by Standerinfamilycourt
I’m Living in an Ongoing State of Legalized Adultery with Somebody Else’s Spouse. Can I Get Away With It?
We have been responding to the 3-part blog series by David Servant called, “I’m Divorced and Remarried. Am I Living in Adultery?” This appears to be the final installment.
The first to plead his case seems right, until another comes and examines him. – Proverbs 18:17
It seems that Part 3 continues David Servant’s parade of slander and emotion, conflation of issues, convenient redefinition of terms, and paucity of consistent hermeneutic principles, while making a very shallow pretense at the latter for the sake of appearances. And then there’s the ad-hominem again, a telltale sign of a leaking and empty truth bucket. All reliable writings, books and blogs, going back to at least 1957 on this topic rigorously apply hermeneutical principles in a comprehensive and disciplined way that accounts for all five minimum elements: Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation. See our blog series, “Stop Abusing Scripture: Debunk Series” for a fuller discussion and application of these principles to the most commonly abused scriptures in the MDR Christian culture wars.
Heretical arguments invariably fail in at least two of these five principles, most commonly: some combination of Context, Comparison and Consultation. When these highly critical pieces of examination are omitted, it’s usually because the author either doesn’t know what he or she is doing, or because the author knows that doing so will immediately expose their theory as insupportable. We pointed out in our Part 2 rebuttal that David Servant even went so far as to deride the rigorous application of the Context principle, complaining about those who would take care to rightly-divide the verb tenses Jesus used in some of His more controversial teachings, and he went even further, to claim that it’s “unnecessary” to validate the translation of the Greek words in a given passage. Pardon us!
For those who have read Part 1 and Part 2 of our rebuttals to David Servant’s earlier installments, this response will seem pretty repetitive due to Servant’s redundant and circular claims. Points 1 through 5 raise no new substantive issues, and we will mostly be referring back to the earlier rebuttal points, while hoping to have the luxury of being a bit briefer in addressing these repackaged “points”. (How well satan knows that if a lie is repeated frequently enough, there are some who will begin to accept it as “true”.)
We defer Servant’s Points 6, 7 and 8 to our Part 3B rebuttal, to follow, because we cannot effectively address these in this same blog post without the length becoming more than most readers will be attentive to. These last three points we’ll deal with next time do raise some arguments that he did not raise in his Parts 1 and 2.
The Part 3 blog links to a Mennonite lady’s testimony, where Servant inaccurately charges that she was influenced by a slick “cult” to abandon her adulterous remarriage, while she clearly testifies that she was led by the Holy Spirit over a course of four years after her regeneration, and she came to conviction purely as a result of deeply studying a book that is ALIVE . Servant’s ploy, as usual, is emotionalism without examining the facts, including what came out of this lady’s own mouth. Oh the emotional punch of the melodrama of appealing to a vivid Hollywood kidnapping scene! Did Servant bother to contact and interview her before he publicly slandered her?
(Yes, this repenter’s Mennonite church probably was of some influence in her decision to exit the legalized adultery she was living in. Some churches actually do still succeed in discipling their members, believe it or not. However, such people don’t tend to make these radical repentance decisions impulsively, and they usually do not make them primarily under anyone else’s influence.) Repenting prodigals with watching family members study to show themselves approved, as we are all commanded to do, but apparently this is unlike Mr. Servant’s practices, judging from the shallowness and redundancy of the eight arguments he offers below, and the canned liberal bible commentary that he passes off as more “authoritative” than the straightforward words that actually crossed the lips of Jesus and of Paul on a repeated basis. The perennial serpent’s question has always been, “Did God REALLY say?”
Servant charges:
“Those people [SIFC: those of us who believe that God-joined covenant holy matrimony is always indissoluble except by death] are not your friends, as you will soon discover if you tell them you have changed your mind about Divine Divorce. They will ostracize you, as all cults do as a means of controlling their members. They will also tell you that you are going to hell. But God is for you. Your life, and perhaps even your marriage, can be restored to what He intended, because His mercy and grace are more than sufficient to restore all that Satan, through Divine Divorce Doctrine, has stolen from you. God is good, and His mercies are new every morning.”
SIFC: The usual understanding of what constitutes a “cult” necessarily hinges on who Jesus is to the “cult members” and how closely they adhere to His authority. If the authentic Jesus is your cult leader, then that’s a good thing, and Servant’s cheap slur becomes quite the compliment. Below, in contrast, we will see David Servant’s “Jesus” painted as some sort of Mosaic rubber-stamper who is so schizophrenic that He then turned right around and delivered the sermon on the mount.
God is “for us”, indeed, but not for our immoral relationships that will keep us out of the kingdom of God. Both “mercy” and “grace” are effectively the opposite if they are only based on temporal comforts, instead of eternal destinies.
Servant has an extremely poor conception of how a person comes to conviction and repentance from a life of coveting, stealing and committing adultery with the God-joined spouse of another living person. We “cultists” seem to be given tremendous credit that is solely owed to the indwelling Holy Spirit, and we simply cannot accept what’s not due us! We’re there to answer the hard questions, sure, and point them in the direction of the necessary scholarship, and to pray for them. We “control” nobody during any phase of the process. Most such repentance occurs long before such a person seeks to join our support community, in the majority of cases. The concept David Servant seems to be consistently tone-deaf on is that the real Jesus expects obedience to come from each disciple’s heart, not from any external factors. On the flip side, those who are unilaterally “divorced” by a prodigal spouse and choose to stand celibate until God removes the satan-dispatched rival (1 Cor. 7:11), do tend to join the support communities early in the process, and often (speaking of “control” and “ostracism”), because that no-brainer decision to obey to God’s clear, explicit instruction causes them to be treated like pariahs in their own church, by the threatened who are living immoral lives, and in too many tragic cases, doing so from behind the pulpit.
All that said, there’s no doubt the man Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 5 felt pretty “ostracized” and “controlled” when he was put out of the church, and turned over to satan in the hopes that his soul might be ultimately saved. What a controlling thing to say, that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”! Some “friend” Paul was! He was so “cultish” that he urged the whole church “not to even eat with such”. After all, what this man was doing was most likely legal under Greek civil law. Yet Paul knew that the “mercies that are new every morning” never extended to continuing, unrepented sin under the higher kingdom of God standards, or there would have been no need to turn the man over to satan through excommunication, as he did.
As for telling people they are going to hell, let’s please make that, “if they do not repent.” Thanks to the blood of Jesus, nobody goes to hell for the act of legalizing an immoral relationship. They go to hell for continuing in it until they die. That’s because a jealous God will allow no idols to compete with Him for worship. Found a mere nine verses below Luke 16:18 is this cry from the pit of hell as described by the mouth of Jesus:
“And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment. – Luke 16:27-28
If Jesus didn’t think it was a “stretch” to link His no-excuses prohibition against taking another spouse (while being inseverably joined in the state of sarx mia to an estranged covenant partner who has not died) to HIs own vivid description of what happens to all who live as if this world is all there is, why are supposedly God-fearing evangelicals surprised or offended to hear 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21 and Hebrews 13:4 linked to Luke 16:18 ? For that matter, why is Servant offended at this? Why are they not instead grateful for the existential warning? The carnal and spiritually-immature soul will claim that this, too, is “controlling” behavior. As we saw, Paul did not hesitate to warn of hell as a consequence of violating the holy matrimony covenant, but as we also saw, he did not preclude the possibility of physical repentance in the form of terminating the relationship, as the escape from hell. If one is going to be part of a “cult”, let our “cult” be the “Christ-followers” after our Cult Leader, and not the “Erasmeans” or the “Lutherites”, or the “Moseans” — all of whom carnally reject Christ’s moral absolutes . The original 1st century saints were all judged to be “cult members” for unanimously obeying Him in their own time, so it is a badge of honor to have that charge levelled at the covenant marriage indissolubility community by a self-proven church wolf.
A final reminder before we dive into a detailed examination of all eight of Servant’s objections to obeying the straightforward commandment of Christ: all civil divorce is man-contrived (Matthew 19:8), and cannot, therefore, be called “divine” in any sense of the word. God’s “divorce” is always spelled D-E-A-T-H. He does not dabble in man’s moral fictions, not even on a part-time basis. (If we must have a label in our support of those disciples who are forsaking immoral relationships, go ahead and call us “fundamentalists”, David.)
#1 of 8 Servant’s Arguments Against No-Excuses Indissolubitly of God-joined Holy Matrimony
“They confuse God’s original ideal—a world without divorce and remarriage—with reality, which is a world that is full of both.”
SIFC: Our sovereign God is not some feckless wimp who has only “ideals”, “designs”, “bests”, “intentions” and so forth. This milquetoast platitude has always been a figment of a liberal bible commentator’s imagination. He is the Creator, Ruler and Judge of all the Universe, and He deals in COMMANDMENTS. He requires holiness, without which He says none of us will see Him. His accommodation to the frailty of mankind was Jesus. He need make no further accommodation or allowances for those who find their excuses not to obey Jesus, including all those like David Servant, who stare wistfully back at Moses, and long for the glory days of concurrent and serial polygamy for the far more reasonable price of a daily ritual animal sacrifice. To them, sacrifice is better than obedience, but unfortunately for them, that’s an option which is no longer the Divine Offer.
Refraining from murdering, raping, stealing, bearing false witness and coveting thy neighbor’s wife can all be said to be “ideals”, too. But they’re also COMMANDMENTS. Just because these things are a “reality” doesn’t make it right for immoral governments to sanction them, and even worse, for God’s shepherds to appease and defend those immoral laws. We surely don’t say, with regard to legal abortion or gay marriage or assisted suicide, that the church is confusing “God’s original ideal“, a world without abortion and gay marriage, with “reality, which is a world full of both“. No, we take a holy stand based on the higher authority of God word!
God has repeatedly, in fact, shown that He is deadly-jealous of His sacred symbols, and arguably, the state of holy matrimony is the very first such symbol, one that weaves through virtually every book of the bible. If men died instantly just for touching the Ark of the Covenant, how much more is His wrath over nations and societies who have so little fear of Him that they misrepresent the Bridegroom as a serial polygamist, and who substitute illicit legalized relationships for fellowship with Him? Is it any wonder, then that our western nations where church leadership are complicit with sequential polygamy are all overrun with the Assyria of rabid homofascism, and Persia of militant Islamism?
Servant:
“To them, there have been no actual divorces, only fantasy divorces. And since there have been no actual divorces, neither have there been any actual remarriages either, but only fantasy remarriages. To a large degree, wedding ceremonies, vows, marriage certificates, witnesses, court records, name changes, and long-standing human relationships and interaction don’t exist in this alternate reality. Millions of people are not actually married to people whom they think they are married to, people whom they live with and interact with every day as a husband or wife, often for decades and until death. Conversely, millions of people are actually married to people whom they think they are not married to, people whom they sometimes haven’t seen for decades and who live hundreds of miles away. On top of this, millions of people have children whom they think are legitimate, but who are actually illegitimate children, the offspring of adultery.”
SIFC: To true citizens of the kingdom of God, the actual “alternate reality” is the one painted by the 16th century Reformers on a wave of “Christianized” humanism. Humanism and discipleship have never been compatible with one another, because to take up one’s cross and follow Him is the very antithesis of the self-worship on which humanism is founded. These “Reformers” were just hypocritical enough to also look wistfully back at Moses, the more lenient “sheriff” when it came to sexual license, while illegitimately claiming the “grace” of the New Covenant, as if they could have it both ways. It was Luther who, frustrated with the lack of access to sanctioned divorce through the church, took what belonged exclusively to God and handed it over to Caesar. The same character flaw in Luther also manifested itself in his penchant for anti-Semitism and Replacement Theology. Luther’s “Jesus” replaces His bride if she doesn’t toe the mark! (He’d rather have stoned her, but “defective” governments tend to frown on this.)
Among the choicer of Luther’s recorded remarks:
“You may ask: What is to become of the other [the guilty party] if he too is perhaps unable to lead a chaste life? Answer: It was for this reason that God commanded in the law [Deut. 22:22–24] that adulterers be stoned, that they might not have to face this question. The temporal sword and government should therefore still put adulterers to death, for whoever commits adultery has in fact himself already departed and is considered as one dead. Therefore, the other [the innocent party] may remarry just as though his spouse had died, if it is his intention to insist on his rights and not show mercy to the guilty party. Where the government is negligent and lax, however, and fails to inflict the death penalty, the adulterer may betake himself to a far country and there remarry if he is unable to remain continent. But it would be better to put him to death, lest a bad example be set. Some may find fault with this solution and contend that thereby license and opportunity is afforded all wicked husbands and wives to desert their spouses and remarry in a foreign country. Answer: Can I help it? The blame rests with the government. Why do they not put adulterers to death? Then I would not need to give such advice. Between two evils one is always the lesser, in this case allowing the adulterer to remarry in a distant land in order to avoid fornication. And I think he would be safer also in the sight of God, because he has been allowed to live and yet is unable to remain continent. If others also, however, following this example desert their spouses, let them go. They have no excuse such as the adulterer has, for they are neither driven nor compelled. God and their own conscience will catch up to them in due time. Who can prevent all wickedness?” Luther, Martin: Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan (Hrsg.) ; Oswald, Hilton C. (Hrsg.) ; Lehmann, Helmut T. (Hrsg.): Luther’s Works, Vol. 45 : The Christian in Society II. Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 1999, c1962 (Luther’s Works 45), S. 45:III33
The kingdom of God has always been an “alternative reality” to those preferring to dwell outside of that Kingdom. They choose to dwell outside because a kingdom is a place where the King is OBEYED.
THY kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
– Matthew 6:10
Servant parrots the humanism of Luther, not the holiness of Jesus. The two are not even remotely compatible. Humanism argues that all humans are entitled to a sexual relationship at all times because this is the only way (externally) to manage the flesh. Following Christ demands that the flesh be crucified from within and that obedience come from an idol-free heart, and if obedience incurs suffering and character development, we are in the midst of a great cloud of witnesses. (For a fairly comprehensive collection the profoundly unscriptural quotes of the “Reformers” on divorce and remarriage, see pages 21-25 of the scholarly paper by Daniel R. Jennings, “The History Of Christian Thought Upon Marriage, Divorce & Remarriage”.)
Anyone who purports to fear God should take Matthew 19:6 and 8 as explicitly denying men any authority whatsoever to create, regulate or “dissolve” an unconditional covenant in which He tells us He remains a participant, in fact, one of the parties thereto. It is appalling, really, that Servant does not grasp this. (More about God’s unconditional covenants is below, when Servant gets to that point in his arguments. ) For now, let’s just note that in verse 6, when Jesus said “let no man separate“, the Greek texts reveal that He did not use the words “andra” nor “aner” here, as He could have if He were merely counseling a man, or the husband of what he “shouldn’t” do. He instead used the word anthrópos, in effect saying, “let no HUMAN put distance between [ chōrizetō] ” what God has supernaturally joined. (Let no human, including Moses who was, after all, a human, have any jurisdiction over what I claim as belonging to ME exclusively.)
Servant:
That smiling Christian couple driving with their four children on their way to “that other church”…they aren’t what they seem to be. They think they are going to heaven because they believe in Jesus and live their faith every day, but actually they are going to hell because they haven’t divorced each other.
SIFC: That smiling Christian couple does not “believe in Jesus“, no matter how full is their evangelical mini-van, unless they practice studying His word, which couldn’t be more plain, even with the pervasive bible translation fraud that has been taking place over the past several decades, that their household is unlawfully-founded. They will see quite clearly that man’s law cannot override God’s law, as these “smiling Christian families” are all very quick to see is the case with homosexuals. Even the most perverse and heathen CNN reporter saw this from just one night of reading the Gideon bible in the Kentucky hotel drawer when serial polygamist Kim Davis went to jail.
Sad to say, it’s been consistently shown through reputable polling surveys that said couple rarely reads their bible for themselves, much less studies it deeply, nor toils to resolve any apparent conflicts which inevitably result from contemporary translation-tampering. Instead, they rely on the “priestly class” to feed them (and preferably, to feed their flesh), as though they were themselves illiterate. Servant glibly terms it as “going to hell because they haven’t ‘divorced‘ ” If they read their bibles, they would plainly see that only death dissolves holy matrimony, and therefore, they are headed to hell with someone else’s spouse unless they cease and desist from breaking the 1st, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th commandments on a daily basis. Servant derides the biblical form of repentance from this (or any other sin) in his sarcasm, and treats them as though God’s messengers are their “judges”.
Servant:
May I first submit that something is indissoluble if it cannot be “dissolved, loosened, or disconnected.” The phrase “one flesh” carries no connotation of indissolubility. In fact, just the opposite is true. Husbands and wives are only “one flesh” during sexual intercourse. Only for a small part of their married lives are they “one flesh.”
SIFC: Servant is here conflating physical separation. that is, immoral abandonment (the chōrizetō that Jesus forbid by any human authority, the rebellion of which is certainly possible, as Servant points out) — with dissolution of an unconditional covenant to which God Himself is and remains a party. This man cannot do, for as long as God is God. The priest in Malachi 2 made the same false assumption that Servant makes here — and he found himself cut off from fellowship with God as a direct consequence of it. In rebuking this priest who had “divorced” the woman God joined him to, declaring that covenant “dissolved” to “marry” another — without that God-joining (synezeuxen), God tells him : “she IS (not “was”) the wife of your marriage covenant.” Man says it’s legal, but God calls it an abomination that separates such people from Him until such time as there is repentance and restitution. Servant also confuses “sarx mia” with “hen soma” with his claim that that one-flesh relationship is only present during sexual intercourse. We dealt in detail with this fallacy in Part 1, and we do so again immediately below.
Servant:
God’s statement regarding husbands and wives becoming one flesh speaks of divinely-intended exclusivity of sex within marriage, not the indissolubility of marriage itself. Paul wrote that the man who joins himself to a prostitute, something forbidden by God, becomes “one flesh” with her (1 Cor. 6:16). Obviously, there is nothing indissoluble about the relationship of a man and a prostitute. In fact, all such relationships should be dissolved immediately.
SIFC: We have above established the untruth of this first sentence statement of Servant’s. As in Part 1, we have shown conclusively that the supernaturally-created sarx mia one-flesh state differs from the hen soma (one body) man-joined counterfeit described by Paul in 1 Cor. 6:16, which he also contrasts with sarx mia at the end of that verse, before Paul goes on to speak only of sarx mia in Ephesians 5:31. Where there is no synezeuxen, there can be no sarx mia. By process of elimination, where there is no sarx mia, the joining is merely hen soma. There certainly is nothing indissoluble about hen soma, the relationship of a man with a prostitute, or for that matter, with anyone other than the God-joined living spouse of his youth. As Servant himself correctly states, “In fact, all such relationships should be dissolved immediately.” We couldn’t agree more, and this has been our point all along. People are often surprised to find out that both Jesus and Paul used an entirely different vocabulary set for indissoluble holy matrimony, and another set of term for all other forms of illicit sexual union. With regard to joining, the main difference again is verb tense — but it is a vey important difference because it describes duration, continuity, durability and the like.
For Servant to neglect making this distinction, and thus to use unlike terms interchangeably, is either ill-informed or willful. We won’t presume to judge which, but will say here that Servant violates the hermeneutical principle of Content on its most basic level.
Properly understood, the above makes hen soma a sub-element of sarx mia, but the converse is never true. The latter exists as soon as valid, eligible vows are exchanged in front of witnesses, and synezeuxen occurs exclusively by God’s hand. In the case of holy matrimony, hen soma occurs , depending on whether or not there was fornication between the (biblically-eligible) pair ahead of the wedding, but at the latest, it becomes an element of the created sarx mia on the wedding night. Some recent science paints a graphic, practical picture of what hen soma (one body) looks like in isolation. Research has found that the DNA from a man’s sperm stays in a woman’s body indefinitely, even if it was a one-night stand or a rape. The spiritual DNA that God puts there in a separate process also remains with the woman and the man until one of them physically dies.
Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. – 1 Cor. 6:18
Servant:
And just because Jesus said, “What God has joined together, let no man separate,” that does not prove that separation is impossible. Rather, it proves that separation is possible, otherwise there would be no need for a warning against it.
God also said, “Do not commit adultery.” That certainly does not prove that adultery is impossible. Rather, the prohibition against adultery proves it is possible, albeit inappropriate.
SIFC: This is a purely semantic (and entirely irrelevant) point. Jesus was not just stating a metaphysical fact, nor an assumedly unattainable “ideal”, He was issuing a COMMANDMENT, by which all men will be eternally judged.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter…Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
Hence, making a flippant statement like “adultery is proven possible [by Jesus forbidding the civil legalization of it] , abeit ‘inappropriate’ ” comes off before the throne of heaven, and the intellect of the reader, as disrespectful of God’s word, and incredibly off-topic.
Servant:
“Divorced people are not married people, and this could not be more clear from God’s words in Deut. 24:1-4. There it speaks of a married woman whose husband divorced her, giving her a certificate of divorce. She was then unmarried. But she remarried, gaining a new husband, to whom she was a wife. But he subsequently divorced her. She was again unmarried. She was forbidden by law to remarry her first husband. But as a divorced, unmarried woman, she was free to remarry anyone else.
“Obviously, Jesus, the author of the Law of Moses, did not believe that divorced people are still married in God’s eyes to their former spouses.”
SIFC: Could we please allow Jesus to speak for Himself concerning what He thinks (since He actually did- repeatedly)?
[ Civilly] “Divorced” people are not “married” people, according to Servant, on account of an obscure Mosaic regulation which narrowly dealt with non-capital reasons to break a Hebrew betrothal contract (consanguinity, bleeding disease, leprosy, captive war concubine, etc.). What Servant claims here is “true” only if one is wistfully looking back to Moses out of utter contempt for the new “sheriff”, Jesus. We really like what Brother Elliot Nesch had to say about this in the weekly stander’s conference call recording as he applied Romans 7:4 to this nutty heresy of neo-Judaism or Hebrew Roots or Torah Observance (take your pick):
Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
Brother Nesch quipped: “this widowed bride is diminishing her new Husband while slaving to please a dead husband”.
We also like what Brother Paul had to say about it: Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the WHOLE Law. – Galatians 5:2-3
Those who want to go back to the lawless pretense that man can dissolve God-joined holy matrimony, under Moses’ system of sin-management, and to forbid inseverable one-flesh partners to reconcile even though willful, ongoing unforgiveness also robs people of their inheritance in the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:23-35), might need to consider offering up a ram on the altar every day (as if that remained possible), or at the very least, stoning their disobedient children to death.
Since nobody in the body of Christ can ever again be impacted by a human ketubah, there is no part of Deuteronomy 24 that has any relevance or application today in the body of Christ. There is some understandable confusion about this due to the post-Moses, pre-Jesus expansion by rabbinical tradition to cover capital offenses, against which the instructions given in Deuteronomy 22 could no longer be carried out due to foreign occupiers, including Persia and Rome, both imposing a legal ban on stoning. We’ll get into that a bit deeper below.
We dealt at length in Part 1 with the false assertions of serial and concurrent polygamy apologists which are based on elevating Torah Observance over the New Covenant. Here we will ask Mr. Servant for New Testament evidence that God ever delegated to humans any authority to create, regulate or “dissolve” holy matrimony. After all, we have presented the direct evidence from the mouth of Jesus that He did not….”from the beginning.” All Servant can cite is Mosaic regulation that Christ explicitly abrogated at the start of His public ministry… “you have heard it said / it is written……BUT I SAY UNTO YOU….”
Nowhere does scripture tell us that Jesus was the “author of the law of Moses”, nor does it tell us that Jesus had no authority to abrogate the law of Moses with a higher law as He saw fit, and as in fact, the sermon on the mount shows several instances where the Mosaic standard was not good enough for the standards of the kingdom of God, where He did just that.
#2 of 8 – Servant’s Attack On The Plain Meaning of Romans 7:2-3 and 1 Corinthians 7:39
(Pseudo-hermeneutics profusely in evidence here.)
So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress’ (Rom. 7:2-3).
Servant:
(Sarcastically) So clearly, only death can end the marriage relationship, and anyone who marries another person while his former spouse is still alive is living in an adulterous relationship, just as Paul taught.”
Answer: Only if we ignore content and context could we come to such a conclusion.
First, the content: Note that the example Paul uses is that of a “married woman” (Greek: hupandros gune) not a divorced woman. Of course, if a married woman is “joined to another man,” she would be an adulteress.
SIFC: First of all, we would vigorously argue with the characterization, “former” spouse who is still alive. There’s no such thing as an “ex” in the kingdom of God, unless it’s an ex-adultery partner (legalized or otherwise). The correct statement is “…anyone who marries another person while his (or her) estranged covenant spouse is still alive is living in an adulterous relationship.”
Secondly, there’s a semantic #fail on Servant’s “content” claim. Yes, we are speaking of a “married” woman – she’s married for life, and in God’s eyes, it is only to the one He joined her to, not the counterfeit replacement on a piece of overreaching paper. The only sense in which she is therefore “divorced” is the man-fabricated civil sense. Untwisting Servant’s contorted logic here, as a consequence of getting back to the correct, biblical definition of terms, the “adulteress” argument is not because she’s joined to some random man, but because she has joined in pseudo-marriage / civil-only union to somebody who is only her “spouse” on paper, since the one-flesh entity is still intact with her true husband, because God declines to participate in #2.
Servant:
A divorced woman, however, is not a married woman, but an unmarried woman. Paul, a former Pharisee who was well-versed in the Law of Moses and who appealed to the Law in this very passage in order to make his point (7:1), knew that a divorced woman was not “married to her former husband in God’s eyes” under the Law of Moses. In fact, Paul knew that the Mosaic Law forbade her to remarry her former husband if her second husband divorced her or died (Deut. 24:1-4). So there is absolutely no way he could have thought God viewed the divorced and remarried woman as still married to her original husband.
SIFC: Term-twisting again. A civilly-divorced woman is still a married woman in God’s eyes so long as the husband of her youth remains alive. While it may be very true that Paul was aware of the Mosaic view of this, scripture tells us that he hung out with Jesus for three years in the Arabian wilderness following his conversion (Galatians 1:16-17). He knew that the Mosaic era was now passe and the higher standards of the Messianic age were now in full effect. He for sure knew that the kingdom of God is a place where the King is OBEYED. He was not about to be staring wistfully back at Moses, as if he were in rebellion against Christ. Servant’s theory, which is (shamelessly) based on elevating Moses over Jesus, simply doesn’t hang together. Jesus said what He said, and He straightforwardly meant what He said. Paul always aligned with Jesus and not with Moses.
(Now let’s see if Servant myopically misses the part of the scripture below that severs us from the law of Moses in Rom. 7:4….note: the bold font below is his emphasis.)
Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter (Rom. 7:1-5).
Servant:
“Obviously, Paul was not teaching about the sole lawful means of dissolving a marriage. That was not his topic. Rather, he was simply using an illustration from marriage to teach how Jewish believers in Christ are no longer bound to the Law of Moses since they have died in Christ.
To claim that Paul’s words in Romans 7:1-5 are teaching about the sole means of dissolving a marriage would be like claiming that his quotation of the old covenant law, “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing” in 1 Cor. 9:9 and 1 Tim. 5:18 was written to teach the Corinthians and Timothy about animal husbandry.
SIFC: Mr. Servant is here trying to have it both ways. Yes, Paul was using the marriage / widowhood analogy to demonstrate to us that Jews and Gentiles alike are not bound to the Law of Moses. But he’d have us believe that the analogy Paul used was not a valid one, if he’s then going to claim that death isn’t in fact the only way that an unconditional covenant in which God Himself is one of the participants can be dissolved. The whole point of both contexts is that death is the only way the Mosaic Covenant dissolved, and death is the only way the covenant of holy matrimony dissolves — due to God’s direct participation in both. Speaking of “animal husbandry” and scripture context, Matthew 5:32 is clearly about an INNOCENT woman not being turned into an adulteress by the heinous action of her husband, not about allowing a man to divorce his wife for adultery. See Part 3B for further clarity on this.
Servant:
“A similar passage that is twisted by Divine Divorce proponents to prove that marriage can only be dissolved by death is 1 Cor. 7:39: “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” Honest interpreters, however, will admit that one sentence is not the sum total of all that Paul, or the Bible, teaches in regard to the subject of marriage or its dissolution.”
Clearly, Paul was not saying that only death dissolves a marriage, as seconds earlier he made it clear that a believer married to an unbeliever who wants to divorce is “not under bondage” in such cases and should let the unbeliever leave (1 Cor. 7:15). It would seem odd to claim that, in such cases, the deserted believer is still married to the deserter until death.
SIFC: Honest interpretation, on the contrary, would point out that Paul’s instruction and testimony on the immorality and invalidity of remarriage while the spouse of our youth is alive is consistent throughout the Apostle’s writings, and more importantly, consistent with Christ’s view, while departing from Moses’ view, throughout. Servant is fabricating confusion out of his own cognitive dissonance. His argument is the classic redefinition of terms engaged in by liberal commentators for decades. His pseudo-hermeneutics come into play here as he misuses the term “under bondage” found in verse 15. We covered that at length in Part 1, and separately in our 2015 “Stop Abusing Scripture” series. What Servant humanistically paints as “odd” is precisely what Jesus was directly speaking of in Matthew 19:12, that is, becoming a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God — one (but far from the only one) of those places in life where His disciples are called to take up their cross and follow Him instead of their flesh. As Paul goes on to state in verses 11 and 16, we are to leave open the possibility of return and reconciliation with our one-flesh who is at this point not only prodigal to us, but prodigal to God Himself, and who therefore remains in danger of hell if he does not make a U-turn in the road. The very worst thing a true spouse can possibly do is join the prodigal in their own leaky boat by replicating his or her adulterous sin in their own life. Carnal Christian society will “buy” the cheap, legalized veneer these days, but Jehovah Berith never will.
Servant:
Moreover, Paul also allowed for those “released from a wife” to remarry (1 Cor. 7:27-28), which indicates again that Paul believed divorce dissolves marriage. On top of that, as I have already said, Jesus’ statement that “Whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery” (Mat. 5:32) indicates that whoever divorces his wife for immorality and remarries does not commit adultery. Clearly, Jesus believed that legitimate divorce annuls a marriage, thus again proving that death alone is not the only thing that can annul a marriage.
At most, 1 Cor. 7:39 is a simple instruction for married women to remain faithful to their vows and to help widows understand that they are free to remarry.
SIFC: It should be abundantly clear by now that Paul “believed” no such thing! In the Corinthian church, which did include some converted Jews, there were two ways a man could be “released from a wife“, neither of which encompassed those who immorally abandoned their one-flesh living wife under pretext of a legal system that violated God’s law. An unmarried man could possibly be released from a ketubah betrothal contract, which was an agreement where under Jewish law and tradition, the betrothed woman had all of the legal standing of a consummated wife, and was referred to as such.
The other sort man of man “released from a wife” in the Corinthian church was a widower. It is inconsistent with the vast body of conflicting scripture for Servant to make the outrageous claim that a one-flesh, legally estranged husband is “released from” a still-living wife. Furthermore, Servant’s denial of the plain, straightforward meaning of verse 39 has no reasonable basis, for the same reason that his denial of the plain meaning of Romans 7:2-3 has no supportable basis: circular reasoning. This is discussed in greater detail in our “Stop Abusing Scripture” series, this particular installment dealing with the evangelical rape of 1 Corinthians 7, and another installment with the rape of Matthew 19:9 and 5:32 to attempt to “justify” what Christ unambiguously and repeatedly forbid. We all individually choose to obey Him or we find excuses not to, but in Servant’s case, he is deceiving others into holding onto those excuses (while forfeiting their inheritance in the kingdom of God), in a manner that shows unusual contempt for the authority of Christ and His word.
#3 of 8 – Servant’s Off-Base Denial That Legalized Sequential Polygamy Is Equivalently Immoral to Legalized Sodomy As “Marriage”
Servant:
If a married homosexual couple became believers in Jesus, we would tell them to “divorce,” even if they shared adopted or surrogate children, because theirs is a sexually immoral relationship. So likewise, we should tell couples in adulterous marriages that they, too, should divorce, even if they have children, as theirs is a sexually immoral relationship.
Answer: This is an invalid comparison, because all homosexuality is always wrong whereas, indisputably, not all marriage is wrong.
SIFC: What makes this a directly valid comparison is the absence of unconditional covenant (along with the corresponding absence God’s participation in it), the complete absence of God’s act of creating synezeuxen, supernatural God-yoking between them, hence no sarx mia. This participation of God in either type of union is, by definition and by His holy character, impossible. The one type of illicit union left their one-flesh partner instead of their father and mother, and the other type is male and male, or female and female, not male and female. Neither type qualifies under God’s unchanging definition of holy matrimony, even if an apostate “pastor” participates. Such a “shepherd” is misusing the holy name of the Lord to perform a vain act — breaking the 3rd and 9th commandments himself. Both types of unions are explicitly listed twice by Paul, who pointedly says, “do not be deceived”, as costing the unrepentant participants in these unions their inheritance in the kingdom of God. (Note also the slick substitution of terms by Servant: referring to “marriage” instead of non-widowed “remarriage” as if the two were morally equivalent.)
Servant:
Jesus did not say that he who divorces and remarries “lives in an adulterous marriage,” or “lives in a continual state of adultery,” or “commits adultery every time he/she has sex,” or “is still married to his/her former spouse in God’s eyes,” and it is obvious, as I explained in my previous two articles, that Jesus did not intend for His words to be so interpreted. Moreover, none of the New Testament authors interpreted His words in any of those ways.
SIFC: Servant will continue to preposterously claim that Jesus didn’t straightforwardly say what He indeed said:
“…and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”
“…and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
“…and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.”
” And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.”
(Scriptures are: Matthew 5:32b; Matthew 19:9b; Luke 16:18b and Mark 10:11-12)
Servant first rejects the notion that Greek verb tenses are crucial to rightly dividing what Jesus was saying, i.e. that this is an ongoing state of sin, and not a one-time act as he would prefer. When that utterly fails, as we shall see below, he hypothesizes based on one “conservative scholar’s” pure speculation about what it would mean “if” Jesus used a different verb tense, despite the fact that none of the scholars provide any evidence that He actually used that alternative verb tense, and they unanimously provide abundant evidence that He very consistently used the present-indicative verb tense. This way Servant appears to be conversant in hermeneutics, pretentiously so, but is deliberately blathering to distract from the inconvenient truth, while parroting someone who is admittedly not a linguistic scholar, and appears to be more liberal than “conservative” — but, all things are relative to their reference point, in this case, Christ. It is very common to prefer to compare men with men, instead of with Christ.
Here’s what we authoritatively cited (as do all credible scholars) in the Part 2 rebuttal:
Without exception, every time Jesus says that “marrying” another person while our God-joined one-flesh partner lives is entering into a state of ongoing adultery, He used the present-indicative verb tense / mood, According to the source ntgreek.org,
“The present tense usually denotes continuous kind of action. It shows ‘action in progress’ or ‘a state of persistence.’ When used in the indicative mood, the present tense denotes action taking place or going on in the present time. “
The very fact that Servant is forced into this discussion of Greek verb tense should alone prove that none of the rest of his theory claiming holy matrimony is dissoluble by acts of men is supportable, when both Jesus and Paul plainly and repeatedly stated that it was not, as did Mark, Peter’s scribe.
Servant:
Just from a purely legal aspect, to claim that a marriage covenant is still binding after an act of adultery is like claiming that any other mutual promise is still in force after one party fails to keep their part of the contract.
And if I enter a mutual covenant with a member of the opposite sex that includes, among other things, exclusive sexual relations for life, and I later have sex with someone other than my spouse, I have no right to expect my spouse to honor her side of the covenant. She did not say in her vows, “For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, in sexual faithfulness and adultery…”
SIFC: Servant confuses contract with unconditional covenant here, while he himself describes a conditional covenant, which holy matrimony clearly is not. It’s a good thing for Servant that Jehovah Berith does not confuse these! The Bridegroom in his salvation covenant with us holds Himself to it for as long as we live. Only when we fail to show up at the Marriage Supper, because we preferred the world system (including its evangelical chapter), does the covenant break, and only because we physically died in our own rebellion. By getting all legal about it, David Servant is showing himself to be a legalist, rather than appreciating the glory and unimpeachable character of the Bridegroom.
As for appealing to the wedding vows, we all know that the groom vows unconditionally and the bride vows unconditionally, so long as they both shall live, not “I’ll do X only if you do Y, and if you don’t do Y the deal is ‘effectively’ dissolved“. What part of “for better or worse” does sexual infidelity not fit into, since Mr. Servant brought the matter up?
Servant:
Divine Divorce proponents sometimes appeal to Greek verb tenses to make the claim that Jesus’ words, “commits adultery” indicate He was referring to continual acts of adultery every time the remarried couple has sex. Again, above and in my previous articles, I showed why such a view cannot possibly be correct…..J. Carl Laney…’it is also possible that the present tense, “commits adultery,” may be used in an aoristic sense expressing the idea of a present fact without reference to progress. The aoristic present sets forth an event as now occurring. So interpreted, the adultery would involve one punctiliar action at the time of remarriage.’
SIFC: This was dealt with in Part 2 and above, where Servant obstinately denies that Jesus said what he said (also denies that Jesus meant what He said). Bottom line: Laney’s assertion is mere speculation and in any event, he has provided no credible evidence that Jesus was using the aorist tense for the word “commits” to counter the unanimous evidence of other scholars that He was using the present-indicative tense, according to all the reliable Greek interlinear text tools, including scripture4all.org and biblehub.com. There is zero evidence that this is a “punctiliar action” and a mountain of evidence, not the least of which is context and scriptural consistency, that it is an ongoing state of sin. Once again, the very fact that Servant finds himself in the unenviable position of trying to find a defense for the obvious wrongness of adulterous nuptials –as he is intrinsically admitting–using Greek verb tense hypotheticals (to establish a suggestion that this admitted sin – presumably including theft, coveting and false witness – “only” occurs on the wedding night) indicates there is a YUGE problem with his theory – pun fully intended.
Servant:
“What grace means is that a divorced and remarried couple need not break up. Although entering their marriage wrongfully, they should remain in that marital state in which they find themselves (1 Cor 7:17-24).
SIFC: No, sir, that’s hypergrace. What grace means is that, so long as the legalized adulterers draw breath, they have an opportunity to sever their unlawful union, make restitution to their real spouse(s) and famil(ies), and receive cleansing forgiveness. If they truly are regenerated, and not a false convert who came to Jesus on conditional terms or false representation of what saving faith entails, grace is the Holy Spirit who indwells them and leads them to purity by inward conviction. As stated earlier, everybody to entered into holy matrimony with the spouse of their youth is “called” as married-for-life to that person, even if they are simultaneously in a legalized illicit relationship, whether heterosexual or homosexual, childless or otherwise. Only the biblically-lawful estranged relationship survives regeneration. We previously pointed out Servant’s invalid-context usage of this (1 Cor 7:17-24).scripture he abuses to claim otherwise.
#4 of 8 – David Servant’s Rejection Of Our Intellectual Rebuke: Arguing From Silence
Servant:
You point out that there are no instructions—by either Jesus or the apostles who authored the New Testament epistles—for those who have been divorced and remarried to divorce again, nor are there any examples of anyone doing such a thing. But that is an argument from silence. Conversely, neither are there any instructions—by either Jesus or the apostles who authored the New Testament epistles—for those who have been divorced and remarried to remain married. So the opposite of your view can also be made from an argument of silence.
“The burden of proof lies with Divine Divorce proponents, as it is quite reasonable to think that, if God requires all divorced and remarried people to divorce again as a requirement to “escape an adulterous marriage” and thus “escape hell” (as Divine Divorce proponents claim), there would be lots of information about that in the New Testament, as it would be a matter of great concern to both God and humanity….And if God does not require divorced and remarried people to divorce again as a requirement for salvation”
SIFC: The plain fact is that the justification purchased for us with the price of His blood is a betrothal of sorts. We were not good enough for this Bridegroom, yet He bound Himself to us in a ketubah contract. He paid our bride-price for us with His blood. We promised to show up at the future Marriage Supper, wearing our wedding garments, and having our lamps filled with oil (our ongoing sanctification) so that our salvation can be consummated there. We promised to keep ourselves pure of other gods, which will invariably lead us to walk in the opposite direction of that holy venue. That ketubah He left in our hands is unconditionally binding on our Bridegroom, but we remain free to break it by choosing those other gods over Him, by not showing up at the heavenly banquet hall because we preferred the comforts of our temporal abode, because this life appeared more attractive to us than what we were promised in eternal life.
It doesn’t matter one bit what the “majority of Christianity” believes…it only matters what GOD SAYS. People who have stood celibate for their God-joined covenant spouse and authentic holy matrimony union will not be faced with any divine “burden of proof” on this topic whatsoever. Neither will anyone who stood on conviction and God’s word to terminate a covetous and immoral relationship with the spouse of another living person, while praying for that person to reconcile and forgive their own one-flesh, have to bear any “burden of proof.” They are the obedient ones who said “Lord, Lord” and did what He said.
Instead, it will be the ones standing before the Great White Throne who are being asked, “Why do you call me, Lord, Lord… but refused to do what I commanded?” who will bear the burden of proof. Perhaps they will try to hide behind their pastoral wolf who said it was OK. They will then be asked whether they could read, and how many bibles and computers were in their illicit homes. The “burden of proof” is going to be on the false shepherds, as well. who misused the name of the Lord to perform the vain act of “joining” the already-joined to an adulterous partner, and then who hindered them from repenting by twisting His word to avoid the mass scandal that such a wave of repentance represents to their “ministry”.
In Part 1, we said this about the “argument from silence” (…that legalized adulterers are not “told” to leave their ongoing state of sin), after we listed and linked several dozen OT and NT scriptures, in contrast to the four that Servant claims we “exclusively” rely on, which support the no-excuses, no-exceptions indissolubility of covenant holy matrimony:
“The second reason the exhaustive list of related scriptures is important is to dispute the typical false claims of ‘scripture silence’ such as David Servant (and many others) have alleged….David Servant makes much of claiming that neither Jesus, nor any of the Apostles ever told anyone to divorce a “second” time who was living in sin with someone else’s God-joined spouse. This is not entirely true. John the Baptist called out Herod and Herodias, both of whom had divorced their God-joined spouses to “marry” each other, saying to Herod, “it is not lawful for you to have your brother Phillip’s wife.” (Mark 6; Matthew 14)….Then there’s the episode of church discipline being applied in 1 Corinthians 5 at Paul’s command to the man who had taken his father wife (probably his stepmother, following either the divorce or death of the father). The scripture does not state that he “married” her, but there are three immoral possibilities: (1) the father was dead and they were cohabiting in fornication, or (2) the father had civilly divorced her and the son had civilly married her, or (3) the father had separated or divorced her, and they were cohabiting in adultery. Since the man was still in the church body whom Paul had to rebuke, (1) and (3) seem less likely than (2). What we do know is that Paul felt strongly enough that the son’s soul was on the line unless the church excommunicated him (“turned him over to satan that his soul may be saved”).
Please read the full section in Part 1 for further details.
We also dealt much earlier with other enemies of covenant restoration per Luke 16:18 and 1 Cor. 7:11 who claim “scripture silence”, in our blog What About That Samaritan Woman?.
Some courses of action connected with repentance are contextual, and the window of context matters greatly in that regard. With regard to repentance from remarriage adultery, the window of context is really the entire bible. There was no explicit command to the tax-collector Zaccheus to return four-fold what he had extorted from the citizenry in his covetousness, which he carried out lawfully (according to some historical accounts of the Roman law and practice), but he did as the Holy Spirit led him to do, and Jesus responded to this “salvation-by-works”: “Today salvation has come to this house.” The bible makes clear that repentance entails far more than “confession” while remaining in a state of sin. It is heart-change that results in abhorrence, repudiation and cessation of the sin. There seems to be more than plenty to fill the claimed “silence” to “he who has ears to hear“.
#5 of 8 – Servant’s Denial of the Unanimity and Relevance of Early Church Father’s Teaching Which Was in Agreement with Christ and the Apostles
Argument None of the church fathers who wrote after the apostolic age agree with [ David Servant, and others who deny that holy matrimony is indissoluble until death.]
Answer: It is certainly true that the church fathers wrote at times about the subject of divorce and remarriage, and they of course quoted Jesus’ words about illegitimate divorce and remarriage being adultery. I have never claimed that they did not. Some forbade remarriage under any circumstances, erring on the side of caution in my humble opinion. But to date, no one has been able to show me where any early church father instructed divorced and remarried people to divorce again, or for that matter instructed anyone to divorce period, prior to something Jerome wrote in 394 AD counseling one remarried woman. So is someone who lived 360 years after Christ the ultimate authority? Jerome also defended the idea that Mary remained a virgin perpetually. Is that biblical?
SIFC: We’ve seen ample evidence so far that Mr. Servant’s opinion is just about as “humble” as it is informed. We’ve already discredited his arguments from silence at length. Servant is owed no evidence that these ante-Nicene leaders expected adulterous couples to separate and true spouses to reconcile. It matters not a whit to the Great White Throne what he personally chooses or declines to believe. He will be held accountable for his actions corrupting (true, not “blended”) families.
Do not be in error my brethren. Those that corrupt families shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If, then, those who do this as respects mere human families have suffered death, how much more will this be the case with anyone who corrupts by wicked doctrine the faith of God, for which Jesus Christ was crucified! Such a one becoming defiled in this way shall go away into everlasting fire and so shall everyone that harkens unto him.
Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Epistle To The Ephesians, 105 A.D.
We do concede that some of the bishops and martyrs of the early churches differed slightly on whether “divorce / putting away” (whatever form that actually took, which may not necessarily have been civil proceedings, and depending on the actual Greek term used in the original writings) was permissible, but all were unanimous that “divorce / putting away” dissolved nothing, and hence they were unanimous that non-widowed remarriage was indeed adultery, which they unanimously did not consider to be a “punctiliar one-time act.” (And, true to form, Mr. Servant can’t seem to restrain himself from ad hominem when the fact-bearers interfere with his carnal humanism, in this case, even besmirching the long-dead saints and martyrs who lived nearest the apostolic age. )
The indisputable historical fact is that the early church was so unanimous in their practice of this conviction of indissolubility that they accomplished in just a few centuries (arguably, only four) a culture-change so sweeping and durable for fifteen centuries following, that the world has never again seen the likes of until unilateral divorce was enacted in the United States in the 1970’s. Even the most heretical elements of the Reformation only rocked it on a delayed basis until after this apostate modern development which the church failed to morally or politically resist.
Quoting bible historian Kenneth E. Kirk, and author Milton T. Wells:
“What is more astounding than the mere fact that the early Church taught and practiced the complete indissolubility of marriage for so long, is the fact that the Church chose to take its stand against the strong contemporary lax social and legal attitudes toward divorce which prevailed so universally all about them. The Church, today, feels that it is on the horns of a dilemma, because so many divorcees are coming to her for help and encouragement. Shall she accommodate the Scriptures to the apparent need of the unfortunate divorcees, or shall she uphold the Biblical standard of the indissolubility of marriage for any cause while faithfully discharging her duty to such distressed individuals? Every church of today which considers the lowering of its divorce standards should remember that the early Church stood true to the Biblical doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage in a world that was pagan and strongly opposed to the moral and marriage standards of the New Testament.
Not only did the Church maintain her stand on the indissolubility in the early centuries, she changed the attitude and standards of the whole world toward it. Even today the whole Church of Christ and the entire western world is still reaping the rich benefits of that heritage. Shall the Christian Church of today [mid-20th century] be less courageous and faithful than the Church of the early centuries of the Christian era? Does she not under God have the same spiritual resources?
“There were other grievous social evils in the early Christian centuries. Slavery enveloped the Roman Empire of that age, yet the Christians did not set themselves to change the thinking of the masses against it, but they did set themselves to change the thinking of the masses toward marriage and divorce. Why did they not attack slavery with the same vehemence? The reason was that the Apostles had not received a “thus saith the Lord” from Christ respecting it. They had, however, received such in the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. No sect or school of philosophy is known to have influenced the early Church in this teaching. From whence, then, did she get the teaching? Certainly she received it from the teaching of the Gospels and from the teaching of the Apostles, who had earlier conveyed the same orally (as well as in writing) to the leaders of the early Church who succeeded them.”
SIFC: “Standerinfamilycourt” also has a “humble” opinion, and that is that this massive social change which introduced and sustained lifelong monogamy for the first time in history could not have been accomplished by ante-Nicene pastors who refused to excommunicate their adulterers, but instead performed faux nuptials over them. Nor was it accomplished by 1st to 4th century shepherds who filled their pews with adulterers by not requiring them to sever those illicit unions, or by allowing them to continue in immoral abandonment of their true families based on the deceitful rationalization that their pre-conversion covenant commitments (things that were clearly not “sin”) were “washed clean” along with their actual fully-repented sin. The astounding societal result shows these leaders were mindful of Christ’s words in Matthew 5,
You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.
Near the end of our Part 2 response, we quickly listed a sampling of key quotes of the ante-Nicene church fathers concerning the lifelong indissolubility of holy matrimony, without the citations. Given the length of our Part 3 response, we now link the readers to an excellent recording where, starting at about 13 minutes in, Pastor Stephen Wilcox cites these with full literary references.
Servant:
One of the most amusing things is to hear people quote certain church fathers in order to support their particular theological beliefs, and then listen to their response when I ask them if there is anything those same church fathers wrote with which they disagree…
SIFC: One does not need to be an expert on all exhaustive positions of every church father to reliably quote them, provided they know and honestly convey the context of the quote they are relying on. Nor did these early leaders have to be perfectly on target on every issue, as long as they align with what Jesus and the Apostles said on the topic at-hand. Peter was rebuked in scripture by Paul — do we therefore discount everything Peter wrote? Paul rejected one of the Apostles who wrote a gospel – do we therefore summarily discount all of what Paul wrote? Moses was also shown to be fallible on numerous occasions, yet Mr. Servant is utterly livid that even one word from Moses be abrogated by Jesus Christ.
This concludes our discussion of David Servant’s points 1 through 5 of Part 3 of his article series, “I’m Divorced and Remarried. Am I Living in Adultery?” As promised, we will wrap up with his points 6 through 8 in the next blog post. Here, however we’ll address head-on David Servant’s greatest fear: that today’s trickle of repenting Emilys will become an embarrassing flood. He has good reason to fear this because of the widespread apostasy of the evangelical church in creating a mass class of improperly-discipled people whom the Lord loves and does not want in hell. If this is a move of God, and we strongly suspect that it is, Servant can write his questionable articles until Jesus comes back, but he cannot stop the move of the Holy Spirit in orchestrating this flood, however bad it looks to the carnally-minded. Ditto for Piper, MacArthur and anyone else on the long list of Christian celebrities who got that way by pandering to legalized adulterers and hindering authentic repentance from this sin. This holy wave will be clearly distinguishable from increased last days evil, due to the celibacy and reconciliation that will accompany it. Blaming and demonizing the truth-tellers is pointless as well, because we only lay out the facts and encourage people toward sound avenues of self-study, leaving the rest up to the Holy Spirit.
Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. – Ephesians 5:11
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
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