- RSS FeedSubscribe
- « Previous PostConsider How You Listen
- Next Post »My Top 9 Books of '09
A La Carte (12/7)
- 12/07/09
- 9
Counsel to a Young Church Planter on Marriage
D.A. Carson offers some wise and seasoned counsel on a rather difficult situation. “The following post was first an email to a young church planter seeking counsel. He is planting a church in a rough area. Not a few of those who are getting converted have been living together, sometimes with children, sometimes for years, without getting married. His question, then, is what should be said to these couples where one of the pair gets converted, and the other, so far, does not. Should the advice be to get married? Or is that encouraging people to be unequally yoked?”
A Colossal Fraud
John MacArthur is beginning a series on fraud carried out under the name of Jesus by health-and-wealth preachers. “In the weeks to come, we’re going to be looking at the preposterous claims and false teachings of some of religious television’s best-known figures. We’ll analyze why a disproportionate number of celebrity faith-healers and prosperity preachers have succumbed to serious immorality. And we’ll see what Scripture says about how Bible-believing Christians ought to respond. I hope this series will challenge you to take a more active stand against the phony miracles and false teachings that are being peddled in the name of Christ.”
How the Internet Changes Our World
Trevin Wax has compiled an interesting list of 9 ways in which the internet is changing our world.
Human Dignity
Dr. Mohler: “The defense of human dignity is the responsibility of all human beings, but certain individuals bear a special responsibility due to position or influence. This is certainly the case with Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.”
Going Rogue
Bob Kelleman offers a review of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. He points out how for a biography written by a professed Christian, this one is awfully short on any explicit mentions of critical Christian concepts.
D.A. Carson offers some wise and seasoned counsel on a rather difficult situation. “The following post was first an email to a young church planter seeking counsel. He is planting a church in a rough area. Not a few of those who are getting converted have been living together, sometimes with children, sometimes for years, without getting married. His question, then, is what should be said to these couples where one of the pair gets converted, and the other, so far, does not. Should the advice be to get married? Or is that encouraging people to be unequally yoked?”
A Colossal Fraud
John MacArthur is beginning a series on fraud carried out under the name of Jesus by health-and-wealth preachers. “In the weeks to come, we’re going to be looking at the preposterous claims and false teachings of some of religious television’s best-known figures. We’ll analyze why a disproportionate number of celebrity faith-healers and prosperity preachers have succumbed to serious immorality. And we’ll see what Scripture says about how Bible-believing Christians ought to respond. I hope this series will challenge you to take a more active stand against the phony miracles and false teachings that are being peddled in the name of Christ.”
How the Internet Changes Our World
Trevin Wax has compiled an interesting list of 9 ways in which the internet is changing our world.
Human Dignity
Dr. Mohler: “The defense of human dignity is the responsibility of all human beings, but certain individuals bear a special responsibility due to position or influence. This is certainly the case with Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.”
Going Rogue
Bob Kelleman offers a review of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. He points out how for a biography written by a professed Christian, this one is awfully short on any explicit mentions of critical Christian concepts.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
Releasing on April 1, The Next
Published in 2008, this book
This is a guide that calls men,
This review of the bestselling
New to the site? You can get
This is a guide written
Comments (9)
Regarding the church planter dealing with unmarried couples, the Bible has some interesting OT commentary:
“If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins. —Exodus 22:16-17
No mention of fornication here, and definitely not the severe penalty that adultery demanded.
I was in a Bible study last night with two other long-time Christian men and the best I could come up with to explain this passage was that the Hebrews could not afford to be killing off their single men, as men tended to die off more than women did due to more lethal jobs and the inevitable war. Perhaps God considered the necessity of continuing the the race above other things.
Given how promiscuous our society has become, the possibility remains small that women in a cohabiting relationships were virgins when they started that relationship. Still, there’s wisdom in this Exodus passage. How to apply it to this example is for better theologians than this commenter!
Leave to MacArthur to come out swinging and God bless him for it. That is one thing I appreciate about him . He is not afraid to go where others fear to tread.
As to Sarah Palin , I was at first intrigued by her but now believe she is just as much a panderer as President Obama. The only difference is she plays to a different audience. Plus in a recent interview the way she talked of God and politics really made me uneasy . I do not think God has his hand on any nation as He did Israel in the Old testament . But in her interview you could glean that she really thought America was “special “. Plus she really says nothing of any depth .If she is the hope of the conservatives then they are in deep trouble .
#1 DLE:That Exodus passage definitely suggests that marriage and sexual intercourse go hand-in-hand. That is to say, if you have sex, you’re functionally “married,” even if you haven’t had a legal ceremony. The Exodus passage (repeated in Deuteronomy, I believe) simply requires a civil recognition of what was already a spiritual reality. Paul makes the same point in 1 Cor 6:16, that even when someone sleeps with a prostitute, “the two become one flesh.” Spiritually speaking, they are married.
Consider also the passage of Jacob & Leah. Jacob was married to Leah because she was the one he consummated a marriage with, knowingly or unknowingly. He didn’t just wake up in the morning, say “oops,” and move on.
Of course, we need to bear in mind that the Bible often records stories of people behaving in a less-than-ideal fashion (polygamy, for example), and we shouldn’t take individual stories as examples to be followed without considering the rest of what Scripture has to say on a subject. For example, a young couple could take the passages mentioned above and say, “Well, since we’re going to get married in the future, isn’t it okay if we sleep together now?”
But Paul addresses this, as well. 1 Cor 7:9 explicitly says, “if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” He doesn’t say it’s okay for them to sleep together as long as they plan to get married. He assumes that sex only takes place within a marriage. Later in the chapter, at 1 Cor 7:36, he even mentions the instance of a betrothed couple whose “passions are strong” and advises that they should marry. Ancient betrothal went much further than modern engagement - it was a binding covenant nearly equivalent to marriage itself. And yet Paul still indicates that sexual relations are only appropriate in marriage itself, not even in betrothal.
@ Andy (#3)
Yes, I agree that it suggests marriage, but it also states that the union does NOT have to lead to marriage. Then, the two parties go their separate ways and nothing further seems to be said about it.
Notice, too, that the standard punishment for sexual sins is never mentioned. It’s strictly a financial transaction, albeit one that is costly for the man. Even then, nothing is said about the case where the man is unable to pay the bride price, though an earlier passage hints that being sold into slavery for an unpayable debt might be the solution.
Either way, the bride-price issue definitely would discourage sleeping around, though perhaps not as much as being stoned to death.
Still, it’s curious that so little is said about the issue of fornication here. While the Bible often equates intercourse with the establishment of a traditional husband & wife role, it’s curious that so little is detailed of the after effects of the Exodus passage scenario from my first comment..
Two thoughts about the Carson piece:
1. I like the French model.
2. This is outside the scope of the question Carson was answering, but the more difficult question for me is what to do in the case of couples (married or no) where one partner was previously divorced.
ISTM that if a couple has been living together for a number of years and has produced children, it’s a little late to worry about whether they’d be unequally yoked — they already ARE yoked. IOW, there’s more than one kind of yoke, and they are definitely in one of some sort. So the question isn’t, “Might they become unequally yoked,” the question is, “Now that they are, what do they do?”
My first impulse is to say they should marry in that situation. I’d be willing to be persuaded differently, but I’m quite sure that you have to approach the situation from the standpoint of their BEING yoked, not whether they “should be.”
Its important to note that the “status of being unequally yoked” is not inherently sinful, since Paul instructs Christians married to non-believers not to leave their spouses. So being unequally yoked is not something God finds abhorrent at face value, unlike many other sins. Paul’s command to not be unequally yoked may be less about “here’s something sinful you shouldn’t do” and more about “here’s something you shouldn’t do if you want your marriage to be all it can be, and avoid a lot of strife and conflict.”
In the case of a couple who are living together in a semi-committed state (i.e. sexually intimate only with each other), and especially when they have children, and one partner becomes a believer, marriage seems like the appropriate response. If for no other reason than that believer has an obligation to loving, raising and providing for those offspring, and separating makes that vastly more difficult. However, if the nonbelieving partner is adamantly against marriage, then separation seems like the only option.
I’m with Carson that the believing partner needn’t insist on a “church marriage”, as long as the couple marries according to whatever the larger (secular) cultural norms regarding marriage. (See Carson’s example of the system in France.)
Just a thought about the couple living together. Jesus, in talking with the Samaritan woman commented on her being with five husbands and the man she was currently living with was NOT her husband. In Christ’s eyes, there was a difference between being married and simply living together with sexual intimacy.
I tend to agree that they should separate until the salvation issue is worked out. My greater concern was the lack of discussion about the sexual intimacy between the “sample” couple in the article. Maybe it is considered understood, but I would have liked to see a comment or two about abstaining between the time of the Salvation and the time of the Marriage, even if I don’t think they should marry.
Yes, there is definitely a difference between being married and living together with sexual intimacy.
But the question that is raised is not, “Should they just be treated as though they are already married and marriage becomes merely a formality,” but “has their relationship placed them in a position where they are actually obligated to BE married and marriage has become a necessity?”
I think very often we approach sexuality and marriage as though the only relationship between them is that you shouldn’t have sex without being married. And that’s true, of course, but I think there’s another relationship: you should be married to people if you have sex with them. IMO, that’s actually “what’s wrong with” fornication — you’re supposed to be married if you have sex with someone, so if you go around having sex with people and not either being married to or marrying them, you are defrauding of them of the marriage to which they are entitled. It’s not just that it’s a no-no in some technical sense — it’s that it sets up an obligation to the other person, which the fornicator then goes on to violate immediately and by definition.
JPH makes a good point — Paul’s problem isn’t with “being” unequally yoked, it’s with seeking out and forming a relationship that puts you in that position. Once the relationship is already there, and there are kids who need their mom and dad, and even without kids, there are all the other things that belong to marriage in place (and not just the sex), it’s not a matter of what “should have happened” X number of years ago, but what is going to happen today (and ASAP after that.)