HOLY THINGS, PART 1: MARRIAGE
Genesis 1:26-28, Romans
8:20-21, 1 Timothy 4:3-5
David Bruce Linn,
Pastor-Teacher
24 September 2006
All Rights Reserved
The film Shadowlands is based on the life of English literature scholar, Christian writer, and apologist C.S. Lewis. He was one who gloried in the friendly association of like-minded men and focused all of his attention on studying, writing, teaching, and taking care of a slain war buddy's mother and daughter. He knew little of women or marriage.
As a result of his books Lewis began receiving vast amounts of correspondence which he sought to answer personally. One woman who wrote him was Joy Gresham, a brilliant and outspoken Jewess from New York who had come to believe in Christ. When her marriage failed due to her husband's drunkenness and infidelities Joy moved to Great Britain supposedly to get away from all the sorrow. Lewis somehow failed to understand that Joy wanted to be near him. Their friendship, now that it could be conducted in person, became quite strong. Lewis found that he delighted in Joy as a person, and she turned out to be very much his intellectual and verbal equal.
Then Joy's visa ran out. In an odd failing of manly judgment he offered to marry Joy simply to gain her the opportunity to remain in England, and she accepted. They continued to live apart after the civil ceremony. Somehow the great Christian thinker and writer did not see that this was not at all a fulfillment of God's holy purposes for matrimony.
Then one day when walking Joy turned and felt her thighbone snap. She fell to the ground in excruciating pain, and discovered upon an examination that she had an advanced case of cancer. Lewis saw his beloved friend in her time of need and finally understood. At last he admitted that he loved Joy deeply and that it was wrong for him to leave her without the help of her own husband. So Lewis convinced a clergyman from the Church of England to come to the hospital and they were married immediately at Joy's bedside in a proper Christian ceremony.
Then came a great surprise. Lewis thought he was marrying a terminally ill woman, and as a result of prayer, she was healed! No doctor could explain how Joy's leg could be strong again, but it was. Thus began a three year period of blessed love for them. Their deep knowledge of the holy purposes of God could finally be applied to themselves and their own marriage.
But it was not to last. The cancer returned and Joy ended up in a sick bed on the first floor of their home writhing in pain. Lewis was brokenhearted in a catastrophic way as he tended his beloved during her last days. She was the sweetest thing Lewis had ever known apart from God himself, and then she was gone. He had taken a whole lifetime to back into Christian marriage and then it was ripped away from him like a limb violently ripped from his torso.
1. THE FOUNDATION OF A HOLY THING
Through marriage Lewis learned deep lessons about holiness. Holiness is one of the most mystifying things on the planet. What does holiness mean? What things are holy? We must begin by asking the right questions or we shall never find the truth. The church of today has often sliced and diced the Bible to answer questions like: How can I improve my life by being a Christian? What exactly can I expect God to do for me? What can Christ do to make me feel better? All of these questions receive good answers in the Bible but they are all limited by the mind of man. The answers coming from the mind of God are focused around a different question, namely, how people like us can move into holiness.
So if we ask about marriage, for example, we often want to know whether we are free to divorce a difficult spouse and marry another one. We want to know if it is OK for married people to have deep friendships with people of the opposite sex. Does merely kissing someone to whom we are not married constitute adultery? And if we are honest, we want to know whether the people who dump spouses simply because they are displeased with them are really making out as well as they say. In other words, are the faithful Christians losing out by not being free to swap spouses until they find a good one? If we research Scripture we discover that God gives very few straight answers to these kinds of questions because he is answering a different question: What manner of marriage represents holiness? God has little to say to anyone who is not interested in holiness.
This is the first part of a study series entitled Holy Things designed to ask the right question of God in significant areas of life. We will begin with the central test case of marriage and then move on to other holy things. A look back at the very first thing the Bible says about marriage tells us a great deal: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth'" (Genesis 1:26-28).
If we take it as axiomatic that God is holy then we deduce that in some limited yet true form the first man and woman were created as holy beings. Because part of the definition of holy means "totally other" the meaning must shift when applied to people, but in some true way this most significant characteristic of God was made their possession from the very beginning. In this condition the unrestricted blessing of God was possible for them in a way it has never been for fallen people: "God blessed them." The highest part of this blessing was unrestricted fellowship with God himself. To know God is life itself, and the first man and woman had it.
Built into the very concept of human creation are our dual natures as male and female. These are not pliable, and are represented in body, soul, mind, and spirit. That is because the first man and woman, as representatives of the human race, were tasked with purposes. If God is holy then his purposes are holy. The first and best is simply that the man and woman might know him. The second is that they might "be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth." Sexuality, in its broadest sense, is essential to the fulfillment of this holy purpose. Thirdly, as male and female, they were tasked with subduing the earth and ruling over it with benevolent care.
Obviously, if fruitfulness is decreed, then marriage is established as revealed in the next chapter: "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). This definition of one man and one woman joined, away from their parents, in total union for life is repeated three times in the Bible and is also not pliable. So if we put all these things together, we begin with a very good definition of holiness in marriage consisting of holy sexuality based on our creation as male and female, holy purposes to multiply and to rule the earth, and a holy pattern of faithfulness to one spouse.
2. LOSS OF THE DIVINE PURPOSES DEFINES UNHOLINESS
The first man and woman suffered a catastrophic loss of holiness which we call the fall of man. Where holiness had been their daily bread, unholiness was now the grit in their teeth. It is, in fact, the loss of the divine purposes which is the cause of all unholiness. You may not have thought of it in this way but that is how Paul the Apostle described the fall in Romans: "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:20-21).
Everything that God created was subjected to what is variously translated futility, vanity, or frustration. This is a very interesting term which also means emptiness. All of creation was made for man to subdue and rule, and when mankind fell into the bondage of sin, the purpose of everything God made was lost. He made it all to glorify himself in the beauty of holiness with a world of holy people, but the fall changed everything. Sin makes man worship the creature rather than the creator so we end up worshiping ourselves, the sun, nature, the mountain, or the feelings we have when we are looking at these things.
So marriage, as something which God created to serve his own holy purposes, is no longer automatically holy as it was for the first man and woman. Because of common grace there is still divine good in it to the extent that any couple accords their marriage with God's plan. Jesus taught that sun and rain were common graces which bless everyone no matter what they believe (Matthew 5:45). But no crops grow in hell because hell is the place where all good is evacuated by the decree of God. For the same reason neither are there any marriages there.
Yet because of common grace there can be good, even excellent, marriages of fallen and unbelieving people. They should receive our blessing and be pointed toward the true source of goodness they experience. But fallen marriages are also just as likely to be poisonous pressure cookers of bitterness and anger, discontent and resentment. When two people marry merely to fulfill themselves they find that selfishness cancels out the fulfillment of their needs. When marriage is wrenched from its divine purpose to glorify God it becomes tasked to human ends which range from the trivial to the abominable. From trophy wives to wife swapping, from social climbing to gold digging, marriage easily becomes a travesty. Even traditional and moral couples can have marriages which God himself calls futile, vain, and empty because all creation fell when the first man and woman sinned.
3. THE RETASKING OF FALLEN THINGS
The one and only way to avoid that outcome is to consciously retask our marriages for the purposes of God. We must get beyond common grace in order to find the unparalleled blessings of holiness. Paul explicitly taught this in his first letter to Timothy. He was warning that people would arise inside the church who fall away from the faith, teaching doctrines of demons and "...who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:3-5). Paul gives two test cases of the prohibiting of marriage and abstention from certain foods. Marriage and food are, in fact, good things given to all by common grace and believers should not allow anyone to call such good things evil.
But Paul's point goes far beyond that. He argues that any good thing God has made which has become empty, futile, or vain in a fallen world can be retasked by a believer to its original purposes. Specifically, Paul commissions us to go on a campaign of reclaiming the fallen things in our lives and our environments because they can be "sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer."
The term "sanctified" means "made holy." Almost unbelievably, we can, by means of the word of God and prayer, take things over for God which have been made futile by the fall of man and make them glorify God once again. The term "holy" means both "morally pure" and "set apart for God." So the original marriage of the first man and woman was, by definition, morally pure and set apart for God. Then they chose to retask themselves to become like God and when they fell all creation fell with them, including their marriage. It is now up to every believing couple to take their fallen marriage and sanctify it, that is, to make it morally pure and set apart for God.
So how do we do that? Any good thing God has made can be reclaimed for his kingdom by receiving the teaching about it from the word of God and praying that truth into our lives. Concerning our test case of marriage there are things mankind is doing we must stop and things we are failing to do with our marriages.
First of all, we must stop doing things which dishonor God and his holy purposes for marriage. The example Paul gave was that there were authoritarian leaders seeking to enforce abstinence from marriage and certain foods. This sounds a lot like incipient monasticism. But if God made marriage and food to be a blessing then we cannot become more holy by abstaining from them. Today it is more common for people to marry quickly and divorce even more quickly. We dishonor marriage when we discard it like a used paper cup.
We dishonor marriage when we change it to any purpose God does not want. So-called "open marriage" where the spouses agree to have intimate relations with random partners is still more popular than you might imagine. Western society is currently deciding whether to write homosexual marriage into law. There are tens of thousands of polygamous marriages in the state of Utah. Beyond such radical dishonoring are more seemingly mundane things such as spending large sums of money without your spouse's agreement, or going on private trips without telling your spouse where you are going. All unilateral actions like these are covenant violations and in many cases a prelude to divorce.
Marriage becomes sanctified when we retask it for God's holy purposes, the first of which is companionship. This surprises many people, but the reason is that "it is not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18a). Companionship can be lost simply by scheduling life so tightly that husband and wife have no time for each other. God calls that futility. God also purposes comprehensive intimacy, ranging from emotional to spiritual to intellectual to physical. It is holy to seek the one-flesh unity which God planned for marriage, and it does not happen automatically. So a dinner date can be a holy thing! So can a walk, a bunch of flowers, a home-cooked meal, a kiss, a letter, or anything which promotes the holiness of marital intimacy.
That is why C. S. Lewis was so devastated when his wife went to be with the Lord. He had moved into such a wonderful holy unity with Joy that it felt as if he had been ripped in half. It was so painful that there were moments when he struggled with the mercy of God. How could God let him in for so much pain? It felt like dying. Yet this is part of the holy love God plans for marriage. It is revealed in Christ's holy, loving, sacrifice of himself for his bride, the church. Later, when Lewis wrote The Four Loves he observed that the love of sacrifice seems to be most realized in the worst marriages and at the worst moments in good marriages. Then is the holiness of Christ seen shining most brightly when one or both partners choose to give sacrificially.
And that is the mysterious highest holy purpose for human marriage. Every marriage which has been retasked to glorify God becomes a picture of Christ and his church. I urge those believers who are married to sanctify their marriages by the word of God and prayer. Take a lifetime to learn the holy purposes of God for you and pray those things into your lives. Be very definite and pray: "Lord, this marriage is for you. Let your holiness shine out of it." If you are single, pray the same prayer about your singleness: "Lord, my singleness is for you. Show me your holy purposes for my life."
What about those of us who have violated God's plan for marriage in some way? The beauty of holiness was never the result of your works anyway. Run to the Savior with your confession of sin and receive the total cleansing. Then let your repentance be seen by subjecting your life and relationships to the holy purposes of God so that you will never commit the same wrongs again.
For decades my wife and I have set apart our marriage for God by having daily devotional time together every morning. We study the Bible and pray separately, side by side, seeking to hear from the Lord separately and then together. We share things we are learning from the Lord and we share prayer needs. Then we rise and attack the day. It is one way we say: "Lord, this marriage belongs to you. Let it be conducted in the holiness of your purposes. Do with it what you will so that you will be glorified by it according to your plan." Other patterns may work for other couples to express the same things and build holiness and unity into marriage.
Since the fall of man into sin nothing on this earth has been automatically holy. But every good thing God has given can be retasked to fulfill his holy purposes by the word of God and prayer. I urge you to become a reclaimer! Let us take back territory for the Lord and his kingdom. We will discover our greatest joys as we do and the world will become a more holy place.
[clip from videotape, 1:57:00 to 2:01:46, Joy Lewis passes away in her bed]