Ephesians 2:8-10 NIV
[8] For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— [9] not by works, so that no one can boast. [10] For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
The word faith in the Bible is often translated from the Greek word, pistis, which can mean more than simply believing. Besides belief, pistis can mean, faithfulness, trustworthiness, or persuasiveness. If one must have faith in order to be a son of God as Paul said, then one must be faithful, and trustworthy to Him, just as He is to us. A covenant is a relationship where both parties are faithful and trust one another .
Marriage is the most intimate relationship between human beings, and symbolizes the covenant that God made with His people. In a marriage, a man and a woman each vow before God to love and remain faithful to one another until death. This is a marriage covenant. Within a marriage covenant, both parties agree to the terms, and vow before God that they will love and remain faithful to one another, be trustworthy, remain loyal and committed to each other, and persevere, throughout the marriage, "'til death do us part". These elements are required in marriage, as well as in any relationship. Without them, a relationship is unhealthy at best.
A marriage covenant is not one sided, but both parties must work to maintain it. If one quits and stops loving, or being faithful, or being trustworthy, or being loyal, or persevering, then they have broken their vow before God, as well as their end of the covenant. They can either repent and choose to keep their vow before God and remain in the marriage covenant, or they can leave the marriage. If they leave the marriage due to sexual immorality, they have Biblical grounds for divorce, which is defined as "a separation of the thing which was once joined together." Jesus and Paul defined the Biblical grounds for divorce:
[5]‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? [6] So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
[7] “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
[8] Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. [9] I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery" (Matthew 19:5-9 NIV).
[32] "But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery" (Matthew 5:32 NIV).
[12] "To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. [13] And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.
[15] 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 7:12-13, 15 NIV).
Unfaithfulness due to sexual immorality is the only acceptable reason Jesus gave for divorce. Paul added, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that an unbelieving spouse is permitted to divorce a believing spouse if they choose to do so. This is abandonment. God permits divorce in this case because if an unbelieving spouse chooses to leave the marriage simply because their spouse is a believer, they have shown themselves to be unfaithful by not keeping the vow they made before God, and therefore they have broken their end of the covenant. A husband and wife are not divorced in God's sight, unless it is due to at least one of these two acts of unfaithfulness, or one of them dies.
Jesus and Paul defined God’s standards for marriage and divorce, which He not only implemented for us, but He also abides by them. God intended marriage between a man and a woman to be symbolic of the relationship between Jesus and His people. Jesus is the Bridegroom and His people are His bride. Let's look at some of the similarities between the marriage covenant between a man and a woman, and the covenant between the Bridegroom and His bride.
According to Jesus, a person should only become a Christian after he has counted the cost of following Jesus. This is so he will know the love, commitment, loyalty, faithfulness, and perseverance that is required of him throughout his life. We do the same thing before marriage. It would be foolish not to, because marriage is a life long commitment.
After he has weighed the pros and cons, and has decided that Jesus is worth it and that he will remain faithful to Him until death, he agrees to the terms and enters into an everlasting covenant with God. He gets baptized as a symbol of entering into the covenant. The man is now in a covenant relationship with God, and is included in His bride.
If he is unfaithful to God by committing idolatry or by abandoning God, then he has broken his end of the covenant, and by God's own standards, God is not bound to remain in the relationship, and has (Biblical) grounds to separate from (divorce) him. Jesus said so when He answered the Jews's question about divorce. He said that God has joined the two together as one flesh, and therefore man has no right to separate the two (nor does he have the ability to) except for reasons of death and sexual immorality. If either spouse divorces for any other reason and then remarries, they are committing adultery.
The reason that God allows for divorce caused by sexual immorality is because it is unfaithfulness to the spouse, just as adultery is. God equates sexual immorality and adultery with idolatry. God said to Israel, "You shall have no other God's before me..., for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:3-5). Idolatry is worshipping something other than God, which God commanded His people not to do. Just as adultery is unfaithfulness in a marriage, idolatry is unfaithfulness to God, and God does not permit His people to partake in either.
It was because of the northern kingdom of Israel's idolatry and unfaithfulness that God divorced her (Jeremiah 3:8). Furthermore, throughout the Old Testament, God described His people Israel as " harlot, adulterer", etc., due to their idolatry and unfaithfulness to Him. The Bible provides examples of God separating from Israel due to their unfaithfulness to Him:
When He divorced the northern kingdom of Israel and gave her over to Assyria because of her harlotry:
[8] She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore - Jeremiah 3:8 ESV
When He left the Jewish temple because He was giving the southern kingdom of Judah over to Babylon because her harlotry was worse than that of the northern kingdom's:
[18] Then the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple and stood over the cherubim. - Ezekiel 10:18 NKJV
When Jesus said that He wanted nothing more than to gather the children of Israel together, yet they were unwilling, and therefore He left their house desolate, meaning His presence left the temple. Shortly afterwards, it was destroyed by Roman armies:
[34] “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing! [35] See! Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ” - Luke 13:34-35 NKJV
When Jesus said that the kingdom of God would be taken from Israel and given to another nation because she was not faithful to bear the fruits of it. This other nation is comprised of all ethné who have faith/faithfulness:
[43] “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. - Matthew 21:43 NKJV
God allows for men and women to divorce if there is unfaithfulness in their marriage, and He follows the same rule, as He has demonstrated with Israel. Israel was unfaithful to Him and were not administering righteousness and justice as He expected from the people He had elected to represent Himself, and His Kingdom. Therefore God, being righteous and just, severed His relationship with them and made a new covenant with people who are righteous and just through faith:
[6] "But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises. [7] For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.
[8] But God found fault with the people and said: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. [9] It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. [10] This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. [11] No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. [12] For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
[13] By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear" (Hebrews 8:6-13 NIV).
One of God's primary attributes that the Bible consistently speaks about and that we praise Him for is His faithfulness to His people. If the old covenant had not been made obsolete, as the writer of Hebrews said it has, then God would be in two covenants, which would be similar to us being in two marriage covenants. And just as a man being in two marriage covenants would be an act of unfaithfulness, God would also be unfaithful if He was in two covenants with two different peoples. But fortunately God is faithful, and has a covenant with only one people - those who are faithful to Him.
Pistis: Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness
In Matthew 23, Jesus sharply rebuked the Jewish leaders for seven things which were an abomination to God, one of which was practicing their religious laws and traditions, but not "the more important matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness":
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former" (Matthew 23:23 NIV).
Justice, mercy, and faithfulness are the important matters of the law in God's sight, but the Jews had neglected practicing them. This was not a light rebuke. Jesus proclaimed woes of judgment upon that generation of Jews. He was holding them personally responsible for their hypocrisy and the sins of their forefathers who had murdered the prophets. Jesus called them a brood of vipers, which means children of the devil, and said that they were condemned to hell. Furthermore, He said that all of the righteous blood that had been shed on earth was going to come upon them because they were going to persecute and kill all of the prophets, sages, and teachers that He sent to them. Not many years after this, God left the temple, and both it and Jerusalem, where God once resided, were destroyed in an act of judgment against them.
God wants His people to be aware of the mistakes that Israel made, so that we do not make the same ones. I think this is one of the primary reasons that God has given us their recorded history, which includes so many of their failures. Those who participate in the same hypocritical abominations that Jesus described Israel as doing, but do not practice the more important matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness, will find that their fate is similar to that of Israel's in the end, which concerns me a lot. God wants His people to practice the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy, and faithfulness - which He created us in Christ Jesus for, and prepared us in advance to do for His purposes.
Jesus, the righteous Branch, came from David's line to do what is just and right in the land. He left, and returned to heaven, leaving His people as His ambassadors to continue His work of justice and righteousness in the land; the Kingdom of God overcoming the world. Thankfully, He did not leave us on our own as orphans to do this work, but He sent us a Helper until He returns. When He returns, He will throw Satan into the lake of fire, and remove all wickedness from the earth, establishing justice and righteousness throughout the land forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment