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This and the next few chapters are important
because without a proper understanding of sex, marriage, divorce, fornication,
and expediency, it is impossible to fully understand salvation. Christians who skim
this material without looking up the referenced
Scripture should understand why
they will be offended: Their religious values are wrongly based on Augustinian
morality, and whenever something (including Scripture) contradicts those
“values” they can’t help being offended because they are bound by tradition.
Their refusal to look up the Scripture isn’t so much because of laziness as it is loyalty; their true allegiance is to traditional morality (that
they’ve never studied!) rather than Thus saith the Lord. True Bible believers live by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God;
tradition-bound morality-worshipping Bible rejecters are in need of repentance
and must gird their loins against themselves because they will find this to be
a Bible study…not a review of society’s moral values. Let me be clear:
This material is for those Christians who want the Bible to be their sole
authority in all matters of faith and practice.
Man is not allowed to see God and live (Ex 33:20) because we are unclean
sinners (Is 6:5). In order to be with
God we need to have our sin taken away (Is
6:7).
Woman is a type of mankind, God’s people, His
body, the church. Man is a type of God. God and mankind cannot get together
because mankind is unclean, and this is pictured by the fact that man (type of
God) should never soil himself by touching a woman (type of sinful man) (1 Co 7:1; 1 Sa 21:4,5;
Re 14:4). Therefore we are supposed to be chaste virgins (2 Co 11:2).
How then can God (man) get together with sinful
mankind (woman)? The answer is in Genesis. God could not find a suitable helper
for Adam (type of God) among the animals (type of mortal man) (Ge 2:18-20). (Why was it even plausible
for God to look among the animals for an help who’d be
meet for Adam? Because there is no difference between men and beasts, for they themselves are beasts: Ec 3:18.) No suitable helper being found for Adam among the animals
is a picture of unsaved dogs being unsuitable for Christ to marry (and by
extension, unsuitable for Christians to marry). So Adam’s bride, Eve (type of
the church), came from Adam himself
(type of being born of God) (Ge 2:21-23).
Because animals were unsuitable it was necessary that a clean bride, Eve, come
out of a clean Adam. Why was the bride clean? Because she came from Adam, she
got her righteousness from him (I speak figuratively). So, when Adam married
Eve they didn’t just become one flesh – they became one flesh again; it
was a reunion.
Adam’s marriage is a picture of God’s marriage.
Out of a clean God comes a clean spirit (a born-again Christian). Why is it a
clean spirit? Because it is of the Holy Spirit, we get our righteousness from
Him (I speak literally). God is the father of all spirits (He 12:9), and if He is to remain undefiled He can only get together
with mankind through marriage. Therefore those who have been born again are the
only ones eligible for marriage to Him.
As our knowledge of Bible doctrine grows
we find that our understanding also expands – if we meditate on
the things we have learned in order to apply them to other doctrines.
For example, on pages D8-2,3 we reviewed some of the
Scriptures that show the Old Testament saints were born-again Christians just
like we are today. But let’s say you had never studied that topic and therefore
were unable to resist your denomination’s doctrinal dissembling when it told
you a fundamental difference exists between Old Testament and New Testament
saints – and it even stooped to the extreme of telling you passages in many
books of the New Testament do not apply to us New Testament saints (!) because
they are “meant for the Old Testament saints” such as Noah, Abraham, Jacob,
Moses, Aaron, David, and Solomon. And let’s say your daily Bible studies
resulted in your gaining an understanding of the information in the several
paragraphs above. It would then be possible for you to gain a better
understanding of why the Old Testament saints had to be born of
God – and why they could not have been unregenerate: The unsaved are not
meet to be servants of God because they are no different from carnal beasts,
which is why the Bible says the unsaved cannot receive the spiritual things of
God, are not subject to the law of God, and, indeed, cannot be
subject to His law. After looking into this matter you would put together the
Scriptures on pages D8-2,3 and you’d also include the
passage in which God teaches Adam (and us) the unsuitability of dogs as His
servants and the necessity for His servants to come from Himself via the new
birth – which is why we are His body. And you would marvel at the incredible
consistency of everything in the Bible; it all perfectly fits together
with no contradictions.
Let’s continue to expand our knowledge by
examining some topics that will help us better understand salvation.
If having sex with – or touching – a woman is
bad because we are to be chaste virgins, how can a man and a woman (Christ and
His bride) get together? Through marriage, when a man and his wife become one
flesh (Ge 2:24). Notice the very next verse (Ge 2:25) says they were both naked
without shame (just as you are not ashamed when you are by yourself and are
naked). That’s because when two marry and become one flesh, when they get naked
together they are uncovering their own nakedness, not someone else’s. In other
words, when a man has sex with his wife he is merely touching his own body, because she is his body. Yes, when a husband and
his wife have sex with each other it is exactly the same as if they
masturbated. That is how Christians can be married and still be chaste
virgins – they only touch their own bodies. And that is why – even though a
man is touching a woman – the marital bed is undefiled (He 13:4); because he isn’t touching a
woman, he’s touching himself, his own body (Ep
5:28,29).
Today’s Christians have two problems with this.
First, because they don’t understand how
two become one flesh, they stop short of believing
the word of God. They don’t accept it
by applying it to everyday life. The
proper Christian, though, doesn’t worry about how it happens, but why. Two
become one flesh by fiat. God simply decreed it; that’s all He has to do
to make something a fact. What He says must be our reality!
The second problem Christians have with this
topic is tradition has decreed (by fiat!) that masturbation is a sin and/or is
shameful. It is not. The Bible lists plenty of sex sins; masturbation is not
one of them. Ge 38:8-10 is used (by those who cannot
read) as the text that “proves” masturbation is a sin. But neither Onan nor Tamar masturbated! Do you think Tamar, who was on
the bottom, thought Onan was masturbating?! And the
fact that Onan pulled out at the last moment (v.9) so
he wouldn’t get her pregnant cannot be used to proscribe masturbation because
that would completely ignore the issues of duty and obedience that are the crux
of the chapter: Onan had led Tamar to believe he
would get her pregnant – in accordance with his duty to her and his dead
brother. Tamar didn’t know until Onan consummated the
marriage that she was now bound to a lying lout who intended to leave her
childless. When God nicely killed Onan He thereby
freed Tamar to marry someone who would give her a child. God killed Onan because he not only failed to fulfill the duty of an husband’s brother (Dt 25:5-10), but he also disobeyed a direct order (Ge 38:8).
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God will not touch unclean mortals. So He makes
us His clean children via the new birth. We marry Him and receive His
righteousness because two become one flesh – we become His body. In that way
God is not defiled; when He touches His bride He is touching His own body. But
this presents two more problems for today’s traditional Christians: First, God
commits incest when He marries His
own children, and second, God becomes a polygamist
when He marries so many Christians.
A quick look at incest in the Bible:
Ge 4:17,26: Cain
and Seth married their sisters.
Ge 20:12; Le 18:11:
OK to wed your father’s wife’s daughter.
Ex 6:20: OK to wed your aunt.
Nu
36:6-13; Ju 1:12,13:
OK to wed first cousins.
2
Sa 13:1,12,13: Tamar, David’s
daughter, and Amnon, David’s son, were sister and
brother. It was OK for them to wed. The reason they did not marry is Amnon never wanted to; he just had the hots
for her. That’s why he completely lost interest in her once he’d humbled her.
SoS 4:9,10,12; 5:1:
OK to wed your sister.
Josh
15:16,17: OK to wed first
cousins.
Le
18 is the chapter traditionally used to define
incest as “the unlawful marriage of close relatives”, which if correct would
make incest a sin. But Le 18, like 1 Co
5:1, has absolutely nothing to do with marriage to anyone! It is about
fornication, about having sex with people with whom it is not lawful – unless
married to those same people.
Compare Le
18:8 with Le 20:11 to see if it
is talking about marrying anybody…or if it’s telling you with whom you can’t
have sex. (In 2 Sa 16:21,22 Absalom violated these verses when he violated his
father’s wives – but he married no one.)
Is the subject of Le 18:19 marriage? No, it’s sex.
Do you see any incest in Le 18:20? Is there even a close relative in the verse? This verse,
like the chapter, is listing the people you are not allowed to have sex with
unless you marry them.
But, object some, if Le 18 says you can’t screw
a close relative, how can you marry someone you can’t have sex with? This
chapter deals with sex outside of marriage only. The sister in verse 9,
for example, is off limits as far as sex is concerned as long as she belongs to
someone else. But as soon as she is given to you in marriage she no longer
belongs to someone else; she is now not only yours, she is your own flesh. And
you are always allowed to touch yourself (Ep 5:28,29). That is why husbands and wives
are not allowed to withhold sex from each other (1 Co 7:4,5)
except when it is agreed to do so during times of fasting. Why during fasting? Because fasting is a training session when we focus on gaining
mastery over our carnal old man. We usually do that by saying No! to something our flesh really wants like food and sex. Fasting
is an exercise in ruling the old carnal man because someday when the
Lord tests us we must be able to overcome the old man’s weakness, fear, desire,
and Reason. If we don’t properly train for battle we’ll be deceived, defeated,
and embarrassed.
We Christians are born of God. We are His
daughters and His brides. You may marry your daughters just like God does. It
is nowhere prohibited in the word of God. Anyone who has a
problem with that needs to take it to the Lord in prayer because He’s the one
who made the rules.
So, we have many examples in the Bible of people
marrying close relatives, and we have zero places that prohibit it. Why
then is incest considered a sin? That’s easy, it’s the old Mt 15:2 scam – inventing sins not in the Bible. This scam undermines
the authority of the word of God, discourages Bible study, promotes traditional
doctrines, and glorifies generations of ignorant preachers and the religious
institutions that ruined them. That’s why inconsistencies between false
doctrines and what the Bible says over the centuries have never been corrected.
Until now.
Many Christians don’t know the Bible well enough
to look up all the above verses and make a determination one way or the other.
A large percentage of them will naïvely say, “Well, there must be someplace
in the Bible where incest is made a sin, otherwise it wouldn’t have been taught
for so long.” Notice the pedestrian mentality of that statement: First, the
“there must be someplace” is an admission that they do not know the
Bible. Second, the fact that they openly admit they don’t know the Bible shows
they don’t think they need to know the Bible because God gave us Reason
– they already know right and wrong. Third, “it wouldn’t have been taught for
so long” shows the power of tradition because it hasn’t been taught!
Sex and related issues are not taught in church, in Sunday school, in Bible
studies, or in theology classes. Fourth, the above statement also reveals the
pedestrian mentality (and/or lack of interest in doctrine) of their preachers,
because they have obviously failed to teach their flocks these doctrines – and
you’d hope it is because they are ignorant or cowardly and not because they are
deliberately defrauding the body of Christ. Even though preachers claim to be
in the ministry “full time” they apparently never wonder, when “studying and
meditating on the word”, about all the sex God put in His Bible. Sex is one of
those things about which everyone just “knows”, just as they know you can get
rid of warts by burying an old dishrag under the front stoop. The shortage of
relevant, practical, growth-inducing instruction in the church is a big
problem because most preachers haven’t got a clue as to what the Bible is all
about. You didn’t think the Pharisees and Sadducees were an anomaly in
Christianity, did you? 90% of the preaching/teaching in church has to do with
the denominational party line on salvation (and much of that is spent appealing
to the emotions). 8% is spent covering basic Bible events (because most people
in church don’t really read or study the Bible other than reading “a verse a
day to keep the devil away”, and memorizing Jn 3:16,
the “Romans road”, and their “life verse”). And 2% is spent going over
mainstream doctrines. Time at home is squandered. The church is pathetically
and disgustingly and inexcusably ignorant.
Anyway, sex is not taught. People will make
veiled references and jokes about incest, fornication, sodomy, fellatio, etc.,
but nobody ever says, “OK, open your Bibles: Today we’re going to cover incest,
sodomy, and fornication,” because it is correctly assumed worldly tradition taught them that stuff long before they ever got
saved! And since neither sex nor marriage is understood, salvation cannot be fully understood. And
Christians think God sins by marrying His own children. But no, they don’t
think that; they just don’t think. One of the things that exposes the shameful condition of the church is the fact
that inconsistencies between tradition and the Bible rarely cause anyone to
question tradition because the real
authority in their lives is not the word of God. That is the greatest
threat facing the church.
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God, who has practiced polygamy in both
Testaments, gave David multiple wives (2
Sa 12:8,11). When these verses are compared with 2 Sa 16:22 we
see that concubines are wives, not just “mistresses” of doubtful virtue. The
many examples of multiple wives in the Old Testament establish the practice as
normal, proper, and authorized by God. It is not significant that
multiple wives are not documented in the New Testament because the New
Testament is not the biographical history that the Old Testament is. What is
significant, since the New Testament is largely doctrinal, is that it changes nothing about marriage while filling in
some details about it such as the duties
of husbands and wives.
Most people, however, maintain that God has
changed His mind about multiple wives, that He suddenly finds His rules about
polygamy (Dt 21:15)
abhorrent, and has in 1 Ti 3 made
polygamy a new sin. They accomplish this by taking verses specifically directed at bishops and deacons and applying them to all
men, both saved and unsaved (!),
because Christians are a royal priesthood! (Did you catch all the
contradictions?) Others agree with the traditional reasoning used above to
proscribe polygamy but go further by saying bachelorhood is a sin for all
men because the Bible says bishops and
deacons must be husbands who have one wife, which is
also contradictory nonsense.
We agree that all Christians are members of the
royal priesthood, but are there not many positions within the priesthood
besides those of bishops and deacons (1
Co 12)? So how can something directed specifically at two positions within
the priesthood (bishops and deacons) be applied to all
of the other positions in the priesthood? And even if the directive is
supposed to include all positions within the royal priesthood, why is it also
applied to unsaved men who are not in any
priesthood? (Don’t you hate inconsistencies? You must learn to zero in on
inconsistencies between what the Bible says and everything in the world
around you in order to develop the ability to rule and reign with Christ.)
Because the traditional position on polygamy is inconsistent with what the Bible
says, we know the tradition is false; can two walk together except they be
agreed?
Putting tradition aside (your Natural reluctance
to do so will wane as you grow), it becomes obvious
that it is OK for a man to have multiple wives unless he wants to be a bishop
or deacon. And it is also OK for a man to be a bachelor unless he wants to be a
bishop or deacon. And it should be obvious to you by now that the unsaved man has no restrictions placed
on him at all.
Bishops and deacons must have one wife. That
is because those positions require proof of a man’s qualifications: The man
must rule well his own household or he can’t have the job. That means he must
have at least a wife (but not necessarily children). In order to promote
polygamy among bishops and deacons in this New Testament era some claim “one
wife” means “at least one wife.” But because it is not necessary to
wrest the Scriptures in order to justify polygamy, I’m guessing that some
denominations ignore the obvious proscription of polygamy for bishops and
deacons because (in the case I’m thinking of) the founding preacher of the
denomination wanted to justify his having more than the required one
wife. If the Scripture were meant to be taken as “at least one wife” for
preachers and deacons it would have said just that. Besides, restrictions on
the number of wives that apply to some Christians but not to others has Biblical precedence. Kings were vaguely restricted as to
the number of wives they could have (Dt 17:17), and Levitical priests had certain
restrictions placed on them (Le 21:7)
that did not apply to other Hebrews (Ho
1:2).
It is certain that God put 1 Ti 3 in the Bible
for a reason. If He had wanted to eliminate His long-standing policy on
multiple wives He would not have limited 1 Ti 3 to bishops and deacons. Neither
would He have explained (v.5) that the requirement was a test to see if a man
qualified for the job. And with 1 Co
7:7-9 in the Bible, neither would God say “all men must be the husband of one wife.” 1 Ti 3 is simple and
straightforward because it not only means exactly what it says, it even
explains why it says what it does. The problem is not that it is vague
or difficult to understand, the problem is that it is contrary to tradition.
Now, having said all of that,
let me go on by saying that while it is true there is nothing in the Bible that
makes polygamy a sin, there can be found a rationale consistent with Scripture
for voluntarily ending polygamy by comparing the Old Commission with the Great
Commission.
Adam, Noah, and
Abraham all lived under the Old
Commission to be fruitful and
multiply because they and their children were God’s people and reproduction
was necessary in order to continue the good fight. But in the New Testament era
God replaced the Old Commission with
the Great Commission (Mk 16:15).
Why? Because no longer are all people
(as in Adam’s and Noah’s time), God’s people. And no longer is any chosen group of people (such as children
of Abraham), God’s people. It is therefore no longer easy to look at a crowd of people
and distinguish God’s saints from pagans.
The Old
Commission and the Great Commission are
very much alike; even though one calls for physical reproduction and the other
for spiritual intercourse, they both have the same objective – the continuance
of God’s people in order to carry on the fight. The Old Commission required marriage (and the more wives you had
the more you could multiply), the New
Commission doesn’t. That’s why the New Testament recommends for the first time in history that God’s
people not marry at all (1 Co 7:7,8,32-35)!
In fact, it is recommended that only two groups of Christians marry. The first
group is the people who want to be bishops and deacons. The second group is
those few Christians (like Amnon in 2 Sa 13:12-14) who can’t contain themselves from
illicit sexual relations. (Look at the context of 1 Co 7:1-9 and then focus on verses 2,5,9.)
In the Old Testament era God’s people reproduced through sex, therefore sex was
required. In the New Testament era God’s people identify and edify each other
through communion, therefore verbal intercourse has replaced sexual intercourse
in importance. The primary meaning of Old Testament verses like Ps 127:3-5 was physical because the Old Commission
was in effect, but today under the New Testament’s Great Commission their meaning is primarily spiritual (1 Co 4:15; Ga
4:19; 1 Ti 1:2; Phil 10; 3 Jn 4). By carefully
considering the above (including 1 Co 7) it becomes obvious that marriage in the
New Testament has a different purpose from marriage in the Old Testament: While
Old Testament marriage was primarily for reproduction,
New Testament marriage is primarily for recreation
(in its “enjoyable pastime” meaning).
Neither Augustine nor Martin Luther understood
this difference between the Old
Commission and the Great Commission.
They also did not understand sex, marriage, and salvation. And they were
clueless as to the meaning of carnal.
All they knew was they didn’t want to be
carnal. When they considered words like fornication, whoredom, the virgin Mary,
chaste virgin, be fruitful and multiply, etc., they came up with some
weird ideas, as we saw earlier. And because Christians since then have also not
understood sex, marriage, and salvation, and are afraid of appearing “carnal”, they have allowed the Augustinian traditions to
persist. For example, the “missionary position” was designed to minimize the
pleasure of intercourse because it was thought the purpose of sex was to be
fruitful and multiply. In other words, New Testament Christians under the Great Commission were acting as if they
were still under the Old Commission!
And they did err not knowing what carnal meant. The confusion about
whether we are under the Old Commission
or the Great Commission often
manifests itself today when an ignorant Christian argues against anal and oral
sex by heterosexual Christian couples and by unsaved homosexuals: They claim
God frowns on any form of sex that can’t cause pregnancy. The Catholic Church
even says all sexual intercourse between husbands and their wives is wrong if
they use birth control because they are having sex for pleasure instead of
procreation.
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The reason “Bible” schools and the preachers
they pump out teach nothing about sex is they simply don’t know anything and
are insecure. They are vaguely aware of the inconsistencies and changes in the
way “society” has viewed sex over the decades and centuries, but they never
seriously examine the issue because they are afraid to challenge tradition or
to question the doctrinal soundness of denominational leaders living or dead.
And they are afraid to be considered “lustful”, “carnal”, “obsessed with sex”,
or just “weird.” So they continue to assume that “ethics” and “morals”, even
though they change with “the times”, are somehow Biblical, authoritative, and
unchanging “standards” that should shape our lives. They don’t realize how
inconsistent their thinking, their “values”, and their doctrines are…because
everybody else is just as confused and ignorant as they, and because they
justify themselves before men instead of by the word of God.
At any rate, as I return to my previous train of
thought, this lesson makes it obvious that if the Bible really were our sole
authority in all matters of faith and practice, Christians in general would
remain single and would limit themselves to masturbation and lawful
sexual relations. If you met a Christian who was married to one wife you
would know he was: a) a bishop or deacon, b) a man who thought his lust might
involve him in unlawful sexual relations, c) both. And if you met a Christian
who had more than one wife you could eliminate choices a and
c.
Nowhere in the Bible is a Christian (other than
bishops and deacons) prohibited from having multiple wives. In fact, the Devil
is delighted when Christians view an incestuous polygamist with revulsion and
contempt because that is just what God
is!