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Mental Health, My Story

Internally, I live 2 lives. On the outside, in terms of productivity, ethics and my responsibilities, I always do what must be done. I am responsible. No matter what is going on inside, I look the same on the outside. But on the inside, for months at a time, I can be living one of these two lives.

Internal Life 1: I feel energetic, clear, motivated, centered and solid. Inside, everything makes sense. My inner life is defined by peace; I sleep well. I have long, wonderful times with the Lord. I love being with people and gain energy from relationships. I am filled with hope. I feel strong and on top of the world. I occasionally get upset or irritated but it’s situational and evaporates as soon as the challenge is over. Here, food is a source for energy not a crutch to navigate life. I exercise often and it’s fun. I feel in control. I love new things and when I find something interesting —a hobby or a topic—I study it with vigor. I am creative and am life-giving to others. I am carefree. Life is good. I enjoy living it.

Internal Life 2: This is what I call, ‘survival mode’. Life feels hard. I feel like I’m moving through molasses all day. It is harder to stick to a routine. Beyond what I must do, I just want to be alone. I begin to withdraw into myself. In my head, I feel safe. The outside world feels like hard, cold wind on exposed skin. If I can be alone, I can live in a cave of solitude. It feels comfortable but lonely. I am able to be present to others but it requires concerted effort that is exhausting. At times, I am irritable and my inner space shrinks. I feel overwhelmed. My thoughts are scattered and focus becomes a discipline of sheer will. Life loses its beauty and everything seems grey. Life feels like perpetual evening dragging into night. Sleep can either be non-existent or I can feel sleepy all the time. Exercise feels like torture. Here, food is ‘helpful’ in mood management, a crutch to manage sadness and anxiety.  But food used as pain management has its own negative effects—less confidence, health consequences, less energy and reinforces a joyless life. Internal life #2 feels hard.

These are the lives that make up my life. For all my life, at least as long as I can remember, I have dealt with depression, anxiety and ADHD. During my Christian life, I have bore these realities and pressed my way through them. I survive and most of the time I thrive. I have gone to therapy off and on since being a teenager. At times, medication has been a life saver. Through it all, my wife and my close, Christian friends have been beacons of hope. For the life of me, I cannot tell you what causes one life to thrive and the other to lay dormant. Or what causes the switch from one to the other. My external life can be tumultuous but the inside filled with peace. Then other times, all can be well outside and the inside feels like purgatory.  

Sometimes I thrive inside and out, one long summer day. Other times, I really struggle within. I feel like I am climbing Mount Everest and making no headway. Life can be good, challenging and filled with constant moments of joy. It can also be hard and filled with suffering. You never know what is happening on the inside of a person.

Since 1949, the month of May has been set aside to raise awareness for mental health. As I consider my own story, my role as a pastor, and being in the month of May, I would like to share the following truths I have learned.

  • The gospel is good news for those who suffer with mental health. This quote from Thomas Watson says it all:

What upheld Daniel in the lion’s den? Jonah in the whale’s belly? The three Hebrews in the furnace? Only the power of God. Is it not strange to see a bruised reed grow and flourish? How is a weak Christian able, not only to endure affliction, but to rejoice in it? He is upheld by the arms of the Almighty. “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. xii. 9).

If you are suffering with mental health, God is not overwhelmed or impotent to help. He can be trusted in and through it all. He is good news; I know from experience.

  • Christ desires that his church be a safe haven for those who suffer mentally. The roots of mental illness are complex—historical, spiritual, biological and personal choices—and is the result of a fallen world. The church doesn’t have all the answers, but we know the answer. His name is Jesus. It’s time to declare the good news to those who suffer on the inside. It’s time to provide safe places for people to share, to be journeyed with and to be loved. We all deserve these gifts of grace.
  • Licensed therapists and medical doctors are gifts from God. Everything good comes from Him. Psychiatrists and counselors go through extensive training and licensing to provide care to facilitate mental health. I thank God for them personally (I’m married to a counselor! Free therapy!). God has made provision for our mental health and we should use it. No one should ever feel shame or marginalized for getting professional help. 
  • Christian kindness and grace go a long way in the healing of a person. I am thankful for the church and it’s members who have almost always been good representatives of Christ. Let’s be gracious and kind to one another. This is what I know, mental illness is not because sufferers are lazy or lack discipline. Instead, mental illness is just another crack in our broken world. It is a crack that love can be a great help in its mending. Let’s be gentler with one another as we pursue hope and transformation together. 

Know if you struggle with your mental health you are not alone. Have hope. Never give up. Morning is coming. To those who are not struggling right now, be kind.  Make the gospel available to all. Make room at the table of fellowship. And to everyone remember, there is a million ways to be broken but Christ with all his gifts is the only way to be made whole.

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Conquering Grace

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Corinthians 1:3 ESV

This morning, I am so thankful for grace. It has become, the older I get, the air I breathe. In honor of his grace towards me, I want to encourage all those who are desperate for grace. The lonely, the broken, the rejected, the betrayed, the addicted, the lost the abused and even the abuser. Grace has room for us all.

Defining grace with one definition is a little like experiencing a diamond without light. Perhaps you will know what it is but you will not know it’s beauty. The full effect of grace can only be seen by the light of the Son and turning it, like you would a diamond, and seeing it from different angles and perspectives. When you do this, you begin to see grace in all its grandeur. 

Perfect grace first and foremost flows from Jesus—from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace is favor, power, love in action. Grace is God’s power at work. 

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14 

John tells us that in Jesus we see God’s glory, his beauty. God’s beauty is manifest in truth and grace. Jesus is truth—the reality of what is really going on. And Jesus is God’s grace. Grace is not about transactions, debts and credits but about a person and the focus of his energies. Jesus is full of grace to you.

Perfect grace has you as its focus—Grace to you. 

Grace is relational, intimate, powerful and effective. Grace is welcoming a stranger into his home. Grace is taking on the burden of another. Grace is setting something right that he is not responsible for. Grace is the torrents of endless water that fuel a hydroelectric dam. Grace takes ugly, broken, shameful persons and situations, and is able, without effort, to restore all things. Grace is a person and he has you as the object of his grace.

Perfect grace is free

Grace makes no demands on the person receiving it. It has no requirements. It’s like winning the lottery, finding buried treasure or receiving a billion dollars from the death of an unknown relative. Grace is the love that propels a wife forgiving, forgetting and committing again to an adulterous husband. Grace is releasing the murderer of a loved one from your vengeance. Grace is paying the debt of a thief. Grace is adopting a parentless child and bringing her into your home as your child, your daughter. Grace is the sun rising every morning and doing it’s good without asking permission. Grace is taking a felon and giving him a home, a job and another chance after failing 15 times before. Grace is the riches of eternity given audaciously and with such liberality that the recipient knows that he did not pay for it. Grace is just given and the recipient receives all the benefits without cost or requirement. Grace is free.

Perfect grace is energy and authority for life

In Romans 5, Paul tells us we stand in grace. In Corinthians 15, Paul tells us he worked harder than anyone and it was grace that empowered him to do it. Grace is more like blood flowing in the body filling it with oxygen and nutrients than a mark in a ledger clearing your name. Grace is like sunlight to a flower. Grace is like a mother’s breast given to a hungry infant child. Grace makes life in Christ possible. Grace is for life.

Perfect grace forgives

We are saved by grace (Ephesians 2:8). This free eternal power of God is the means of setting us right. We mess up; we hurt people; we rebel; and we do what we shouldn’t do. In moments of clarity and horror, we realize that we have done things that we cannot fix and that we are guilty. Sin, mess, chaos, shadows, separation and death face us. We are powerless before them. Like a category 5 hurricane aimed at a small coastal house. There is no hope.But, He saves us. Sin becomes mercy. Mess becomes wholeness. Hurt becomes healing. Shadows become light. Separation becomes union. Death becomes life. He saves us. He gives grace and we become fully alive.

Grace is amazing. It is free. It is available-right-now for your life. Grace forgives and sets you right. And if you ever wonder what God is like, God is eternal, unchanging, unlimited, extravagant grace.

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Intimacy with God, part 2


Recap: Did hyou practice silence and solitude? What did you learn and experience?

What are the challenges of doing nothing?

Introduction

Intimacy with God is a life. A life of intimacy with God is to be one of constant interaction, and communication rooted in agape love—His love towards us— that naturally produces Christlikeness. This is a life of joy unspeakable. Last week we learned that silence and solitude creates the space to get free of lesser stories and move into life-from-above, life with Him. It is the quiet heart that hears, “I am the beloved of God”. This is the foundational reality from which all else flows.

This foundation is what we build our life of intimacy upon. We must constantly remember and experience that he loves us, and nothing we do can change his heart towards his beloved. This is true, but our heart—the mind and will—is severely warped by sin even in our belovedness. We understand Paul’s words from Romans because we experience them all the time:

“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…Wretched man that I am.”

Romans 7:15, 24 

We are beloved and wretched. We desire our Beloved but continually act in ways that harden our hearts and troubles our conscious. We know we are to be people of joy but hardly ever experience it except in fleeting moments. What a horrible place to be! What can be done? 

What we need to know is that intimacy, joy and freedom are inextricably linked together. It is in the mind that we deepen our grip on our belovedness, break free from the sin that troubles our intimacy and find unstoppable joy.

What fills your mind throughout the day? 

It all starts in our thoughts 

Dallas Willard describes thoughtthis way:

Thoughts bring objects or ideas before our mind in various ways and enable us to ponder them and trace out their interrelationships with one another. Thoughts are what empower our heart to range far beyond the immediate boundaries of our environment and the limited perceptions of our senses. Through them, our consciousness is able to reach into the depths of the universe-past, present, and future-by reasoning and scientific thinking, by imagination and art, and also by divine revelation, which comes to us mainly in the form of thought.

To be human is to be constantly thinking. There is simply no other way of perceiving a human person. We are more than our minds but we are no less. We dream. We worry. We fear. We love. We imagine. We dwell on the past and make plans for the future. These are all rooted in thoughts.

In our mind we encounter images, have thoughtsand both build ideas. As a group, define these three words.

Emotions 

Thoughts are always accompanied by emotions—either negative or positive. Every thought brought before the mind naturally stirs feelings—chocolate cake, starving child, a beautiful sunset. Except in cases of mental illness, the emotional state of a person reveals the thought life of that person[1].

This coupling of thought and emotion is a profound good that God has created. Jonathan Edwards in his book, Religious Affections, writes:

Holy affections are not heat without light; but evermore arise from some information of the understanding, or some spiritual instruction that the mind receives, some light or actual knowledge

For Edwards, religious affections—joy, peace, adoration, etc..—are born out of knowledge. Of crucial importance here is that our emotional life is dependent upon what the mind dwells upon. This is for good and for ill. 

The broken mind

A broken mind, to whatever degree it is broken is a mind that has been decimated by the thoughts that inhabit it. Such brokenness  usually presents in one of three ways.

The first  is a mind that is characterized by runaway, uncontrolled thoughts—the rabbit-trail mind. Such a mind is, “tossed to and fro.” In a real sense, such a person is enslaved to random neurons firing that create images in the brain. From images come thoughts that build ideas[2]. Any thought can cause this person to spiral into thoughts that bring the dangerous feelings of anxiety, depression and hopelessness. 

The second break is the one where the mind is habitually, seemingly uncontrollably, focusing on those thoughts that cultivate temptation leading to sin. Sin, before it is sin, begins in the mind. Thoughts of sin happen (which is no sin). If left to grow, more sinful thoughts come and we feel desire towards that sin which the Bible calls temptation (but still not sin); the more we dwell on the thoughts and allow desire to grow, the more tantalizing the idea and we look for the opportunity to get away with it (lust). Here, we decide how it would be “good” for us to do such a thing. Finally, perhaps months or years after “thinking”, we act in the physical world and, “we are carried away” into sin. And we experience the hell that comes with it. 

The third break of the mind is one where our thoughts and are contrary to what God has said about us. Not loved, not forgiven, not protected and not cared for are examples of broken thoughts/ideas running and ruining the mind. The more powerful the hold, the more dangerous they are. It is a real hell when a follower of Jesus believes and lives from a lie of the enemy.

When we see the horror one can do or experience—from suicide, adultery,  abuse, murder and abandonment, to name a few—we need not wonder where such darkness comes from. It is not mysterious. It all started with a broken mind, marred in sin, living in the wrong story. It need not be this way.

Discuss: have you heard the saying, “the devil made me do it?” What does a person mean when he says it? Is there truth in this statement?

The mind, defeating sin and JOY!

We have a mind filled with a lifetime of thoughts.  These thoughts are where the enemy does his work and where God desires to win us to love.

Paul writes,

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” II Corinthians 10:4-5 NKJV

Here, we learn the secret to defeating sin. To defeat sin, we must notfocus on behavior without first changing the ideas that make such action possible (Matthew 7:18). We must, by God’s help, transform our mind—the very thoughts we dwell upon.

We must first, hold thoughts not worthy of the beloved, “captive”. This means to hold it, stop its movement and keep it from initiating action. Simultaneously, we must replace these “captive thoughts” with the mind of Christ—his images, thoughts and ideas  

The scriptures can be used in a variety of ways. But for the transformation of the mind—thoughts, emotions and the decisions that flow from them—it is memorization of large portions of scripture that you can then meditate upon throughout the day that will bring you experimentally to the Land of Promise. 

Consider Jesus. Jesus quotes the Bible 180 times in the gospels from 24 books of the Old Testament. These quotations are from memory. We can say with authority that the mind of Christ was saturated with the scriptures. It formed his reality.

We must continually keep before us God’s goodness, love, power and availability 

Remember, you are the beloved of God, you have captured his attention. He is pursuing you. God is love! It is this foundational realitythat you need to steep your mind in. As you do, you will find God filling your actual life. The old adage is true: You see what you look for.

In such a thought life, the inside changes. Our very mind begins to hate what God hates and love what he loves. It takes on the aroma of Christ. Sin loses it grips. And we experience deep, unfailing, unquenchable joy:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:8–9

What must we do for this to be possible?

Practice

Pick oneof these texts to memorize and set an alarm 4 or five times throughout the day to slowly work through the text. Use it to pray; use it when you have time to think. Don’t waste your life, dwell upon God!  As time goes, continue to memorize portions of scriptures until you have a reservoir to draw from. 

Live in the Word and you will find the Word alive in you.

Exodus 15:1-13

Psalm23

Colossians 3:1-17

Romans 12:9-21

Deut 6:4-6

Psalm 34

Matthew 6:25-34

Philippians 2:1-11

You can have a life of freedom and joy. From a place of silence and solitude, we fill our minds with the goodness of God found in the Bible. Anyone can memorize scripture. The very act of memorization, intentionally focusing on it, considering it and feeding from it throughout the day, will be the space that a life filled with the goodness of God rushes in like, “torrents of living water”.  It will not take very long, you will be changed forever.

[1]This is true in most cases except where there is mental illness such as clinical depression or diagnosed anxiety. Some mental disorders are caused by chemical imbalances. Though probably rooted in trauma and the thoughts that are involved, such disorders are chemical imbalances where medicine can be deeply helpful. 

[2]An image is a person, place, thing or moment brought before the mind. A thought is our determination on image(s). An idea is a collection of thoughts that build the framework of reality as we see it. For a fuller discussion on the mind read, Renovation of the Heart, by Dallas Willard.

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Intimacy with God: Part One

Intimacy Week1

For reflection: What is hard about your relationship with God?

Our relationship with God will only be strong and growing if we understand the reality of the world you actually inhabit. These words of Jesus have always captured my attention:

“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

John 17:3 ESV

Eternal lifeis not a location where we go after we die but instead a quality of life. This life from above is marked by “knowledge” of Jesus and his Father.

The Hebrew idea of knowledge has to do with embodied experience. It is personal knowledge. It goes far beyond information and involves relational intimacy—the mingling of persons.. This is why the Hebrew word for sex and knowledge are the same word.

Jesus’ vision for you and me is that we would have deep, ongoing, personal relationship with God. We are uniquely created (imago Deo) for such relationship.

For reflection:In what ways is your relationship with God intimate? What would make it more intimate?

Marriage is the window

One of the primary metaphors used to describe our relationship with God is one of husband and wife. So, we can look at a biblical marriage and begin to build a vision for what is possible for us.

Ephesians 5, written by Paul, is grounded in a biblical vision of Divine relationship framed in marriage.

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV

The mystery of marriage is that it points to what is possible in our relationship with God.

At the beginning of a romantic relationship there is attraction, pursuit and the mutual sharing about the self. Before this generation, the man was the initiator of this dance. He had to win the right to love. If successful, the woman began to open her life to him.

In intimacy with God, God is the ideal pursuer: ” “You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace”

(The Song of Solomon 4:9).  He pursues us. Our relationship with God is based upon his relentless pursuit. He finds us beautiful. He loves us, not in some abstract way, but with passion and fire. 

For reflection:What keeps us from believing and living in the reality that God pursues us with the kind of passion of a “captivated lover” (Song is Songs 4:9)?

From his pursuit, we depart the familiar and join him:

“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride; come with me from Lebanon. Departfrom the peak of Amana, from the peak of Senir and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards” (The Song of Solomon 4:7-8 ESV).

What does it look like you to depart what is familiar and yours to be with God?

Finally, we reciprocate his love:

let us go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love. (The Song of Solomon 7:12 ESV)

Thus, intimacy with God can be described this way:

  1. Pursued by his love
  2. Leaving the familiar
  3. Loving him

These seasons happen over and over again throughout life as we live. They are not one time events. This is the primary story of life and eternity.The work of intimacy is always about livingin this story.

For reflection:Is this your story? Why or why not?

The need for honest self-assessment

Unfortunately, we all were born and live constantly in other stories. These stories are shrouded in self-reliance, other “lovers” and infidelity. 

For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ Hosea 2:5 ESV

For reflection: Our work is to be honest about our current condition. Where are we in the story?

The Foundation: Silence and Solitude

We have bought into the lie that activity is the ground of intimacy. We stay busy doing religious things but forget the true story—who He is and who we are. 

“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.”Psalms 62:1 

Dallas Willard writes:

Among the practices that can help us attend to soul care at a basic level are solitude and silence. We practice these by finding ways to be alone and away from talk and noise. We rest, we observe, we “smell the roses”—dare we say it?—we do nothing. This discipline can be used of God as a means of grace. In it we may even find another reminder of grace—that we are saved, justified by His redeeming power—not by our strivings and achievements.

In drawing aside for lengthy periods of time, we seek to rid ourselves of the “corrosion” of soul that accrues from constant interaction with others and the world around us. In this place of quiet communion, we discover again that we do have souls, that we indeed have inner beings to be nurtured. Then we begin to experience again the presence of God in the inner sanctuary, speaking to and interacting with us. We understand anew that God will not compete for our attention. We must arrange time for our communion with Him as we draw aside in solitude and silence. (“Personal Soul Care”, Dallas Willard)

This work is fundamentally about actively being quiet and alone. God will meet us, we will (super)naturally enter the right story.

The need for a plan

Such extended times must be planned for, they are costly. Some can find times during the weekend, others early morning while others must practice, “the watch of the night.” Being quiet and silent must be practiced until we feel different, we have an internal sense that we are in the right story. It will take some time at the beginning, but only here can we hear, “Come away with me” (Song of Songs 8:14).

Next week: Living in Joy: keeping our mind always on him  

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Can a Christian be “Gay”? Sexual identity, Foucault and the Bible

Recently, on Twitter, and in various conversations, I have been asked if “gay Christian” specifically and if “gay” in general are appropriate biblical categories. Though I have written about this in, Hope for the Same-Sex Attracted, it is a conversation that has really important issues at play. Sexual identity and the words we use are not just descriptors of one’s desires and experiences but are philosophical claims on reality. One is rooted in the social constructionism of Michael Foucault and the other is rooted in the Bible. Words matter and Christians need to use the ones that most align to biblical reality.

Michael Foucault is a primary sage of the sexual chaos around sexual identity that now exists. In his, History of Sexuality, Foucault writes:
Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp, but a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special know ledges, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power.

Here, Foucault introduces Social Constructionism into the conversation of sexuality. Sexual identity is not an objective reality but an individual and social construct that is named by individuals, and centers of power. Foucault places sexual restraints into the category of repression by powerful forces of culture and religion. Thus, freedom is the naming of self. For Foucault, we can be whoever we desire to be and ‘truth’ and the ‘common good’ are illusions. This is the world we live in.

When someone says that he is “gay”, this person is embracing a post-modern view of identity. Here I am not speaking of one’s attractions which very well might be real. Instead, I mean by embracing this linguistic reality, one is saying that each person or society has the power to identify the truth of their sexual selves. For the individual this might do little harm, but for the church the cost is immeasurable.

In the biblical account, the only way to understand sexual identity is through the lens of the Imago Dei and the divine blessing that comes from it:
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”” Genesis‬ ‭1:27-28‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
Male and female is a divine edict that flows from the very reality of God. From it comes the creation ordinance: be fruitful and multiply. The Church and Christians does a disservice to those they serve when they mix the categories of Scriptures with post-modern philosophy. From the biblical perspective, categories like gay, straight, trans, bisexual do not exist as categories of identity. They do not point to reality; instead they are the words of a creature taking the place of God. As soon as these are the categories of conversation, you have left the realism of the Bible and entered into the miry chaos of post modernity.

Words have power. By entering and accepting the unbiblical categories of the current, cultural moment, the church has given up the ground of biblical authority. Identity is primum momenti; identity is the primary ground of lordship. If Jesus is your Lord, then you are a man, a woman with a divine calling. He redeems all of us including our sexuality identity.

Herman Bavinck rightly grounds sexual identity in the realism of the Bible,
God is the Creator of the human being, and simultaneously also the Inaugurator of sex and of sexual difference. This difference did not result from sin; it existed from the very beginning, it has its basis in creation, it is a revelation of God’s will and sovereignty, and is therefore wise and good. Therefore, no one may misconstrue or despise this sexual difference, either within one’s own identity or in that of another person. It has been willed by God. The authority of the father, the love of the mother, and the obedience of the child form in their unity the threefold cord that binds together and sustains all relationships within human society. Within the psychological life of every integrated personality this triple cord forms the motif and melody.

Here, one’s sexual identity is objectively decreed by God. And the psychology of this identity and the family born of it is the foundation of society and the reality every person must reckon with.

There is much that could be said about how we ought to talk about our impulses and inclinations, as well as how singleness plays into the Christian view of reality but words have power. Let us use our words with care.

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Membership and Reaching the LGBTQIA Community

In recent years, churches seeking to adapt to a rapidly changing culture and expansive view on sexual ethics have sought novel ways to engage the LGBTQIA community. Some churches are still adhering to an orthodox sexual ethic while finding ways of embracing gay individuals and couples. One such way is through membership framed in “missional hospitality”. The reasoning for such churches to engage in missional evangelism is relevance, engagement and relationship. Such hospitality fosters relationship and is based in inclusion with a “long view” on discipleship. And since, historically, church relationships are embodied in membership, biblical hospitality would, “make a place at the table”, for those whose otherwise would not be there. Here, membership is primarily about relationship, evangelism and eventually discipleship. Pulling from another relational reality for an example, it is a little bit like missionary dating. We are not “equally yoked” yet but my love will make the difference. For both, relationship allows for inclusion and demonstrations of Christian love while not embracing an unbiblical worldview. The laudable goal is discipleship and transformation. If it works, we can stand, declare, love and make disciples all in the same breath. 

Hospitality is a profoundly Christian category found throughout the Scriptures. Deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition (birthed out of Genesis 18), it is one of the marks of a true Christian community (Matt 25:31-46; Romans 12:13; 1 Peter 4:8-9; Titus 1:8). Hospitality was such a mark of Jesus that he was called a friend of sinners for his hospitality (Matt 11:19). Christian hospitality according to the, New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, “Identifies Jesus with the ‘least of these’ and links hospitality towards human beings with love for Jesus”.  Christian hospitality is loving the stranger and those we know with the same love we have for Christ. It is love in action. We show hospitality with a meal, an open home, financial help or an listening ear. Hospitality is a tangible means to love our brothers and sisters in Christ and to love the other. Authors like Rosaria Butterfield have encouraged the church that it is through hospitality—the authentic opening of home and relationship—that non-Christians can encounter the living Christ. I know from my own journey, I am a Christian today in large part because of open homes and unmerited friendships. I found Jesus there.

Hospitality is a biblical command for the Christian church to follow and is the means of evangelism in a disconnected age. As an evangelist and someone who is more prone to say yes to relationship, I have been considering whether missional hospitality gives the church a framework for membership as it is understood in the reformed tradition? 

As I have considered this question what I have found is that membership is a totally different biblical category than hospitality. While membership is an earthen but valuable sign of salvation that has specific demands on those who are members, hospitality is best thought of as the work of love the believer has towards other believers and outsiders alike. Hospitality might reveal the living Christ but it cannot take away the demands that “Jesus as Lord” puts on his disciples.For the sake of the gospel, we cannot confuse the two. 

According to article 28 of the Belgic confession, membership is defined by:

  1. Salvation 
  2. Worshiping regularly in the local congregation 
  3. Submitting to and being disciples under biblical authority through local leadership
  4. Serving 

When we think about giving membership, the goal isn’t to be hospitable to one another but to endorse with a visible sign the spiritual reality of salvation. The high goal of membership is a member’s assurance and a church’s confidence that a local church’s elders sees the fruits of salvation in a particular person. 

This is the goal of the Belgic Confessions’ obligations on a member of a local church. And in each obligation we clearly see that hospitality can help someone come under the yoke of Christ but it cannot replace the decision each person can make.

According to the Belgic Confession, there must be salvation. This isn’t just reciting some words and believing the right things, but it is the hidden reality of the heart that has decided that Jesus is Lord. He is the master in all areas of life and though one might have a long way to go to maturity, he or she has as the aim Christlikeness. Salvation is Christ’s work but in the biblical record and reformed tradition, it is coupled with a public profession. Obvious sins that are entrenched are explored graciously and if there is agreement that it is sin, and there is a holy energy to get free, a person is gladly welcomed into the community of redeemed and being redeemed sinners. But unrepentant sin that is entrenched has always been a sign that salvation has not taken root.  Here, hospitality is extended but membership withheld. A gay couple who is civically married is entrenched in cultural sin. Active homosexual activity is a sin of grave concern. Both are matters of first importance. They are issues of salvation.  The question for a church accepting a gay couple into membership is does this couple agree about this biblical conclusion and will the church along with the couple go on the journey of discipleship so that obedience might be worked into their lives? If not, the profession is hollow and the church is encouraging disobedience with its silence.

Second, according The the Belgic Confession, membership is a commitment to gather regularly together. This has more to do with discipleship than attendance. It is the commitment of a member to publicly practice the disciplines of the church to become more like Christ in every area of life. Interestingly, in every church that has engaged the practice of missional hospitality that I have engaged, sexual ethics are of little or or concern as an issue of discipleship.  For a church to be faithful, it must be clear on its sexual ethics as asserted in the Bible. It must call the whole church to fidelity no matter the cost. Doesn’t “missional hospitality” that gives membership away and reduces the importance of sexual ethics secretly malform its members, same-sex attracted and heterosexual alike? The goal of membership is radical discipleship. I am not sure how lowering the bar of Christian living helps in this most important endeavor.

Third, the Belgic Confession says there must be ever growing obedience. In the words of the Belgic Confession, members must “bend[] their necks under the yoke of Jesus Christ.” An orthodox view of sexuality sees ongoing, unrepentant, sexual sin as something that can disqualify you from eternal life and Christ’s kingdom (1 Cor 6:9-11). A married gay couple following Christ brings complications and costs that will be severe. Is the cost of discipleship being laid out and is church and member alike ready for this journey of the cross? Or is the church declaring, “peace, peace, when there is no peace.” If so, in an attempt to be hospitable, such a church becomes an enemy of the cross.

Fourth, the Belgic Confession calls members to serve the church and the community with the grace and hope of the gospel through the gifts given by the Spirit. Here, in a church who opens membership because of missional hospitality, utter confusion reigns. Where sin has been minimized, hospitality and discipleship confused, and the aim of membership not clear, how can a church be a force for gospel good? Sure, it will be able to be kind and do some social good, but its primary mission of making disciples who become like Jesus is totally lost.

Being fed by Jesus or healed by him does not save those who receive such kindness. Christian hospitality can bring a recipient to the door of salvation but each person must decide  to follow Christ. We walk into salvation by becoming disciples. Of course salvation is a free gift of grace but it is grace into eternal life now.

Anything that is alive has certain attributes and as long as it receives the attention and nutrients it needs and nothing harmful intervenes, the life will naturally grow into a mature life—a seed becomes a bloomed plant, an egg becomes a hen, etc… This is the way God has designed life. It is also the biblical vision for the Christian life. A man or woman who is born from above (John 3:3) begins as an “infant in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1). This new life will grow and mature through the process of discipleship until a Christian lives his or her life as Christ lived his (1 John 2:6). This is the natural development of the Christian. Such growth into maturity is not for the super-Christian. It ought to be as natural as a flower seed growing into a fully bloomed plant. When membership is reduced and discipleship side-stepped in the name of hospitality, people will not grow. Salvation itself is at stake.

Anyone who loves Jesus wants to reach the community around them. Hospitality is a great way to do this but we also must not sugarcoat what becoming a Christian means. It means putting to death (Col 3) everything that stands in the way of Jesus being Lord of our lives. This includes liars, thieves, sorcerers, adulterers, envy and yes homosexual sex. Let’s be hospitable but let’s not lose the gospel in the process.

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Marriage Post #2: What does a good marriage look like in daily life

 

In my last post, I considered how the Bible describes a good marriage. What I described was that marriage should be understood as embodied theology (read here). In Christian marriage, the world gets a window into Christ and his relationship with his church. This is the meta-meaning of marriage. In this blog I want to get practical. What I want to show is how such a Christ-exalting marriage looks like in daily life. In other words, what are the components of a healthy Christian marriage. I have been extremely helped by the research and work of Dr. John Gottman in this regard. Though not a Christian, his research reveals that a basic Christian ethic used in the marital relationship, sets the marriage up to thrive relationally and to be a space where satisfaction and care flourish. Much of what I will share in what follows comes from his research. Gottman’s relational insights along with a theological foundation, give us a real sense of what is a good marriage.

**The relational aspects that make a great marriage**

The first relational reality that is foundational to a great marriage is that there is *fondness and admiration* between partners. Fondness and admiration can be described simply as the emotional reality of liking your partner. Liking your partner is the basis of any relationship and most likely the reason a couple begins their relational journey together. It involves sexual attractiveness but more deeply it is the psychological reality of just clicking as a couple. One way to test whether fondness and admiration are alive in your marriage is to consider the story of how you met your spouse and how you courted one another. When you remember those first months/years of the relationship are you filled with joy and happy remembrance. Are the memories romantic and fun? Or has those moments become emotionally neutral or even negative? Has your beginnings lost the magic of love? Does any of the attraction you initially have remain (or at least you desire for it to be rekindled)? The number one indicator of health for a marriage is the depth and health of the underlying affection each has for the other. If this is missing, or one of the partners no longer desires it, the marriage is under deep and profound threat. If you don’t like your spouse, the enemy is at the door. But if there is affection, friendship and admiration for one another, your marriage has the most important relational reality to be a good marriage.

The second reality of a healthy marriage is whether the couple cultivates the relationship through continuous, ongoing, small acts of connection. Gottman calls these ‘bids’. Bids are any act of connection by one partner to the other in an attempt for connection. This could be as small as asking your partner to look at a picture to as big as listening to a problem your spouse is having at work. These bids happen continually throughout the day and how each partner responds is indicative on whether affection will grow or diminish over time. To each bid given the receiving partner has four choices:

1) he can ignore his partner (she asks him to look at a picture, and he acts as if he didn’t hear her).
2) he can turn away from his partner (she asks him to look at the picture and he tells her that he is too busy right now).
3) he can turn against his partner (she asks him to look at the picture and he uses this moment to berate her on some topic of his choosing.

The fourth choice and what healthy couples do is turn towards one another. She asks him to look at the picture and he acknowledges her request and acts with interest in what she is displaying. When partners turn towards one another consistently over decades in small and big ways, the marriage relationship has depth, affection and is secure in relational love. Bids that are regularly used as moments to turn towards one another are the means of securing and growing love over a lifetime.

The third reality of a healthy marriage is the ability for each partner to listen empathetically to the other partner. The hardest thing that I see couples struggle with is to hear his or her spouse and see an issue, challenge or conflict from the spouse’s point of view. Men and women alike (though men are more prone to do it) are seemingly compelled to lead conversations, insert opinions, try to change a spouse’s opinion or solve a problem. Such behavior conveys loud and clearly that you care more about the sound of your own voice than the heart of your spouse. Healthy couples listen to one another well. Such healthy listening has several components:

– Empathetic listening with thoughtful questions (he tells his wife that he can’t stand a coworker. She says, “that sounds horrible. Tell me about it.”
– The listener takes the side of the spouse. If he can’t stand his coworker, she conveys that she is on his side in the conflict.
– There is no inserting of opinion or problem solving unless asked for. Instead, the goal is to cultivate a space where your partner feels completely heard, accepted and protected.
– Each partner always has time to listen. When a spouse is in distress, everything else disappears and the spouse becomes the focus.

If this is the frame of relational dialogue, most likely we are looking at a healthy couple.

The fourth element of a healthy couple is the ability to navigate conflict in a healthy way. This means the ability to hear a complaint from your partner rationally, empathize with his or her position, take responsibility for your part and together find a solution for the future. Many conflicts in marriage are perpetual. Meaning there are no easy solutions or the ‘solution’ would damage the soul of one of the partners in profoundly existential ways. Healthy couples can live in the tension of difference, find compromises and celebrate the gap that inevitably happens between two people.

Fifth, healthy couples create a culture of love for their relationship and their family. They ritualize important behavior that embodies their values. Here is an example that almost all Christian marriages celebrate that embodies a family’s values: celebrating Easter Sunday. Easter is the yearly moment of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Most Christian families have created rituals to embody their beliefs and values about this day. Church, games and families gathering become yearly rituals that embody a profound family value—Christ is alive and this is profoundly important to us. In some significant way, the day has meaning because each family has given that meaning to it. Healthy couples do these embodied rituals for other areas of life. They ritualize love making–a special way of initiating it, declining it, figuring out what to do, and enjoying one another. They ritualize date night–it is regularly calendars with specific activities that they enjoy together. They ritualize common activities that they do and enjoy together. And as a family, they participate in shared activities that cultivate relationship and love. All of these rituals embody values, beliefs and realities the couple want in their marriage. A healthy couple practice what they see as important by their shared, repeated activities. Because love must be cultivated, healthy couples come together to make sure such cultivation happens.

Finally, healthy couples have shared purpose and meaning. This has two aspects. First, each partner is committed to the other spouse’s calling and dreams. He acts with significant energy and support to help his spouse achieve what she wants out of life (& vice versa). In this way, each partner knows they have a life long ally in life. Each spouse knows that he or she has one person who stands and believes in him or her no matter what. Second, the couple over time cultivates and comes together over a shared purpose for the marriage itself. This might involve parenting but among healthy Christian couples this will also mean embracing the particular reason that God has brought this unique marriage together. This spiritual purpose will be the guiding light of the marriage. The narrative that gives meaning and hope even in the dark places. No matter what this marriage goes through, this marriage stands as a bright light because the marriage is an inseparable team reaching for audacious goals.

When all these components are operating in a marriage, the marriage is healthy and thriving. It is a good marriage.

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Marriage: Embodied Theology (Part one of five)

Marriage is hard. Marriage is beautiful. Marriage is mysterious. I have been married for almost 16 years and I know many of the contours of married life but everyday brings new challenges and adventures. To stay committed and hope-filled over decades is no small achievement. Truly, it is a gift.

I am always filled with awe when I hear of a couple who has been married for fifty or sixty years and still they love each other deeply. It is otherworldly.

As a pastor, I interact with married couples all the time. Some marriages are beautiful. Many are trudging a hard road of faithfulness but standing and believing in goodness.  And sadly, more marriages than you can believe are relationships that are slowly dying or already dead.

For a variety of reasons, some personal and some theological, I have a deep passion to see Christian marriages thrive. For me, my passion means to do all I can to help marriages flourish.

With this in mind, the next several blog posts are going to focus on marriage. The topics will be:

  1. Marriage: embodied theology (This post)
  2.  Marriage: what masters of relationship can teach us
  3.  Marriage: The four horseman of the apocalypse
  4.  Marriage: repair
  5. Marriage: @Calvary

It is my hope that these posts might help all of us grow in our marriages and help in protecting and honoring the second most important institution in our world today.

What Makes a Good Marriage?

I want to answer this question in two ways. First and in this post, I want to consider the question biblically. The Bible, in my opinion, gives us a narrative framework that helps us understand marriage and when we aim to live into and live up to this narrative, our marriages thrive. And then in my next post, I want to answer the question relationally. Or to say another way, what relational behaviors do healthy couples do on a regular basis that cause a marriage to thrive as a place of love? When we have both answers, I think we will begin to get a picture of a good marriage.

A biblical framework for marriages

A Christian narrative framework for marriage is found in one of the most controversial verses in scripture:

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭5:22-33‬ ‭

To understand Paul’s commands on marriage, one needs to understand that Paul describes marriage as embodied theology. Ephesians 5 isn’t simply ethical dictums based on gender and marriage but more profoundly it places marriage in its rightful story–the story of Christ and the church.

In the Old Testament, one of the metaphors used to describe God and his people is that his people is the bride and he is the bridegroom. Paul is drawing on this narrative structure here. What he wants to do in Ephesians five is to explain the meaning of marriage, it’s purposes and ends. Marriage is not a human invention. Instead, it is a cultural reality that has meaning in that it points beyond itself to who God is, how he pursues his people, and who his people are to him.

God in Christ is the bridegroom. He is the passionate lover who has laid his eyes on the object of his love, the bride. Interlaced through Paul’s marriage theology are specific ways that Christ acts as the bridegroom.

The bridegroom is the head

Paul uses this language of ‘head’ elsewhere to describe Christ:

“And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Colossians‬ ‭1:18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

When you think of this language of head in its most basic biological function, it is the head that brings together all the separate constituent parts and makes a whole person–body, drives, emotions, and consciousness. It is that organ that runs the body–both its automated parts and conscious parts. The head makes interprets the past and seeks a preferred future.  It is also that part of the human person that makes sense of a situation, puts it into context and in a sense, explains it. The head is the storyteller–not in the sense of myth or fiction but in the sense of telling “our personal story”. It is the head that gives meaning and purpose to human life.

Without the head, there is no life at least one worth living. There is no purpose, no meaning. Without the head we cannot know where we are, what we are and where we are going. We would not exist in any meaningful way.

Christ is the bridegroom who is the head of the marriage with the church. He gives the marriage meaning and purpose. he tells the church her story–the meaning of life. He shows her who she is, where she is at and where she is going with him. He makes it possible for her to function. Without him, she has no life. This is what Christ the bridegroom does for his people the bride.

The bridegroom is Savior

Paul tells us that the bridegroom Christ is savior of his bride. He has laid down his life for her. Now we quickly understand this as substitutionary atonement and that is right. But I don’t think Paul wants you to think atonement theories here. He wants you to think in terms of a love story. This is a marital story filled with adventure, passion and romance.

Christ loves his church, he is passionate for her. His eyes are on her. He is consumed by her (the Bible calls this jealously). But she has fallen for other lovers. These are lovers that have turned into tyrants (read the Old Testament and you will see this is the continual story of Israel). She thought she knew her lover but he ended up being a jerk, abusive and cold. And instead of being a bride she became a slave to this lover. And perhaps she even longs for a real lover but she sees herself now and wonders who would want her now–used, demeaned, and made small.

But the great bridegroom still wants her even though she has been greatly diminished by false love. She is imprisoned and under lock and key. He loves her so much and wants to be with her that he goes to war to defeat this tyrant of love. And in the battle to save her, he lays down his life. He wins his beloved but it comes at great cost.

Christ is the bridegroom who has gone to war to have his bride. And to free her and love her, he paid with his life.

The bridegroom makes her beautiful

Paul says that Christ nourishes, cherishes, and washes his bride so she might be presented in splendor. In other words, he gives his energies for one purpose: so she can be beautiful.

The relationship is one in which Christ’s energies are used to make his bride shine like the sun. He waits for the day when he can show her off, when all the residue of that horrible past lover is washed off and forgotten. In the place of a demeaned and abused maiden will be the most beautiful bride.

Christ the bridegroom is a leader who passionately loves his bride. Nothing stands in his way. He faces all her captors and slays them even when it costs him everything. His actions display his love. When he has her, his energies are spent for her beauty and good. His life is spent on her. We might say that the glory of the bridegroom is seen in so far as he is willing to act in love for his bride. His actions are his glory on display. Her destiny fulfilled reveal his magnificence.

Then Paul gives a narrative framework for the bride.

The bride

The bride respectfully submits

The bride, the church, remembers her old lover, the tyrant. He promised so much, but he caused her to turn her eyes away from her beloved. The tyrant turned out to be a beast. All he did was use, abuse and demean her. For reasons that our mysterious, her Savior has come. Forgetting and forgiving her the false love, he has rescued her. The bridegroom has laid down his life for her. And he hasn’t just left her all beat up, insecure and small. He has done great work to fulfill the deepest desires of her heart. It’s his aim to bless and honor her in the marriage. Now, she is beautiful. Her glory shines because of the work of the bridegroom.

And her response is the response of love-filled, faithful following.

She declares, “You are so good, strong, mysterious in love that I will follow my beloved wherever he desires to go because I know that his aim is my good.”

So she will go wherever he goes because in following she will flourish. She fully trusts him because he is trustworthy. She submits fully to him.

She respects him. He is unlike anyone she has ever met, a hero of heroes. He is her knight who has rescued her from tyranny, pain, obscurity and raised her up to glory.

Christian marriage

Christian marriage is to tell this story of Christ and his church. This is the great drama of the universe and our marriages are to be a reenactment of the greatest love story that ever was.

Christian husbands

Before you are married, you are to look for that one woman that captures your attention, the one that captivates you. Find the woman that fills you with passion. You are to look for the one who attracts you and the one who you know with your help could be great and glorious. As her husband you believe she could be everything she was ever created to be. She can be more beautiful than she ever imagined because of your love. When you find that woman, pursue her with all the nobility and passion her unique brilliance demands. Then marry her.

You will find that your wife has tyrants in her life. These days it might be that life and relationships have made her think she is not worthy of love. Maybe she thinks she is not beautiful. Maybe a tyrant of life has said she is not brilliant or capable. Maybe a tyrant has wounded her soul. Maybe a demonic tyrant has imprisoned her with an offer of some good but now she is enslaved by this beast.

Well husband, use all your energies and all your passion to free her from all those who would seek to harm your beloved. Fight to the death to have her and to bring her to her destiny–free, mature & able to do what God has called her to do.

Whatever you do, from morning to night, small things and big, use each moment to bring out the best in her—to provoke and cultivate her beauty. Your work is to make sure this brilliant woman shines with all the radiance that God has given her. Spare no expense, leave nothing on the field. Do all you can to help her live into her destiny. If it costs you everything, it will be worth it because her radiant life is worth the price.

And finally be the head. You are the keeper of the story. You are the leader. You remind, embody and declare that all of life has a purpose. You remind that your love and this marriage points beyond itself to the great purposes of the cosmos. You keep pointing her to the great story. You help her see. You help her find her part. You use all your skills, and learn new ones if you need to, to make sure it all makes sense. Your behavior, the direction and aims of your marriage, her identity and purpose is a beautiful reenactment of the great love story. You are to lead with this story in mind. You are not a tyrant; you are a hero. Don’t settle for a lesser story. Fight for the best with all your might. This is what headship is all about in Paul’s theology.

Christian wives

In response to such a lover, wives go wherever your beloved leads because you know that he is your knight in shining armor, your “savior”. He is the one who is embodying the Bridegroom, the hero in the story of love. You know from experience that he wants you to flourish; his every decision is one with your best interests in mind. He is selfless, brave and noble. You trust him with your whole life and future because he is trustworthy. He is your best friend and it doesn’t cross your mind to stand in opposition because your hearts are so aligned that his will and yours are the same. You gladly submit. It’s easy for your heart to follow him because he is like no other lover you have ever seen.

And you respect him. You make it your marital work to make sure he knows how strong, brave and courageous he is. You let him know how his selfless, life-costing love has won your heart. Every word you utter is one soaked in a kind of awe that you got such a man. And it’s not just with him that you honor him but with all you interact with— kids, friends, coworkers and parents. Everyone. You just can’t help yourself. You have yourself a keeper. Every word you speak about him is intentionally worded to make sure that the whole world knows how his love is the treasure of your heart.

Wife, this is your part. Coupled with his selfless love and leadership, it tells the great story. The world will stand in awe to this other-world reality. This kind of marriage tells in detail the reason for existence–the great love story of the cosmos.

This is marriage as it should be using a biblical, narrative framework. Biblically, marriages that live this great story, with lots of room for sin and grace, are good marriages.  In my next blog I will look at how such a marriage actually looks like up close. I will show how healthy marriages work relationally.

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Part 2: Divorce and Remarriage

This is the second post in a two-part essay. In the first essay I considered when is divorce a biblically viable choice: click here to read. What I want to cover here is the challenging subject of whether remarriage is ever permissible after divorce.

It is a challenging for a number of reasons. First, the five New Testament texts that seem to deal with remarriage seem to be saying different things. It is also challenging because divorce runs rampant in our culture; whatever the statistics, many Christian people do it. And finally it is challenging because most pastoral leaders are simply quiet on the issue because of whom they might offend or hurt.

But these challenges should not stop us from entering into these tumultuous waters. Instead, they remind us to tread carefully and humbly. What I will seek to do below is to consider the texts on divorce in light of one another and then see if we can draw conclusions and a biblically-based ethic framework for remarriage after divorce.

The 5 pertinent New Testament texts are:

“But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭5:32‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,”
‭‭Mark‬ ‭10:11‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“”Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭16:18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭7:15‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭7:39‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Some of reflections on these texts:

First, it is clear from these verses that marriage is a nearly insoluble relationship apart from death except in the most dire of circumstances:

  1. adultery
  2. abandonment.

Just because marriage is hard, feelings have turned neutral/negative, your partner has changed from whom you committed to or any other of the plethora of reasons people give as reasons for divorce today, we can say biblically that none of them give license to get divorced. Such illigetimate reasons for divorce are sin and simply unthinkable in a Christian framework.

Secondly, one will notice from these texts that it is assumed that it will only be a man who would get a divorce. This is because these texts in their cultural context knew that for the most part only men initiate divorce. That being said, today divorce can be initiated by either spouse and we can rightly interchange husband with wife or vice versa without touching the integrity of the text.

Thirdly, the Matthew, Mark and Luke texts are quite similar in language and construction yet the Matthew text seems to give the possibility for remarriage after divorce. In the Matthew text the husband who divorces for legitimate biblical reasons has no outright restrictions on remarriage. It is by far the most expansive view on divorce from the teachings of Jesus. The other two verses are quite restrictive and seem to say that any remarriage after divorce is an act of committing adultery.

What ought we do with this seeming contradiction between these teachings of Jesus? It seems reasonable to go with the most expansive verse. If as a parent I give several instructions to my child and one of the instructions give more freedom than some other instruction, the child is not at fault in any way for following the more freedom-filled instruction. Something similar seems to be happening here. Also, the Matthew text has within it a pastoral accommodation that need not be ignored even though the other two texts don’t have it. The text does not fully restrict remarriage after divorce and this accommodation has a quality of mercy that seems to me to be authentically from the heart of Jesus. My reading of the gospel texts get greater validity based upon the 1 Corinthians text which I cover below.

My final observation of these texts is based upon a close reading of 1 Corinthians 7. This Pauline text along with the expansive position of the Matthew text seem to give permission for remarriage in specific circumstances and is by far the strongest biblical argument for remarriage after divorce. 1 Cor 7:15, in the case of abandonment, the abandoned spouse is no longer bound to the marriage. This word “bound” is used again in
7:39. In vs. 39, “bound” is used by Paul as the clarifying ethical marker of whether remarriage is permissible. If the husband dies, the spouse is no longer bound and is free to remarry. Following Paul’s own logic, if a person is divorced for abandonment or adultery, they are no longer bound to the marriage, just like in death, and are freed to be remarried. This can be seen as a pastoral accommodation given by Paul similar to Jesus in the Matthew text. Taken together, a clear path is given.

Permission for remarriage for adultery or abandonment is not explicitly declared in any of the NT texts but the ethical framework seems fairly clear. One reason, perhaps, why it is not explicitly spelled out is that for Paul  such circumstances, among Christians, will be extremely rare and not a current reality in the Corinth church. For Paul and for us, most couples need to work out their marriage as unto the Lord. The reasons for the textual differences in Jesus’ teaching are less clear. But with the whole New Testament in view, in the cases of adultery or abandonment, a path for remarriage seems to be given.

An ethical framework for remarriage

Assuming my conclusions are correct, below is a biblically based ethical framework for remarriage after divorce.

  • Divorce and remarriage are possibilities allowed only in specific circumstances–adultery & abandonment (for a treatment on abandonment read part one).
  • Almost all married, Christian couples are biblically required to stay in their first marriage and do the work required to stay together.
  • If a couple is in their second marriage for illegitimate reasons they have sinned but since divorce to “fix” the original sin is a sin as well, one must ask which sin causes the least destruction. It seems clear that the couple in their second marriage should repent, accept mercy and seek to have a thriving marriage and not end it. Because God is gracious, we ought to expect God’s goodness to move in this marriage. He regularly does good to sinners. Thank God for that.
  • In the case of divorce where the marriage ended for illegitimate reasons (no longer in-love, fight too much, we no longer know each other, etc.), the divorced couple are commanded to embrace singleness. The marriage season is done and now they are singularly with the Lord and his church. In this relationship with God and his church, they will learn his fidelity and love. No doubt it might be a hard road of suffering. It is a long discipline towards holiness.
  • A christian couple who have divorced for illegitimate reasons but have not remarried to others should seriously consider getting remarried. This is clear in Paul’s instructions to the church in Corinth.

I pray these two posts have been helpful. Please comment below on any questions you have or concerns.

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Divorce and Remarriage: Part One

As a pastor, one of the hardest things I deal with on a regular basis is walking with couples who get divorced. And secondarily the challenge of helping a person who is divorced walk through the biblical reality of whether remarriage is morally permissible in his or her situation. This is painful, hard work filled with suffering, guilt and doubt. Most Christians want to follow Christ in their marriage but not many know how to follow Christ in divorce and remarriage.

What I want to do in the next couple of posts is describe what I believe are biblically legitimate reasons for divorce, what aren’t, and explore biblical realities of remarriage. The hope is that this can help you personally or be a resource if you are walking with a couple or person navigating some of the most difficult relational/emotional waters of life.

This first post will consider biblical reasons for divorce. The second post will look at whether the Bible ever endorses remarriage after divorce.

Biblical Reasons for Divorce

There seems to be two biblical reasons for divorce.

  1. Adultery is the clearest and strongest reason for divorce by the aggrieved spouse. In Matthew 19:9, Jesus gives adultery as a reason for divorce. It is the clearest and strongest reason for a divorce but it is a relational concession not a command. Marriages can survive adultery and even become more beautiful on the other side. But some marriages are so broken after the affair and the years of pain that made adultery even possible that divorce is a suitable moral decision. For the sake of putting to death a union that has brought death to the couple and those around them, divorce might offer some kind of relief.

The word used here for adultery is porneia. This word is used in the New Testament for all sexual activity outside of the marital covenant. This of course includes physical, sexual relationships and I believe unrepentant, ongoing pornography use as well.

All this is said with a clear gospel caveat. The ethical framework of love which marriage is to embody (1 Cor 13) should be employed if the sinning spouse is convicted and doing the serious work of repentance. Love forgives all things and keeps no records of wrongs. If the adulterous spouse is seeking to follow Jesus, the aggrieved spouse is mandated by gospel love to follow Jesus by seeking marital reconciliation. No matter the sin, if the sinning spouse is repentant, the faithful spouse should seek to see if the marriage can be salvaged. Remember, marriage is for life.

  1. The second reason for divorce is given by Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:15. There, divorce is possible if an unbelieving spouse leaves one’s married partner. In such a case, the believing spouse need not hold on to a marriage which the other has abandoned. Paul says to live in peace. Divorce might make that possible.

I think this reason by Paul is actually an ethical framework for ending a broken marriage. It would be unthinkable for Paul that a believing spouse would ever leave his believing spouse. This is based upon Paul’s belief, expounded in Ephesians 5, that Christian marriage is a reflection of Christ and the church. Christ is the faithful spouse even when his bride is serially unfaithful. When she returns, he will always accept her without shame or condemnation. This gracious, kind love should always be on display in marriage. Thus, only an unbelieving spouse would leave his partner for no cause. A believing spouse would endure with Christian hope.

Thus, if a spouse leaves his spouse, he is revealing that he is an unbelieving spouse. Paul seems to say as much in 1 Timothy 5:8. There, Paul makes clear that if a “believer “ does not take care of his family, he is worse than an unbeliever. What can be worse than an unbeliever? A hypocrite–one who says one thing but acts contrary to his profession thus revealing no real faith. In marriage, when a spouse professes faith but serially does not keep his commitments to spouse and family, he is a hypocrite and the very act of not living up to one’s vows reveals that he is an unbelieving spouse. Consequently, it is my opinion that if a believer is left by one’s spouse, Paul gives an ethical concession for divorce.

The word for “leave” in the Corinthian’s text has as its connotation the idea of actively distancing yourself from your spouse. This for sure happens in physical abandonment but it can also happen emotionally too. One can be physically present but has left his or her partner in every sense of the word.

Here I think of the husband who gambles his salary against his wife’s wishes and leaves the bills unpaid. When she confronts him, he berates her as judgmental and nothing ever really changes. This lasts for years. He is acting as an unbeliever and has left his spouse.

I think of the verbally abusive wife who for years belittles her husband for every mistake crushing his masculinity and destroying his soul. She always undermines him and he is reduced to a sheepish boy. He seeks to be faithful and loving but she won’t stop. But after years of trying, it is hell to be with her. Her meanness is one thing, her unwillingness to partner with her spouse to change the dynamics of the marriage is another. She is acting as an unbeliever and has left her spouse.

I think of the addicted spouse who won’t get help. Whether drugs or alcohol, her addiction causes great harm to her partner. He tries to love her but she loves the high more than her commitments. She has become her addiction and has nothing relationally for her spouse. For years she lives in the cycle of her addiction and he pays with his very soul. She is acting as an unbeliever and has left her spouse.

Finally, I think of the cold, harsh, abusive husband who is more tyrant than lover. Everywhere in the familial sphere he goes, he brings contempt and criticism. He belittles his spouse and won’t stop, no matter how many times she begs for them to get counseling or pastoral help. After years of this, she has lost her identity and any semblance of joy. He is acting as an unbeliever and has left his spouse.

It seems to me that it is not incidents or even seasons of “separation” that give legitimacy to possible divorce for Paul. But instead, a settled condition over time in the sinning spouse that declares through actions that his or her heart has left the marriage. Where this has happened, divorce might be warranted.

A couple of caveats. First, divorce is never commanded and need not be chosen. There might be good reasons to stay in a marriage where a spouse has “left”. Perhaps God has given the faithful spouse deep hope, or patience in pain or joy in suffering. In such cases, one ought to endure. For as Paul says, your faithful, committed love might bring about salvation for your spouse (see 1 Cor 7:16). But sometimes, this is not possible or healthy.

So where a sinning spouse has “left” the marriage, how does the faithful spouse decide it is time to end the marriage? First, I think there is an obligation to do all one can to awaken the leaving spouse to his or her commitments. I’m thinking of significant time living out patient love. I also think that when crisis hits, it is imperative to bring in wise council long before one begins divorce proceedings. And if one wise person doesn’t make headway, then bring in another. A competent pastor or counselor can bring help to a marriage the two partners can’t imagine. We should fight for our marriage until there is nothing there to fight for.

What I want to make sure I don’t convey is that the next time your spouse is mean or distant or forgets pay the bills, you can get a divorce. No. Divorce is the last option. It is a horrible option. But sometimes, sadly things need to die. Divorce is to name dead what is horribly ill and has no chance at being resuscitated.

One point of necessary clarification: one should always physically leave a serial, abusive relationship until wholesale change in the abusing spouse has happened and has been verified by trustworthy pastors/counselors and proper boundaries have been put in place. A serial abuser is immersed in patterns of behavior and thought that are not easily broken. In such circumstances, clear boundaries must be set with the help of counselors and pastoral help. It is too easy for love to become a sick cycle of dependency and abuse without outside wisdom. Abusive relationships are serious and need serious intervention. But even with all that said, Christ can redeem anyone willing to nail his/her flesh on the cross. I know. I’ve seen it. Don’t give up easily. Christ can do unbelievable things.

When all this work has been done and the leaving spouse has not returned, the decision to divorce is based upon what will bring “peace” according to Paul. Here peace means the cessation of ongoing conflict. There comes a point where seeking faithfulness just brings chaos, bitterness, soul death and pain. No one can live there forever. When a marriage has degraded to the point of a living hell and the leaving spouse won’t live up to his commitments or even try, divorce might bring peace. However painful such peace might be.

I do not think most Christian marriages that end in divorce have legitimate reasons for divorce. Instead, embracing a cultural belief of romantic love or personal happiness as ultimate ends, couples break life long vows. I think most Christians who divorce give up far too easily. I cannot tell you how many times I have been with couples when the aggrieved spouse declares he or she is done (often for good reasons) but then the sinning spouse finally begins the kind of gospel, personal change that would make the marriage beautiful but the aggrieved spouse won’t seek reconciliation. This is sin, it has life-long consequences and tarnishes the name of Christ.

Life-long commitment to one person is hard work. It is not for the faint hearted. There will be suffering and pain. But also joy, laughter and love. It might be the hardest thing one can do but it is well worth it. In marriage, we become mature in the fire of love. It is worth the work. In it you can experience Christ and become like him.

But for some, the work becomes soul crushing. Unrepentant unfaithfulness or abandonment from an unrepentant spouse over a span of years is something no one should endure. In such cases, divorce is an option. There is little good in it but it is better than the alternative. Sometimes, in this world, this is the best we can hope for.

In the next post we will consider divorce and remarriage.