Tag: Marriage

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Profound Mysteries – Ephesians 5:28-33

The first half of Ephesians is deep theology, while the second half goes into the application of this theology, the “walk” as Paul calls it – walking together in unity, humility and gentleness, taking off sin and putting on good works.

In the passage today, Paul has just walked through instructions for living out this theology in the context of marriage – and now he’s going to cycle back into discussion of theology by relating marriage back to our relationship with God.

He does this by introducing the new “mysteries” of the epistle. The first was the mystery of the church gathering together the gentiles as well as Israel into relationship with God.

Here we have two mysteries, directly related. First, the mystery of the communion between husband and wife, making two into one, and the resulting truth that husbands should be loving their wives as they love themselves. After setting the bar so high, at Christ’s sacrificial love for the church, Paul boils it down into maybe a more accessible target. Though it is plenty difficult in and of itself!

We can see it, though, in couples living out the vow of “in sickness and health,” as spouses care for and nurture their ill or dying partner. And Jesus does this for us as well, as Paul points out.

It is vital for a healthy marriage that we come together as one team, because we are one flesh. This outlook, this mystery, sets us up for success when we have conflict in our marriages. To do this, though, does require self-sacrifice – giving up our individual identity and desires in order to attain a new identity, and even new desires. Like so much in Christian life, we must be constantly “dying to live.”

And Paul points out that this is true of our relationship with Christ, and each other, as well – “we are members of his body,” just as “the two shall become one flesh.”

And this is the second half of the mystery, a great mystery, the single Paul calls it, that the marriage relationship, properly undertaken, is the most beautiful picture of God’s love for us that we are likely to see in the world. The very nature of sexual reproduction in some ways exists in order to point the way to Christ.

Both the submission and the love that Paul calls for are facets of the selfless self-giving we are called to when we seek to imitate Christ. It is hard, because of sin, because vulnerability is hard, because conflict is real. But every conflict is an opportunity for a strengthened, more beautiful picture of Christ and the church.

If that concept is attractive but elusive, the first step is meeting God through the Christ who transforms us.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, February 7, 2021

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God’s Ideal for Marriage – 1 Corinthians 7:10-16

Christianity teaches that marriage was created by God, and the story of God’s ideal for marriage begins in the Garden of Eden Adam saw the need for a female counterpart, and God declared it “not good for a man to be alone”. So Eve was created as a “helper” – a term used for God Himself, which is elsewhere translated “savior”. She is was taken out of Adam and then reattached as one flesh through the spiritual and physical union.

This concept of one flesh, seamless unity, is also the picture of union we see in the trinity. The unity of marriage is itself a picture of the relational unity of the trinity. Marriage was monogamous. Polygamy was not in the original intent, and the polygamy we see in the bible never goes well. Marriage was heterosexual, a union of a male and female both for the unification of two contrasting bodies and the potential for reproduction.

Note that the “image of God” is applied to both male and female together, not one or the other. Note also that this has nothing to do with hobbies, preferences, talents, etc.

Marriage was pleasurable, and sex is pleasurable. God invented the orgasm.

Marriage was permanent, a life-long commitment. The concept of divorce came far later.

Marriage unites two people equal in value. Eve was not created as a maid.

Marriage at its core brings together two soul-mates as partners.

All this is a picture of Christ’s relationship to the church. Christ is in unity with the church, derives pleasure from the church and eternally faithful to us. But in the garden, we see things go wrong. Adam and Eve are apart, and the seraph Lucifer persuades Eve to disobey, and she does the same for Adam.

God then lays out the consequences for each gender. Women, generally speaking, have a hole in their heart that they try to fill with men, none of whom can fill out. This is the pattern we see where women seek love and men seek respect. And so we so frequently see marriages dissolving into frustration rather than being the beautiful union of soul mates and picture of Christ’s love they are meant to be. But the problem is not with the model or the nature of marriage – it is about the Fall and our sin.

That is what Paul is addressing here – a church in a culture with an even more messed up marriage situation than we have today. In Greco-Roman cultures, men had full legal power over wives, could divorce them for any reason, and could sleep with other women without any consequences.

In Judaism, things were also bad. Men could practice polygamy, which meant they could never be guilty of adultery, only women. Wives could be abandoned but still married and controlled by the husband, unable to remarry. Many would have to turn to prostitution.

The message from Paul, then, was radical, particularly in regards to the rights of women. Men and women were each given rights and responsibilities in the marriage and the marriage bed. But Paul was also more restrictive in some ways – specifically, restricting marriage and the marriage bed to only one husband and one wife.

How do we apply this? First, Radical Commitment. Divorce is relegated only to the most extreme circumstances. We are to approach marriage in a different way than anything else we do. We cannot come to marriage with a “commit and quit” mindset. This is not a job we can take until something better comes along. It’s not an instrument that we can take up and then drop when practice turns out to be mundane. We cannot come to a marriage with an eject button in our minds. We must come into marriage with without divorce as an option. But we also cannot just sit around with the notion that things will “just work themselves out.” Marriage must be fought for continually, and cannot be left to drift.

Second, Radical Reconciliation. Paul was writing to people who were feeling like they needed to separate for some reason, whether “spiritual” reasons or more usual ones. He calls them here to leave the door open for reconciliation.

Third, Radical Selflessness. Paul, not as a command but as an apostolic exhortation, calls Christians married to non-Christians to stay with them. The “sanctification” in this context is likely that which Peter talks about when he writes that we are to “sanctify Christ in our hearts” and suffer for him. We prioritize Christ over our suffering and discomfort. And a married person who finds Christ should likewise prioritize their non-Christian spouse – perhaps living that way will reveal Christ to the other.

Selfishness can happen when we try to fix our spouse so that we can be happy, rather than serve them and love them. Or, alternately, we may focus on ourselves and our problems at the expense of our spouse. For a marriage to be healthy, we both must serve and be served. When both of us are giving more than we are taking, that is where the wholeness and beauty of marriage can be seen.

– Sermon Notes, Brent Rood, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA

1 Corinthians 7:10-16
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Christian Sexuality, Christlike Sexuality – 1 Corinthians 7:1-9

The world and Christianity have both done a number on our understanding of sex, a swinging pendulum between selfishness and shame. We see this in the Corinthian church, with some engaging in prostitution and even worse, while others seeing sex itself as bad in any context. The latter is addressed here, as Paul unpacks what Christian sexuality should look like.

Paul himself was single, and may certainly have been tempted to agree with the Corinthian assertion that “it is good for a man not to touch a woman.” But he did not do that, and acknowledged that sex is not only permissible within marriage, but a moral good and a required duty.

Like us, the Corinthians live in a society saturated with sex. Then and now, there were plenty of opportunities and even pressure to take sex outside of the marriage relationship. The answer to that, though, is for active engagement in sexuality on the part of both spouses, to serve and fulfill the needs and desires of the other.

Note that Paul here does not mention this in the context of bearing children. Sex here is clearly about bestowing pleasure on the other partner, not solely about procreation. The emphasis on giving versus demanding or denying here is clear. We should be competing to out-serve each other, both in our lives together in general and specifically in the marriage bed.

The key word in Paul’s command here is “stop” – stop depriving, stop defrauding your spouse. The Corinthians here who think they are being spiritual are in fact no better than those described earlier who are getting involved with lawsuits.

Paul does make a concession that, if both parties agree, if they devote themselves instead to prayer, and if they keep it temporary, then at that point they can take a break. The concessions serve to emphasize the importance of the command.

Today, we generally don’t use the “spirituality” excuse to deny sex. Instead, it tends to come from a degradation of the relationship, often with the marital sex relationship being replaced, whether with porn, romance novels, or affairs, whether emotional or physical. It can also come from a wrong view of sex. If we see sex as a privilege, it can become used as a reward or a weapon.

Likewise, if we see it only through the lens of only what we want, then even the understanding of sex as a responsibility can be used as a weapon, and that is just as wrong as the former issue. In all this, we have a unique opportunity to follow Christ in potentially the most pleasurable way possible.

Sex is an opportunity to serve as He served, to lay down our rights as He did. Christ is both our model and motivation even in the marriage bed. Love your spouse in a way the seeks to serve rather than be served.

– Sermon Notes, Jeff Krabach, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA

1 Corinthians 7
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