Monthly Archives: February 2018

Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

SHADES OF ZOHAR: Shane Willard’s Sermon on the Sermon on the Mount

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by Standerinfamilycourt

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
– 2 Timothy 4:3-4

Who is Shane Willard?
There is not much about this itinerant evangelist in the Christian press or other public sources, so we rely mostly on what he says about himself on his website,  quoted verbatim here, that he “has been in full-time ministry for 20 years. He began working in full-time ministry as a youth pastor of a small church. Since that time, Shane has held multiple pastoral positions at various sized churches. Shane now ministers full time in America and internationally, particularly in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. With degrees in both clinical psychology and theology, Shane is known for being an informative, brilliant and humorous communicator.  Shane is mentored by a pastor with rabbinical training, and teaches the context of the Scriptures from a Hebraic perspective. This perspective helps people to see God’s Word in a completely new way and leads them into a more intimate relationship with the Messiah, Jesus Christ.”

 It appears from the flavor of his sermon content that this (unnamed) rabbinical “mentor” of Willard’s might possibly be a practitioner of kabbalah, the mystical Jewish-rooted gnostic heresy.   Regardless of whatever else Shane Willard is, it is quite clear that he is an unabashed humanist, which shouldn’t be at all surprising to find in a trained and formerly-practicing clinical psychologist.   It should also be noted that Shane Willard appears to be in a covenant marriage, and is apparently not motivated by being in an adulterous remarriage, despite his advocacy of it for others.

“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in.   Aim at earth and you will get neither.”    –  C.S. Lewis

Willard’s current ministry seems to be primarily to evangelical churches in Australia and New Zealand, a few of which are Word of Faith churches.   The Facebook page for Kabbalah Centre Australia has over 4,000 followers.

As Willard’s video message unfolds, it is also quite clear that his claims of expertise in the Greek texts are false, despite his assertion of a “theology degree” (no further elaboration offered or found to be researchable).

 

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;  until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.   As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;  but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
– Ephesians 4:11-14

The first kabbalist whiff of windy doctrine comes about 5 minutes in, when the straightforward, hell-linked warning of Christ, that “marrying” the estranged spouse of another living person is ongoing adultery, is hijacked by gnostic application of the Hebrew concept of (H:259) echad (אָחד),  most likely in order to simply distract from the true narrative, and substitute a more humanistically-palatable one that is not, in fact, hermeneutically supportable.   This is also the first clue that Willard-the-theologian is not doing his own scholarly work before accepting carte-blanche the input of his “rabbinic mentor”.   Notice throughout the video the glaring lack of hermeneutical rigor (which this blog post will be filling in, as appropriate).

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. “  –  Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Even without a “theology degree”, we are all called to be Bereans, including those of us in Willard’s audience.

Willard asserts:  “The first big idea (that you can’t read this passage without knowing) is…The concept of ‘echad’ in the ancient Jewish world was ‘unity within diversity’.   To have like (sic) unity is one thing, like if something is one solution. but to have diverse elements coming together…that is unity.  That is echad….The Wallabys played as one team tonight – that’s echad….Deuteronomy 6:4 was called the ‘shema’…the idea is that this God is this mysterious mixture of unity within diversity.   He’s diverse yet He’s ‘one’ …And the concept is that all of us, all of creation is made in the image of God.  Since God is ‘echad’ and we are made in the image of God, then we are ‘echad’.   We are unity in diversity…The world itself is ‘echad’.   Billions and billions of different parts, and if only one gets out of alignment, it affects the whole.  If the ocean temperatures change too drastically, it creates incredible weather phenomenon way far away…it’s almost like the whole world has to be in someone else’s hands…that is ‘echad’…The idea is this: if God is ‘echad’, and we are made in the image of God, then ‘echad’ is the force that holds us all together.   The concept is that you cannot come against the very force that holds the universe together and not expect to be torn apart yourself…so you can’t enter into things like gossip and slander and murder and hatred and judgment and calling someone a fool, and adultery and divorce.   All of these things sabotage ‘echad’…But the overarching command…you can summarize the entire chapter 5 by saying this: order your life in cooperation with unity, and avoid things things in your life the sabotage unity, because wherever you enter into engaging in the sabotaging of unity you are simply going to tear yourself apart because ‘echad’ is the force that holds the universe together, you are a part of the universe, if you enter into an act that sabotages the force that holds the universe together, you yourself will be torn apart because you are not the exception to the rule…”

Sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it?   The problem is the consistency of application, given where Mr. Willard has this sermon going in the next several minutes, now that it has actually launched from a false opening premise.    As the earlier link to authentic Hebrew scholar Jacob Prasch describes, kabbalah always mixes partial truth with a heretical vector leading away from Christ.    Humans holding the universe together?   We thought Jesus had that role.   We were unaware, from scripture at least, that He shared this role with any human agents.

FACT CHECK:  No part of Deuteronomy 6 refers to the horizontal relationship between humans.   Furthermore, though the context of a few Old Testament passages will support the “unity” idea, the vast majority of the nearly 1,000 references to “echad” refer simply to the number, one, as most arguably it does in Deuteronomy 6:4.
The context of that entire chapter relates only to the vertical relationship between a human and their Sovereign God.   Kabbalah, however, posits that God has some sort of dependency on how humans “relate” to each other (temporally, of course), on which the fate of the universe “depends”.    Compare to how Jesus later adds the vertical relationship in the Matthew 22 exchange with the rich young ruler.   Jesus does so, however, without denigrating God’s absolute sovereignty in any way.     To elevate the horizontal relationship above the vertical one, in the way Willard suggests, is itself a form of idolatry.   Unrepented idolators have no inheritance in the kingdom of God, and will be thrown into the lake of fire.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”   And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’   This is the great and foremost commandment.  The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’   On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”  –   Matthew 22:36-40

Deuteronomy 6 is a reference, in fact, to the first four of the ten commandments:  to have no other Gods before Him;  to make no image that a man will worship in place of Him;  not to misuse His holy name to attribute it to a vain act; and to honor the Lord by observing the Sabbath.     Love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

The major commentators (Ellicotts, Bensons, Matthew Henry, Pulpit Commentary, etc.) appear unanimous that the only “oneness” supported by the context of Deuteronomy 6 supports the Trinity, but reflects that God is not many competing gods, instead He is the only true God, sovereign over all created things.   He does not need the participation of any of those created things to achieve this.  Using the separate fact that mankind is indeed made in His image, wrongly inserted into this context, creates a triangulation that subtly opens the door to the conflicting kabbalistic doctrine.   Once the “shema” is hijacked in this way,  kidnapping the sermon on the mount for temporally-focused,  humanistic distortion purposes becomes a cake-walk, as we shall soon see.

So, if Deuteronomy 6:5 only alludes to the first four commandments, what about the final six commandments?    In fact, those are the “horizontal” commandments governing how humans are to relate to each other.   Hence, the sermon on the mount is not really an “echad” or a “unity” concept, but one of “do unto others (with an eternal, not only a temporal perspective) as you would have others do unto you.”   In other words, it is the Golden Rule.   The unity ultimately results from obeying the Golden Rule, but if the focus is eternal rather than merely temporal, a little “disunity” is going to be unavoidable in arriving there, given the sin nature that is in all of us.

Indeed, Willard’s “rabbinic mentor” might have more accurately advised him that the Wallabys actually played that night with (H:251) achdut אָח (“as brothers”  Ps. 133:1; – אחדות) ., the more common Hebrew term for “unity”.   

The next “big idea” Willard introduces, with reference to the sermon on the mount, is that Jesus wasn’t really referring to the place of eternal punishment, torment and separation from God when He spoke of hell in Matthew 5:29-30.   He was merely speaking of the rubbish heap outside the city which can be likened to sabotaging the “echad” unity that we’re all universally “responsible” for.   He argues at about 11 minutes in that Jesus didn’t use the Greek word “hades“, but rather “gehenna“.

Says Willard:  “The word He used for ‘hell’ here is ‘gehenna’.   Gehenna, not ‘hades’.   This was not the hell after the grave.   This was not, ‘Hey, take care of this, or I might torture you forever and ever’.  Um, no….This was the town garbage dump.   They called gehenna the place where the fire does not die and there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth.   The reason is because this was the town garbage dump and they had to keep the fire going all the time in order to keep the smell of the garbage out of the city.  It was also the place where they buried people who couldn’t afford a tomb, so there was always families standing there weeping over their lost loved ones.   It was also the place where stray animals would scavenge for food, so all the time in gehenna you would hear barking and biting and all this stuff from the stray animals… so when Jesus said, ‘Hey, beware of these things lest you get your whole self thrown into gehenna’, essentially what He’s saying is, ‘if you start rationalizing this kind of behavior, before you know it, your whole life will be on the garbage heap.’ “

While that is likely to be quite true in a temporal sense, Willard offers no support for his notion that there isn’t also an eternal consequence (“um, no”) for “sabotaging ‘echad‘ “.   He references Matthew 18:9, the verse where Jesus repeats the warning that He gave in Matthew 5 to take drastic action as necessary to avoid hell.

This argument of Willard’s that “gehenna” doesn’t literally refer to hell is easily discredited by noting the other scriptures where Jesus referred to hell, including Matthew 10:28, Matthew 23:15, Mark 9:43, 45 and 47, and Luke 12:5.    The other issue is that “sheol” is a Hebrew term, and while it’s possible there is an original Hebrew text of the gospel of Matthew still existing somewhere in the world that was translated into Greek after Matthew wrote it in Hebrew, most biblical scholars say this is unlikely.     Even so, this only deals with the language in which Matthew recorded what he witnessed from Jesus, but we still don’t know conclusively whether Jesus was actually speaking to His Jewish audience in Hebrew or Aramaic.    Hence, Willard’s expectation that the “real hell” be referred to in biblical text as “sheol” or “hades” seems ignorant, and even worse, seems to reflect an actual ignorance of those texts.   The clear context in the overwhelming majority of the scriptures noted above is clearly the place of eternal punishment, not merely the symbolic “garbage dump”.

The scriptures where “hades” was actually used reflects that the apostles Luke and John were more likely to use that term, while Matthew and Mark most often used “gehenna”.   The distinction between them is of no material consequence.     It should  be further noted that Luke, in chapter 16, used “hades” in linking one who dies in the sinful ongoing state of remarriage adultery to hell (Luke 16:18-31), in precisely the same context that Matthew earlier linked it to “gehenna” (Matthew 5:27-32) – namely, dying while “married” to the God-joined spouse of another living person.   Willard’s theory also ignores much that Paul and the writer of Hebrews had to say on the topic (1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Hebrews 13:4) in reference to not inheriting the kingdom of God.   It’s easy to recommend adulterous remarriage to people if you’re not in that situation yourself, and you don’t believe it will cost others their eternal souls, even though the bible makes that quite clear in numerous passages.    This points up one of the key reasons why humanism is never compatible with following Christ:  it is devoid of any concern whatsoever for eternal souls.

But (ironically) jump back and listen to what Willard says at 9:27….
“…later in the sermon on the mount, He goes on to say, retaliation and revenge and these sorts of things….”     Willard stops short of citing the refusal to forgive, which is also mentioned in the sermon on the mount, as well as Matthew 18:23-35, where Jesus makes it clear that if we refuse to forgive anyone’s sin against us, our sins will not be forgiven.    What is marrying someone else while our covenant spouse still lives, if it is not retaliation, revenge and refusing to forgive?    (Apparently it’s only “sabotaging echad” and landing one’s life on the garbage heap — but wait, there’s more, since that’s not the picture Willard starts to paint a bit later in his message about remarriage).

By now, everyone is wondering how a remarriage apologist can be almost 15 minutes into an hour-long sermon and not yet done the customary butchering of the so-called “exception clause”.      Not to worry, this is Willard’s third “big concept” from the sermon on the mount, and he does it with an unusual and expansive flair.
(Never mind that verse 5:32 is not even about a guilty partner, nor is the actual context about an “innocent” person who initiates a “divorce” remarrying, per se.   It’s about the shared guilt of putting an innocent wife in a potential hellbound remarriage situation by divorcing her.)

Undaunted, however, Willard declares….“marital unfaithfulness; the word in Greek there is porneia…not moicheia.   Sometimes it gets translated ‘adultery’ …that is not the Greek translation of what Jesus was saying here.   The word they translate is ‘porneia’ which essentially was a broader term around ‘out of controlness’ ….the root word, porneia, which is where we get the word pornography from, is any time you use someone else’s skin as an object….Let me put it this way, it’s any time you treat your wife as a piece of property instead of a person filled with the dignity of God.   This starts to bring some things into play.   I’ve had many, many counseling situations because I was a counselor for years, and, um, one in particular, the man was horribly addicted to pornography.   And the wife just could not take it one more day, and can you blame her? ”  

  SIFC :  No I cannot blame her.  But since Matthew 5:32 is neither about pornography nor about disgusted wives (who had no Mosaic provision to initiate divorce in any event – perhaps Willard’s “rabbinic mentor” neglected to fill him in on that),  the passage to look to for guidance in that situation is 1 Corinthians 7:11.

“….and his big argument, instead of being repentant for this addiction that was destroying his family was, ‘she can’t leave me, because I’m not cheating’…when actually the word Jesus used was ‘porn’, so the idea was, you can’t make it too closed-off.   It’s not adultery, it’s marital unfaithfulness.   Which raises all kinds of questions about how marital unfaithfulness would have been taken in the 1st century….so, it can all be summarized in this statement:  don’t.sabotage.echad.”

  SIFC :   In what way, sir?   Indulging in an addiction….or taking our own revenge against the addict?   Did you not say that both things were “sabotaging echad” ?    Does that mean that there are offsetting (kabbalist) penalties, then?

In Daniel R. Jennings’ book,  Except for Fornication, the scholarly author points out through photocopies, beginning on page 63,  that all of the concordances and bible dictionaries that were written prior to the 20th century translated the Greek word “porneia” narrowly as either “whoredom”, “unchastity” or “fornication”, consistent with the root meaning of “porne“ which actually meant “to sell off“.    Not one of them translated “porneia” broadly as “marital unfaithfulness”.   That was done by a liberal 20th century translation committee run by humanists.   Even the Latin term, “fornication” comes from the word “fornix” which were the Roman colonnade columns under which prostitutes carried on their trade.

The Received Texts (Antioch manuscripts) do not record Matthew 5:32 merely showing an act of unchastity / whoredom, but a report of an act of unchastity / whoredom:

[ “…gunaika  autou parektos logou porneias….”]

This alone makes the context unable to support  a translation of porneia that would be broad enough to encompass all contemporary forms of “marital unfaithfulness”.    Such a “report” (logou) specifically relates to the betrothal period up to the wedding night when such unchastity would be discovered.     Taken with the earlier context problem mentioned with regard to Matthew 5:32,  i.e., that the passage is not even addressing any actually “guilty” wives, nor any “right” on the part of their dismissing husbands to remarry, Willard’s claims about broad “marital unfaithfulness” (at least based on this passage) are completely baseless.    Willard later refers to post-marital “breaches of the ketubah”, the Hebrew betrothal contract, so he shows that he is not completely ignorant of the kiddushin custom, but doesn’t show himself to be thoroughly conversant on it, either, as we shall later see.

By now, everyone is no doubt also wondering where the customary exploitation of the red-herring dispute between Hillel and Shammai comes into Willard’s message.     In due course, he sashays over to Matthew 19 as well for that obligatory ritual.    However,  “standerinfamilycourt” would like to make the observation that at no point in this message is the inseverable one-flesh metaphysical reality, described by Jesus in Matthew 19:5-6 and Matthew 19:8, ever discussed.     Evidently, it’s of extreme urgency for we created beings to “help” God hold the whole universe together, but of little importance to cleave to the God-joined one-flesh entity He created with His own hand between us and the spouse of our youth,  or to honor the exclusive, unconditional covenant to which He is a party with that one-flesh entity, which His word says twice that only death can dissolve.

At 23 minutes in, Willard does the traditional exploitation of the so-called “exception clause” and the substituted concept of “marital unfaithfulness”.    He then claims that Jesus makes an “odd” statement:  “and if any person marries a divorced woman, they cause her to commit adultery.”     What’s so “odd” about that Mr. Willard?   He doesn’t answer that question, but instead launches into the classic tactic of someone who is on very shaky biblical and moral ground in their defense of serial polygamy – ad hominem.    Declares Mr. Willard:  “now, that…statement…unfortunately, has been wielded in a highly inappropriate way like a sword to make people feel guilty.   What do you say to a twenty-five year old girl that has went (sic) through the horror of divorce and she really desperately in her heart wants a family of her own?   She dumbly got married at seventeen.  He was gone by twenty, and now she’s ‘doomed forever’ – why?  Because ‘Jesus’ said so.   And who is telling her that?  People who follow Jesus and are supposed to be spreading LOOOVE throughout the WOORLD…”

  SIFC :  What about emotional arguments that are wielded like a sword, sir, simply because you don’t have a biblical leg to stand on, and want to distract from that obvious fact in order to prop up your bald-faced humanism?    We say to this unfortunate girl exactly what the second of the two most authoritative “sword-wielders” who ever lived have already told her in no uncertain terms:

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….but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband….

Meanwhile, to you, Mr. Willard, we say that your concept of “love” is pretty distorted if it doesn’t take into account the poor girl’s eternity, and, that of her prodigal spouse who just might repent.    Take up your argument with Jesus Christ!    Perhaps a little “guilt-riddenness” and “shame-riddenness” will eventually keep this woman and her progeny out of hell if she takes your advice and disobeys the clear word of God not to enter into a subsequent union that both Jesus and Paul repeatedly called adulterous.  (Oh, that’s right, obedience will only keep her out of the smoldering garbage heap that exists only in this life; we sword-wielding non-kabbalists forgot momentarily!)

But, here it comes…Willard goes on to claim that “well-meaning Christians don’t have first hand knowledge of the all-important debate that was going on in the 1st century between Hillel and Shammai…. to read this…” (e.g., Jesus’ very clear, thrice-repeated statement that  everyone who marries one who has been put away enters into an ongoing state of adultery) “…without understanding that [pacing frantically across the platform] will lead well-meaning Christians, I’m sure, to wield [accompanying flourish of an arm-gesture] the sword of the Lord in a highly inappropriate way.”

Perhaps, sir, we “well-meaning Christians” have bothered to read the entire Matthew 19 passage, and from its full context while comparing with numerous other passages where Jesus said the same thing (whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery),  and where He directly linked remarriage adultery with going to hell.   Perhaps from doing so, we know pretty conclusively that based on Matthew 19:6 and 8 and 12, He was soundly disagreeing with both Hillel and Shammai.    Perhaps the only “sword” anybody rightly wields is the same one Jesus and Paul already wielded, along with all of their disciples for the next 400 years to follow.    Perhaps if Jesus wanted His law to vary by the endless humanistic “complexities” and “stories”, there would be an “exception clause” in Luke and Mark, and a considerably longer one in Matthew.

“What if there was infidelity and it just kept happening? “

  SIFC :  1 Cor. 7:11

“What if there was abussssse? ” (hisses Willard) “What if…he wrapped the phone cord….around her neccccck…because she bought the wrong kind of minttssss?”  (hisses Willard)

  SIFC :  1 Cor. 7:11, and the criminal justice system (assuming she survives all that, if she’s quick-thinking maybe she can take a selfie as evidence)

It gets more disrespectful of the word of God from there, so those interested can join the video at 26 minutes, and we’ll spare the rest of the social justice tirade.   “What if, what if, what if…”    What if, on that day, the only thing Jesus is interested in hearing about any of it is…“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”  (Luke 6:46)

At 29 minutes, Willard makes a very interesting claim.   He says that under Mosaic law, a man had to go to the rabbi to secure a bill-of-divorcement (a “get”) with which to dismiss his wife.    Most scholars talk about early history where the husband simply said “I divorce you” and put  a bill-of-divorcement (ha git)  in the repudiated wife’s hands that protected her from stoning should she remarry.    If there was an express requirement to go to a rabbi for this, issuing from Moses, he was sufficiently detailed about such matters that most likely he would have so specified in Deuteronomy.    We all can plainly see that Moses did not.  It is possible that the rabbinic tradition might have embellished this point, as it did on many other things in the time between Moses and Christ, but outside of that undocumented possibility there is really no backing for Willard’s claim that in biblical times, rabbis issued the “gets”.   There is some documentation for the custom of using of special scribes to prepare the “gets” under the dictation of the husband, but not rabbis.

Several minutes later(42:50), Willard makes an even more preposterous claim that Jesus, in His rabbinical role, was in the business of approving and dispensing bills-of-divorcement, ’cause that’s what rabbis do.      That’s right, He who said “Moses allowed….but from the beginning it was not ever this way”, and “Therefore what GOD has joined, let no human put asunder” was allegedly in the business of signing the hard-hearted papers to put asunder.    “Standerinfamilycourt” can think of few more blasphemous statements about Jesus than to liken Him to a “family court” judge!

Willard’s pattern of triangulation should be getting pretty obvious at this point, from Matthew 5, which does not quite make the point he hoped to make (since its context is not about anybody’s “right” to remarry at all, actually) to Matthew 19, which relies on abuse of Deuteronomy 24 to force a point that Matthew 19, in its own proper context, does not even make.    Triangulation. also, from the unsupported suggestion that rabbis issued “gets” for use by husbands, to the criminally-insane claim that Jesus did so, and finally to the claim that wives could also go to the rabbi for her “get” (41:00) if the husband didn’t materially provide for her according to the terms of the betrothal contract…insisting (in Instone-Brewer fashion) that this, too, constituted “marital unfaithfulness” (36:00).

But, what to do with that messy assertion of Jesus that (according to Willard) “doesn’t make sense”, that everyone who marries a divorced person enters into an ongoing state of adultery?    Simple, you claim with a straight face (32:00) that it’s only referring to the dismissed woman in Deuteronomy 24 whom Moses said couldn’t be taken again as a wife by her original husband.   That’s the divorced woman a guy (more precisely, her God-joined one-flesh) can’t marry without committing adultery.   Problem solved.   That is, if you completely ignore Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:11-12.   Which Willard indeed did

By this point in Willard’s message, all pretense at hermeneutics is dispensed with, and the floodgates of humanism swing wide open.   Next we’re scolded: “The dignity of the person takes precedence over your moral rightness.”     Several aggrieved parties in his Australian audience were comforted who have allegedly “eaten the judgment of the church” just for wanting to live as though this life is all there is.   But it’s time to get back to “breaking echad” and the help that God needs from us to hold the universe together….

Careful to ensure that no marriage passage goes undistorted, we are informed at 47:50 concerning Malachi 2:13,  where we learn: “Rabbis taught that divorce ‘floods the altar with  tears’ “

Come again?   This is another thing you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning, because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’ Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

(My bible seems to say it’s the divorced-and-adulterously-re-wed priest flooding the altar with tears because he’s found out he can’t keep both his legalized adulteress and fellowship with his God.)  

This sermon on the sermon on the mount starts to wrap up at 48:50  where, predictably, we’re reminded (with Isaiah 50:1 and Jeremiah 3:8 as his witness):  “You worship and you serve a ‘divorced God.  God is divorced.  In the book of Exodus, He married Israel.  It was a marriage proposal.”      Indeed, it was a marriage proposal, and God’s bride Israel was handed a ketubah, in the form of the Ten Commandments. That made the arrangement a betrothal, not a consummated wedding.    The future wedding is described in Revelation 19.   God is “divorced” at the moment from a betrothed bride who became defiled, not a consummated one.    Fortunately, even Moses cannot prohibit the Almighty from taking her back to Himself after she is purified.  Misuse by remarriage apologists of the spiritual adultery analogy God was making through the two prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, is addressed in this earlier post.  

Back to Malachi 2:  “Malachi 2:16 is a scripture that gets quoted so horribly… [we’d have to concur, since it’s typically applied to the opposite parties versus what the context specifies ] … “I hate divorce says the Lord God of Israel.  Maybe He hates divorce because he was going through one…maybe…”

Or maybe what He hates is “shalach” — the  immoral abandonment, “putting away”, of an inseverable one-flesh union His hand personally joined, for the illicit purpose of pursuing a legalized adulterous relationship that will never be anything but a legalized adulterous relationship, according to the word of God…maybe.    Maybe He hates the eternal consequences of dying in that unrepentant state…maybe.   Maybe it’s altogether blasphemous to suggest that God would be going through that kind of a “divorce”.    In fact, when Malachi delivered that word, God was actually trying to put the nation of Israel back together, decades after the prophesies of both Jeremiah and Isaiah, following the exilic chastisement that was nearing its completion by Malachi’s time.
I wish we were finished rebutting Willard’s creativity, on that note, but alas….

“Somebody asked me once in a situation like this, ‘Shane what do you think about divorced and remarried preachers?’   And it was obvious in her tone…she didn’t like ’em.  To which I said, ‘well, before you go disqualifying people from your stage, you might want to consider that that attitude disqualifies God Himself, because He’s divorced…and He remarried the Gentiles.”

Really?

I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?   “Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.”  But what is the divine response to him? “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal” … But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree,  do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you…. And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.  For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?  –  Romans 11:1-4, 17-18, 24

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife….. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?) – 1 Timothy 3:2, 4-5

  SIFC:  It certainly seems safe at this point to rule out the Apostle Paul as Mr. Willard’s undisclosed “rabbinic mentor”,  does it not?

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Meat Sacrificed to Idols, Inadvertent Shepherds and The Harsher Judgment

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Groupsby Standerinfamilycourt

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify.   Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor.   Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake;  for the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains.  If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake.   But if anyone says to you, “This is meat sacrificed to idols,” do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience’ sake;  I mean not your own conscience, but the other man’s; for why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience?   If I partake with thankfulness, why am I slandered concerning that for which I give thanks?

Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.   Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God;   just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of the many, so that they may be saved.
–  1 Corinthians 10:23-33

Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.
– Ephesians 5:16-33

“Standerinfamilycourt” has never been one to belong to dozens of social media sites and pages, being  extremely selective and purposeful about which ones merit THE LORD’S time which has been entrusted to advance the kingdom of God.    This balance of time is certainly going to look different from disciple to disciple, depending on the particular assignment we’ve been given in these last days.    The half-dozen sites SIFC has committed to membership in generally serve these main purposes, consistent with kingdom assignment:

(1) plug into high-quality  scholarship of others so that 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall and Unilateral Divorce Is Unconstitutional can be as reliable as possible in dividing God’s word (and on the flip side, promote respectful avoidance of misusing the word of God)

(2) provide a trustworthy connection point to refer opposite-sex individuals who contact our pages seeking to be ministered to deeply — which should be done by a same sex person who is spiritually mature.

(3)  extend the reach and circulation of our posts  so that the stander community is aware of, and connected with, other voices and communities who are our natural allies in the righteous, interdependent quest to abolish unilateral divorce and clean up the apostate churches to the extent possible.

(4) keep tabs on what satan is up to these days in opposing God’s kingdom.  He loves to send in intruders and hang out on standers’ pages, too, while constantly shifting his ugly tactics.

Many covenant marriage standers will belong to an astounding number of sites and seem to be online “contending for the faith” all day and night.    Knowing firsthand how addictive social media is, especially to isolated and often-alienated standers, one has to wonder how much time is being truly spent in intercession for the rebuilding of our torn up families, pleading with the throne of heaven for the soul of our estranged one-flesh partners, and praying protective hedges around our impacted loved ones, especially given satan’s particular rage against us.      Not a few in the marriage permanence community, if they were completely honest with themselves and others,  have seemingly given up expecting the Lord to restore their holy matrimony union (if they haven’t instead come out of an unholy matrimony union).    Some, wrongly in my view, see Paul’s instructions in 1 Cor. 7:11,
“remain unmarried [celibate] or be reconciled…”
as “either / or” instead of “both / and”, and this is reflected in how they spend their time and emotional energy.     I pray that the Lord will greatly surprise these folks one day.    

A well-run site for covenant marriage standers (and for others with hearts open to the truth of marriage indissolubility), will have ground rules that look something like this:
– this is not a dating site
– name-calling, gossip, personal attacks and bad language will not be tolerated here
– off-topic posts and those pushing divisive, controversial ideologies not essential to inheriting the kingdom of God will not be allowed in our space, nor will debate on them be permitted
– promotional posts for unrelated ministries, products, etc. will be removed as spam

It is not typical at the present time for most pages which are geared to a doctrinally pure, continuously-maturing covenant marriage stander or repenting prodigal membership, to have more than a few hundred members or followers, nor rapid net growth (joiners far exceeding the unjoiners).  Yet when one gives this reality some reflection, such small following is still equivalent to a small-to-medium-sized church congregation.    Given the other reality that in a lot of cases, a particular site may become the church-surrogate for an unfortunate number of standers, the integrity and consistency with which the rules are applied takes on a sobering importance.    Everyone in this marriage permanence community has recently had a front row seat for the sad spectacle of what happened under the cronyism, carnality and lack of accountability in Greg Locke’s brick-and-mortar church.     Though virtual fellowship is not typically a matter of financial stewardship, the situation might not be too different in some of the stander sites in many other important respects, complete with defecting sheep who fall into carnality because the responsibility for discipling  the members wasn’t quite what it should have been in some sites where the defectors were hanging out.    When a standers’ site is growing at megachurch pace, it doesn’t hurt to take an objective look at what might be driving that aberrant pace and be a bit wary of failure to consistently apply the site’s own rules.

SIFC joined a fast-growing page recently that seemed to be well-run, at least as it appeared from the outside.   Its owner is an organizer of weekly conference calls of very high quality, good attendance, and excellent guests.     The live streaming of these calls had just become available on that site, with convenient playback.   Despite misgivings some months  earlier about the pushiness of the owner in posting the call notices on several restricted-topic sites and being rather obstinate about respecting those owners’ reasonable requests not to do so,  SIFC began to join these conference calls on a fairly regular basis due to the quality of the speakers.    Site membership had grown to about 1300 with a dozen or so new joiners weekly to site membership.    At first it appeared this site would nicely meet all three of SIFC’s top desired purposes for joining, as described earlier, and for committing to being a contributing member of a helpful standers’ group.    Some of the handful of soundly-based groups that had been fruitful a year or two ago had since gone fairly inactive, so the time seemed ripe.

After two or three weeks’ participation, SIFC has come away feeling as if comments in response to some of the posts had invited everyone there to a dinner party where, unknowingly, there had been served meat sacrificed to idols, which offended some guests of weaker faith.     Let me explain.

At the time point of joining, there was quite the conversation ongoing on about a male stander who had fallen prey to a heretical remarriage apology page, but had simultaneously been a member of this particular group, from which he evidently pursued several female standers (as confessed by one of them) before selecting a another stander to “marry” while his covenant wife remains a living prodigal.     To-date, two of our blog own posts have early-flagged and discussed the role of this man’s profuse legalistic ideologies which directly contributed to his moral fall, and (likely) to the ongoing depth of estrangement from his true wife.

Against this unfortunate backdrop, it was incredibly disheartening to see  legalistic and dogmatic posts by one of the page’s moderators in the next two weeks on all of the following off-topic issues that drew contentious debate:
– the  alleged”corruption” of attending a flesh-and-blood, brick-and-mortar church that has an appointed pastor or pastoral staff
– the alleged “pagan-ness” of Valentine’s Day celebrations
–  the alleged “impropriety” of addressing anyone, great or small, by a title

This appeared to be the only type of post ever observed being made by this gentleman in that time frame.   Not only were the moderator-poster’s extrabiblical biases being promoted, but anyone not practicing them was being overtly condemned.    SIFC’s first appeal to observe the site’s own posted rules was made to the owner in a comment on the post.  The site owner publicly commented that he agreed with the legalism complained of, and would therefore allow the posts to remain for the heated and unseemly discussion that ensued.   SIFC challenged the moderator-poster on all three of the above distractions, a man whose “story” hadn’t been revealed in SIFC’s short sojourn on the site, but his faith background can likely be guessed from the ethnicity of his name and the apparent appeal to him of these particular dogmas.    One of SIFC’s challenges was quickly deleted by somebody with access to do so, and SIFC received two PM’s from the site owner claiming that the dissenting comments constituted “name-calling”.  (Apparently because SIFC used the “L-word” as a descriptor).    In a display of spiritual maturity, this  fellow removed himself for a morning from the page membership, then the next thing SIFC knew, the page was “no longer available”.    Not only was I removed, but evidently also blocked from the page.

This site had all of the ground rules described above in place, and then some, as follows:

“This is NOT a dating site. There is ZERO tolerance for name calling, gossip, slander or profanity. If you do not answer questions, you will be ignored, and you and your posts may be deleted. Posts of false doctrines or false teachers will be deleted. This is not a debate forum. Keep posts focused on [marriage, adultery, divorce and remarriage].
DO NOT POST VIDEOS BY UNAPPROVED SPEAKERS. APPROVED SPEAKERS HAVE THEIR WEB SITES LISTED AND/OR ARE MODERATORS. VIDEOS SHOULD BE APPROVED PRIVATELY BY A MODERATOR PRIOR TO POSTING ON [site name].
(Examples: types of baptisms, tongues, women head coverings, dress or other topics that Christians have been divided on hundreds of years) Not a place to advertise your business. Violators and their posts will be deleted without warning.”

These were indeed enforced against infractions committed by non-cronies of the page owner, as SIFC observed on one occasion when a lady was admonished, not for a post but for a question she raised about a legalistic and divisive doctrine.     On the other hand, outright slander against a very effective and godly pioneering marriage restoration ministry was actively defended by the site owner when interjected by another commenter, interfering as she was with help SIFC was attempting to provide to a new member in the crisis of his wife leaving him.    Nope, this site is clearly not safe for referrals from Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional as originally hoped.    

Reflecting on this incident in its aftermath, several thoughts come to the surface that (at least in SIFC’s estimation) if heeded will help keep the looney-tunes “cult” perception, not to mention actual stander defections from biblical morality, at bay so that the marriage permanence community as a whole will be taken seriously by people who can potentially help us make a difference for families, a goal I’m certain this site owner shares.

Many years ago, SIFC and spouse were trained in our charismatic, nondenominational church, which practiced a plurality of pastoral leadership as modeled by the 1st century church,  into a 13-week course for house church leaders called “The Maturity in Christ Series”.  We  weren’t very chronologically mature at this time in the early ’80’s, but we then went on to teach this course together to new leaders a couple of times after that, while we co-led a house church with a seasoned couple who were both bible college grads.   Without denominational leadership and sound doctrine, the atmosphere was ripe for every kind of lunacy to be tracked in from outside, and indeed, we observed much during this time that was successfully resisted by the framework that the leadership had proactively established and the careful grooming and monitoring of the lay leadership.     On one occasion, there was an administration of (Matthew 18:15-17) public church discipline to a male house church leader who had become romantically involved with a troubled female in his charge.   This man was put out of the church for refusing to terminate the immoral, extramarital relationship.

In those days, marriage permanence was preached from the pulpit of that church.   Unlike the affluent Methodist church downtown, the number of remarried divorced pairs could be counted on the fingers of one hand.    The typical dogmas and distractions that regularly surfaced were very similar to today’s virtual communities of believers:  dress and makeup legalisms, Sabbath disputes, head coverings, holiday observance,  homeschooling, women working outside the home being likened to “streetwalkers”,  legalism about pursuing college at a secular institution, order in using the gifts of the Spirit, and so forth.    Similar to our virtual communities, people were being born again after spending their upbringing in churches with autocratic authority structures and some clearly pagan or extrabiblical practices, and these folks tended to backlash in the opposite direction of whatever they have grown up with until a period of responsible small group discipleship had brought them into better balance.

But what happens when a stander or repenting prodigal is persecuted in their traditional church, or even worse, put out of it for being outspoken about remarriage adultery being a hellbound sin?     The discipling processes can be short-circuited in some cases before a person has matured spiritually.      They can easily become distrustful of all traditional churches, due to the widespread apostasy over the remarriage issue, and assume all pastors are incorrigible and all churches apostate.   However, it doesn’t stop there.   Instead of becoming spiritually secure individuals, it becomes necessary to disparage and accuse anyone who is attending an actual church and attempting to influence their pastor toward scriptural faithfulness.   This was indeed the tone taken in one of the posts by the page moderator, who appears from this behavior to have come out of a faith tradition where church leadership is deemed “infallible” and not to be challenged.    Only, who’s there and qualified to disciple him in the virtual church?  Who’s properly trained and willing to do so?    Only somebody who can see (or has seen) where the man’s error is taking him!

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
– 1 Corinthians 15:33

There’s a key reason why SIFC opted for an open community page instead of a closed group – lack of time and biblical qualification to act as a de facto pastor.    There are just over 600 self-elected followers to Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional, none of whom are very likely to mistake the page for a suitable church substitute.
(By contrast, a community page started four years earlier, similarly targeted as ours, but which doesn’t call non-covenant “marriages” adultery, doesn’t seek to reform the laws, and doesn’t write about things like hell, toxic Calvinism, and the corruption of our contemporary bibles, has eight times as many page fans.)   Even so, ministry, prayer and referral (as appropriate) takes place behind the scenes upon request on UDIU, and there is a comfortable margin of time for this to occur with good handling while maintaining the page, and while assisting on a couple of other pages.   People don’t (normally) get insulted, protest loudly and huff off on our page — which I’d say is good for public decorum.    They simply “unlike” and “re-like” our page.

Were there 1300 group members to deal with, coming and going through a page-owned gatekeeping process, that’s equivalent to a fairly large church, and maintaining this administratively pretty much requires a staff, as indeed this page has appointed its moderators.  The site owner told me he works the page himself an average of eight hours a day.

An overseer, then, must be…. and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.
– Timothy 3:7

Page owners in the marriage permanence arena must understand that their page is a pseudo-church (unless the following is very small or unless they regularly and sincerely urge participation in a real church or house church fellowship wherever possible), and they must understand that the shared leadership of that page are indeed pseudo-pastors, at least to a portion of their members.     Is this page owner therefore willing to qualify these folks serving as his moderators according to Paul’s guidelines in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1?   If not, what unction do they really have for criticizing the qualifications of a non-widowed remarried pastor?  If they don’t consistently “police” the lunacies and heresies surfacing on their page, are they any better than Paul found the Corinthian church to be when he rebuked the leadership for tolerating similar lunacies and heresies in his first letter?  If they have defectors who lapse into immorality, is this not a potential sign of pastoral deficiency?

And what is their strategy for discipling and counseling the women in their virtual congregation?    There are one or two virtual marriage ministries that have addressed this issue thoughtfully and made effective provision for it.   At least one of the leaders of this particular page, however, claim there’s something wrong with a female Christ-follower if, deprived of the covering God expects from her absentee husband, she therefore decides to be under the covering of a traditional pastor.  Yet her critics on the page really don’t have anything superior to offer her in the alternative.    What then happens in the vacuum is (unfortunately) that some can be preyed upon by insiders and outsiders alike.

Here’s a quick reminder of a few of the substantial benefits someone who can’t or won’t attend a flesh-and-blood fellowship miss out on:
–  communion (the taking of which just might be felt by our absent one-flesh partner)
– anointing with oil when ill
– meals brought over when ill
– small helps in severe situations they are unable to do themselves
– opportunity for mission trips
– opportunity to mentor young people

Surely, the Lord would not have His sheep criticized in this fashion for being a part of a congregation that provides things which He clearly intended for us to have that the alternative gatherings, real or virtual, can’t necessarily provide?    I think of an isolated late middle-aged woman who died alone in her house in our neighborhood several years ago who wasn’t even discovered until a part of her roof fell in due to heavy snow, and whose out-of-state children then had to be tracked down.    How incredibly sad, and  I’ve often wondered if she had been a stander.

Let’s face it:  we standers tend to be a mess emotionally, and long years of standing don’t normally make it any better.   These online groups tend to be a magnet additionally for wounded people who, for whatever reason, reject having spiritual authority over  them, who bristle at the idea of tithing (one legalism they do agree not to tolerate), and at other disciplines they shouldn’t be finding excuses to avoid.   Often this behavior and mindset is due to being raised in a church that was pompous in requiring the use of titles, and in declaring individual leaders “infallible” while promulgating the traditions of men that contradict the word of God.    Standers’ groups should be safe havens for those who have been involuntarily rejected or persecuted by their brick-and-mortar church.    But bad behavior that is harmful to the others on the group page should never have a safe haven.    Response to this behavior should follow a Matthew 18:15-17 process with no favoritism shown.     “Excommunications” should certainly follow this process, and should be done with correct motives which are soul-related.     “Excommunication” should never result from other members pouting at being admonished.

For the body is not one member, but many.   If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.  And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?   But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.    – Corinthians 12:14-18

Another thing typically happens in large, virtual pseudo-churches.   All of the usual functional and spiritual gifts have a tendency of showing up in the group’s members and manifesting in posts and comments on the page.    One of the key pieces of leadership training my honey and I received “way back when” was instruction in what some of these gifts look like in their actual exercise in a group, including both the strengths and the weaknesses of each kind of person so gifted.    However, many standers have always been taught some measure of cessationism, so this conversation could not even be had on this particular group page, according to the stated rules.    One is perfectly free on this page, therefore, to hyper-apply Matthew 23:1-12, according to the YouTube video of some self-appointed “theologian”, but God help anyone who dares exercise the gift of, say,  discerning of spirits in that group.    That “passed away” with the Apostles,  after all.  Unfortunately, satan doesn’t spare the marriages of charismatics any more than he does the marriages of the “Reformed” or the Baptists.    Pretending within a group of Christ-followers that the functional gifts don’t exist doesn’t make them “poof” go away.   God certainly knows that a body can’t function without a nervous system,  so chances are that an “excommunicated” nervous system just might grow back through another member.     Successful groups, flesh-and-blood or virtual, learn how to benefit from the functional gifts in an orderly fashion.

I do not share my written perspective on this to get back at the group, for if so, I would name them.   I also do not write this out of any desire to rejoin, based on what I so quickly learned about how its governance stacks up with my pre-contemplated desires for investment of time in such a group.   At best, rejoining would fulfill only objectives (3) and (4) – not good enough to compensate for the much greater downside, as it currently stands.   I will probably not repost this blog to Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional, because a portion of that diverse audience is best not exposed to petty squabbling and (actual) cultishness in the body of Christ.     I blush that the poor man who was a new joiner seeking help for a horrible family crisis was exposed to it that day, and can only pray he wasn’t so turned off that he won’t follow up on the good referrals he was given.    My main hope is that this post will trigger the marriage permanence community to reflect on what they hope to achieve from group membership, and for the many others administering marriage permanence pages to prayerfully gut-check their own priorities and objectives, responsibly considering some of the eternal implications for running their page.

Surely, making one’s own decision whether to be part of a traditional church or observe Valentines Day are both lawful, according to the Apostle Paul, and whether or not they are both profitable depends on the circumstances involved, which are not for a third party to judge in any event.    Similarly, Jesus did not forbid a disciple from voluntarily addressing someone by their title.   At least that was the interpretation of the Shepherd of Hermas (addressing an angel sent to him in a dream):

““And I said to him, ‘Sir, if any one has a wife who trusts in the Lord, and if he detect her in adultery, does the man sin if he continues to live with her?’ And he said to me, ‘As long as he remains ignorant of her sin, the husband commits no transgression in living with her. But if the husband knows that his wife has gone astray, and if the woman does not repent, but persists in her sin, and yet the husband continues to live with her, he also is guilty of her crime, and a sharer in her adultery.’ And I said to him, ‘What then, sir, is the husband to do, if his wife continues in her vicious practices?’       (The Shepherd, Second Book, Commandment 4:1)

Rather, Jesus taught that it was presuming upon the glory of God to insist that others address us by such a title.  Someone of weaker faith might not see one of these issues as the scripture intended, and someone of the weakest possible faith will have issues of conscience over the shallowest reading of scripture or every suggestive, but ill-researched, teacher they encounter.    I humbly suggest that such folk are not yet ready to teach others if they elevate such things to a heaven-or-hell gravity.

My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.    –  James 3:1

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

 

marriage, Marriage Restoration, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Valentine’s Week Testimonies….Sonny* and Sally*: A Story Close to My Heart

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NeverGiveUpby Standerinfamilycourt

Put me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as death,
Jealousy is as severe as Sheol;
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
The very flame of the Lord.
“Many waters cannot quench love,
Nor will rivers overflow it;
If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love,
It would be utterly despised.”
– Song of Solomon 8: 6 – 7

A fan of our Facebook page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional,  “inboxed” us one recent evening to ask if we knew of any holy matrimony couples who had been “divorced” under man’s immoral laws and later came out of non-covenant “remarriages” with others to be reconciled to each other by the power of God.     We have been sharing true stories like this all week leading up to Valentine’s Day, and we’re not finished yet!

(* names have been fictionalized to protect the privacy of SIFC’s own son’s mother and father in law, but the facts are true and real.)

One blustery late afternoon in February several years ago, our son asked a young lady to marry him after he had led her to the Lord, and she accepted.    SIFC had met this young lady on two or three previous occasions, on the first of which, she temporarily had blue hair and various body piercings.    The next occasion saw her at our home prior to attending a business dinner as our son’s escort, and I was asked to lend her a pair of tights for the evening so that the “cutting” scars on her legs would not show.    It wasn’t long after that, that an early May wedding was scheduled, and the mother-of- the-groom was heading toward the home of her parents to assist the mother-of-the-bride with her gown for the occasion, sewing basket in hand.   The family story that unfolded as we prepared for this wedding was an amazing one indeed.

Sonny, his pastor brother “Sam”, and Sally were all from Cajun country in Louisiana, and now were living and working in north central Illinois.    Sonny and Sally married young, not long after finishing high school.    Unlike the brother,  neither Sonny nor Sally are born-again believers to this very day, despite Sonny’s and Sam’s father also being a pastor.   Grandfather and uncle co-officiated at the tender wedding of our children in 2011.

A few years into Sonny and Sally’s marriage, Sally met another man and divorced Sonny.    She remarried this other man, taking two children, including our daughter-in-love, into this new “marriage”.    To the two dark-headed, olive-complected covenant children were eventually added a blonde half-sister.    God was nevertheless gracious to Sally, and after some time, He pulled her out of that unholy matrimony union.   In due time, she was back home and remarried to Sonny, who had honored his original vows and did not remarry.    (Having now met the whole family, I have to strongly suspect the unrelenting prayers of the elder pastor and his wife, Sally’s in-laws back in Louisiana.)

Though Sonny remains a polite but firm atheist, he did not hesitate to forgive his covenant wife, nor raise his little non-covenant step-daughter in such a way that you would never know she is not his own flesh and blood.    As far as SIFC is aware, the biological dad has not been part of our son’s sister-in-law’s life since the non-covenant marriage was dissolved between the parents.

This divorce and remarriage trial has left its scars scattered through the family, on several levels that reflect the unresolved need for this home to be introduced to Jesus Christ, so that He may become the center of that home.    One of the violent crimes against heaven, when satan drags off a believing spouse into a life of covenant family abandonment and legalized adultery, is that he or she is “AWOL” when a Sonny and Sally enter our lives, speaking of SIFC’s own prodigal, who would have gone out of his way to minister to Sonny a few years before falling away himself.    There is no other couple of similar age and experience to model a Christ-centered, restored marriage in front of them, nor moral authority to witness to them that no covenant marriage is beyond God’s touch to bring about ALL of His purposes for it.    Among Sonny and Sally’s children, the elder son is a practicing homosexual.     Our daughter-in-law has panic attacks, and it’s taken years to get her to wear a swimsuit, due to pervasive scars from the season of cutting herself that resulted from all the turmoil in her family. Though Sonny has forgiven his wife for these events,  the lack of Jesus, and of God’s design for biblical roles in their home has kept their relationship on tense and fragile terms where teamwork is present, but intimacy has never been fully restored.    Our son and their daughter have a vibrant, Christ-centered marriage, to the praise of God, and the prayers continue down in Louisiana, as well as in SIFC’s home,  for the power of God to get hold of that elder covenant marriage one more time!      For nothing will be impossible with God.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |   Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!  

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Are Millions REALLY Going to Hell for Remarriage Adultery? How Do We Know?

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Luke16
by Standerinfamilycourt

What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.   Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
–  Matthew 10:27-28

With permission, we’re sharing an “inbox” inquiry received on our Facebook community page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional:

“Quick overview. Covenant wife divorced me early nineties. Stood approx. 4 years until Cov. wife became engaged. Starting dating..fell into sin..ended up marrying woman I impregnated 1 week before cov. wife was remarried. Tough second marriage. 3 year separation where I stood for the non covenant marriage and she did come home with another mans child. Fast foward 15 years and she left again. This time as reading the bible and studying the blinders came off. Now back to standing for covenant marriage altho cov wife seems to have had a very blessed marriage. Sometimes I think if I had married one week after I would have had a good marriage and hers would have been bad. The struggle I have is with how my covenant wife has seem to have been so blessed. Reading your blog there was an article where you had come to grips with remarriage being a hell or heaven matter. What was the information the settled the matter in your heart? You see so many people in remarriages that love God…works demonstrate their faith, etc. that it’s hard to believe that an eternity in hell awaits them. Your thoughts are appreciated.”

( FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC: Of course, we have addressed these recurring questions in many prior posts, such as this one,  and  this one, but we’re not surprised that the central question keeps popping up.)

Thanks for your question, Page Fan.   You raise many issues in your question, and the response can get lengthy in a hurry.  Since it’s a question many have, I’d like to give you a quick answer about the events that solidified the heaven-or-hell heart knowledge for “standerinfamilycourt”,  and give you a couple of resources to digest on your own.    Then, with your permission, and keeping your identity confidential, what I’d like to do is bring a fuller response to everyone through a blog post by the end of February.   May I ?

The first thing to understand is what Jesus was telling us in Matt.19:6 and 8.  Humanists, from Moses to the Pharisees, to Martin Luther to Pope Francis, have always rebelled against God’s order, which was established at creation, by trying to make the question of divorce and remarriage about allowances and “permissions”.
Jesus came along and said, “no, it’s strictly about metaphysics — to which there are no exceptions.”   This is what He’s saying in Matt. 19:6:  only God’s hand can form the lifelong one-flesh entity of holy matrimony.  He does it instantaneously and supernaturally, creating an entirely new entity, “they are never again two (according to the verb tense He actually used, translated into Greek) but one flesh.”   God then becomes the other party with that new entity to an unconditional covenant.  All of this occurs BEFORE physical consummation if the couple was chaste before taking vows.
Where they weren’t chaste, but there is no living, estranged spouse, it still occurs before they are back up the aisle and out the door.

This is the foundation that makes all non-widowed “remarriage” adultery, and is why Jesus repeated on three separate occasions that EVERYONE who “marries” a divorced woman enters into an ongoing state of adultery.   If it was adulterous for another man to “marry” YOUR covenant wife, it is equally adulterous for your one-flesh to claim to the world that she is “married” to that man, regardless of how “blessed” it might look from the outside.

I assure you, she knows that “hen soma” (satan’s glittery but pale counterfeit discussed in 1 Cor. 6:16) is a hollow substitute for “sarx mia” – the supernatural, God-joined genuine article.

Jesus was not just saying in Matt.19:6 and 8 (SIFC: notice the verb tense again in “it was not [EVER] this way”) that divorce was immoral — He was saying that man’s paper claims of “dissolution” were IMPOSSIBLE.   Only death severs the one-flesh entity, and only death removes God from the unconditional covenant He has made with that inseverable one-flesh entity.   To the divorced and remarried priest He addresses through the prophet Malachi (chapter 2), He says….” the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she IS (not “was”) your companion and your wife by covenant.”

I have always known from my earliest days as a believer that non-widowed remarriage was fake and adulterous, and this came by revelation of God’s direct word and the Holy Spirit’s counsel to me personally.   I stood strong against the rapidly-apostasizing church four decades ago based on that.   But even in those days, I only knew a fraction of what I was eventually to learn.    So here are the events that clarified things for me:

The first thing was that the pastor of my own church decided a few years ago to take many weeks to teach the entire congregation on Sundays how to use the principles of sound hermeneutics in bible study to detect and avoid error / “spin”.   He was so serious about it that he did this right from the pulpit in the main service.   He wasn’t teaching on marriage, just general principles.   I then read a 1957 book called “Does Divorce Dissolve Marriage?” written around the same kind of rigorous hermeneutic framework as I had just learned in church, written by a bible college president who died in 1975.

The second thing was the range of accomplished bible scholars I met shortly afterward.   Soon I met displaced pastors whose covenant wives had divorced them, but they had obeyed the Lord and remained celibate, some of them for 30 years who never had a church again after that, expressly because they refused to “remarry”. These guys (and in one case an accomplished lady bible scholar who had repented of an adulterous “remarriage” with another woman’s “divorced” husband), taught me how to use free online deep bible study tools to get back to the original Greek and Hebrew texts, which then exposed all of the places where liberal bible translation committees had distorted our English-language bibles over the past 100 years or so to make divorce and remarriage seem acceptable.  I then found out there were a handful of happily married pastors, in quite a mix of denominations, with congregations who agreed with these “divorced” pastors and preached the truth boldly from their own pulpits — all of the truth.   Being able to see the differences in Greek word usage that the liberal commentators don’t tell people about, helped me deeply understand the nature of both one-flesh and God’s unconditional covenants, as well as His character in how He treats His holy symbols.

Once I had this hermeneutics and online tools methodology under my belt, I happened to be accepted as a FB friend by a prominent professor (former Catholic) in a mainline Protestant seminary who had become an early friend of our FB page, and who had once rebutted Dr. David Instone-Brewer’s erroneous and liberal book from 2001.   Dr. G allowed me to post marriage indissolubility comments on his wall, which is a gathering-place for Christian leaders and students, but he became uncomfortable and PM’d me one evening when I posted evidence that it’s a heaven-or-hell issue, just as remaining in a sodomous relationship is for gays who claim to be believers.

Dr. G: ”  [SIFC}, I think you are beginning to dominate the discussion on my divorce post overly much. I think people understand your point. Some of it is helpful but careful for overkill.”

SIFC:  “Good evening, Dr. G. Sorry I’ve offended. I’m in the middle of finishing a blog, so will give it a rest, and I do appreciate the touch-base. I do have a question, if it’s something you’ve addressed before. In your mind, is there any difference between “not inheriting the kingdom of God” and going to hell?   This is a serious question and would love to have your input some time. Thanks.”

Dr. G:  “Not inheriting the kingdom of God means exclusion from eternal life.”

SIFC:   “So I guess your response would be “no difference”?”

Bottom line, he readily admitted that they mean the same thing, and has continued to allow me to post the same kinds of comments ever since.    (The other possibility might have been for him to cite “loss of rewards”, as some of the Calvinists do with regard to the born-again who disobey the Lord in this area, but he didn’t do so.)

By that  late evening incident in 2015, I knew that it wasn’t wrong to link 1 Cor.6:9-10  with Luke 16:18, since after all, Jesus Himself did so in verses 19-31 of Luke 16.   Notice He also does so in Matthew 5:27-32, keeping in mind that when those words came out of His mouth, there was no bible committee to sanitize it by adding “helpful headings” and “suggested divisions”.     (Dr. G still claims there is adultery and “adultery-lite” depending on whether or not there’s man’s paper involved, but this learned seminarian has never been able to point to any scripture that supports this, except for the (irrelevant) story of the woman shacking up with a non-husband,  of whom John’s account doesn’t tell us Jesus told her she had to “come out of”  – but neither does John’s account tell us that He told her to hie herself off to the rabbi and “marry” the dude, post-haste.)
Dr. G is similar to John Piper and Voddie Baucham, good men who all agree that “remarriage” is adultery before it actually happens, but who all object, without scriptural basis, to the idea that repenting of this ongoing sin is done the same way as repenting of any other ongoing state of sin.

The third thing that happened is that I was exposed to all of the writings of the early church leaders, from the Apostles – people who had been in the house with Jesus after His confrontation with the Pharisees about remarriage being adultery, where He spoke of becoming a “eunuch” for the sake of inheriting the kingdom of God – to the ones that lived some 300 or 400 years later. They were unanimous about it as well. Even if some of them did consider man’s “divorce” real in terms of a separation, they all knew it didn’t dissolve anything until somebody died, so they all unanimously forbid remarriage while an estranged spouse was still alive.
One of them, Ignatius, who was the bishop of Antioch (died when executed by the Romans in a den of lions) said this around 100 A.D. :

“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 the flesh have suffered death, how much more shall 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.”

This audio link with important church history details is by Rev. Stephen Wilcox – whom I also highly recommend to you as a contact. Stephen runs the Spirit of Hosea Fellowship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhhGSHJAef4

We have to understand that remarriage adultery doesn’t just break the commandment against adultery. It also breaks the 1st commandment against idolatry (finding God-substitutes / self-worship), and the 8th, 9th and 10th commandments (stealing, bearing false witness, and coveting that which belongs to another).
If we die in the ongoing sin of remarriage adultery we die in all of those other sins as well, and we know from Rev. 21:8 that unrepentant liars and covetous idolators are cast into the lake of fire.   Ditto for living in an ongoing state of unforgiveness which Jesus repeatedly stated will send people to hell if they die in that state (see Matt. 18:23-35).   Adulterous remarriage constitutes permanent unforgiveness, taking our own revenge, as well as idolatry, covetousness, theft and sexual immorality.

MarriageHeresy

If we stand for our covenant marriage, our motivation has to be right — we have to dread the idea of our God-joined one-flesh being cast into the lake of fire so much that we are determined to go the distance in what will seem like endless deprivation.  We have to dread the idea that our children and grandchildren are likely to emulate our example of something that could send them to hell, unless they have the chance to observe us drawing a durable moral line in the sand.    Above all, we can’t presume to give the Ruler of All Heaven and Earth a selfish time limit before we go and jeopardize yet another person’s soul by purporting to “marry” them when we are already joined for life in holy matrimony by GOD.

There’s much I can say about the appearance that your wife is “blessed” while “married” to somebody Jesus repeatedly called an adulterer.   To gain some perspective, I suggest you read all of Luke, chapter 16;  think deeply about everything Jesus was saying in that rich chapter and how it all ties together.  The part about unrighteous mammon (following the world system), about John the Baptist who was beheaded for warning a pair of remarriage adulterers to repent or face hell and what Jesus thought about that, and finally the story of the rich man and Lazarus, thinking about how that relates to your exclusive one-flesh and the counterfeit she is “married” to.

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.   –  Matthew 5:44-45

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.  For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.  – Galatians 6:7-8

(FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC: When we sow peas, we don’t reap corn.   We usually reap much later than we sow, and normally, we reap much more than we sow.   When the covenant wife “divorces” her husband, she takes herself out of the God-ordained covering-and-authority structure that includes her God-joined husband with God over him, which is also planting a “seed”, of sorts.  That act [unrepented], too, is a “work” that is demonstrating her “faith”, is it not?   God’s mercy toward her may be because she was never taught any better, but we cannot say.)

And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?   No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”   Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.”     –  Luke 16:12-15

In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and *saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.   And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.’  But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.   –  Luke 16:23-25

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.  For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”   –  Matthew 7:13-14

Truly, I say to you, “they have their reward in full.”  – Matthew 6: 2, 5, and 16

Finally, Page Fan, do remember that God joins and honors valid mixed and pagan marriages as indissoluble, equally as He does “Christian” marriages.   However, if anyone in this scenario is unsaved, not born again, remarriage adultery won’t be the primary reason they wind up in hell.   Nobody can afford to put the cart before the horse.   I hope you will recognize these women in your life, and all the children, as souls first who need Jesus more than anything else.

Blessings, Page Fan, and I hope this helps.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Discipleship, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

What if a BELIEVING Spouse Leaves?

5 Comments

Peaceby Standerinfamilycourt

For the report of your obedience has reached to all; therefore I am rejoicing over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.   The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.
–  Romans 16:19-20

Would the Apostle Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 7:15 really be the same to the immorally-abandoned spouse of a backslidden believer as he gave to the abandoned spouse of an unbeliever who departs?

What is happening in the apostate church today is causing a contagion that goes a bit beyond what Paul spoke of in in his first epistle to the Corinthians.    No leader in the 1st thru 15th century church, outside of the rogue papacy of the Middle Ages who occasionally offered the indulgence of “annulment” (from the inception of that abominable heresy in the late 12th century), would have tolerated divorce and remarriage without excommunicating the guilty party and refusing to sanction any subsequent “marriage” of either partner.    We know this from the very consistent writings of the early church fathers in those centuries.  Hence, when Paul spoke of the (Greek: apistos – “one who is unconvinced“) , contextually, he was speaking of the spouse of a relatively recent convert who was suffering the persecution from their one-flesh who “didn’t sign up for” a life of discipleship, and emotionally could not live under the same roof with the strong conviction that  this event invariably introduced into the home.    The purpose of allowing the unbeliever to depart while walking in our own tranquility was  (1) to allow refocus on discipleship without guilt or double-mindedness, and
(2) for God’s mercy and the supernatural power of the one-flesh bond to draw the agnostic into the kingdom of God through the built-in sanctification process in their mate.    All of the above presumed a pure, uncorrupted church body and godly leadership, such as prevailed in the 1st century church, into which Paul was speaking.

By sharp contrast, the apostate church of today is literally fueling the demand for rampant unilateral divorce and adulterous remarriage among professed believers by performing wicked, vain ceremonies over the already-married-for-life, by counseling those “married” to someone else’s God-joined spouse to remain in those adulterous unions lest they commit a “repeat sin”, by refusing to warn the adulterously-remarried that dying in that ongoing immoral state will send them to hell,  by handing pulpits over to pastors who are themselves adulterously “remarried”, and by steering people into unbiblical DivorceCare classes if satan attacks their holy matrimony union.    This has created an epidemic of “believers” departing in almost every church, with only a temporary (at best) rebuke from leadership– usually only until such time as the immoral relationship is legalized under man’s law.

Toxic Calvinism (“antinomianism”) has added further fuel to the fire by claiming (often falsely) that the abandoning spouse “wasn’t born-again to begin with“,  and results in further hindering, due to the “once saved, always saved” (OSAS) heresy, the warning of hell that backslidden spouses are ethically owed by church leadership.     Who today is still publicly rebuking  Tulian Tchividjian or Kent Hovind,  as they were only a year or two ago?    Will the current furor die down in Christian alternative media when Greg Locke “marries” another man’s covenant wife and charges forward in his “ministry” as though he is not apostate before the Lord?     Does anyone even remember that John Hagee and Jim Bakker have done so for decades without rebuke?     Or that Benny Hinn and Charles Stanley, by the grace of God, both narrowly escaped falling into this apostasy?    Paul surely prophesied of an apostate latter-day church, but he left a strong prescription for cleaning out the old leaven.   Today’s wolves leave the leaven of the Pharisees undisturbed, and instead claim (temporarily, it seems) that none of these gentlemen were ever born again.    Will we allow them to say the same about our one-flesh partner, if we know differently?    Is that not damnable slander?

Do we spouses owe our deceived but born-again one-flesh mate who is running from God this warning of hell, if we know they won’t hear it anywhere else?    After all, the primary reason the unbelieving marital abandoner is going to hell is because they have never surrendered their life to Christ, not their ongoing state of legalized adultery.   They cannot possibly digest a hell message tied to holy matrimony until, and probably for some time after,  that eternally-crucial event occurs.   However, with regard to the one irreversibly indwelt with the Holy Spirt,  does such a warning constitute “striving” and “not allowing them to depart”, such as Paul envisioned?    Is such a warning to them from us failing to promote “living in peace”, in disobedience to Paul’s instructions?  Further, is challenging in court, or refusing to sign, an unconstitutional unilateral divorce petition which violates our precious 1st amendment protections also a failure to “allow the unbeliever to depart” in God’s eyes, or is it our holy witness of loving our enemy as we ourselves would want to be loved?    Is God at all offended by our earnest, eternally-motivated prayers to pull the immoral union apart for the sake of all the souls involved?

By way of illustration, in the state of Illinois the combined fault-based / “no-fault” petition in effect in 2012 (later changed by the legislature in 2015)  listed these “irreconcilable differences” assertions by the Petitioner:

  • That the spouses have lived separate and apart for a continuous period in excess of 2 years
  • Irreconcilable differences  have caused the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage
  • Good faith efforts at reconciliation have failed
  • Future attempts at reconciliation would be impracticable and not in the best interests of the family

When no part of these four statements are true for the Christ-follower who believes in the holy will and power of God toward covenant spouses, whom His hand has personally joined and with whom He covenants until physical death,  if that Christ-follower is the “Respondent”, they had at that time only three options, only two of which would be according to their conscience:

(1) Perjure themselves by signing off their assent under oath in order to avoid a humiliating and expensive civil grounds trial

(2) Not respond  to the petition  at all, including not engaging counsel, and accept a default judgment

(3) Deny the false allegations and prepare to bring hard evidence into “family court” to attempt to disprove the allegations.

Due to lack of resources to carry off option (3), many standers would choose option (2), or worse, option (1).     “Standerinfamilycourt” chose option (3) and was blessed to have  been provided the resources necessary to do so.     Needless to say, this is not necessarily the option most evangelicals would consider the “way of peace” to which we are “called”.   But, due to the blatant slander of the character and power of God, and the sworn falsehood entailed in option (1), neither is that option necessarily the way of peace with God, even if it seems the “way of peace” with our one-flesh.    In “standerinfamilycourt’s” case, sustaining this civil trial compelled the petitioning prodigal to make numerous, disruptive transatlantic trips, further shattering the “peace”, as humiliating evidence of misdeeds and perjuries were brought forward in the courtroom.    Several requests and proposals to submit to counseling in order to cut the litigation short were offered by the Respondent and rejected by the Petitioner.

This begs the question:   what exactly is “peace” in the context Paul was using it in verse 15?

 Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace.

InPeaceOrToPeace

The usual rendering of this verse in most contemporary English translations ends with “called us to peace”, or it adds words, by inference, that are not in the Greek manuscript texts so as to equivalently render it “called us to [live in] peace”.       The idea of most exegetes (including the brief sermon link by Pastor Stephen Wilcox of the Spirit of Hosea Fellowship behind the clickable picture above) is that the disciple of Jesus is not to strive to induce an estranged spouse to remain in the home (some, though not Pastor Wilcox, go so far as to say,  in the marriage — which is nonsensical, since only death dissolves the holy matrimony union, and immoral departure from it only violates the union without severing it, hence, God never gave anyone the “choice” about staying in their vowed state of lifelong holy matrimony, we simply ARE in it if the spouse of our youth is alive, whether we like it or not).

What if, however, Paul actually meant that our “peace” is not merely the result of our chosen actions toward our prodigal spouse or any other adversary, but is, at least in part,  the passive result of our regeneration in Christ?    Wouldn’t that mean that we are “walking in peace” if we are sincerely living to depend upon and please Him?    This would certainly be consistent with the actual untranslated, literal texts, at least.    We are called “in” peace, it literally reads, not necessarily “called to” peace (a circumstance that we might be able to influence to a certain degree, but certainly not control).

If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace {G1514-eiréneuó)with all men.
– Romans 12:18

Several wise Christian leaders have truthfully asserted that the absence of conflict does not necessarily constitute the presence of peace, just as the presence of courage is not comprised of all absence of fear.    Both depend to a certain degree on our behavior responses, which reflect varying degrees of faith.   Choosing option (1) above, entailing perjury and blasphemy, does not make for peace with God’s glory.     Choosing option (3) may seem contentious on the surface, but may actually reflect a larger purpose of God as well as not only looking out for our own interests but concern for the interests of others, even if it alienates our spouse.     Of the three, which option requires the most faith and confidence in God?    Which option requires the least faith and confidence in God?

Peace-#1515-eiranay_2

According to Strong’s concordance, there are five Hebrew words which translate into the Greek eiréné (G1515) for “peace”, which is the root word for the English word “serenity”.     One of these is shalom, which means not only the absence of conflict, but the presence of overall well-being or wholeness.

Here’s a link to the other biblical Greek words for “peace”.

Hesuchazo (G2270 ) – Luke 14:4 and 23:56.
(to keep quiet, to rest, cease from labor)

  • to lead a quiet life, said of those who are not running hither and thither, but stay at home and mind their business
  • to be silent, i.e. to say nothing, hold one’s peace.

Sigao (G4601) – Luke 9:36; Luke 20:26; Acts 12:17; Acts 15:12-13;
1 Corinthians 14:28; 1 Corinthians 14:30; 1 Corinthians 14:34; Romans 16:25
(to keep silence, hold one’s peace: to be kept in silence, be concealed)

Salem (G4532)  Hebrews 7:2
(the ancient name of Jerusalem, where Melchizidek was king; city of peace)

Mesites (G3316) Galatians 3:19-20; 1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 9:15; Hebrews 12:24
(mediator, arbitrator, peacekeeper)

Peacemakers; peace-lovers (G1518) are eirénopoios – Matthew 5:9 whom Jesus told us were blessed.

Hence, the idea of conflict avoidance to appease the prodigal and his/her allies, or ‘”option (1)” in the unilateral petition dilemma, seems more closely related to  sigao (conflict concealment) than eirene.   “Option (2)” might be consistent with hesuchazo in the circumstance of a lack of means to do otherwise, but there is no assurance of wholeness.   However, if we’re called to a life of discipleship in well-being or wholeness, this more closely links with the “shalom” understanding of eiréné, which appears to be passive and not at all instructional.     The “option (3)”  response does not appear to be “striving” (provided it is not motivated by seeking our own vengeance) and can morally be selected as part of a vision for God to do something bigger than ourselves, such as a constitutional legal challenge to an immoral law that is destroying society and triggering God’s judgment on the land.

And the peace (eirene) of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.   – Philippians 4: 7

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.
– John 14:27

Eirene is the most frequently-appearing form of “peace” in the New Testament.   Virtually everywhere it’s used, the context is far greater than mere conflict avoidance or conflict concealment or appeasement.   Certainly, covenant marriage standers don’t “stand” if they want to avoid conflict.   Most allies of our prodigals consider our stands “selfish”  and “divisive”, after all.    We stand because we seek the wholeness and well-being of our covenant family, and this requires far more than appeasement and conflict avoidance.

In properly understanding what the Apostle had in mind when he gave the instruction in 1 Cor. 7:15, it also doesn’t hurt to check that we have an accurate understanding of what it means to be “called”.

kletos – (G2822 ) – 1 Corinthians 1:1-2; 1 Corinthians 1:2
(invited; commissioned; appointed)

kaleó  – (G2564) – 1 Corinthians 1:9; 1 Corinthians 7:15;
1 Corinthians 7:17-18; 1 Corinthians 7:20–22; 1 Corinthians 7:24; 1 Corinthians 10:27; 1 Corinthians 15:9

(Note that this verb “called” is consistent throughout 1 Corinthians 7 for our rebirth into the kingdom of God while in a pre-existing condition;  called (keklēken) while married or single; called (keklēken) while circumcised or uncircumcised; called (keklēken) while a slave or a free person.   It does not seem to be connected with a particular command or instructions other than to remain in that condition, so long as it is not an immoral state that calls for repentance.)

  1. to call
    1. to call aloud, utter in a loud voice
    2. to invite
  2. to call i.e. to name, by name
    1. to give a name to
      1. to receive the name of, receive as a name
      2. to give some name to one, call his name
    2. to be called i.e. to bear a name or title (among men)

to salute one by name

eklektos  –  (G1588)   Matthew 20:16; Matthew 22:14; Matthew 24:22; Matthew 24:24; Matthew 24:31

(picked out, chosen by God, to obtain salvation through Christ

  1. Christians are called “chosen or elect” of God
    • the Messiah in called “elect”, as appointed by God to the most exalted office conceivable
    • choice, select, i.e. the best of its kind or class, excellence preeminent: applied to certain individual Christians

1 Cor 7.15 dissected

 Picture credit:  Sharon Henry

We can make no mistake: the believing spouse who abandons their one-flesh companion to pursue and attempt to “legitimize” their adultery partner is every bit as lost as the unbelieving spouse who does so, if they never repent or make restitution, but instead die in the illicit relationship.    But the very day-to-day nature of that lostness is profoundly different.   In the latter case, the hounds of heaven pursue the unregenerated wayward spouse from outside his or her body.    In the case of the immoral believer, a grieved and quenched Holy Spirit, never comforted by man’s paper,  is forcibly, unwillingly joined time and again with a harlot or whoremonger, as Paul so vividly describes in the previous chapter.   In the unregenerated adulterer, the Holy Spirit is not forced along for the ride.   Is it not therefore at least possible that the approach to that wandering sheep was not actually addressed by Paul as specifically as in verse 15, but more generally by verses 11, and 39?     Today’s OSAS crowd would have us believe that this difference does not exist,  as they would have us believe that sarx mia (God-joined one-flesh) can be severed by other than death,  and they would have us believe that man-legalized spouses are morally interchangeable in God’s sight.

Lastly,  it should be noted that the Greek term apistos (G571) has usages other than “unbeliever”, including “faithless” or “lacking faith”.    Its usage is different, however, than in 1 Peter 3:1 where apeithousin (G544) is used for “disobedient one”, “rebel” or “disloyal one”.    It is also distinguished from moichalis (G3428) – a spiritual adulterer or idol-worshipper.   Further, apistos is distinguished from parapesontas (G3895) – meaning apostasy or one who has fallen away.    All considered, it is doubtful that Paul was talking about a backslidden believer in 1 Cor. 7:14 or 1 Cor. 7:15, in his instruction to allow the unbeliever to depart without challenge of any sort, and his encouragement that the unbelieving spouse is sanctified by the believing spouse.    Possibly, this is because a Tulian Tchividjian or a Kent Hovind or a Greg Locke would already have such a hardened, demon-controlled heart, bordering on apostasy, that the choices of their believing one-flesh spouse in seeking family wholeness would be unlikely to have much effect in the short run, regardless.    Perhaps in the longer run, however, such a person’s God-joined, one-flesh mate is the only other soul strong enough to wage long term spiritual warfare for their soul, possibly averting the realization of dire warning in Hebrews 6:4-6:

 For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

SIFC says this in hope rather than in firm reliance on scripture, only because of the miraculous testimonies of prodigals who have indeed returned to the Lord and to their faithful, praying stander, sometimes after decades of willful apostasy (as contrasted with negligent ignorance of the truth of marriage indissolubility).     This may be due to nothing more that the mercy and special favor of the Lord for the obedient stander in these evil times.

Wrapping up,  “standerinfamilycourt” would say that any abandoned spouse who was not around for their prodigal mate’s conversion and regeneration, and did not live with them to see several years of progressive transformation thereafter, whose maturing children’s lives and attitudes show they were not “caught by”, rather than “taught”, the way of the Spirit of God by the progidgal’s example during those post-conversion years,  is probably best off assuming their spouse was a goat among the sheep, or a tare among the wheat, and applying the traditional view of 1 Cor. 7:15 (except for the false notion that the marriage bond is “broken” or never existed) – as Pastor Wilcox described it in the audio link above.  Ditto, for the case where the spouse apostasized from the exceedingly rare church that did teach the full truth about the no-excuses indissolubility of holy matrimony, with eternal consequences being frankly exegeted from the pulpit.    These last prodigals are consciously rejecting truth that they have been faithfully exposed to, and in that regard, are not unlike the man in 1 Cor. 5 whom Paul deemed it necessary to hand over to satan that his soul may be saved for the last day.

That said, a considerable number of genuinely born-again, Spirit-indwelt prodigal spouses, where the above signs were in solid evidence before they fell away,  were sold a “bill-of-goods” by the harlot church and failed to hear the truth for decades since, from leadership who may not even have known the truth about the nature of sarx mia (the inseverable one-flesh state and indissolubility) during the post-1970’s era.   These prodigals remain in great danger (if they have “remarried”), of falling under the influence of a John Piper or a Voddie Baucham or a Russell Moore or a David Servant who will tell them between 50% and 98% of the truth, but the 2% which all of these Calvinist shepherds are omitting is eternally lethal, because they all omit, misrepresent and discourage the opportunity for true repentance to someone who has the Spirit-endued capacity to absorb the unadulterated truth.    This truth should never be delivered as a cudgel or as a naggy, dripping faucet.   It should not be forced, but we should prayerfully ask God to open up to us, as their one-flesh true spouse, the rare opportunity where it is natural to share once or very, very infrequently, and we obey Him in that moment.

 

As a repentant Solomon once exposited, late in life:
Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.   For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up.
– Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Having done what the Lord requires of us,  we then should plead before the throne of heaven for the Lord to stir up the grieved and quenched Holy Spirit in our born-again prodigal to cause what was shared to be recalled by Him frequently to their disturbed remembrance, also  to hedge them off from the offices (and YouTube channels) of the evangelical wolves,  and grant them an overwhelming burden for their own soul and that of their faux spouse.   Once we have done that, and we have obeyed in forgiving and restoring them when and if they repent, we will then not have to endure God’s future rebuke that what we failed to do for the least of these, we failed to do for Him.

The one who desires life, to love and see good days,
Must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
“He must turn away from evil and do good;
He must seek peace and pursue it.
“For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous,
And His ears attend to their prayer,
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
– 1 Peter 3:10-12

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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