Marriage Is Mutiny

NOTE: The manuscript may contain spelling or grammatical errors, and may deviate from the actual audio of the final sermon delivery. Quote with caution.

Scripture Reading

"Do not commit adultery."

-Exodus 20:14

"You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

-Matthew 5:27-30

 God did not bless me with a green thumb. I am not very diligent when it comes to taking care of flowers, trees, or any greenery really. All of the efforts you see strewn around our living room are of one wonderful, dutiful woman who loves to create a vibrancy in our home. Truly, Laura is an example of a wondrous woman who builds the coziest of homes. I, on the other hand, suffer from the disease of impatience. I have often tried my hand at caring for God's creations, and I have repeatedly failed in my endeavors. 

Though, maybe that's turning around for me. There was one particular plant I was reflecting on this past week in our family's hotel lobby during COVID when we were going through construction and a lack of sales and whatnot. The plant in question had all but died; the stems withered away, and it was covered in dead leaves and rancid soil. It seemed as if it was completely done for. But for whatever reason, we held on to it.

About two years ago, I started nurturing that plant again, gave it new soil, trimmed all the dead off of it, gave it consistent care, and ensured it had water, sun, all of its necessities. Two years later, I find myself looking at this little plant in the lobby, and it's not more than six inches, maybe seven high, with maybe 15 leaves on it, but that's more than no leaves and more than no height. And I found myself overwhelmed with a unique sense of enjoyment that I had cared for this thing and cultivated it to the point that it is now beginning to grow. One day, I hope to see it truly thrive, which considerably delights me.

It was that very plant that I began reflecting on as I eyed its beautiful purple, orange, and green colors on each leaf. I began to think about marriage. Some of us have been married longer than others, and some are in the younger stages of our marriages. But ultimately, the healthiest way to look at marriage is to look at it as a plant you are growing, a tree that you are tending to carefully.

And sometimes, we languish because we don't see the fruit of our labor right here and now. And so we cry out to God because we don't see the marriage that we feel like we were promised in the Hallmark movies, that we feel like we got an exquisite preview of in our dating lives. We were once head over heels, and then we got married, and it turns out that cultivating this beautiful thing is a lot more challenging than people made it out to be.

"Was it all a lie?" We ask ourselves. Is it a sham that Christian culture sells to young men and young women so that they might procreate more good little Christian girls and good little Christian boys who will also one day get married and continue the process? You all know that I don't believe that. You all know that I see marriage as something more magnificent, something utterly unique to Christianity, something that no matter how hard a secular culture will try to seize the image of marriage for their own desires and ends, they will never have anything close to God-honoring marriage because it is something God designed for God, to glorify God. And to preface, I am happily married. I wouldn’t trade my wife for anything in the world, and I’m not just saying that because I’m supposed to.

The title of my message today as we deal with the seventh commandment and all its various implications is  "Marriage is Mutiny." I bet you don't consider your marriage to be mutinous. The last thing you likely see in your marriage is something that rebels. Perhaps, on some level, you feel like you conformed. You feel like you did what was expected of you. I'm here to tell you that you mutinied. 

In a Pew Research analysis in 2019, they saw that over 68 percent of adults say that it is acceptable for unmarried couples to live together. That is to say, enjoying the benefits of marriage without the covenant promise that Christians implore is necessary for matrimony. In 2014, the dating website Ashley Madison, a website geared towards individuals interested in affairs, mind you, conducted a poll about the religious affiliations of its members. Appallingly, out of the sixty thousand respondents in the U.S., one out of every four described themselves as born-again evangelical Christians. Another 22.75 percent said that they were Catholic. God knows what statistics we might glean today.

To quote something else, while I am open to seeing it as a joke, there's a website that I came across this past week - ChristianSwingers.com, a new dating site for "faithful couples." Faithful, eh? "We are faithfully trading each other off to other individuals." I'm quoting directly from the website right now when I say, “For Christian swingers, things are not easy. Often, other religious people judge you out of ignorance or envy, telling you that your lifestyle and love practices are wrong.” Uh… yeah. Yeah I am. More people in this world need judging, and ya'll are some of them. Please quote me on that. I am judging the heck out of them right now. 

They go on to say, “...the Bible teaches us to judge not lest ye be judged…and there's that other verse about the first stone. [Shame. They don't even have the courtesy of knowing the Word that they're bastardizing.] But if you're keen on keeping your privacy and don't want your friends, co-workers, or other PTA members or just about anyone else to know that you don't have a problem with faith and enjoying free love with other couples, this site can help you. Designed to cater to the needs of those like you, devout Christian couples who still want to have an active love life and share it with another in good faith.”

 I'm praying that the last one is a joke. But who knows nowadays? I've met enough, "loosey-goosey" Christians to realize it could be true. Regardless, in this world that denies the sacredness of marriage, your marriage is mutiny. Your marriage rebels against the seemingly unending tide of non-commitment and licentiousness.

I hope you catch the problem with all I've currently described. I hope you see the absolute torrent of issues this causes. I hope you've awoken in a sense after witnessing scandal after scandal from people who claim the name of Christ but find out later that they lead a sexually immoral lifestyle, creating a bad reputation for Christians everywhere. So we ask ourselves, are these people really Christians, or are they Christians in the areas that are convenient for them, hypocrites to the very core, demonizing the very activities that they believe qualify as immorality while also overlooking their own evil? More importantly, will we conform to their letdowns, or will we rebel?

Where We're Going

You know, in this church, we don't play that game of making faith convenient for us. Whatever sin you wish to overlook, whatever Bible verses you wish to cease reading and studying, those are the ones you need to wrestle with day and night. See, the problem is you all, to my knowledge, acknowledge the acceptability of infidelity according to the world and have likely said "no" to it. You've seen the gaining ground of those who champion infidelity even in the church, and you would still say, "No, I would never sleep with someone else!"

 Yet, I wonder if we consider there are other implications in this command that have nothing to do with sharing the bed with someone who is not your husband or your wife. We want to think that, like the prior commandment against murder, this would be an effortlessly followed command. However, that depressing study by Ashley Madison and all these other things I mentioned find depressingly that the church struggles with infidelity. And even if you don't personally, maybe you're not tending to the roots of your marriages as faithfully as you ought. 

So, I want to take a step here, and I want to state, firstly, that while much of what I say in this upcoming (I'll be honest) ramble may not apply to you right now, but perhaps it'll apply to someone you minister to. Or there is a principle you can pluck from today's message that will help you in your marriage as you grow in love and peace and joy to appreciate better who your spouse is to you.

I've got three things I will do today as I talk about how God cares about our faithfulness. God cares whether or not we are faithful to our spouses. And that means much more than simply saying "no" to sleeping in someone else's bed. If you want my two cents right off the bat when it comes to understanding the seventh Word from God, that's it there. To merely refuse to commit physical adultery is only standing on the precipice of what constitutes a God-honoring marriage. We are called to more, amen?

So, I'm going to go over three points, three significant assertions of what is implied by God in this command, in this revelation. The three things I will go over are that, first, God loves marriage. The second is God established an order to marriage. And the third is that God hates adultery. Lettuce begin.

God Loves Marriage

 Realizing that God loves marriage is not an arduous task. Of course God loves marriage! God created marriage. At the beginning of the Bible, Genesis 2, the marriage covenant is displayed magnificently. After God created the first man, Adam, he said, "It's not good for man to be alone. I will make a suitable helper for him." (Genesis 2:18)

The first thing we realize is that marriage is for companionship. God loves marriage because he knows what is obvious: It's not good for us to be alone. God did not create another man so that Adam might experience a brotherly companionship, though that can be a powerful thing. Instead, God made a woman from the man's own body and brought her to the man. With the woman, Adam is opened up to the fantastic ecstasy of experiencing intimacy much more deeply than ever possible to share with a man.

God creates man and woman, body and soul, to complement each other in such a profoundly expressive and beautiful way that they literally, in a sense, become one flesh, as we read in Genesis 2:24. I won't get into the order of marriage just yet, but I will state briefly that the most apparent design for marriage is clearly between a man and a woman. You cannot have a marriage if it is between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. And just saying that there defies contemporary sensibilities, and we're just getting started on this crazy train ride. Another such assertion is to declare that God only meant us to experience sexual union within the covenant of marriage. “How dare you say that we can’t sleep with who we want to sleep with!” Oh, I dare. You can undoubtedly consummate outside of marriage, but that does not mean you have established a covenant. 

We must settle this foundation before we move on to the other points. If we argue for marriage the Christian way, if we contend for sex the Christian way, and condemn infidelity and sexual immorality on any level that they appear, we as Christians must unanimously come together and say, "This is what marriage is. God created it and established its purposes, so no other purpose shall prevail." 

"Well, you guys are just oppressing my freedom of self-expression."

No, we're leaning on the wisdom of God, who created marriage, to understand that marriage benefits, expressed outside the marriage covenant, almost always cause irreparable damage to ourselves and others.

Kids born out of wedlock always spell trouble. To sleep with someone for years, only then for them to abandon the relationship with you later causes emotional hurt. Your next partner will have the unenviable task of being compared to someone else’s sexual nature. The marriage covenant protects us from these and does more.

God loves humanity. He wishes to protect us and cause us to thrive. Marriage fulfills such pursuits. God has established the family unit for the flourishing of humankind. In fact, one of the simplest ways you could destroy humanity is to destroy the family unit. The family unit blossoms under the marriage covenant: a mother, a father, and children loving each other. If you get to the point where you are able to justify in some sick way the permissibility of adultery, you have gotten to the point where you are able to justify the downfall of the family. This is not what God has designed for his people, try as radical feminist culture and radical egalitarian culture have done to tear down the nuclear family or  tear down the marriage covenant.

Sharon Jones, author, and social policy analyst for the Christian Institute, once wrote a review of a strictly feminist book called Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family. The book was written as a critique of the New Testament with the objective of promoting distinctly anti-family views. In response to the book, Sharon writes the following:

"Feminists have for years said that the nuclear family is a recent innovation. There are aspects of the so-called traditional family which crystallised during the last one hundred and fifty years. But the nuclear family is universal (George Murdock in Social Structures analysed 250 different societies, and found it to be the basic grouping). Although the nuclear family is often represented as modern, and extended families as old fashioned, recent historical scholarship shows this to be a myth...repeated by evangelical writers…

Certainly Jesus placed the Kingdom as a higher priority than the biological family. Jesus is Lord—not parents, nor husband. If they forbid allegiance to him they must be 'hated' in comparison to him.   But to jettison the creational pattern of a man leaving his parents and being united to his wife is blatantly selective use of the biblical evidence, which ignores God's plan for the family enshrined in the fifth and seventh commands, which indicate that the basic building block of society is mother and father, in a covenant relationship, with the responsibility of bringing up their children." (James, Themelios Volume 27 Issue 3)

Only in love could God establish such a building block, and his desire for healthy marriages and healthy families is exemplified in his deliberate establishment of two out of ten commands tailored explicitly for the family. Furthermore, the egregious cultural desire to upend the institutions of marriage and family gives me further reason to believe these things to be beneficial for humanity. Because, if there's anything I've learned in life, trends are poor indicators of what God intends for his people. 

 Proverbs 18:22 says it simpler than most, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord." The gentlemen said, "amen." The ladies said "amen" as well. After all, you're a good thing, ladies. That’s what it says. As a great line from the movie, The Incredibles declares, "Greater good? I am your wife. I'm the greatest good you are ever gonna get." It's true. Marriage is good. The benefits are countless, a few of which I will touch on today. But my primary point (regarding marriage's benefits) is that in a world beholden to infidelity and disparaging family and marriage, marriage religiously points to the loveliness of God's covenantal promises. This is why Genesis 2:24 says, 'A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they become one flesh.' You've established a family, you've established a union, you are establishing a covenant, honoring God. It's good for you, it's good for society, and it's good for families. God made it very good. God loves marriage.

Marriage Is to Be Honored

This then leads me to my second point. If God loves marriage,  if God has created marriage, it stands to reason that there is a God-honoring way to be married and a God-dishonoring way to be married. 

As we see in the command here, as we saw with 'Do not murder,' there are only two words in the Hebrew  that lead us to this phrase, 'Do not commit adultery.' Two words that can either save a marriage or destroy it, two words that can either empower a beautiful covenant family or two words that can crush it.

God creates marriage. And by extension, God creates sex. The logical conclusion is that there is a way to have sex God's way, and there is having sex in a way that dishonors Him. And far from robbing individuals of their joy, God's commandments concerning sex are built to protect them so that they might not lose their joy.

I love what Ecclesiastes 4:9-11 says if you apply it to marriage:

 "Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?"

 That's beautiful. Joy, true joy, exists in marriages—a sustaining joy. There's a joy unique to marriage. Two are indeed better than one.

Knowing this, the command to not commit adultery builds a wall around your marriage. Not that your relationship will be made into a prison, but that a beautiful, secure garden would surround you; That you would get to enjoy the pleasure of knowing someone in such a beautifully intimate way. And you would also be safe, knowing that such an expression will never yield pain or future regret.

If you speak to individuals who have slept around before they got married, even as Christians, they feel regret. They feel deep pain that they didn't wait around for each other. Furthermore, those who sleep around and then find themselves breaking up with the individual in question end up dealing with the fallout for some time. And this is innately detrimental to their souls. No such issues exist within the marriage covenant.

 But God establishes an order to this marriage covenant. Because if you break down this protective garden, cultivate and tend to it incorrectly, you risk decimating that which God has built for the flourishing of humanity. In short, there's a right way and a wrong way to do marriage.

The home begins to break down when husbands shirk their duties as lovers of their wives. The home begins to break down when men are abusers, adulterers, and abandoners. When women seek marital joy outside of anywhere but their husbands, whether they seek romance or other affection, there is a risk of deterioration in the home. And that's how you destroy a nation: by destroying homes. 

Any wonder why we're in a stormy spot as Americans with all the destroyed homes around us? The devil starts with the family. That's how you annihilate the home. It starts with children dishonoring their parents, as we saw in the fifth commandment, and it also begins with spouses committing emotional, mental, and even sexual infidelity, sinning against each other, desacralizing the marriage covenant designed by God to the glory of God, for the betterment of our joy. This violation of the seventh command will ultimately kill us, and thus, we must take seriously the order that God has established in marriage.

God is serious about his seventh word because, while a sin like infidelity is often thought to be a secret sin or even a harmless sin, this is far from the case. Again, consider the Ten Commandments as Jesus saw them: an expression of loving God and others. When a commandment is broken, it is an act of non-love toward others. Infidelity is an unloving act that can be devastating for many people in our circles of friends and families. Several years ago, a clinical psychologist studied the impact of infidelity on children, and she found that seventy-five percent felt betrayed by their cheating parent. Eighty percent said it affected their attitude toward love and relationships, and 70 percent found it impacted their ability to trust others. (Larson, "How a Parent's Infidelity Can Hurt a Child")

Consider that infidelity can hurt in such a way that, for the rest of someone's life, they are vulnerable to their relationships not being lived out the way God intended. In Hebrews 13:4, it says,  "Marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers." "Honored by all" because marriage is a veritably honorable act. To defile the marriage bed dishonors marriage and dishonors God. And God will judge such individuals for their acts because of just how destructive their actions are.

God Created Marriages Have Purpose

In pursuit of nurturing honorable marriages, we recognize that there's an order to marriage. How do I know that there is an order to marriage? Because I read the bible. And the bible told me so. If you look at Ephesians 5, where Paul addresses unity in the body of Christ, the church, he preaches towards adultery:

 "[Be] imitators of God, as dearly loved children. And walk in love, as the Messiah also loved us and gave Himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. But sexual immorality and any impurity or greed should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for saints. And coarse and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks. For know and recognize this: no sexually immoral or impure or greedy person, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of the Messiah and of God."

-Ephesians 5:1-5

There shouldn't be a hint of these things! They aren't proper! They don't honor God! Every single person given over to sexual impropriety is an idolater, those who have chosen selfish gratification over pleasing the Lord. These will not inherit the kingdom. Strong words.

Do you remember the second commandment? The second commandment says, "Do not commit idolatry. Don't make idols, don't worship idols." What happens when we commit adultery? Paul says we're committing idolatry.

Our Lord is a jealous God. In this, he is very much like a husband who is jealous when their spouse commits physical adultery. And yet, we commit spiritual adultery on God all the time. That's something I was thinking about when I preached about not making idols, but I figured it would fit better here this week. Because just like us thinking flippantly about the apparent harmlessness of idols, we might feel flippantly about the harmlessness of adultery.

But it's never harmless. It backstabs your spouse. It hurts your children. It profanes the name of Chirst. It disgraces God's intent for sex, which we're only to express in marital covenant love. God has an order to marriage for a reason. God has created these covenant promises and expressions for a reason. Because they are good and they help you thrive. 

 This is what I can't stand about how far the church has fallen into compromise with this secular, pagan culture, accepting their disjointed, disgusting distortion of marriage. That it's all just about some emotional requisite feelings towards one another. Is that what the bible says? Marriage is just about feelings? There are sentiments involved, sure, but is that the primary purpose of marriage? Here, I ask this as carefully as I can, but is the primary purpose of your marriage to make you happy? 

I understand that's a risky question, and I don't mean to imply that if you are currently miserable in your marriage, then everything is hunky-dory or to say, "Chin up. God's probably in it." That's not what I'm trying to convey. A distinct lack of happiness may point to an underlying sin issue that needs handling. 

But, set that aside for a moment. What I'm trying to open you up to consider is that maybe marriage's purpose does not regard what you desire first and foremost but rather what God desires through your marriage. Is there happiness? Without question! But is this feeling our foremost pursuit in marriage?

Consider the other purposes of marriage: Marriage teaches children how to be faithful and gives them a stable home environment in which they can grow and learn and experience the beauty of the instruction of the Lord. Sometimes, you won't feel like doing that for your kids; heck, it might not even make you happy sometimes. But that's one of the purposes of marriage.

Marriages also protect us from sexual immorality.  1st Corinthians 7:2-5 says, 

"Because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband. A husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise a wife to her husband. A wife does not have the right over her own body, but her husband does. In the same way, a husband does not have the right over his own body, but his wife does. Do not deprive one another—except when you agree for a time, to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again; otherwise, Satan may tempt you because of your lack of self-control." 

He does go on to clarify that this is a concession, not a command. He wishes many were single, like him. But in a world given to sexual immorality and overt sexual imagery, it's necessary for married Christians to have regular sex, even outside the need for procreation. For even if you run your whole life away from sexual sin, inevitably sexual immorality is going to attempt to seize you. God knows this. God has created marriage as a healthy way to express your sexual desires without opening you up to the damage that is naturally inherent to casual, non-committed relationships.

Now, I pray your marital sex life feels like less of a duty and more like a delight. I pray your spouse loves seeing you writhe in pleasure from what they can do to you and for you. But the reality is that you will not always be aligned with your spouse in that way. Some days, someone will want it more than the other person. Or there are certain acts one or the other might not find appealing, but the other person loves it. Gentleman, sometimes there's something your wife will desire that will not come naturally to you or that you might not like doing. It would be best if you tried it anyways. Ladies… ditto.

Let me be very clear, your spouse is not a porn star, and you shouldn't treat them as such. Some sexual acts fall outside the realm of Christian permissibility, and even if they don't, there must always be mutual agreement between spouses. But the long and short of it is that the bible is clear: Outside of physical incapability or an act that would cause your spouse to sin or stumble in their faith, the only reason to withhold sex from your spouse in a Christian marriage is if there's a mutual agreement to do so to devote yourselves to prayer. All other such denials are sinful.

 This is not a popular teaching. I considered cutting it altogether. I concede this is a teaching that can be twisted for evil by horrendous abusers. But I cannot escape what the Word makes clear. Laura and I have both answered the Word's challenge here in our own lives, and it's not always effortless. Libidos don't always line up, tastes don't always match, and specific activities often take much practice to perfect. But we're working through it together because we never want to deprive one another. And we don't see it as a duty. We see it as our pleasure. Sex is a purpose of marriage. And I hope you know that doesn't mean it has to feel like an obligation.

A good marriage should produce healthy children, and a good marriage should create a healthy, happy, thriving home. A good marriage should produce holiness in your life. You will never have a friend closer than your spouse, except Jesus. They will know your sin like no other human will know your sin. They will show you where you are filthy like no one else will show you where you're filthy. You can hide from your pastor. You can hide from your friends. You can hide from your family. But it's almost impossible to conceal your iniquity and impropriety from your spouse. Marriage calls you out on your junk.

These are all purposes of marriage. Many of these can generate great joy. But of course, they can also be challenging to wade through. This doesn't mean we discard them just because what we must do doesn't always align with what we want to do. Instead, we dutifully and delightedly attend to these as husbands and wives. I'll say it like this since I'm apparently committed to unpopular teachings today: Joy always comes back around. The opportunities to commit to our duties towards one another, however, don't. And in a world that prizes selfish desires above duties, our marriages will be mutiny, displaying the great pleasure we take in obeying God's Word and honoring one another in marriage.

A Firm Complementarian Stance

Moving on, as we consider God's picture of what marriage should look like, we consider that marriage is a picture, a beautiful portrait of the marriage between Christ and His bride, the church. This is where we dissent from radical egalitarians, feminists, queer affirmers, and all other manner of people that wickedly–and I do use that word deliberately because I'm not feeling very charitable today. I may have to apologize for that later, but right now, I need to speak the truth–These people that would atrociously abominate marriage, diminishing and distorting the beautiful illustration of man and women painted by God so that they can further their agendas. I refuse to do such a thing. 

You remember me reading Ephesians five? "Sexual immorality and impurity and greed should not even be heard of among you Christians. It's not proper." If Ephesians five is generally accepted even in these compromised churches that I lamented of mere moments ago, if Ephesians five is usually tolerated as scripture speaking of what Christians should do, if we all agree that Christians should be imitators of God as dearly loved children, that Christians should avoid obscene and foolish talk, why can't we agree on the rest of Ephesians five?

They agree that we should "walk in the light" and that we shouldn't be given to drunkenness, nor should we neglect giving thanks to God in everything. They would agree with Ephesians 5:5; "Every sexually immoral or impure or greedy person, who is an idolater, does not have an inheritance in the kingdom of God." 

"Amen!" They cry. Of course, sexual immorality is wrong! They may nitpick about what sexual immorality means because to give a straight, clear, concise answer, you need your spiritual foundations to be straight, clear, and concise but I digress (again, not very charitable today). These are things Christians should do. 

So why then do they begin to stumble with the rest of Ephesians five? They agree with Paul in Ephesians 5:1-21. Believers should be imitators of God. Believers should focus on the love demonstrated by Christ and mimic it. So then we get to the next verses, why do they then say, 

"Well, that's culturally limited."

"That doesn't apply to us today." 

"Actually, it's a very progressive statement by Paul and we're even more progressive nowadays. So really, it was just a preview of what was to come and it's outdated."

You know, the verses I speak of, and you know what they say.

 "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, since we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband."

-Ephesians 5:22–33

I once posted on biblical marriage on a subreddit dedicated to Christian Marriage. The post is still there, should you wish to read it. When challenged on my, let's call it "traditional" view, I noted that Ephesians five is not the only place we find such order in marriage within scripture. Egalitarians wishing to circumvent these passages will find equally difficult times surmounting passages found in 1st Peter 3, Titus 2, Colossians 3, 1st Corinthians 11, and I'll even say Genesis 2. If we can divest ourselves of those verses as well, a case might begin to be made, slim a case though it may be.

Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. At the second coming of Christ, we know that the church will forever be united with her groom. In Revelation 19 and Revelation 21, we find at the end of all things, there is a wedding, an eternal union of Christ and His bride, the church. So, it's paramount that we get the picture of marriage right. Because we're talking about something bigger than what we think marriage is or how we feel we should express marriage. We're discussing what God designed marriage to be as a picture of Christ and His Church.

Feminists, Egalitarians, and the like must reinterpret the scripture to say it talks about mutual submission. That is to say that men submit to women, and women submit to men in marriage relationships. But let’s parse that logically: If marriage is meant to be a picture of Christ and His Church, and marriage between a man and a woman must be beholden to mutual submission, I then ask you how does Christ submit to the church? Is He not Lord of all? Is He not King over all creation? He who was and is to come the Alpha and the Omega. Is He not everything?

This, friends, is the unambiguous, unadulterated, unapologetic truth:  Jesus commands the church to follow him, but the church cannot demand that Jesus follow her. The marriage roles cannot be swapped. Wives and husbands cannot operate in the same functions. Full stop. We cannot. And I'm fully aware that there is a societal backlash against these parts of the bible. Often justified backlash, I'll concede. Indeed, domineering men who have subjugated their wives into coerced compliance are known to utilize these very passages to their nefarious ends. I know that.

But, though it has been and will be misapplied, the male headship paradigm—in which Christian men love their spouses as Jesus loves the church—has been an invaluable supporting model for the family unit and the flourishing of Christian marriages. And it must remain. Otherwise, we compromise the portrayal of Christ and His church.

Ladies, hear me. My goal is never to see you dominated or worse. Never in a million years. If such things occur in the church, we rightly call them out for the sin that it is. And men, this isn't to inflate your egos, to give you a big head that you're the big man in charge, the head of the house. The Lord you emulate in your marriage, Jesus, comes not as a domineering king but as a servant born in a manger. He lays his life down for his bride. Gentleman, I'm charging you with doing the same. 

These passages self-evidently teach what they teach. You don't have to be an expert to figure out what they say and what they mean. You don't have to do mental gymnastics or hermeneutical backflips to make these scriptures work. The bible says what it says. Husbands, love your wives self-sacrificially as you lay down everything for her and die for her. Wives follow the servant-leadership of your husbands. In a rapidly androgenizing, compromising, homogenizing world, such marriages can't help but be a way of mutiny.

Such rebellion is undeniably breathtaking. We pattern this marriage relationship not after patriarchalism, or misogynism, or any other ism that the world uses as boogeymen to reinforce their anti-biblical tastes. No, we pattern this marriage model after Christ's relationship with His Church. As there is no reciprocal submission between Christ and His bride, neither is there such a reciprocal submission between husbands and their wives. Mutual obligations? Absolutely. Mutual love? Without a doubt. Mutual honor and respect and care? There better be. Mutual submission? Absolutely not.

The Slippery Slope

 Why am I lecturing about this? Why am I taking time out of a sermon on adultery to vehemently fortify my stance on complementarianism? Why am I taking what is supposed to be a secondary doctrine and making it primary?

Well, because I look out there and see a rapidly expanding radical egalitarian intent in the church, I've started to become worried about the future trajectory of the American church. The secular, pagan world wishes to conform everything that God designed to their sinful notions. Everything God designed for good, they will twist it, they will manipulate it. God creates, so it is with God’s people; they also would create. The devil, however, only distorts. He is, in fact, the king of distortion. So, of course, those who are of the devil will distort the beautiful picture of marriage. 

And, while compromise has worked for the church thus far, do you really think the world is going to stop with mere concessions? After they've completely redefined what Christian marriage looks like, do you believe they are going to stop? Do you think that they're going to let marriage, as Christians have defined it, continue to exist after they've completely redefined the roles that are in marriage? Now that we've made men and women essentially interchangeable, they're eliminating distinctions between the genders altogether. And do you genuinely think they'll stop there?

No. Until the world completely remolds the church in its sinful self-image, they will never stop. And I say this with complete confidence: Mark my words. Egalitarianism is a slippery slope to queer affirmation, which is a slippery slope to saying God does not belong in human relationships whatsoever. To reject the complementary differences between men and women in marriage will always result in catastrophe.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, started by John Piper and Wayne Grudem in 1987 as a criticism of egalitarian and LGBTQ Christians, said this: "we believe that by minimizing the difference in sexual roles, feminists contribute to the confusion of sexual identity that, especially in the second and third generations, gives rise to more homosexuality in society. Some evangelicals who once disapproved of homosexuality have been carried by their feminist arguments to the approval of faithful homosexual alliances." 30 years later, and how right they ended up being!

For all the leaders and institutions that I have watched over the past, I want to say ten to twelve years of my life that started minimizing gender roles or started to disparage what the bible clearly stated about what marriage should be when it comes to men and women are now steeping their churches in queer affirmation. I see churches nowadays that are egalitarian and are also beginning to take the same plunge. I will tell you that every Christian egalitarian institution that exists nowadays if it is not affirming now, within 20 years, it will likely be. Maybe I'm wrong. I pray I'm wrong. They may be able to make their compromises today without consequences tomorrow. But history has not been on their side.

God Hates Adultery

The order of marriage is vital because if you can't order marriage correctly, how can you then condemn those who create disorder in marriages? Let's bring it all back together and talk about the third big point and why God hates adultery.  Marriage is valuable; marriage is a bedrock of civilization. So, to in any way upset the beauty of marriage, to paint over it with sinful brush strokes, ultimately obliterates it and unseats one of the ways civilization thrives.

1 Corinthians 6:9–10 asks us, "Don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God's kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God's kingdom." Adultery sends people to hell. You devalue the covenant relationship of marriage to the detriment of your very soul. 

God hates adultery because adultery attacks the very image of Christ's love for his bride. In the Sermon on the Mount, much like Jesus did with every other commandment that he extrapolated upon, he says very clearly that even if you look at another person with lust in your heart, you are already guilty of adultery. We might think we're okay because we've never committed the physical act, but at the root of the physical act is a darkened heart condition. God looks at the motivations of our hearts. If he sees the seeds of the deed in our hearts, then we're guilty nonetheless, whether or not that seed has sprouted.

Pornography is lumped into this. To linger over another who is not your spouse in lust is lumped in with this. God desires us to be faithful to our spouses, not just in deed but in our thoughts. Christ goes on to say, "If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away, for it is better to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown in hell."

Now, by my estimation, there are a great many people who claim the name of Christ who should be gouging out their eyes and who should be chopping off their hands, for they use the most dreadful justifications to explain away their atrocious, unholy acts. However, I don't believe that the proper interpretation of Christ's teaching means for us to wriggle into heaven with no arms, no legs, no eyes, ears, or tongue. Even if we were a stump rolling to the pearly gates, if God hasn't remedied the lust issue in our hearts, we're still not getting in.

And this is not what God means when stating that something has to be cut off of us. Instead, we think about what we actually have that can cut lust out of our hearts: The Holy Spirit, described in Hebrews 4 verse 12 as "sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing soul and spirit, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." We pray, "God, cut this out of my life." We don't pray that any opportunities of lust would go away but that our hearts would no longer be given over to lust. 

 I'm not sure if you remember back in the day the Billy Graham rule. The famous televangelist comes up with this rule to govern his life. He said he didn't ruin his ministry by failing in sexual immorality, which all too often does happen with famous Christian leaders. His rule was that he would never travel or eat alone with a woman other than his wife. Now, while this was a prudent rule for him and his particular situation, for it prevented any possible stumbling block to the gospel, I think it's problematic, especially in work settings and other cases like that, because what ends up happening is we inadvertently sexualize the opposite sex and limit their opportunities.

I remember counseling a young adult leader when I was in youth ministry. He was sharing with me how challenging he found it to do his work because of the teenage girls and their tight-fitting yoga pants, and one of them who would always wear shirts that exposed her belly. He found himself thinking lustful thoughts. Now, I'm proud to say I had a charitable conversation with the young fellow, but what I really wanted to do was to punch him in the mouth because how dare you sexualize these young girls that we are working so hard to guide and love? She is not an object for your gratification. She is a beautiful woman made in the image of God. And if you can't see her like that, you are the problem.

I want women to feel liberated to wear what works for them. I envision a church where a sex worker can feel like she can step through the doors on Sunday after a long Saturday night and meet Jesus without feeling as if the men are fantasizing about her. And yes, ladies, there is outstanding excellence in not causing your Christian brothers to stumble, but it's not entirely on you. You're made in the image of God; you are not a sex object. You're not a porn star. You're a daughter of the King. And insofar as you are a daughter of the King, you've been entrusted into the care of your spouse for a time. That's a serious role for us gentlemen. And the very least we can do in that role is to commit to letting the Holy Spirit carve lust out of our hearts.

It's something I had to start praying for as I worked at the family hotel and on club nights. I would see young women walk to and fro in front of the windows in outfits that left nothing to the imagination. And I had to ask the Holy Spirit to carve out the wicked lust in my heart so I could see these women as God saw them: as those made in His image, those whom His heart breaks for, those whom Jesus still died for in hopes that they would come to Him. For me, for any man to see these women as anything less, as a mere object for lustful consumption, is contemptible. God hates it.

 Jen Wilkins once said, 

 "Lust itself is an act of contempt, reducing someone to a source of sexual gratification and nothing more. If the sixth command prohibited regarding our neighbor as expendable, the seventh prohibits regarding our neighbor as consumable…Satan has succeeded in convincing believers that lust is just something to be managed instead of something to be slain." (Wilkins, Ten Words to Live By)

That became my prayer,  "God, slay this beast in me, kill it, cut off its head. My love, my desire is only for my spouse and no one else." And I felt my heart beginning to transform, even to begin to break for these ladies. To be broken at their need to, for whatever reason, expose themselves like this. I mean, don't they know that God loves them more than anyone else ever could? Furthermore, my wife deserves all my attention and all my affection. Not even necessarily because she's outlandishly fantastic (she is), but rather because God requires it of me. He demands I let my lust be put to death.

I'm reminded of a quote from Martin Luther, whom I don't quote very often, "You can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair." That's what we have a lot of Christians doing nowadays, allowing birds of adulterousness to nest in their hair. And I wonder if they've considered that they're allowing themselves to conform to the pornographic image of the world and not the glorious image of Christ. I further wonder if they've thought about how conforming to Christ's image is the actual rebellion. The mutiny, so to speak.

Delighting in the Mutiny

 I know this particular sermon has been a little rambly–all over the place. I apologize. It's difficult for me to collect my thoughts on this matter. There are so many avenues to discuss when talking about this subject. You could talk about what is and is not permissible in marital sex, delve into the sex lives of Christian couples, dive into the conversation of sexual satisfaction, or what makes modern families, or living out these ideals in an adulterous world. I wish I could address everything, and I genuinely just can't. I welcome discussions with you all, no matter how messy or explicit. For this sermon, all I can do is leave you with a few pointers and a reminder about how your marriage displays God's light in a darkening world.

One pointer I find infinitely helpful to those who struggle with this is that sexual infidelity thrives in the dark. If you've got a dragon you need to slay in your heart that bears the name of sexual sin, it needs to be brought into the light. Maybe not even in front of the church, but at least with your spouse. I mean, after all, what do you have to hide from your spouse? They're bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. Would you hide something from yourself? Then why hide anything from your spouse? 

Another pointer is to understand the link between appreciation and adultery. When you think about it, the negative imperative against adultery is a positive command to appreciate the spouse God has given you. Fidelity in marriage means that each partner continues to appreciate the other. You'll hear all the time from people who end up cheating that it didn't start with a desire of lust, but it started with frustration at a lack of appreciation. So they sought out appreciation from someone else. This should lead all of us as spouses to be conscientious that we're not leaving our spouses feeling underappreciated, undervalued, or underloved.

It also leads us to ask, "If I feel unappreciated, am I on a slippery slope to being unfaithful?" Because no matter how underappreciated you feel, there's no biblical warrant that excuses infidelity. We're instead encouraged to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. (I'm pretty sure that's how the Message translation puts it) We're encouraged to take the time to nurture our relationships with one another lest we be vulnerable to temptation.

I am reminded of Psalms 37:4. It says very simply, "Delight in the Lord, and He'll give you the desires of your heart." I believe the desire for sex is something that God put in the hearts of those who end up finding themselves pursuing marriage. I encourage healthy sex lives in Christian marriages and am always willing to counsel those who need assistance in such things. I'm always open and honest about mine and Laura's sex life. We try our darndest not to get too explicit or graphic because that's not what we're here for. We're not going to mimic the pornographic world and display our marriage as pornography for people to revel in, but we'll be as honest as we feel we can.

And in such honesty, I will tell you this. I very much delight in Laura when it comes to sex, and I know she very much delights in me. Part of that is deliberately nurturing the relationship outside of sex. Part of that is stellar communication. But a big part is that we've both, first and foremost, delighted in the Lord. He comes first, and all the other pieces seem to slide into place. It takes work, to be sure, but it's a lot less work than trying and failing to do it ourselves.

You can look up positions, you can look up techniques, you can mimic what you saw on TV that one time. None of it will be as satisfying as cultivating an open, honest relationship with each other and nurturing a relationship with God. Song of Solomon Chapter five, verse sixteen is written from the perspective of a wife describing her husband not only as a lover but as a friend. This we'd do well to remember always. If you're married, God has given you something extraordinary in your spouse: a lover and a friend. I pray that you will never neglect that, no matter the trials, no matter the tribulations. I pray you will honor that. We can get into more tricky conversations later. Maybe share what works and what doesn't work later, but for now, I just needed to reinforce that God instituted something captivating and indispensable, and you have a duty to embody it in a way that aligns with His word, in a way that not only glorifies Him but brings you overwhelming delight. 

I pray you're able to find that. I pray you embrace the rebellious nature of your marriage in these ungodly times. Go home, married folks. Reflect on the sermon together. Kill your lusts together. Enjoy sex together as something much more awesome than duty. Enjoy desiring one another. Consider that such a powerful expression is rebellion in the face of this rebellious world. Who knows? Maybe that'll spice things up a tad. 

But, above all else, remember who you are and who you ultimately belong to. You belong to the Lord, and so everything, including your sex life, belongs to him and him alone. It is expressed to the praise of God and shines His glory in your marriage and the world. I dare you to delight in the mutiny. 

-RJ