Living Between the Times

When my son was in high school, he came out on the porch one day and announced that he didn’t like 1 Corinthians 7. Being a romantically inclined young man, he didn’t like what he thought was Paul’s negative view of marriage. I’m sure I was unsuccessful in helping him understand the nuances of “the present distress” and “the present form of this world.” Recently, I have reflected on two things related to this chapter. The first is that I believe it has hugely important truths which teach us about how to live wisely in this present age. Second, I rarely hear this chapter referred to in the context of discipleship or counseling (not to mention marriage and singleness). So I’m going to make another pass at applying the themes in 1 Corinthians 7 to counseling people to persevere through pain as they groan for God’s glory.

Three Things We Need to Know as We Live Between the Times 

1. A Hopeful Perspective on Suffering
   Each of these people is suffering greatly and there is no guarantee of immediate relief in their circumstances. How are they to think about their significant suffering? In 1 Corinthians 7:26, Paul refers to “the present distress.” While this could refer to specific trouble in first century Corinth, it could also refer to the general distress of this present age—the time between Jesus’ first and second comings. This is the distress and suffering of a sin-broken world that we all deal with in one way or another.In Mark 13:5-8, Jesus speaks of several manifestations of this distress and says, “These are the beginning of the birth pains.” While not minimizing the sufferings of this age, this is greatly hopeful and encouraging. For the believers in our case studies, the grievous sufferings they are experiencing are not death throes but birth pains. This means their sufferings ultimately lead to life, not death. I well remember the groans of pain from my wife (and other mothers in nearby birthing rooms) when she was in labor, but her temporary pain led to the births of our two children.

2. A Wise Engagement With the Things of This World
   Verses 29-31 are worth quoting in full:
   

   This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

   This paragraph is counter-intuitive, counter-cultural, hard to understand, and profoundly helpful. Notice it begins with, “The appointed time has grown very short” and ends with, “The present form of this world is passing away.” I don’t believe this is the typical mindset of Christians in the West. We tend to think this world will go on indefinitely and that it is our last and best hope of happiness. Ironically, thinking this way often increases anxiety as people frantically pursue and tenaciously cling to perishable goods. But Paul says this world is on its way out and it won’t be long until the new world is fully here in power and glory.
   Again, this doesn’t take Frank and Janie’s and Allison’s and Ben’s pain away, but it declares it as meaningful (“birth pains”) and temporary (“the appointed time has grown very short”). Therefore, Paul says to us all, deal with the present—marital struggles or joys, painful losses or joyful rewards, anxieties or excitement about career and money, etc.—deal with these things as though…you weren’t dealing with them. What does this mean? Engage with this world but engage wisely and loosely. These things are real but not the most essential reality. They are here but on their way out. See through them and past them to the glorious and massive joys that are just around the corner.

3. A Single Passion: Jesus Christ
   This single-mindedness is the bottom line and the underlying point of all of Paul’s letters.
   
   • “I say this for your own benefit…and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:35).
   • “For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2-3).
   • “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand.” (Rom. 13:11-12).
   Undivided, sincere, and pure devotion to Jesus Christ is the goal of the gospel, the glory of God, the end of all our travail, our eternal happiness, and our lasting peace. This is the realistic radiant hope we offer our suffering counselees: “The night is far gone; the day is at hand” (Rom. 13:12).

Adapted from "Living Between the Times" by Pat Quinn, April 19, 2019

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10-27-19 Meeting Change

This Sunday we will be meeting with the Thatcher Care group to conclude our discussion on marriage. Plan on joining us as we discuss the different phases of married life.

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Understanding the Deeper Purposes of Sex

Until we understand why God created sex, we won’t make sense of His commands regarding sexual purity, for His commands always relate to His purposes.

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By Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas

On the whole, human beings are fascinated with sex—men and women, young and old, Christians, atheists, and everyone in between. In all cultures, throughout all of history, sexual desire has been one of the greatest motivators of the human will. Men and women throw away their families, houses, money, and land in order to be sexually satisfied. Some are addicted to it. Wars have been fought over it. We compose songs about it, make movies about it, and write stories about it. And this preoccupation with sex is not simply a facet of our fallen nature. Even one whole book of the Bible (the Song of Solomon) is dedicated to celebrating the sexual relationship between the husband and wife.

But have you ever wondered why all the fuss? Why did God create us as sexual people in the first place? He was obviously not tied to a need for sexual reproduction in order to propagate the species. He just as easily could have created humans as asexual creatures that reproduce like amoebas.

Until we understand why God created sex, we will never sufficiently make sense of His commands regarding sexual purity, for His commands always relate to His purposes.

Christ and the church

Ephesians 5:24-32 pointedly describes the sexual relationship within marriage as an image of the spiritual relationship between Christ and the church. As you read the passage, note carefully the significance of the last sentence (verse 32) within its context:

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

In this passage Paul is discussing the relational dynamics of Christian marriage. And as he gives instruction to husbands and wives about how they are to treat one other, he draws a tight parallel between human marriage and Christ’s relationship with the church. The way Christ treats the church, Paul tells us, serves as the pattern for the way in which a husband is to treat his wife. And the way the church relates to Christ is the way a wife is to relate to her husband.

Revealing a  mystery

But why is this? By what logic does Paul ask husbands and wives to relate to one another as Christ and the church? The answer is found in verse 32. Human marriage, Paul tells us, “refers to Christ and the church.” In other words, marriage is a “type” of Christ’s relationship to the church. Drawing upon the ancient marriage formula of Genesis 2:24, Paul reveals a mystery (i.e., a previously hidden truth): Sexual oneness within marriage was created by God to serve as a foreshadowing of the spiritual oneness that would exist between Christ and His church. As the great church father Augustine once wrote, “It is of Christ and the Church that it is most truly said, ‘the two shall be one flesh.'”

From Paul’s comments in Ephesians we can see that when a man and a woman come together sexually, in some mysterious way they become one in their flesh (see also 1 Corinthians 6:16). Something profound occurs through sexual intercourse. The marriage union is not simply a legal union or a social union, a financial union or a familial union, but rather a union of bodies, a sharing of physical life.

Through sex, two people are joined together in the deepest and most wonderful way—so much so that they are said to become one. This is why sexual intercourse is rightly said to “consummate” a marriage.

Living out of the union

Marriage is more than sex, but it’s not less than sex. In fact, in the ancient biblical world, sexual union was the primary means by which a man and woman married each other (see, for example, the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah in Genesis 24:67). Unlike today, religious clergy of the ancient world did not create a marriage through a formal pronouncement; rather the act of sex itself created the marriage.

Thus, a healthy marriage relationship is the living out of the union that is established through sexual intercourse. (This is why a sexual relationship that occurs outside the context of a marriage relationship is so emotionally destructive. The act of sex, which is meant to initiate and sustain a permanent union of marriage, is broken apart and divorced from its very purpose.)

But herein lies the greatest significance of sex—not what it accomplishes on an earthly plane, but what it images on a divine plane. Sex is not an end in itself; it points to the deeper reality of the gospel. Just as the sacrifice of the Passover lamb in the Old Testament foreshadowed Christ’s atoning sacrifice in the New, so too the physical oneness established through sex foreshadows the spiritual oneness that will exist (and which already exists) between Christ and his church at the wedding supper of the Lamb.

The bride and bridegroom

The New Testament’s many references to the church as the “bride” of Christ and to Christ as the “bridegroom” further highlight this parallel between earthly and heavenly union. Additionally, many of Christ’s parables use the wedding motif as an illustration of His return and consummate union with the church. And the book of Revelation explicitly refers to the wedding supper of the Lamb as inaugurating the dawn of the eternal age (Revelation 19:7; 21:2, 9; 22:17; see also Matthew 25:1-13).

But it’s important to remember which came first in God’s mind. God did not pattern the divine marriage after human marriage, but rather human marriage is a foreshadowing of the divine marriage. It’s not as though God discovered the connection between sex and the gospel the way a pastor peruses the Wall Street Journal for preaching illustrations. No, the connection was purposed before the foundation of the world. As Paul tells us, the sexual oneness of marriage refers to Christ and the church. Just as God ordained the coming sacrifice of Christ, so too God ordained human marriage—from the very dawn of creation—to testify to the coming wedding supper of the Lamb.

Remembering the gospel

Our spiritual union with Christ is an essential yet often overlooked aspect of the gospel. The good news of salvation is not simply that God has forgiven us but, rather, that through our union with Christ we are born again into his very life—we have become sharers of his nature (2 Peter 1:4).

Forgiveness is indeed a significant aspect of our salvation, but we must not reduce the saving work of God to simple bookkeeping in the divine registry. Forgiveness cleans the slate, but forgiveness alone is not sufficient for entering the kingdom of heaven.

It is only when we understand that our chief culpability before God is not bound up in our sinful actions but, even more fundamentally, in our sinful nature—the source of our sinful actions—that we can begin to understand why we need more than forgiveness.

Not surprisingly, the main requirement for entering into eternal life is that one actually be alive. Jesus Himself said, “No one can see [enter into] the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3, NIV). A key component of New Testament salvation, therefore, is centered on our connection to the very life of God, through Jesus Christ via the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

It is when we become one spiritually with Christ Himself that we enter into both forgiveness and life. Just as a husband and wife become one in their physical life, so too Christ and the Christian, through the indwelling of the Spirit, become one in their spiritual life. Through our union with Christ, His life becomes our own. We are born again precisely because we have been united to the one who is life itself.

Supernatural union

The ability to live a God-pleasing life, indeed, to inherit eternal life, does not stem from our dedication to God or vows of our will; rather, it flows to us from the power of the divine life granted to us through our supernatural union with Christ. The very life of God through Christ via the Holy Spirit has taken up residence inside us. We are irrevocably wed to the divine nature, and human marriage is a powerful picture, or symbol, of this union.

In the end, our final hope of salvation is that we have been married to Christ. When we come to God for salvation, He makes us one with Christ—just as a man and a woman become one in marriage. This union with Christ is the very thing that provides eternal life.

Indeed, the eternal life that we have now begun to live is the eternal life that Christ lives. The sap of the vine is the sap of the branch. Through our union with Him, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3). He has become our head, and as His bride, His job is to present us “to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:27, NIV).

And He will do it. Marriage and sex are powerful illustrations of the union that exists between Christ and the Christian, and they were created specifically for that purpose.

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Adapted from Sex, Dating, and Relationships by Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas, © 2012, pp. 17-26

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Marriage Should Be Fun!

Fun and laughter can illuminate our world by reminding us life is not supposed to be so serious.

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By Tom Davis

One Valentine’s weekend after a long and weary day of travel and meetings, I was looking forward to a hot shower, the quiet of my hotel room, and a good book. As I entered my room, I saw the lights were on and the room was filled with red and pink balloons. Oh, my! Immediately, my face turned red and I quickly backed out thinking, I crashed someone’s party!

But then my wife called down the hall to bring me back. She had booked a flight to arrive after me in the same city and decorated my hotel room for Valentine’s. What a fun surprise!

Marriage should be a fun place to grow where we learn to laugh together—and how to laugh at ourselves. We need to recapture pure fun in our relationship.

Are you having fun in your marriage?

It sounds like a ridiculous question, doesn’t it? After all, most of us got married because we liked being together and doing fun things.

But after a few years of marriage, many of us don’t even think about fun. We are just trying to get through the day—keeping up with a household of kids, finding money to pay bills, figuring out how to be at two different ballgames at once … Who has time for fun in marriage, anyway?

Yes, life has its share of disappointments, debts, doubts, and trials. We all get sapped of energy. Yet like a shaft of sunlight, fun and laughter can illuminate our world by reminding us life is not supposed to be so serious. A Christian marriage ought to be found guilty of having too much wholesome fun rather than too little. Marriages that stop enjoying each other slowly slip into routine and boredom.

Playfulness refreshes our souls and lifts us out of the daily ruts. It drives away the drab, dull, and the mundane. It lightens our loads and knits our hearts together.

Add the fun back in.

Try something new together. My wife and I recently began square dancing lessons. Oh, what a hoot! To our delight, we met a great group of people who graciously encourage us through our mess-ups and enjoy helping the newbies. We look forward to this time of fun, and we are making great memories together.

Fun does not have to be elaborate or expensive. Just enjoy the moment together.

Here are some ideas:

• Watch high school or college musicals and plays in your area.
• Walk through a botanical garden when flowers are in bloom.
• Explore antique stores or visit a farmer’s market.
• Hike the trails at a state park, especially during the fall foliage.
• Stay at a bed and breakfast in your own hometown.
• Enjoy what your town offers seasonally. Each December, my wife and I visit a nearby hotel with a two-story Christmas tree. We sit and sip coffee in the lounge area.
• Visit a lodge, sit by the fire, and enjoy the view.
• Volunteer together.

A glimpse of heaven.

A friend once shared a childhood memory that gave me a better perspective on the value of enjoying life.

He told me about visiting his grandpa’s big Texas ranch house. Grandpa had a dog named Sadie who would find a cool spot under the house on summer nights. There, my friend would join Sadie and look up through the ranch house floorboards to catch the glimmer of house lights. He would lie there and listen to all the fun and laughter going on inside Grandpa’s house.

Now, when my friend looks up on a starry night, he remembers Grandpa’s big ranch house. He imagines he is looking up through the floorboards of heaven where there is fun and laughter going on.

Perhaps making time for fun and laughter in this life is just practice for what is going on in our heavenly Father’s house.

"Adapted from Family Life Today"

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