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Christian Chronicles, June 2006 - Volume 7, Issue 124

The Editor's Pen

We read the newspapers and we compare notes with the Scriptures concerning those things that are yet to come to pass on the earth and, if we have studied prophecy much at all, we realize that those things that are prophesied to occur after the rapture of the Church are almost ready to open into the flower of stark reality.

In this issue of Christian Chronicles, we will demonstrate that some of the signs of the times are clearly upon us. We will seek to show assuredly that we are in the wedding season, when our Groom will call us to Himself, and take us at long last to those homes He has been preparing for us, lo, these many centuries. Other than the doctrine of salvation, there is no doctrine of Christianity more important or relevant to our day than the doctrine of the rapture of the Church.

As if this were our last chance to prove that the rapture occurs prior to the beginning of Daniel’s seventieth week, we will attempt to offer conclusive evidence of a pretribulation rapture. And it may indeed be our last opportunity, for it could not be more clear that the times and the seasons are upon us. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the message of the rapture ought to be ringing from every pulpit into the consciousness of every Christian. More and more every day, it ought to be the moving force in our daily lives, and it certainly should be at the forefront of our thoughts as we say our morning prayer and have our daily devotional, our own private communion with our Father and our Lord. Surely, as you read this issue of Christian Chronicles, the Holy Spirit will be speaking in that still, small voice that shouts, “The fields are white already for harvest!” It is our prayer that, not only should the Lord come soon, but that every Christian may be found doing what he is supposed to be doing when called.

Perspectives

“Have you not read that He who created them in the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate”

(Mt 19: 4-6)

Fifty or sixty years ago, divorce was scandalous. People who divorced were ostracized from those who bore their troubled marriages stolidly. Divorce was a red flag of weakness and self-indulgence. Movie stars were looked upon with shock for their many marriages and divorces. It simply was not done in polite society. Along came the women’s liberation movement, and the burning of the bras went hand in hand with the burning of young men’s draft cards. A generation revolted. Old ideas were passé; a new, freer world was about to burst onto the stage. America never was innocent. At least, not in the way God counts innocence. But she believed in and tried to practice obedience to standards that were ancient, as ancient as the Word of God itself. It is not possible to pin down a single incident in American history that precipitated a shift away from accepted principles and toward a form of hedonism in which the rules were thrown out and a “real” new world order came into being. Perhaps it was only a new American order. It seems, in retrospect, that it was the assassination of John Kennedy that was the catalyst. To a young generation, that young president was something of an icon. When he was gunned down, idealism felt the shock and bled alongside him. If it could happen to Kennedy, it could happen to anyone, or so was the sub-current of fear in the minds of the young. The rules no longer meant anything, and so new rules must be developed and adhered to.

Unfortunately, the new rules contained much to satisfy the hedonist. God was declared dead, women were declared free, men could become more open in exploiting every advantage, honorable or otherwise, that reared its head. The New World Order began then, but it did not become apparent on all the earth until George H.W. Bush would declare it, two or three days into the first Gulf War.

When God said, “Let there be light,” (Gen 1:3), there was no possibility that light would fail to appear. It was not by permission that light came into being, but by command. Nothing could have prevented the introduction of light into creation because the Creator decreed that light would come into being. And when our Lord declared, “...let no man separate,” it became impossible for a couple whom God had joined together to divorce and remain divorced. Yet, divorce happens all the time, and the vast majority of those couples do not reconcile and reunite. What then? Was Jesus’ command unenforceable? Was He mistaken? As the old KJV says so well, “God forbid!” No, the answer does not lie in the command, but in the qualification: “What God has joined together.”

Ah, not every marriage is made by the will of God, but many—considering the divorce rate today, one might say most—marriages are made by the will of man, with nothing of God in them. If a lost couple calls upon God to sanction their marriage, He must say to them as He also says to those religious unbelievers who do all manner of “Christian” works in His name: “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Mt 7:23). How can God join together two people whom He does not know? Some marriages between unsaved people last and do very nicely, as far as marriages go. And some marriages between saved people are troubled from the very beginning, and get worse as the years progress. Saved people also sometimes marry in accordance with their own wills, and not in accordance with God’s will for their lives. Just because a person is saved, there is no guarantee that his life decisions are all godly. Some genuine Christians divorce, but if they remain apart, God did not sanction that marriage, even if it was performed by a preacher in front of a thousand witnesses. But if God made a marriage, even though they may divorce, God will either bring them back together, kicking and screaming if He must, or he will bring the recalcitrant party home, freeing the other party. The salient point is this: When God said, “Let there be light,” light was bound to be. And because He said, “Let no man separate,” man completely lacks the ability to separate that which God has joined.

We are not the judges of these things. God alone knows who He has joined and who He has not. Clearly, God does not like divorce as a matter of principle, whether among the saved or unsaved. No counselor ought ever to counsel divorce, but neither ought he become the judge of whether a marriage is by the will of man or of God. Those who do not know God are not necessarily unknown to God, for it is possible that one who marries today will be illuminated by God’s grace tomorrow. Let us not judge, but love.

Middle East Update

On the last day of March this year, Iran tested a missile that flies below radar, and also carries multiple warheads that can reach Israel and the U.S. bases in the Middle East. On the same day, three earthquakes rumbled through Iran, leveling three villages. Do you suppose that Iran will draw any connection between the two events? It is not likely.

Iran is between Iraq and a hard place these days, with Afghanistan to the east and Iraq to the west. The Persians (Iranians) are becoming increasingly isolated in the world community of nations on account of their nuclear program. Most nations believe that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons, while Iran claims to seek only peaceful uses of nuclear material. Russia has offered to resolve the international disagreement by enriching the uranium that Iran needs for nuclear power plants and providing it to them. Iran has refused that offer, insisting that it has a sovereign right to use nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes and also declaring that it will continue to enrich uranium whether the world approves or not. Iran has balked at permitting United Nations inspection of its facilities in order to ensure that no nuclear weapons capabilities are created. This in itself raises the level of suspicion around the globe. It is as if Iran is painting herself into a corner from which there may be no escape. The U.S. and other nations are beginning the rallying cries for sanctions against Iran, and no options are being taken off the table, meaning that military action is quite possible. It is, however, at this date, unlikely in the immediate future.

With all of the international wrangling going on, we do not need newspapers to prognosticate the future of Iran. We have the Word of God to tell us how the process will unfold as the world approaches the climax of Gentile world dominion. One needs only to understand that Iran was formerly known as Persia, officially until 1935, when the government declared that it would be called Iran, or a nation of Aryans. In Biblical times, however, Iran has always been called Persia.

Iran and Iraq (formerly called Babylon, Chaldea or Mesopotamia) have fought for millennia, and those peoples still bear deep animosity one toward another. When the Jews in Judah were carried away in their first deportation, it was to Babylon that they went. The ruins of the actual city of Babylon (partially restored) are situated about fifty kilometers south of modern Baghdad. About seven decades after Babylon carried Judah into captivity, the Empire was felled in a single night by the Persians and the Medes, as they diverted the flow of the Euphrates away from the city and their armies entered Babylon through the empty river channel. This was the night of the fall of Belshazzar in 539 B.C., as recorded in Daniel, chapter five.

Babylon fell to Persia and Persia, eventually, was conquered by Greece (see Dan 8), which was ultimately crushed by the iron teeth of the Roman Empire.

Even today, it is in Iran’s interests to foment civil war in Iraq, for a weakened and divided Iraq is not nearly so fierce an adversary as a united and politically stable Iraq. Iran is primarily a Shiite Islamic nation, and the Shiites are also the largest sect in Iraq. The struggle in Iraq today is between the Sunnis and the Shiites, and Iran would like for the Shiites to wipe out the “heretical” Sunnis.

Ezekiel tells us that Iran will be an ally of Russia (Gog and Magog) when Russia invades Israel about midway through the tribulation period. Written in the sixth century B.C., Daniel describes an alliance that is in place today, as Iran has a written agreement with Russia that allows the Russians to cross over and to overfly Iran in an attack on Israel. While there are formally good relations between Israel and Russia, the underlying hatred yet burns in embers just beneath the surface of their civility.

At the same time, the relations between Russia and the U.S. are growing increasingly strained, though there remains even there a surface civility. The closeness and warmth that existed between Reagan and Gorbachev has largely dissipated. The next war between these two powers will not be a cold one, but desperate and heated.

We see events, not only in the Middle East, but especially in the Middle East, shaping up to bring to pass the events that must transpire shortly after the rapture of the Church. The marriage of the Lamb cannot be far off.

Fruit of the Vine

As we see the end of the Church Age at hand, it becomes all the more important that we arise each morning more mindful than the last that our employment in the world is coming to a close, and that we must be about the business of representing our homeland’s interests faithfully in the dissemination of the word of reconciliation. Our God-given task today is the spreading of the Gospel. There are many ways in which we may go about this important work. There is a natural hunger, or curiosity, in the heart of man to know that which is to come. That is why “documentaries” on the writings of Nostradamus are popular. But if one seems knowledgeable to an unbeliever, no one will more quickly gain a listening audience that one who speaks on Bible prophecy. Those who most sensationalize the prophets draw the largest crowds, but those who speak with quiet conviction gain the more “convinced” listeners. The Scriptures are sensational themselves without our adding to them. It is vital to bring the listener to history, to the cross, before ending any talk on things prophetic. If we tell our listeners about the tribulation without telling them the only way to escape those dark days, we have done nothing more than satisfy morbid curiosity. But if we give them the “Escape Hatch,” (I am the Door) then we have given them far more than escape; we have given them the certainty of eternal life. Preach prophecy all you want, but keep the Gospel in it. Otherwise, your preaching will have been in vain.

What Time is My Flight

We have spoken much about the harlotry of adultery against God in this issue of Christian Chronicles, concerning both Israel (see Dr. Ozie Mark's article, “God and the Harlot”), and the Church, mostly in this article. Woman is a type of the Church as the bride of Christ (Eph 5:25-32; 2 Cor 11:2-3; cp. Jn 3:28-29; Rev 19:7-8). As such, the four kinds of women described in the Book of Proverbs, bear a relationship to the Church in relationship to Christ. This is especially true in chapters 1-9 of Proverbs, as well as chapter 31. In the first nine chapters and the last chapter of that book of wisdom, we see four kinds of women: the wise woman and the foolish woman, the virtuous wife and the harlot. Every woman is, at one time or another, each of these four. And men, hold onto your hats. As the bride of Christ, you are also, at one time or another, each of these four. In fact, whatever the Bible has to say to women, it also says to men—not to every man, but certainly to those who constitute the bride of Christ. It is a thing that most men prefer not to know. Ignorance, they say, is bliss. But ignorance is not bliss; it is merely ignorance, and those men who do not read the Bible’s instructions to women with an eye toward their relationship to Christ miss many blessings.

But what has this to do with the church on the corner? We will look at chapter seven of Proverbs to see the wise woman and the harlot. It is written from the perspective of the wise woman, who gazed through the lattice covering the window of her house, observing the ways of the world. She saw young men walking past her house, and among them, a young man who displayed little sense. Down the street, at the corner, was the workplace of the harlot. As is true today, the prostitutes and adulteresses in Solomon’s day plied their trade in the evening, and on through the night. We see in verse 8 that this woman works the corner of two streets. There is a reason for this. If she works in the middle of the block, she catches traffic from two directions, but working a corner, she catches traffic from four directions.

The harlot is loud and rebellious. She is not shy about flaunting her wares. She dresses ostentatiously, and naturally tries to draw attention to herself. She works from corner to corner. She sees the naïve young man and she grabs him and kisses him and tells him that she was out and about seeking him specifically, and is thrilled to have found him. She tempts him into her bedroom with its rich appointments and luxurious trappings, and cloaks the bed of her defilement with sweet-smelling fragrances. Ah, it is to be a love-fest, but one without any sincere love on either part, but a seeking after pleasure on the young man’s part, and a grasping for money on the harlot’s part. She is a married woman, and yet, a prostitute. Her husband has gone on a long journey, and has taken a bag of money with him, and will not return before the time appointed for his return. Oh, how she subtly seduces him, with many persuasive words! And he follows her to his own destruction.

All these things the wise woman sees as she watches through her lattice, and she uses what she sees as a warning to other young men to avoid the adulterous harlot, saying that all who were slain by her were strong men (NKJV). “Her house is the way to Sheol, descending to the chambers of death” (v. 27).

This harlot is everything worldly. She is the temptation of the flesh. She is untrue to her husband, an adulteress, and engages in intimacies that satisfy only briefly. Have you ever considered that our Husband has gone on a long journey, and that He has taken a bag of money (our redemption price) with Him, to return on the appointed day? Have you ever noticed that almost every professing Christian church is situated on a corner? No, we are not implying that every church that sits on a corner is adulterous toward God. But apostasy does characterize the latter days of the Church Age, and many apostate churches do as this adulterous woman did. They woo strangers with flattery, and they show off the magnificence of their buildings and their facilities, and they implore and they wheedle, sometimes subtly and sometime loudly, crying of their need for money. “Oh,” they might say, “you will find that we are a very loving church,” and they will caress the ego of the prospective new member with flattery, and seduce him with praise. The apostate church brazenly preaches doctrines of demons with deceiving spirits, always mixing works into God’s grace, and claiming for themselves a superior holiness, covering their iniquities with their silks and wool and brass and crystal.

This writer belongs to a church on a corner, and can testify that not all corner-dwelling churches are apostate, but many indeed are. They heap luxuries upon themselves, claiming to give glory to God when they are actually stealing for themselves glory that ought to belong to God. Chapter nine shows the wise woman inviting the sinner into her place of true wisdom. She cries out for the naïve to forsake their folly and live, and go in the way of understanding (vv. 1-6). And then, in following verses (vv. 13-18), she quotes the foolish harlot, who paraphrases what the wise woman has said, changing it subtly; just enough to fool those who are not wise. She entices him into her house, “But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol” (v. 18). And so does the apostate church house the dead. Most of those who attend apostate churches believe that they are going to heaven because they are members of the church, or because they believe that they are good enough to go on their own merit, and they do not even realize that they are dead, nor that their destination is Sheol, and then hell.

The apostate bride of Christ has painted herself up like the adulterous bride she has become, and she hungrily devours all who will enter her chambers. She plants herself ostentatiously on the corner, seducing all whom she may. She does not consider that Her Husband is going to return from His long journey but, unlike Hosea, she will not be restored, for there never was anything good in her to restore. The true Church will be taken out of her at the rapture, and the Bride will be presented spotlessly to her Groom, while the apostate church will become the great harlot of Revelation 17.

Sound doctrine, Christians, is our most valuable possession, and as Paul said to Timothy, we must guard that which has been committed to our trust! (1 Tim 6:20). We are the guardians, and the bearers of the truth from one generation to the next. It is the responsibility of the virtuous wife today. May God strengthen us to persevere unto the end of the Age!

Our Blessed Hope

“Surely, as a woman treacherously departs from her lover, So you have dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel," declares the LORD” (Jer 3:20). Jeremiah 3 (and the similar theme of Ezekiel 16) describes God’s emotions and desperation in His dealings with His adulterous wife, Israel. Now these things are written not only to declare to Israel God’s faithfulness. These also let the Church know Christ is faithful to forgive and restore His adulterous bride as well (Rev 2-3, Rom 11).

God says, “If a husband divorces his wife and she goes from him and belongs to another man, will he still return to her? Will not that land be completely polluted? But you are a harlot with many lovers; yet you turn to Me” (Jer 3:1). Jeremiah declares the dismay (3:4-6) and actual bewilderment (3:7) God felt over Israel’s unfaithfulness. He describes her as a wife committing adultery. He describes the divorce that subsequently takes place and the woman defiles herself further by marrying her lover. Then the ultimate disregard for the covenant relationship, she desires to leave her lover and return to the husband for remarriage. God calls this an abomination (Deu 24:4). In Lev 18:27-28 it is stated that the pollution the Land would experience over this. The Lord asks Jeremiah twice (Ch. 6 & 8) if Israel was ashamed over this abomination. The answer is negative, “They couldn’t even blush!”

The Lord expresses his wrath in these passages as in Ezekiel. But Jeremiah 3 also describes the deep hurt the Lord experienced. In verse 1 the Lord is exasperated. Will they return and pretend it will all be the way it used to be? In verse 4 is the shock over Israel calling Him tenderly by affectionate names. Were they so blind not to see how they grieved Him? (Isa 63:10).In verse 6, the Lord appeals to the king as a witness in His own astonishment. In verse 7 the Lord declares His secret hope in thinking they would return and be ashamed and sorrowful. But, God was disappointed. He waited in vain for her return. Then the people (Judah) pretended to return, but it was a deception (verse 10).

So shall the Lord be the angry husband forever? Should He be the father disowning his worthless son? He sends the prophet to speak the message: “Go and proclaim these words toward the north and say, 'Return, faithless Israel,' declares the LORD; ‘I will not look upon you in anger. For I am gracious,’ declares the LORD; ‘I will not be angry forever.’” (Jer 3:12) The sorrowful, angry, disappointed Lord can do one thing: beckon His whoring wife to return. He declares how safe and genuine this offer is. He will not be angry forever.

The reason why the Lord can forgive any who return to Him is this: I am gracious. Israel would be restored, but not by their works; not even by their repentance, but by His grace (Zech. 12:10). This is how He has saved people through all generations. This is how the church stands today (Eph 2:8-9). God’s grace is greater than His wrath! The anger that will consume the world in judgment is superseded when a sinner receives His grace. The Lord is free to forgive.

Ultimately, Jeremiah would be the representative to declare God’s plan to erase the abominations. The Lord would make His people clean. He would forgive them completely. He would be better than a husband. He would know them intimately and put His wisdom in their hearts and minds (Jer 31:31). Then they could never leave Him again. (3:13-19)

To reassure any who doubt, He gave a promise. To refute any evil teachers who dare say, ‘God is through with Israel’ the Lord gave His promise: “You would have to knock out the sun, moon, stars and the fabric of space before God’s earthly chosen people would pass away” (Jer 31:36-7).

The prophet Hosea married a prostitute and then took her back after further unfaithfulness. And so, the Lord with Israel. The gracious, loving God would get over His hurts and forget her sins toward Him. He would take her again to Himself and their marriage would continue in faithfulness. Only then would they truly know the Lord. (Hos 2:19-20) The love of God would be known when the saving power of God acts. This is the grace of God.

The Lord would bear all this grief so the people would come to learn how desirous He is to heal those who depart from Him (Jer 3:22). Then they would willingly return. He is a gracious, loving, forgiving God, One who is safe to love. This they would learn only after having been forgiven what was unforgivable. Then they would return in repentance and sorrow (Jer 3:25)

And so the Church is to take note (1 Co 10:11). The Church is warned to take heed of this example and be faithful in heart toward the Lord. Has not Christendom followed in Israel’s steps? The Lord describes the Church this way in His letters. The message for the adulterous is to repent and know the grace and love of the Lord. The pain He feels reaching out to Israel (Rom 10:21) is expressed today for the Church who has rejected Him (Rev 3:19-20).

He calls the disobedient, whom he loves and disciplines. To all that still go astray in their hearts, the message of old is uttered, “Be zealous and repent!” As with Israel, it is not the Church corporately that is adulterous, but it is individuals who submit to the worldly harlot, who constitute the true Church, and it is a shameful thing indeed! Let us turn our affections Godward!

These Are the Days

Nothing evokes anger and sorrow more quickly in a marriage than the unfaithfulness of the husband or the wife. Not only is the emotional stability of the relationship seriously threatened, but those things that the adulterous partner does all work together to do actual damage to the relationship. It is not all an emotional matter, though that is as large a part of it as any. But other factors are also important. In many marriages where one partner is unfaithful, money is spent on the illicit affair that can hardly be afforded. Often, it is money that is desperately needed to keep the family’s head above water. The guilty spouse will seek to project the fault onto the faithful partner, making something that the innocent party does or does not do the catalyst of the affair. This is a gross rationalization, but one that is present in almost every illicit affair. Children are robbed of time with the offending parent, usually when they are at an age when strong relationships are forged. The absence of a parent from the home when he ought to be at home is an offense against the whole family. The guilty party will begin to make excuses that “justify” his absence even when he is not with his illicit partner. This, because he has built up such a case in his own mind against his (or her) spouse that he genuinely doesn’t want to be with the innocent party. His presence among his family increases his certainty of guilt, and so, he stays away even more than the affair itself demands. He becomes a friend of darkness, sneaking here and there in order to avoid discovery by friends or family.

Let us be clear; the offended partner suffers greatly when the guilty partner engages in affairs. Everything stable in life is suddenly shaky, and the future appears terribly at risk. Destruction waits at the door, and in addition to the emotional devastation, there is the uncertainty of the future. There is also the emotional devastation, the hurt and the destruction of trust and the awful betrayal. But the partner who is engaging in illicit relationships also suffers, usually without realizing the depth of his or her own suffering. Guilt gnaws at the soul of the offending partner. The web of lies becomes increasingly complex, and what was once a stable life becomes a life of rationalizations and self-deception. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer 17:9). Oh, the devil loves these situations! Even among Christians—or especially among Christians—the innocent party’s faith is sorely tested. Human emotions rise to the surface, and many people rush into divorce court when they would do better to wait and be patient, giving God a chance to work things according to His less emotional will. No decision made in the heat of any moment is likely to be the right decision. And the devil loves the situation because he can move the offending party so easily in so many wrong directions. Certainly, the devil will bring John 3:20 into play: “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” Even a man or woman who has been spiritual for years may fall into the clutches of his own lusts or the temptations of the devil. And when he does, on what a grievous chase the tormented soul is led. Hiding from God, he does not pray or read his Bible, or anything that might lead him out of the quagmire of sin until he has been rendered fruitless and hopeless. Sometimes through discovery, and sometimes through chastening and conviction, God brings the offending partner back into fellowship with Himself. But the offended partner may not be nearly so quick to jump back into full fellowship with the one who has caused such awful torment of heart and mind, and who has neglected family and spouse in favor of sin.

Here is the difference: The offended spouse must come to a point at which he or she can again trust the partner who was unfaithful. This may take months or years. But God never has to come to a place where He must trust any sinner. It is not the sinner’s faithfulness that God must trust, but His own. God would be foolish to trust any of His saints this side of the rapture. He doesn’t trust the sinner because the sinner is a sinner, and if he does not fail in one way, he will certainly fail in another. All are alike to God. When a sinner breaks faith with his spouse, He has first broken faith with God. Any trust placed in a sinner is bound to end in disappointment and disillusionment. This is why every marriage that survives three or four years enters into a phase in which love is no longer blind, and faults become mountains of discontent. In every marriage, faults become magnified and assume a greater role in the relationship than the virtues, and both spouses are left wondering how they could have been so blindly fooled about one another. It does not take adultery for a marriage to reach this state. At some point, both spouses’ shortcomings will be manifest in the relationship, and both sides will wonder if they have not made a tragic mistake. Christians have much the advantage over the unsaved in this respect, for they have a God to whom they may turn, and upon whom they may rely.

It is always a shock when one realizes that the “honeymoon” is over. The reality is far less than the preconceived notion, and the preconceived notion must ever fall beneath the awful reality of sin. It may take decades for the wedding to become a marriage. This is why it is wisely reported that people do not marry for the first twenty-five years, but for the last twenty-five.

And so it is between God and His saints. When we are saved, there is an unflagging enthusiasm, a voracious appetite for understanding, a certainty that human relationships cannot match. There is the complete assurance that God will not disappoint, that He will never betray us, that He will always be forgiving, no matter how many times we fail. But therein lies the rub. We remain sinners, and we fail God in a thousand ways every day it seems. The “honeymoon” lasts for varying lengths of time, but sooner or later our own sin rears its ugly head, and we follow our lusts into adultery with the world in one form or another. We, whom God has sanctified, are diverted by our own lusts, or by temptation from without, and our hearts turn from fidelity to adultery. Not all adultery with the world is sexual. Not even most is sexual. We all love our temporal idols, and often, more than God.

No Christian wants to be adulterous with the world, but it happens to all of us. Even that great Apostle Paul said, “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate...For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for to will is present in me, but the doing of good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want” (Rom 7:15, 18-19). Paul understood the battle that is constantly waged between the new man in Christ Jesus and that old man that lingers still in his consciousness. No matter how badly he wanted to do well, to serve God sinlessly and perfectly, he could not do it consistently. Instead, he practiced sin, which he hated. This passage concludes, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24). Paul answers his own question: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin” (Rom 7:25).

Paul understood that he could not live as righteously in this life as he wanted because the flesh often diverted him. He knew that he would sometimes walk in the flesh, but John teaches that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9). In this same epistle, John instructs us, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 Jn 2:15-16). Paul gives a similar admonition: “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col 3:2).

Is it not strange that we can understand so clearly the distress of a human spouse when there is infidelity in a marriage, but we do not attempt to comprehend the depth of the distress of our heavenly Father when we play the harlot with the world? How is it that we understand our human spouses’ hurt and anger, and the terrible trauma that marital infidelity wreaks on both sides of the human equation, and yet we can be so consistently unfaithful to God, who loves us far more truly and deeply than our human spouses, and have such little regard for His suffering on account of our sins? Paul surely had some small inkling of God’s pain when he exclaimed, “Wretched man that I am!”

Matthew records our Lord’s lament over the city of Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling” (Mt 23: 37). One can read the anguish in those words that afflict God when His people turn from the way of holiness to adultery with the world. There is a terrible result of Israel’s unwillingness to be true to her God: “Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Mt 38-39). As Jesus warned, so it happened to Israel. In 70 A.D. Titus sent his Roman hordes into Israel, driving the Jews out, where they would be scattered among the Gentile nations for two thousand years.

But unlike human relationships, where divorce is generally the resort of those who have been betrayed by an unfaithful spouse, God takes a different approach. Even in His closing argument against the Jews in this passage, He does not say that He will never forgive them. Rather, He tells them that their house will be left desolate “until...” What we have, in effect, is a separation, but not a divorce. There is a limit to our Lord’s anger against Israel. When she returns to Him in Spirit and in truth, He will welcome her back into His loving fellowship. After two thousand years of adultery with the world, in the instant when Israel turns back to her God, He will immediately forgive and restore her. We humans tend to become altogether too emotionally charged in these situations, and would do well to follow the pattern that God has established with Israel. Far too often, separation between husband and wife ends in divorce. In every marriage that has reached a point where separation must occur, it ought to be viewed as a necessary stepping stone toward restoration and reconciliation, and not as an end in itself.

The tragedy of infidelity is very real, and both the victim and the unfaithful spouse suffer emotional trauma that leaves ugly scars. But no human relationship has suffered to the extent that God suffers a thousand times every day, multiplied by the number of His living children. Among sinners, all manner of evil is inherent. That is, there is no sin that any Christian is not subject to committing, given the right circumstances. Many Christians believe that there are certain sins that they would never commit, and that is the greatest deception of the heart. We judge others, believing that, because we have not done a particular thing, we never would. Do not judge before you have walked a mile in another person’s shoes. There is but one thing that a Christian can do to avoid any sin, and that is to walk faithfully with our Lord. Israel never wanted to be unfaithful, but she often was, and still is, though she does not believe it. If a Christian would avoid the tragedy of adultery in his marriage, then he would do well to remain faithful in his relationship with Christ; for adultery against God leads to all manner of sin, including adultery in marriage. In God’s eyes, however, any adultery with the world, to any degree, is every bit as heinous and troubling as adultery in marriage.