Paul said that marriage is
a great mystery and take it to mean Christ and the church.
In Christian life you should be looking to please Jesus first; if
you get into looking to please yourself you're backsliding. Adultery
is breaking marriage vows. If you're into something in your heart
and not doing it physically it's counted as if you were. Jesus
looks at your heart. Marriage is not defined in the Bible.
It does say that you promise to have sex with no one else. Marriage
in making vows. When you break that vows "God has no pleasure in much a
fool." You don't get away with it. Says you can divorce your wife if' she
is unfaithful to you sexually. You already dissolved the marriage;
in that case. Adultery dissolves the marriage. The marriage
isn't there. Divorce has revenge. It's trying to get back at
the person. You're married whether you're saved or unsaved.
I Cor. 7:14 consecrated means set apart. Set apart from other unsaved
people so that your children are in special position than other unsaved
people. There is no sure way of knowing if you should marry a certain person
or not. There's
nothing wrong with using birth control methods. This whole
subject could be the downfall of the F. F. because there in a thing in
the flesh that says "if he can get away with it, I want to too." If no
one else is disciplining themselves., how can we? If you
see others getting away with something your flesh wants to get away
with it too, Divorce is wrong except for unchasity, In 2 out of synoptics
an divorces there's no exception. In the other two gospels he in
only speaking of the general case. In the 0, T* they were stoned for adultery.
someone fornicates or commits adultery in the fellowship they should be
removed from fellowship (If they persist in it) I Cor. If the leaders
are open and responsible and a good example that can for the most part.,
solve the sex problem in the fellowship. (Eph- 51 3) Adultery and fornication
are alot worse than alot of other things. If you're unfaithful to
your wife or husband, you're unfaithful to Jesus. Marriage is a figure
of you're relationship to Jesus and you make a vow.
Better not make a vow if you're not going to keep it. Adultery
is playing games. The husband is a figure of Jesus in marriage.
Sinning against the body (yours) is the worst thing to do. It is disgracing
Jesus. Such a person crucifies Jesus afresh. If a person
in the fellowship fornicates, one thing to do is bring it up in fellowship.
When you commit sex sin you pay for more than it was worth. You either
pay by backsliding altogether or you get into games. When you sin
sexually you sin against your own body.
If someone in the fellowship backslides for a weeks or something and
then comes back and rededicates and then does it Rgains the leadership
in the fellowship is questionable. If a backslider wants to move back in
even if he hasn't rededicated you should let him, he may be restored.
It's only when your mind is set on the flesh that you get into these sex
sins, If someone commits adultery you shouldn't immediately divorce
them, they may come back to Jesus. If you're not sure in a situation
then you should take it easy. If you lust after a person and entertain
it and pursue it and put your mind, its on you, you are backsliding.
God says he hates divorce. (Mal* 2:13 and14) Sex between brothers and sisters
ruins fellowship for everyone and also-puts a barrier between the particular
brother and sister. (Mal. 2:9 Jer 44:4) Physical adultery is treated
as spiritual adultery. Jesus forgives you but you can't undo what
is done. The leaders in the fellowship have to build up integrity.
Prov. 10: 9. Sexual sins are very heavy, There was automatic
excommunication in the early church. You can't trust a person who
is committing sexual sins (also Pro. 29:6) It is hard'to discipline
yourself sexually but we have to do it. Make up your mind that you
are going to be faithful to Jesus. How can you trust your brothers and
sisters if you know they are committing sexual sins?
(Prov. 31 16, 17.) About marriage- sexual faithfulness in marriage.
(Pro. 5:23.) he dies for lack of fun (riff) unfaithfulness. Every
wife or female should memorize Prov. 31. Continue in the faith of the Lord.,
'I mean fear, all the day. as a father
disciplines his son, so the Lord disciplines you. (ref. I.Tims 5:20)
To should fear ourselves falling. We should have a healthy
fear of falling,,. "Take heed lest you fall" (Gen. 4:7) "Flee youthful
passions." There are degrees of right and wrong. You
shouldn't feel guilty over sex drives. It's when you get into
it and look to' it that it's sin, Its very, difficult to restore a marriage
after one of the persons have committed adultery. The spirit and the flesh
wage war against each other and either the now creation or the old man
wins. The old man can win through sex. This is one of the major
ways the old man can win through sex. This can.destroy!-us as a group
and that's why its critical. Marriage is the public statement to
all society, that in your
cattly nature, old nature., you intend to live as husband and
wife. You enter into an agreement with society so thats why you obey
societies rules. Its not just living together, there is to be an
open agreement. in the human sense, marriage is sacred.
That means it is to be held with honor. The kind of sex that a
married couple have between each other depends an what the husband-and
wife agree on. Your whole marriage should not be sex though.
And birth control isn't wrong either. You can't be doing 'badly with
Jesus and expect your marriage to be good. If you're loosing interest
in your marriage, you,should separate for awhile by agreement. The 'figure
of sex relation to Jesus and the church is intimacy and union. In
Cor. it says If you're free from a wife."not to seek to be married but
if you marry, it is not a sin. ( I Cor, 7: 27., 28) If you get divorced
before you are saved, you are divorced. If you are bound, you shouldn't
seek to be free you shouldn't seek to marry, but if you do its not a sin.
(Jesus said to marry a divorced woman is adultery) Cor. is talking of the
young starting over, but it does apply in this case too. The
sexual things spoken of in the Bible are a figure of something else (deeper).
That is marriage isn't an end in itself. God uses things to teach
us. He teaches us through raising children. For instance, you
can learn a great deal about people by raising children. (At the end
of Marks Jesus tells us that we can lay hands on the sick and tread on
scorpions. That means we can handle this subject., tread on snakes like
this - we can openly deal with heavy subjects like marriage and divorce
and it won't hurt us.) Marriage isn't defined in the Bible, every marriage
has problems. Paul says that everyone who marries will have problems
in the flesh. When we consider marriage, we should consider that
every marriage is bad, every
marriage has problems, It is probably the lesser of two evils in almost
every case. It would be better not to marry, nevertheless., it would
be better to marry than to burn in hell. In the Bible it never gets
into the romantic side of marriage except in one place. Pro* 5119.
"Be infatuated always with her love." When people try to squirm out of
their problems rather than face them in truth, they create more problems.,
and get into all kinds of weirdness. You have to work at marriage
to make it a success. A fundamental truth is that any two Christians
ought to be able to marry and make it A success.
Through marriage you learn about being faithful to Jesus* There is
no way you can be faithless to your spouse and faithful to Jesus.
Humanly speaking marriage is sacred. In his attempts to deal with life
on his own, man has devised many marriage., sex schemes, and each with
unhappy and frustrating results. In God's mercy,, he has shown us
our real problems and needs, lie provides answers to these problems.
That is part of what this verse Means. "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and
a light to my path." He gives us answers,, but., first he ziakes:lt
clear to us what the problem is. -The initial attractions between people
(human speaking) fade away., partially the dating thing that isn't very
real. As you get into life circumstances and people change.
The thoughts and attitudes you have now won't be with you in later years.
They'll deepen into more meaningful things
supposedly. Marriage can not make you happy., only Jesus
can make you happy 'When people look for happiness, they don't find
it. When people are into serving Jesus they are happy. If when
you look away from serving Jesus and look for happiness then you get into
trouble. It's wrong to have sex if you are not married - first because
Jesus said that you couldn't. Also its a figure of wrong relations.
In the early church you were excommunicated if you committed adultery;
you were disfellowshipped. Fornication was almost as heavy.
Jesus gets glory, through us disciplining ourselves, -for instance,
by not getting into fornication or adultery. We'll find
the inward struggles are greater than the outside struggles. Why
should we get married? Gen. 4 "It is not good for a man to be alone"
also, you have a really close relationship with someone.
Then, it also fulfills your need for sex. According to the Bibles all
the apostles were married except Paul. Paul says "He who is married
is to live as though he is not married." It means not to put marriage first.
In the majority of cases, people get heavier in
Jesus after they get married. it isn't directly because of marriage,
its through marriage, and because of their needs and marriage fulfilling
their need.. There are cases of people getting weaker because of marriages
also. Don't ever jump into marriage
Just hunger after understanding and be sure that you have that before
marrying. If you ought to get married it will come to you, don't
look for it. When there are problems in the marriages the husband
should take the lead in straightening them out. How much a wife submits
to her husband depends on how right a husband is with Jesus. Ideally,
the husband is serving Jesus and reflecting Jesus and through serving him
the wife is serving Jesus, It can happen that A wife depends
on her husband and not Jesus and again that depends on how right
the husband is with Jesus, as to weather she should depend on her husband.