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February 2016 • SR
That escalated quickly. If something is causing you to sin, cut it
off, gouge it out, throw it away.
That is how important this is.
Jesus is not giving advice here and His close disciples did not
immediately maim themselves. We hear the subtext: “if that
would help, do it!” But the truth is that wouldn’t help. A guy
named Origen tried cutting everything “down there” off in
the second century so he could tutor young women without
suspicion and without lust. Full Ken-doll mode. He said it didn’t
really work.
Jesus’ point seems to be that if these things did help, you
would do them, that is how important this is…but they don’t
help. We have a whole host of ways and rules and structures
and programs towards helping men and women “make a
covenant with their eyes” to sexual faithfulness. Anything that
works, absolutely use it.
But I believe Jesus’ main point is that, once again, this is a heart
issue. The adultery has taken place in the heart. Ultimately, it
wasn’t about the eyes, the ears, or the imagination. The sin
took place in the heart.
And love requires absolute faithfulness.
So what is needed? New hearts! Even as Jesus is announcing
the Kingdom news in Matthew 5, the full solution to adultery
of the heart isn’t there.
This absolute faithfulness looks impossible...
He can call us to faithfulness, because He is faithful. He can
course that faithfulness through us, pour that faithfulness
through us, such that it redeems our eyes, redeems our hands,
redeems our sex life, redeems our marriage and redeems our
heart.
It is in Matthew 27 — in forsakenness as Jesus took on your
sin, your covenantal unfaithfulness, your adultery, your lust.
He carried it down into death.
And He made possible
absolute faithfulness
, for it rests on His
absolute faithfulness:
Absolute faithfulness in our marriage covenant.
Absolute faithfulness in our covenant with Him.
Covenant Faithfulness
Why the switch to our covenant with God? It is the start of the
Ten Words: I am the Lord, your God. We see this pattern in His
commands: they teach us how to live with each other; they
teach us how to discover and love God; that we might love our
neighbor as ourselves; that we might love the Lord our God
with all our heart, mind and strength.
Sabbath invites us into God’s holiness.
Honoring father and mother teaches us to honor and love God.
Marital covenant faithfulness teaches us covenant faithfulness
and intimate love.
When we are dealing with the Creator of the Universe,
Creator of our relationship with Him, and Creator of marriage,
we should never go “Huh! That made a really good metaphor.
Fancy that!” What if the purpose of marriage and the sexual
intimacy designed for marriage is all about teaching us
absolute faithfulness
...and the kind of intimate love absolute
faithfulness enables?
Love requires absolute faithfulness.
That is the soil in which it
grows. That is the only environment in which it can grow. So
marriage is then a greenhouse in which to nurture and protect
and see what love, covenant love, faithful love looks like.
Love requires absolute faithfulness.
In mate Love
This brings us to the “sex” part of adultery. Sex is created for
marriage, designed for marriage, reserved for marriage. It is
impossibly intimate. It is ridiculously risky. It is vulnerable.
It is the dropping of all barriers to experience shared joy. It is
no accident that new human beings, procreation, is the fruit
of a consummate act of love. Past all the brokenness of sin,
the hijacking of sex, the sinful nature and immorality upon
immorality…we still respond to this beautiful picture of what
God created.
Now, what does it mean if the marriage covenant is a reflection
of divine covenant? Uncomfortable. We reject that level of
intimacy because we are uncomfortable, we are afraid, we
are nervous, and so internally I react like a sixth grade boy.
“Ewww… gross!”
Whatever expression of joy, intimacy, love and faithfulness we
find in marriage, it is a shadow of what we find in God.
Jesus says in heaven we will be neither male nor female. There
is no marriage in the resurrection. Whatever it is that marriage
gets at, even among human beings, must be fulfilled, must be
completed. What if the sweetest perfection of unity, of love, of
faithfulness, of commitment, of vulnerability and acceptance,
of joy — all of that — what if all of that were made complete
between all the children of God!
For now, we see only a reflection in a dim and
dingy mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now
I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I
am fully known.
Top Ten Words
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