July 5 – Marriage
Honored – Part 2
1 Corinthians 5:15f –
"What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?
Are you not to judge those inside [the church]?"
It is a fantastic event
when two people get married. A wedding is always a joyous occasion,
with solemn vows exchanged, and feasting and dancing enjoyed by
family and friends. We honor God, when we recognize his first
institution, and follow its model, with its holy promise, love –
and boundaries.
When I see a so-called
believer, whom I knew somewhat in years past, shack up with his/her
soulmate, it pains my heart, knowing that God's commands toward
fornication are not respected. The living together is sometimes a
matter of convenience, while most of the time it is clearly a matter
of selfishness. The question one should ask is: "Whom do I
want to please today, and always, with my life and its actions – me
or God?" Even if there is not sex involved in the living
arrangements, the very appearance of evil negates that fact in the
eyes of everyone (1 Thess. 5:22; 2 Corinthians 8:19-21). So, when I
get a wedding invitation from someone who has been shacking up, I
experience two emotions. The first emotion is gladness, for the fact
that the persons are correcting the external appearance – the
outward arrangement of marriage. The second emotion is stunted joy.
You are asking me to help celebrate your sacred union on your wedding
day, even though you have already disrespected the sacredness of that
union. If you couldn't wait to consummate your relationship, then
why should I celebrate months later, after the fact? To me, it takes
the "punch" right out of the party!
Well, you might say,
"Wait a minute! Are you not acting like the brother of the
prodigal son?" Perhaps, but, I have been to a few weddings of
people who had shacked up previously. None of them contained
confessions of repentance for actual or possible sinfulness. The
story of the prodigal son contained real and voiced repentance.
The verse above
comes at the end of a fairly short argument by the Apostle Paul
regarding a self-called believer in the Corinthian body of Christ,
who was knowingly having an affair with his father's 2nd
wife (not the man's mother). It was public knowledge, and deemed to
be okay, probably due to the tacit response of the church's
leadership. To Paul, this seems to be an obvious case of blatant
sin, being allowed to continue with nothing said, and thus being the
leaven that works itself through the rest of the dough, in which it
comes into contact. In other words, its tacit allowance causes the
spiritual culture around it to be influenced – in a negative way.
Today, in 2018 in the
western world, it is quite common for couples to live together before
they get married, if they ever do get married. In the eyes of the
world, marriage is growing ever un-sacred. Bad turns to worse
progressively – which is not a surprise. It should not be so for
the body of Christ. We are the light of the world, and should act
accordingly to help a dying world see that it is living in the dark.
God calls us out of the world's system to be different, to be set
apart from cultural norms when they go against God's commands, ways,
and model of living. We must be different on purpose in order to not
let the evil leaven to work its subconcious ways in our lives.
