Marriage reflects . . .

Exodus 1; Job 18; Luke 4; 1 Corinthians 5

The Bible is filled with metaphors and symbols. One of them is particularly significant in these days because of increased divorce rates and a great deal of promiscuity . . .

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. (Ephesians 5:22–24)

 Because submission is wrongly interpreted (to mean doormat), many people miss what this is saying. It is not about him/boss and her/slave, not at all. Look again: marriage is God’s illustration of the relationship between Jesus Christ and His people. He asks for His Bride, the church, to follow the leading of Jesus. The man is to love his wife as Christ loves the church and the wife is to respect her husband and follow his lead. Sin in both sides creates a lot of problems, but rather than get into the issue of submission, I’m thinking of the other ways that marriage illustrates the relationship of God and His people.

The Lord is faithful to us and expects our faithfulness. In marriage, fidelity is expected. If I ran around on my hubby, my actions would illustrate those who worship and follow other gods instead of the true God.

For this reason, and because it causes so much pain to those involved, God condemns fornication and adultery. Even non-Christians know (by the pain) that such behavior is not the best way to live. Today’s reading in 1 Corinthians describes the will of God concerning those who pay no attention to the importance of being faithful:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. (1 Corinthians 5:1–2)

This church may have thought that tolerating such a person is the ‘loving thing’ to do, but that is not love as God loves. He cares about us to a far greater degree than tolerating our sin. He died for it. He purges it. He knows that sin leads to death. It separates us from Him and from each other. He tells the church at Corinth that sin in their midst is serious, even more serious than the same sin in those who are not believers. After all, the people who do not know Christ cannot be expected to behave in a godly way, but those who belong to Him are called and equipped to live a higher standard:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. (1 Corinthians 5:9–11)

The rest of the passage instructs the church to put unrepentant sinners out of their midst. They are like yeast and will permeate and affect everyone. Without fellowship and their support, that person will experience spiritual defeat and must fully repent or risks losing life itself.

Revelation 2:19ff records a letter to a church also guilty, this time because of a woman who was “teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.” The Lord “gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.” As a result, He “will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead.”

This is the seriousness of violating the will of God. If I or anyone else believes in Him but mocks Him by ignoring how I’m supposed to live, I stand on a slippery slope.

We live in a world that tolerates sin, not because it is ‘loving’ but because it opens the door for those who tolerate it to do the same things. Much of what God calls sin has become so commonplace that even Christians are no longer upset to see it all around us. At the same time, I need to remember that the Lord equips His people for victory over sin. He also wants us to tell the world about Him so that everyone can also be victorious. Without Jesus, and without obedience, I have no message about the wonderful plan of God.