To have and to hold

1 Corinthians chapter 7

   Human beings are eternal spirit beings who enter this life at conception and return to God when leaving physical life after death. God is actively aware, through Jesus Christ’s acceptance of all we are and do on the Cross, and therefore through His Resurrection, of our places and positions unto others. When a man and woman do become the “I do!”, the “I am” of God melds the spirit beings of the two into one eternal spirit being - just as Eve was one in part with Adam before God formed her from Adam’s side.

   As Adam and Eve were two separate complimentary human flesh beings of the one spirit soul being of Adam God created, their responsibilities were to each other in their joy of honor to appreciate their companionship in pleasing God’s own delight in His creation.  The Bible says marriage is patterned after the church unto Christ where the man holds the position of Christ to his wife who represents the church. That is because of original sin in the Garden of Eden where Eve was tempted to listen to the Serpent instead of Adam her husband.

   All things in the world that are not in the will of God are patterns of original sin because the falling away from life is from the same source. No matter what their particular or collective circumstances, everybody belongs to God. Men are designated by God as the primary examples of leadership in our families, and therefore society, in its many offices. Strength of character, the backbone to practice self-control by refraining from intimate involvement unless married, is the gift realistic men give to women, as opportunities of freedom in trust, to protect their mutual integrity through the choices they encounter.

   Jesus Christ transferred reality, under the authority of natural law of flesh and blood, into reality under the authority of supernatural grace of His Spirit of the Word in His name. Thus, the authority of Creation, by the covering of the Blood of Christ, is the living example of transformation from life unto one’s self in the world into life through faith in Christ in Him through a word of promise (the wedding vow). This word of promise represents a man and woman’s faithful acceptance of priorities of honored authority under the man’s family name, in the Name of God, according to His Word.

   God certainly did not separate Eve from Adam or Adam from Eve to punish them, or to teach them a lesson, for sinning against Him and each other. He knew, in His wisdom, that they needed each other to honor Him. In the general “worldly wisdom” of personal responsibility for one’s soul condition, there is a reversed sense of religious belief in an independently focused autonomy with regard to responsibilities toward God in faith interaction.

   When our attentions look for worldly viability at the expense of those we admire, responsibilities to one another become subject to individual freedoms of expressive/protective “soul development” in priority to the positions and places we have with and to those loved ones. Conversely, our call to salvation involves realizing our levels of responsibility to our loved ones precisely where considerations of self-protection are most deeply felt. Without a constant conscientious awareness of who we are unto others, unto God, the purposes He has for our moment by moment undertaking of tasks loses the reasons we have our expectations in faith.

   Usually, we are inordinately concerned with who others are to us based in our own beliefs in how “right over wrong” may bring to us the securities and happiness we view is our right of individuality. When we are happy with money, when our emotional sense of security rests in spending, we use circumstances and people as tools to get it. When we are happy with circumstances, when our emotional sense of security rests in events and experiences, we use people and money as tools to get the experience.

   Any continuing way needs at the least three supporting aspects to thrive. So, the connecting dynamic sources between circumstantial events and money, and money and circumstantial events, are people. The penchant for putting money and circumstances ahead of people, because people are thought of as the means, gives the distorted perception that money and circumstances are less usable as tools than people. Behind the pretense, since it is recognized people are created in the likeness of God, is a hidden belief that God Himself is creating avenues for us to use those around us to please Him in what we can acquire and accomplish for ourselves as a right to enjoy living.

   However, when we are happy with people, when our emotional sense of security rests in our gratitude there are people who love us no matter the circumstances and/or cost, we realize companionship comes without motive and price. We are glad, then, to trust God together in our mutually respectful victory in our freedom by promise in Him; to love with unyielding devotion through thick and thin, through peace and war, through hardship and bounty – through it all. This is why God provides for us a particular pattern of obedience, to His will in interactive co-dependence, for us to follow.

   A man is responsible unto God for his wife and children. A woman is responsible to her husband, unto God, for her husband and children. Children are responsible to their parents, unto God, for their own future responsibilities when they are either a man or woman in adulthood. Certainly, and blindly contrary to our adherence to the positions we are usually given to honor in our efforts to make productive personal sense of the world around us, we hold our Godly expectations from others as a bolstering support for our independent faith.

   It is a negative way where anyone who loads our sensibilities at odds to comfort and peace of mind, is held at distance to reception, unless they capitulate to our will. However, the call of the Gospel is for us to be responsively humble, a purposefully chosen heartfelt and active appreciation for God’s ways in and through the walk of life of our husbands, wives, and children; that corresponds with an unwavering plan of faithing the moments God designed for everyone to respect.

   God’s will, His created expectation for everyone, is for each person to honor Him, others, and their self by being responsible in refraining from sexual intimacy, except within a marriage between a man and a woman. In ancient times, and in some cultures today, Betrothal is a time of the fullness of two families as one. Before betrothal, each family holds a separate identity. During betrothal, the two families are combined as one, lasting for a specific period of one year, a time that directly coincides in spiritual significance with the heavenly thousand years of the millennium.

   After betrothal, the two respective families are once again separate, but combined within the new and separate family, in the new marriage. Betrothal is not a tentative agreement or a time of consideration of whether the man and woman’s lives will be compatible – those issues were worked through before the joining. It is a time of arranging, exchanges, and the sorting out of inheritances, business, and directive guidance. In this, the dynamic authority of a person’s acts and deeds are through the name of the authoritative influence behind the motivations. The quality of our spoken word, and our unspoken word through action, as is generally supposed, is not from our knowledge, intelligence, or pressure of will.

   Who we are by our word is trustworthy in Christ, or deceptive without respect to our honest responses regarding positions of loyalty. When a person accepts God’s intended life in Christ, he or she is given a new name that reflects the God created original purpose for that particular soul. Likewise, when a man and a woman intimately join, there is a knowing of the identities shared. In marriage, the sharing of the identities of the spirit and soul is covered by God’s grace to honor the name of authority of the union unto the Holy Authority of God.

   In marriage, the three aspects of a soul’s identity are the father, the mother, and the children - the mother being of the father and the children being of the father and mother - the ideal family being an example of the Holy Trinity. When a man is physically one with a woman by word of promise, he knows her soul and she knows his soul. There is no interfering knowledge of other souls who are not part of the union. If other personalities have somehow become involved, our freedom through the Gospel of grace unto salvation provides a covering of light of truth to wash away the emotionally confused darkness brought by misapplied yearning.

   The identity of the children brought through married commitment are acknowledged by the witness of the truth of creation as having rightful spiritual authority with respect to God’s promises and intentions. The purity of their family integration and trust is sealed with God’s protective hand to uphold this celebration of life and vulnerability through trust in honor to the name the couple share. Ideally, a child carries to maturity three natural identities that correspond to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – the father, the mother, and the self.

   As the people of a marriage union trust in faith their life and endeavors to God, He will lift them up into His integrity. What society calls relationship is a false justifying label to cover the sin-witness of infidelity and fornication. The term ‘relationship’ brings a perceived tolerable acceptance to the unacceptable, unholy, and abominable corruption of the souls and spirits involved. In unnatural and unholy union, intimacy without regard to marriage, the acts of marriage do still produce the joining knowledge of the spirit and soul. This is an intermingling, an un-natural mixing of identities.

   Intellectual emotionalism based in the wisdom of the fallen nature of mankind is a denial of the acceptance of God’s will and design. The excitement, intrigue, and idolatry of fornication is addictive and allows the demons of false gospel to intertwine themselves with one’s internal identity. The intense unnatural attractions for multiple relationship partners is an attempt to fill the void God designed for a person to accept His ways outside His ways.

   As a conquest loses its freshness of promise – because an ill conceived joining will always eventually uncover its deceptions - the lost glow of initial discovery combines with guilt to compel a person to reject the sinful union by rejecting the person of accomplice. However, the rejection is no rejection because the identity and nature of knowing the spirit and soul of the other remains. Then another person is found to take the place left open by the previous. Influential essences of the subverted authority to wrongfully accept the interlacing of others with one’s self becomes a compulsion to repeat the process.

   A person forgets who he or she is and becomes a role-playing manipulator to fulfill any whim and desire the idolatrous eyes can conjure. If these person’s marry, they are carrying their mixed identities into a defiling of the marriage bed. Comparisons in union are impossible to avoid and corrupt the celebration of oneness at the very point of integrity. Memories of others live on because the sin lives in the knowledge. The only way to remove the spiritual soul presence of the others, though most worthwhile is very heart rending and difficult; it is to fully confess the secret sins of fornication and adultery and to ask for forgiveness.

   There will be times when memories will spur an individual into fantasy. This is exactly when the matter should be honestly shared and purged from the marriage. The husband and wife must honor the name of the marriage, the family of the name, and the Wholeness of Christ through His resurrection if they are to find the authority of the truth of wholesome vitality in their marriage. Darkness, and its influence, shrink and dissolve away as the light of Truth, through repentance, shines forth.

   The will to conceive, the will to decide to procreate, is a responsible freedom everyone is blessed to honor. The use or abuse of God’s most holy ways is in our hands to decide. The abuse of the privilege of the great responsibility of being part of Creation has the direst consequences – most of which we are blinded to. It affects society as a whole, but society is no greater than the members thereof. Sexual needs and wants are a perceived and self-serving deception brought about through being steeped in the culture of the world and its vices.

   With regard to economic vitality and population control, the secular thinkers and leaders suggest there is a sex drive that must be fulfilled to remain emotionally healthy. It is believed fantasy and personal desire work together to bring about a healthy and happy life whether or not married. The drive behind this serving of the self at the hand of another - which brings the other into having to respond in like - has hankering for self-esteemed individualism at its core. It drives competition and a greedy economy.

   With education and social trends being what they are influenced to being, the clarity of purpose in marriage becomes inverted and compensation for loneliness becomes money where money knows nothing of why. Money is unable to replace grace and dignity of purpose in the strengths of mutual integrity because money itself is an exchange medium. Marriage is not an exchange medium. It is an integration of two into the strength of one according to respective roles.

   A woman’s shield of protective grace over manipulative intrusions, through faith in God, is in the office of her husband’s position in Christ’s victory, and is not dependent upon her husband’s personal degree of righteousness or wealth, even though the strength of faithful unity between a married man and woman builds enhanced clout against adversities. Sin is exciting and enjoyable and does make the flesh seem to be happy. However, the deception of sin is not the physical act(s) of indulgence. The actual sin of debasing oneself for the experience, by practicing intimate involvement outside of marriage, is self-willed disloyalty.

   Identifying with the intensity of emotions, and the corrupting of virtue in another, lifts one's ego into the highest heights of ecstasy. We wallow in the experiences of having conquered our loneliness and inner turmoil, for a time, by believing our interaction with another has brought to us love. We are deceived to believe that this love is from God and Satan stands in triumph to mock God through our ignorance. The adversary is intent on defiling the marriage bed with any means he has to use. The easiest way for him is to use the pleasures of intimacy to confuse us into believing our emotional reactions, and the glow left behind, is for us to own.

   This is why marriage becomes optional in a depraved society. However, our bonding experience in marriage is a celebration of the joy and pleasure God experienced in creating us. We are meant to be responsive to His call in our marriages to respect His created ways. Healthy sexual intimacy is not the core of the marriage witness.  It is one of the fruits of the marriage witness. It is a celebration. As a witness of the Gospel it is necessary for a spouse to bring his or her witness to the other in loving-kindness. Each is still living in the flesh and from time to time, throughout a day, needs the Word of God brought to the other for the sake of eternity and the sake of the witness of marriage.

   It would be amiss if one spouse “respected” another’s folly and deception as if there were no harm in believing a falsehood of secrecy that leads to destruction and eternal fire. At the same time it is necessary to give heed to the spirit of grace and longsuffering, as we trust in the Holy Spirit to impart to our spouse the Truth. It is his or her responsibility to realize the import of the moment and exercise the faith unto God given to him or her to defend and uphold the marriage for God’s sake. This also means the self-preserving higher regard for chastity - abstinence from physical sexual intimacy - unless one is properly married.

   As the mercy of God is ever present to accept, we have the opportunity to overlook the foibles and mistakes of our mate in such a way that lifts them up into a better way. This is not to say we accept or validate a wrong at all. It means that we have an understanding that provides patience and expectation that the power of God, according to His promises in scripture, is enough through our hand to create a pathway for healing. This healing comes through the open confession of our shortcomings, no matter how sinful and evil they may be, in order that grace, mercy, and forgiveness may come to fruition.

   In this way, we are able to openly respond to the life of Christ in each of us to shed the light of Truth round about us. The darkness of sin influence will shrink away as we walk in God’s glory. Beware, though, Satan watches for, and attacks, such witness. What goes on between a husband and wife is God’s business, anyone else should take heed to respect His dealings and will. Romans 14:22-23; The faith which thou hast, have to thyself before God: happy is he that brings not judgment upon himself by that which he approves; But he that is in doubt, if he eat hath condemned himself, because it was not of faith, and everything which is not of faith is sin.