Hebrews Chapter Thirteen, Defiling Marriage

 

Hebrews 13:4 Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

 

The conversation regarding brotherly love transforms into general dictums of, to put it one way, Christian conduct. Love is the undergirding that upholds all other principles, which is why the writer led with its reminder. We are to love strangers, and the saints that are prisoners for His name’s sake.

Now the Hebrew Christians are reminded about the sanctity of marriage. The Holy Spirit calls the institution of marriage “honorable.” Delving in a little deeper, He further pronounces that the marriage bed—shared exclusively between a husband and wife—is to remain undefiled. How does one defile the marriage bed? We are given the two primary examples.

 

First, there is fornication. Oxford defines the term as “having sex with someone you are not married to.” When God created Adam and Eve, it is heavily intimated that with them He created the order of how we are to function in male/female relationships. There was no “dating,” which I have come to believe is a major contributor to readying people for divorce, because it promotes a fickle love that looks for a certain flavor of romance; when that romance dies, so too does the relationship. Then the cycle repeats. No, a man is to leave father and mother, be joined bodily to his wife (implying sexual union) and to cleave to her as one flesh until death. Sex is meant to be enjoyed between a man and woman AFTER marriage. Fornication changes intercourse into a plaything, something seemingly casual that people exchange that has little to no meaning, except to excite carnal senses for a short while until someone that arouses them more intensely becomes a prospect.

 

Adultery is of course intercourse with someone that is not your marriage partner. Jesus our Lord warned us of the dangers of adultery that begin within. “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” Matthew 5:28. Solomon, writing to his son Rehoboam, counseled him, “rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love,” Proverbs 5:18, 19. The connotation of “love” in verse 19 is sexual, as defined by the context of the passage in Proverbs chapter 5, where Solomon is warning about the peril of the harlot, or the immoral woman who offers physical intimacy, at the cost of sacrificing the spiritual and emotional intimacy a husband and wife receive and build together. Solomon commends enjoying such intimacy with one’s spouse when desire awakens. Even Paul, perhaps considering this passage from Proverbs, wrote to the Corinthian church, “for it is better to marry than to burn with passion,” 1 Corinthians 7:9.

 

The modern Christian church has certainly ignored the natural order of God’s creation when it comes to marriage and sex. I have met many Christian youth that do not believe marriage is necessary to begin an intimate relationship with someone, that divorce is perfectly acceptable when one’s marriage no longer “works” however that word is defined, and going so far as to condoning or encouraging homosexual union despite the fact that Paul called such union, unclean, dishonorable, vile, against nature, and error, Romans 1:24-27. Yet marriage, as Christ Himself defined it when asked, was explained as a monogamous institution between a man and a woman, and for the entirety of one’s life, Mark 10:6-9.

 

The Greek word for “judge” in this verse is “krino,” and means, “decide judicially, punish or condemn.” God loves marriage, Malachi 2:11. He created the institution so that mankind may procreate, and have a suitable partner to live out one’s life in this world, Genesis 1:28, 2:18. Sexual sin seems to exist in a different category from other sin. Yes, I agree that sin is sin, and all who have sinned fall short of the glory of God. But we read in Corinthians, “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body,” 1 Corinthians 6:18. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of rampant sexual perversion, Genesis 18:20, 21. Satan began his attack on marriage by having man question the purpose of sex, and whether or not it was fit for the act to remain in the bedroom of married couples. Then heterosexual union came under assault, and consensual union between adults and children continue to be promoted in certain circles. The very nature of human gender is under assault, and some people no longer define themselves as male or female, though it is painfully clear that there is no third option as to what we may pretend to be. The downward spiral has conducted mankind far into the depths of moral depravity, reflected by our views of marriage and sex. The church was to be a light that reflected the moral purity of God’s revealed word to mankind about what is right and permissible when it came to such matters. Now, even on my way to work everyday I see churches with Pride flags, giving wholesale endorsement to what Scripture refers to as abomination, Leviticus 18:22.

 

Sexual license has successfully infiltrated the church, and no one is immune. We must be careful to help one another, and to address error wherever it is found in professing Christendom, no matter how unpopular it is. But God’s word is unchanging, and if the church no longer adheres to it, then those who confess to comprise it are not really His, but deceive themselves, and worse, they deceive others. They are the modern day Pharisees, the blind leading the blind who will both in turn fall into the ditch. God will judge His people, Hebrews 10:30. It would behoove us to cling to sound doctrine, not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, and honor both marriage and the marriage bed. Marriage is one of the ultimate reflections of God’s love for His people, Ephesians 5:25, 32. By perverting the symbolic union of marriage, which is supposed to be the most profound example of selfless love on earth, it defiles and undermines our own understanding of the deep, abiding love Christ our Lord has so abundantly for us. It mistakes love for lust, and permits the object of one’s love to change as one’s focus moves from one object of affection to another. This isn’t love; this is temptation, and we are to endure it, James 1:12. If we do not, it is not love as the Lord defines it that guides us, but our own temptation, “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire and enticed,” James 1:14.