878)

Under Erasmus’ heavy influence, Martin Luther wrote:

“What is the proper procedure for us nowadays in matters of marriage and divorce?   I have said that this should be left to the lawyers and made subject to the secular government. For marriage is a rather secular and outward thing, having to do with wife and children, house and home, and with other matters that belong to the realm of the government, all of which have been completely subjected to reason (Gen. 1:28). Therefore we should not tamper with what the government and wise men decide and prescribe with regard to these questions on the basis of the laws and of reason.”

Luther, Martin: Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan (Hrsg); Oswald, Hilton C. (Hrsg.) ; Lehmann, Helmut T. (Hrsg.): Luther’s Works, Vol. 21 : The Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1956 (Luther’s Works 21, S. 21:93

Apparently, in the Age of Reason, neither God’s wisdom nor Paul’s
( 1 Corinthian 6:1-8) were “reasonable” enough any longer.   In summary, the fabrication of “biblical grounds” that purportedly removed the eternal consequences from this state of sin Jesus defined three separate times as adultery, was an opportunistic overreaction to Catholic legalism (including the spurious indulgence of marriage annulment) and to asceticism including the extra-scriptural preference for celibacy over holy matrimony.   After all, if the Popes were “all wet” with regard to issues of salvation by grace alone through faith alone, then who was to say they were also infallibly correct on the indissolubility of covenant marriage?    In an age where few had their own access to the scriptures or books on the history of the Church as yet, it was the perfect opportunity to shed the fear of God that restricted sexual options.     But, you ask, what does all this have to do with Joseph and Mary’s  Jewish betrothal?

Embrace of the Hebrew betrothal custom as part of the overall symbolism and analogy of the relationship between Christ and His bride the Church presents all of the following threats to the more indefensible elements of Reformation theology, and (more specifically) to key documents arising therefrom– such as the Westminster Confession of Faith:

(1) It presents a far more hermeneutically-sound explanation and interpretation of the “exception clause”, which appears exclusively in the gospel of Matthew, than does any merely implied exception for post-wedding adultery. 

(2) It reinforces that the Matthean “exception” was limited to a very narrow premarital provision that became totally irrelevant under the New Covenant ushered in by Jesus.

(3) It causes all of the other marriage scriptures in the Old and New Testaments to perfectly align around God’s having made  no provision whatsoever for either divorce or remarriage against the spouse of our youth, and it reinforces the eternal consequences for disobeying – see point (6).

(4) It would compel countless pastors and denominations to admit they have been presiding for nearly 50 years over false weddings, and most mainline denominations to admit this has been the case for some 500 years.

(5) Their nephew is a practicing attorney (just kidding!)

(6) It directly challenges the dogma “once saved, always saved”.
Regarding our initial justification as a legally-binding betrothal that can still be broken by us, provocatively calls into question the Calvinist doctrine commonly referred to today as “hypergrace”.   Once all of the other scriptures about not being ready for Christ’s return, and about falling away due to a hardened heart are integrated, dealing with such matters as the Rapture of the Church takes on a much more serious tone.   This harmful “OSAS” doctrine asserts that our sins have no eternal consequences, even if there is not physical repentance, so long as we “confess” and “repent in our hearts” of the things Jesus and Paul both said would send us to hell.   According to the revisionists, this is attempting to “earn” our salvation, as though the “full price” hadn’t been paid by Christ.    (If this is truly the case, then three of the gospels and all the epistles are seven times more wordy and verbose than was strictly necessary.)

Not only is the Jewish betrothal spurned by all but a few modern theologians in discussions of divorce and remarriage,  pastors go to great lengths not to even mention it in sermons dealing specifically with divorce and remarriage.    Hence, you might hear about it during the “safe zone” of Christmas services, but only as an interesting (but disembodied) curiosity of bible times.

I will betroth you to Me [pay  a  bride price for you]  forever;
Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice,
In lovingkindness and in compassion,  And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness.
Then you will know the Lord.       Hosea 2:19-20

For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.
2 Corinthians 11:2 

 

 

 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |   Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com
 

 

 

 

Jesus was a Libran (Not a Capricorn)…But He Did Eat Organic Food

12299221_10153487499221645_8196301818129518010_nby Standerinfamilycourt

Jesus was a Capricorn
He ate organic food
He believed in love and peace
And never wore no shoes

Long hair, beard and sandals
And a funky bunch of friends
Reckon we’d just nail him up
If he came down again

‘Cause everybody’s gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please…..

– Kris Kristofferson, circa 1970

 

So goes the ballad from the heady days when we were all assured that “you can’t legislate morality” (and before the days when we found out that legislating immorality is no problem at all, once this fallacy had been fully embraced by those in civil and ecclesiastical power).

This blog, despite appearances, will not be a rant against paganism in the  yuletide traditions of Western culture.    There are few aspects of New Testament history where paganism doesn’t pervasively intertwine.    This will be more of an urgent plea to the marriage permanence community to “keep our powder dry”,  in order to assure that our more urgent message is heard by this culture.    We must choose our battles wisely and with eternity in firm focus, Standers.    The time seems to be growing short.

It is true that the actual birth date of Jesus is far more likely to have been late September rather than late December.    We find this by the account of the conception and birth of cousin John the Baptist, whom scripture tells us was 6 months older than the Son of God (see Luke 1) .    We also surmise it by the fact that shepherds would not have had their sheep out overnight in the fields at that December time of year (Luke 2:8-14) .    It is also true that some of the things said by the Hebrew prophets concerning Asherah poles, and the like (Jeremiah 7:18, Jeremiah 10:2-4)  find a valid enough analogy in the Christmas tree, for a reverent Christ-follower to learn about the pagan history of various traditions, to gain strong insights into how the more serious heresies took root in the Church in similar fashion, and to seek the Lord’s face on how to best honor His birthday, which most likely came in the month of Tishrei (in which both Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and Rosh Hashanah occur), rather than Tevet, the month in which Hanukkah falls.
(Those who instead believe Jesus was born in early March are interpreting the reference to “the sixth month”, concerning the timing of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth in Luke 1, not as the sixth month of that pregnancy, but as the sixth month of the modern Julian calendar.  For more information on the Hebrew months of the year, click here.)

 

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Legalism over holiday-tainting seems to be one of the 4 or 5 “wedge issues” dividing and distracting the marriage permanence community, as though celebrating Halloween, Christmas and Easter were transgressions of equal magnitude as those on the 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and Galatians 5:19-21 lists (though some would be quick to call having a Christmas tree idolatry), and as though a spirit-filled believer, suddenly dying while in the act of committing one of these celebrations, is going to be ushered into hell.   Some current-day Judaizers would go so far as to say that Christ-followers should be celebrating Hanukkah and Passover instead of Christmas and Easter.    SIFC says, “why choose?”   Why not be free to enjoy the richness of all of them?

St. Augustine of Hippo said,

“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”

Prior to that,  St.  Paul of Tarsus said of an idolatry-tainting issue in his day in the Corinthian church:

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.    All things are lawful, but not all things edify.   Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor.   Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake;  for the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains.   If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake.  But if anyone says to you, “This is meat sacrificed to idols,” do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience’ sake;  I mean not your own conscience, but the other man’s; for why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience?  If I partake with thankfulness, why am I slandered concerning that for which I give thanks?

Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.    Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God;  just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of the many, so that they may be saved.
1 Cor. 10:23-33

As the early church grew into the European regions they found the native / pagan holidays had evolved around the agrarian cycle with its busy fall harvest time, followed by the means  (in both time and food availability) to celebrate.   Winter was also longer and darker there than in the Middle East, so winter festivals were also a time of lifting people’s spirits.    It is questionable whether Jesus’ actual birthday could have been celebrated during the height of the harvest season in many of those countries.   Making the most of the available time and conditions to harvest was a matter of survival in those days.    Is this so dissimilar to the run-in with the Pharisees, when the Lord’s disciples were gleaning grain on the Sabbath?

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat.  But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.”  But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions,  how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat nor for those with him, but for the priests alone?   “Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent?   “But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here.   “But if you had known what this means, ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT A SACRIFICE,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.
Matthew 12:1-7

Yes, it’s true that many of the symbols that became associated with Christmas traditions in Europe had pagan origins, since that was the tradition those pagans had converted in.    See this short video for a very balanced and informative look at this.    On balance, I find it not that unreasonable that from the time of Emperor Constantine, early church evangelism started wrapping biblical teaching around what its pagan proselytes knew best, so long as Christ’s essential commandments weren’t compromised.    Jesus used object lessons in the same way, for sure, and the Apostles likewise saw the need to agree on essentials for the earliest Gentile converts, in order to avoid the legalism of trying to Judaize them, so that the greater work  of discipleship, and of advancing the kingdom of God weren’t hindered.    By comparison, it was a far more serious matter that Constantine’s court started undermining the commandment of Christ that no man has authority to dissolve the marriage covenant joined by God Most High.

December 25 seems to coincidentally be the observed birthday of quite a few pseudo-deities.   (Disclaimer:  SIFC has not verified any of these.)

12347760_1237665472915500_1012862929238615774_n

These observations are not being written to slam anyone who feels convicted in this area, but only to stimulate a little more thought about kingdom priorities.   Covenant marriage standers certainly would have a tendency to be drawn to these ideas, absent any other input.    After all, year after year, many of us suffer through the holiday season having to put up with the miserable fact that our one-flesh is celebrating with the counterfeit who is doing their best to escort them to hell.   There typically isn’t much money for gifts, travel, party invites, or ability to accept the ones that come, for many who stand praying for the repentance of their prodigal.    The joke’s on the adulterers, isn’t it, if they’re reveling in a false occasion while the real date brings the everyday relational turmoil of living in a sinful state.

But what of maintaining an attitude and welcoming environment for the sudden repentance of that wandering one-flesh?   Is a home that now bans all the things the Holy Spirit has perhaps been faithfully stirring up in their memories going to feel welcoming to them?   Is that the message that’s plastered all over your wall, Stander?

May I suggest applying the “T-H-I-N-K  filter” to the frequency, tone and content of posted items on this topic?

Is it True?    (Mostly, it is!   But what do they see you actually doing?)
Is it Helpful?  (Probably not — are there better ways to walk this out by positive example?)
Is it Inspiring?  ( We have to be honest here, don’t we?  Scrooge was inspiring!  Leaving room for the work of the Holy Spirit is inspiring.)
Is it Necessary?  (Most things that aren’t heaven-or-hell issues are probably best left to the move of the Holy Spirit, and led by our example instead of grating rebuke.)
Is it Kind?   (That depends on each of the elements above, does it not?)

If our conviction is strong about celebrating Jesus’ birthday as close as possible to the actual date, and doing so in some way that excludes objects that could be seen as idolatrous,  why not start that tradition in our home and invite someone over in late September, perhaps even post those pictures with a non-disparaging explanation?    Why not then spend Dec. 25 serving the community in some way?   We’re sure to be asked about it, which then opens up an opportunity to witness.    Could a posted meme possibly be more effective than this?

 

 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

 

 

 

What Therefore God Has Joined Together, Let the Bishop Annul? (Years Later)

r”McAnnulment2by Standerinfamilycourt

They prophesied by Baal and led My people Israel astray.
“Also among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing:
The committing of adultery and walking in falsehood;
And they strengthen the hands of evildoers,
So that no one has turned back from his wickedness.
Jeremiah 23:13-14

Effective today, December 1, 2015, Pope Francis has determined that it will be cost-free and streamlined for a covenant-breaking Catholic to unilaterally obtain a denial that God supernaturally joined them with their covenant husband or wife as an inseparable  one-flesh entity.   A single bishop can now decide that even vows made decades earlier in a Catholic church wedding were “not sacramental” and did not create an indissoluble covenant, due to various “impediments”,  usually a taking the form, in most U.S. dioceses, of a perjurous retroactive claim of “lack of consent”.    Imagine a cleric lacking the awe, reverence and holy fear of God, instead finding the temerity to inform the Most High of the effectiveness of His Own supernatural act and covenant participation, while bearing false witness before and about the Omniscient and Omnipresent One in the process.
God help them!

The true witness of Jesus Christ is this:  ‘…For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall be — the two — for one flesh?  so that they are no more two, but one flesh; what therefore God did join together, let NO MAN put asunder.’   
(
Matt. 19:5-6)

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,

A valid Catholic marriage results from five elements:
(1) the spouses are free to marry
(2) they freely exchange their consent
(3) in consenting to marry, they have the intention to marry for life, to be faithful to one another and be open to children
(4) they intend the good of each other
(5) their consent is given in the presence of two witnesses and before a properly authorized Church minister. Exceptions to the last requirement must be approved by church authority.

Rationalization:
“And the church also recognizes—with the same love of justice and desire for mercy as Jesus—that imperfect people enter into what are called “attempted marriages”. Despite their good intent, their best efforts, and maybe a very long time, something vital was missing or in the way that prevented the union from ever being able to rise to the level of a sacrament.”

Same mercy as Jesus?   Would that be mercy and justice toward the rejected covenant family, or futile “mercy” toward the one who wants a decree of Church permission to ignore Jesus’ thrice-stated definition of adultery (creating a hellbound offense if not repented by termination of the immoral relationship, according to 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and Gal. 5:19-21)?   What was    Jesus’ definition of the ongoing state of adultery?      Did He not say it was the attempt to legalize and sanctify an unlawful union to one who has a living estranged spouse, and therefore, an undissolved covenant in God’s sight–not any man’s faulty, fleshly sight, including that of a hireling shepherd?

The Lord Jesus said:

“…and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Matt. 5:32

“…and he who did marry her that hath been put away, doth commit adultery.” Matt. 19:9b  (YLT)

Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”   Luke 16:18

The Protestant Church, of course, would be all about trying to find several “biblical exceptions” for blanket application (whereas there are none stated above by Jesus) to counter the unpalatable, allegedly “unmerciful” marriage law of Christ.   The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, pretends to respect Christ’s commandment by not finding per se exceptions, but instead by paying meaningful lip service, in a manner as recently articulated by Fr. Peter Daly:

“It is pretty clear from the Gospels that Jesus did not approve of divorce and remarriage.  He says it amounts to adultery, which is pretty strong language, especially coming from Jesus.  But if we are his followers, we have to at least try to deal with his teaching.   Our annulment process is an attempt to take his teaching seriously and still allow people a second (or third) chance…..The problem with the process in the Roman Catholic church is that it takes what ought to be a pastoral matter and turns it into a legal one.”     –  National Catholic Register, January 13, 2014

In what way, exactly, is the Roman Catholic annulment process taking the teaching of Jesus “seriously”, Fr. Daly?    And… “rise to the level of a sacrament”?    Does the performance of the human participants in covenant with God make the covenant a sacrament, or is it a sacrament precisely due to God becoming a party to that covenant?     When Jesus, in that upper room on the night when He was betrayed,  as He took up the bread and the cup, reciting verbatim the words of the traditional Hebrew betrothal ceremony, did He hold out standards for His disciples’ participation to “rise to the level of a sacrament” that evening?    Do  the Catholic Fathers have that same expectation of those receiving Eucharist, that some element of their performance “rise to the level of a sacrament”?    Was it not Jesus who took up the basin and washed the disciples’ feet in that last supper ceremony?   Did John the Baptizer offer to examine the “sacramental validity” of Herod’s and Herodias’ respective covenant marriages before putting his head on the literal  execution block, in bluntly warning them “it is not lawful for you to have her”  ?

Pastoral matter, Fr. Daly?   What about the more urgent pastoral matter of snatching people from the fire?   Is it not more urgent to warn people to get out of unlawful adulterous unions, warning them away from hell?    Is their temporal happiness really more important than their souls or their inheritance in the kingdom of God?

fiery-furnace

The usual purpose of committing the unspeakable abomination against one’s covenant family, of denying that the covenant marriage ever validly existed, is usually undertaken to gain (purported) sacramental status in a church ceremony for a subsequent and conflicting union that Jesus made crystal clear was continuously adulterous–by even the ready admission of the Roman Catholic Church.    But Who is it that judges whether He created a one-flesh entity?  And Who is it that determines whether He will replicate the same between two adulterers?   Is it even plausibly the Bishop?   From Whom does the claimed sacrament flow?    What man will dare desecrate His sacred symbol of holy matrimony, which the Holy Spirit has woven through scripture from Genesis to Revelation, and hope to stand upright before a Jealous God?

Did the apostles, Peter or Paul, ever “onboard” the sinners along with their sin in any of the churches?

“You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.

“For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus,  I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?  Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.  Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

 “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people;  I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.   But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one.   For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?   But those who are outside, God judges.   Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.”    1 Corinthians 5

It appears that Paul was decidedly “unmerciful” when it came to the sanctity and utter indissolubility of holy matrimony!    Almost as “unmerciful” as his Lord and Savior.

 Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the ante-Nicene church fathers is aware that the 1st through 4th century early church, then the Roman Catholic Church, grew and developed for centuries without any apparent need for sanctioned marriage annulment — in an epoch that knew little else than arranged marriages. 

Indeed, the words of St. Ignatius (A.D. 100) should give strong pause to the contemporary fathers of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as every shepherd of the universal church of Jesus Christ:

Do not be in error, my brethren.  Those that corrupt families shall not inherit the kingdom of God.   If, then, those who do this as respects the flesh have suffered death, how much more shall this be the case with any one who corrupts by wicked doctrine the faith of God, for which Jesus Christ was crucified!  Such a one becoming defiled in this way shall go away into everlasting fire, and so shall every one that hearkens unto him.”

According to The Original Catholic Encyclopedia, the codification of provisions for declaring a sacramental marriage “null” first emerged in the mid-12th century under the papacies of Alexander III and Innocent III, after some bishops had been allowing remarriage on an ad hoc basis.    This development led to a period in history where a succession of pontiffs in the 14th and 15th centuries were themselves far from celibate, and many lived profoundly immoral lives before and during their papacies.   Earlier codifications from the Roman era dealing with marriage and breach of marital sanctity, such as Julia et Papia and Codex Theodosius do not mention any provision for seeking a declaration of nullity even though Theodosius promoted unilateral divorce in the 5th century.    There is nothing scriptural on which to base the heinous practice that was formally adopted in the 12th century (while ironically also formally adopting requirements that clergy must take a vow of celibacy), and both practices were a clear departure from earlier authority that held more faithfully to the teachings of Christ and the Apostles.

The sharply rising incidence of “nullity” in the 20th and 21st centuries also seems to be tied primarily to Western nations with easy, unilateral divorce.   It is certainly notable in those countries that arranged marriages among Catholics, where consent might legitimately be called into question, are virtually nonexistent.   According to Robert H. Vasoli, author of What God Has Joined Together – The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism” ( Oxford University Press, 1998), approximately one-third of the average 60,000 annulments per year are granted because one spouse was a non-Catholic, with the bulk of the remainder being granted on claims of lack of consent, usually due to a purported “lack of emotional maturity” to sustain a viable marriage (conflicting evidence of longevity being deemed “irrelevant” for this purpose).

In this, they join the rogue family law courts in adjudicating a  fiction that a marriage that was obviously healthy for 3 or 4 decades is suddenly “irreconcilable”, even worse, wasn’t “viable” from the beginning due to the requisite lack of “emotional maturity” on the part of one of the spouses.    (Emotional maturity that was ample on the wedding day might more likely have taken flight in the fear of losing a late-life adulterous relationship.)

Citing the “rubber stamp” predilections of the U.S. tribunals (which on average grant 3 annulments for every 1 annulment granted anywhere in the rest of the world despite representing only 6% of the world’s Roman Catholic population), on page 7,  former Notre Dame sociology / criminology professor, Dr. Vasoli  asserts,  “A salient premise that undergirds the system, one seldom stated for public consumption, is captured succinctly in an anonymous tribunalist’s comment, ‘There is no marriage which given a little time for investigation, we cannot declare invalid.’  ”     Is there overwhelming evidence that this staggering number of “invalid” marriages (as in some cases retroactively determined some 30 years after the wedding) being driven by anything other than our immoral unilateral divorce laws ?   According to this author, the result has been a tidal wave:  in 1968, the American church granted fewer than 600 annulments; today it hands out more than 60,000 a year.

More recently, two Catholic writers independently reported on the September, 2015 announcement by Pope Francis authorizing local bishops to remove barriers to annulment on demand, countering the Vatican’s claim that what outsiders accurately saw as the most comprehensive changes in annulment policy in some 300 years were merely an “administrative improvement”.    John Zmirak  wrote in Stream Magazine, September 11, 2015:

“…But liberal priests and bishops did not view annulments as what they are — rare, exceptional events that recognize an injustice, such as a girl who was married by force.   Instead, many bishops, especially in America, began to hand out annulments to almost anyone who asked, on spurious psychological grounds such as “emotional immaturity.” In my own Catholic high school, the quarters that once housed Christian Brothers (who all cleared out after Vatican II) were turned into an annulment tribunal with the highest “success” rate in the world. Some 99 percent of marriages examined in that tribunal turned out to have been invalid….That means one of two things: a) We Americans are very good at faking annulments of perfectly valid marriages, so that couples can contract second, adulterous marriages with a clear conscience; or b) We are very bad at performing valid marriages….

Zmirak continues, “Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI ….saw the American annulment rate as an international scandal, and tried to tighten the rules from Rome, making it harder for local bishops to accommodate the divorce culture, and giving some support for those spouses who didn’t want their marriages (sometimes of 20 or 30 years, with multiple children) declared in retrospect null and void. An abandoned Kennedy wife, Sheila Rauch Kennedy, famously fought her powerful husband’s annulment petition — and when she lost had the bad manners to write a book exposing what a farce the procedure had become.

“Pope Francis has apparently reversed most of the reforms that the previous two popes imposed, and made annulments easier, quicker and cheaper. That surely will mean that they will become more common.”

 

Writing in Crux, September 8, 2015,   John L. Allen Jr.  suggests a very sinister political calculus by this Jesuit pontiff:

“All along, reform in the annulment process seemed the most obvious compromise measure, a way of giving both camps at least part of what they wanted. Those opposed to revising the Communion ban could take comfort that the Church was not softening its stand on divorce, while progressives would be pleased that the Church was at least trying to show greater compassion and outreach.”

We would suggest that the only “compromise” was to what remained of the integrity of Catholic families.   The result allows “the faithful” to continue to live in sanctioned adultery with the Church’s unobstructed blessing  — disregarding the commandment of Christ entirely, along with the eternal consequences awaiting unrepentant adulterers, instead of counseling those adulterers to terminate the relationship in order to take communion in a worthy manner (1 Cor. 11:27-32),  not to “eat and drink judgment to himself if he does not judge the body [of Christ] rightly”,  and to recover their forfeited inheritance in the kingdom of God.   For all of Pope Francis’ profession of “mercy” and “compassion”,  His Holiness’ failure to see beyond the temporal,  mirrors that of most Protestant leaders, and turns both of those concepts on their head considering the eternal costs of condoning the sin.
 

We know that there is no scriptural precedent to justify men retroactively declaring a consummated marriage “null”, and in fact no recognition in the courthouse of the Most High of man’s repudiation of the consummated marriage of our youth, as declared by the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9, where He asserts that man is given no authority to unjoin what God’s hand has joined.    We also know that for the first ten centuries of Christendom, there was no provision for marriage nullity, either written about or taught until it was legislated by a medieval pope.    This begs the question, on what basis was this supported?    Contemporary Catholics point to translations of Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9 where the “for fornication (Greek “porneia”) exceptive clause”  is  rendered “except for unlawful marriage”.    However, this is not the case in the Catholic Douay-Reims 1899 version nor the Catholic Revised Standard Version where the exception reads “for unchastity“.   Tellingly, the first time an exception for “unlawful marriage” occurs is in a version introduced in 1970 called New American Bible Revised.

Speaking of  fornication or unchastity, “logou  porneas”   certainly does not translate as “unlawful marriage”!

Sc4All_M5.32a
Original Greek Text (Textus Receptus)

Protestants can hardly afford to cluck about the time-honored sport of bible translation vandalism undertaken to accommodate the Sexual Revolution, wherein Westcott & Hort in the 1880’s transformed “porneia” (unchastity, whoredom, fornication) into adultery via the revisionist rendering “general sexual immorality”,  while completely jettisoning the remarriage-damning last phrase of Matthew 19:9, “whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”    Indeed, we now have not only the Queen James Version, but also the 2011 New International Version coming out with homosexual-practice-friendly retranslated renderings.    Comparison with Greek interlinear text tools, as illustrated above, is becoming compulsory to the accurate bible study of the 21st century “Berean” because of this.

Baal was the pagan god of the worship of sexuality, to whom child sacrifices were made.    Jeremiah’s prophecy is being unmistakably fulfilled in our time in both the Catholic and Protestant Churches as a result of the systematic destruction of the  sanctity of marriage in both the Church and Western society:

They prophesied by Baal and led My people Israel astray.
“Also among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing:
The committing of adultery and walking in falsehood;
And they strengthen the hands of evildoers,
So that no one has turned back from his wickedness.

How long until judgment on our land and the American church is complete by the Lord’s hand?    Jesus repeatedly asked, what would He find on the earth when He returned, perhaps already knowing.   

I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book;  and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.
Revelation 22:18-19

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  For a deeper study into the biblical meaning and significance of the supernatural one-flesh joining, and God’s exclusive participation in the covenant of holy matrimony, including why (despite a pastor’s participation) this is never replicated where one or both of the partners has a living, estranged covenant spouse, please click here.

 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

The Hound of Heaven By Francis Thompson (1859–1907)

hound-of-heaven-illustration
`Ye did not choose out me, but I chose out you, and did appoint you, that ye might go away, and might bear fruit, and your fruit might remain, that whatever ye may ask of the Father in my name, He may give you.
John 15:16

‘Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. `Do not I fill both heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.”
Jeremiah 23:24

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
Psalm 139:7-10

[ This classic poem is the biblical rebuke to the permissive heresy “once saved, always saved”, and to the humanistic corruption by Martin Luther, John Calvin and Erasmus of the  doctrine of “free will”.    Enjoy!      – “standerinfamilycourt”]

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside).
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover—
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot ’thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:—
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat—
‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.’

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children’s eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
‘Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share
With me’ (said I) ‘your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.’
So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one—
Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that’s born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day’s dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning’s eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak—
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o’ her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noisèd Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet—
‘Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me!’
Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must—
Designer infinite!—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
‘And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),
‘And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited—
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’

Lord, may we rest confidently in Your promises while You, O God, faithfully pursue our prodigal.

 
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com