So premartial sex is wrong but females as property or slaves are okay? when a man has to pay the father for the daughter..that is okay?? I think marriage is just for property use...

In some countries/religeons this is seen as acceptable. But in most western cultures it as seen as wrong, and I certainly would not be owned or bought.

Part #5 Enjoy! John

DOCTRINE OF MARRIAGE
(Part 5)

Q. The Analogies of Christ and the Church.
1. There are seven analogies in the New Testament with regard to
Christ and the Church.
2. The Analogy of the Head and the Body.
a. This analogy takes up the vocabulary of marriage as in
Ephesians chapter five, "Husbands love your wives as Christ also loved the
Church and gave Himself as a substitute for her." The mystery doctrine
language never occurred in the Old Testament.
b. Col 1:18, "He is also head of the body, the church; and He is
the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come
to have first place in everything."
c. The head and the body is used for mystery doctrine. It is
also used for the Christian institution of marriage, Eph 5:23, 29-30.
d. 1 Cor 6 15, "Do you not know that your bodies are members of
Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a
prostitute? May it never be!"
e. 1 Cor 12:12, "For even as the body is one and yet has many
members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one
body, so also is Christ."
3. The Analogy to the Bride of Christ.
a. There were three stages to marriage in the ancient world.
(1) The Contract Stage. The Bible calls this betrothal. It
was not a period of engagement. The woman was already considered to legally
be the wife of the man. The parents of the couple negotiated for the
woman's dowry. The couple were considered to be legally married once this
contract was signed, though the marriage had not yet been consummated. This
was a part of Codex Three of the Mosaic Law, Dt 38:30; 2 Sam 3:14. Anyone
guilty of seducing a betrothed virgin was stoned to death for violating his
neighbor's wife, Dt 22:23f. The bride was considered the sacred property of
the groom even though the marriage had not yet been consummated. Today
betrothal or engagement has a different meaning.
(a) This explains the dilemma of Joseph, when he
learned that Mary, his betrothed, was pregnant, Mt 1:18-25, "Now the birth
of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to
Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy
Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a virtuous man, and not wanting to
disgrace her, desired to divorce her secretly. But while he was thinking
about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream,
saying, `Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to yourself Mary
your legal wife; for that which has been conceived in her is from the Holy
Spirit. And she will give birth to a Son; and you shall call His name
Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.' Now all this
had occurred that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be
fulfilled, saying, `Behold, the virgin shall become pregnant, and shall bear
a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,' which is translated, `God
with us.' And when Joseph got up from his sleep, and did as the angel of
the Lord commanded him, and took to himself his wife [the wedding ceremony
in the home of the bride], and he did not consummate the marriage with sex
until after she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus." Mary
and Joseph were one of the greatest couples in the divine institution of
marriage.
(b) The Christian institution of marriage in contrast
to the divine institution of marriage is found in 2 Cor 11:2, "For I [Paul]
am jealous of you with a jealousy from God; for I betrothed you to one
husband, that I might cause you to be presented to Christ as a pure virgin."
Your resurrection body is analogous to the pure virgin. The contract point
in the analogy is the day you believed in Christ. Once the contract is
signed, you are totally dependent on what the husband has provided for that
marriage.
(2) The Wedding Ceremony. The groom and his friends went to
the home of the bride. The home of the bride in the analogy is planet
earth. The groom stood before the bride in her parents home and he said,
"You are my wife. I am your husband from this day and forever." Then the
parents gave their daughter to the groom. The presentation of the bride to
the Lord Jesus Christ occurs at the Rapture of the Church. Then the groom
and his friends escorted the wife to the home of the groom for the wedding
feast, Mt 22:2. The bride's maids assembled outside of the home of the
groom and waited for them (the parable of the wise and foolish virgins was
based on this custom). John the Baptist is identified as one of the
groomsmen, Jn 3:29. The groomsmen are the Old Testament believers. The
purification of the bride is the fact that the groom married her as a
virgin. In Eph 5:25, we have the preparation of the bride, including
positional sanctification. In Eph 5:26, we have the corporate testimony of
the bride in experiential sanctification. In Eph 5:27, we have the wedding
of Christ and the Church, ultimate sanctification.
(3) The Wedding Feast. The wedding feast begins at the
second Advent of Christ and lasts for one thousand years. The wedding list
includes: the groom is the Lord Jesus Christ, the bride is all Church Age
believers, the groomsmen or friends of the groom include Old Testament
believers and Tribulational martyrs, the bride's maids are the Tribulational
believers who are alive at the second Advent of Christ. The Groom is the
Lord Jesus Christ. The home of the Groom is the perfect environment of the
earth during the millennium. There will be 1000 years of wedding
celebration in the home of the Groom. The wedding occurs at the Rapture.
Preparation for the wedding feast occurs during the Tribulation.
b. Eph 5:27, "that He [the groom] might cause her [the Church] to
be presented to Himself as a glorious church [the Church at the Rapture],
having no stain [ultimate sanctification] or wrinkle [no human good or evil]
or any such category of these; but that she shall be holy and unblemished."
c. Rev 19:7, "Let us rejoice and celebrate and give the glory to
Him, because the marriage supper of the Lamb has come and the bride has
prepared herself."
d. 2 Cor 10:17-11:2, "But he who keeps on boasting, let him glory
in the Lord. For not he who commends himself for achievement is approved,
but whom the Lord commends for achievement. O that you would endure a
little foolishness from me; and not only this but also patiently endure me.
For I am devoted to you with a devotion from God; for I have betrothed you
to one husband, that I might cause you to be presented as a pure virgin to
Christ."
(1) Betrothal to Christ occurs at the moment of salvation.
The resurrection of the Church is the wedding ceremony. During the
Tribulation, every believer will be presented to the Groom. The wedding
feast lasts for one thousand years during the millennial reign of Christ.
(2) Paul uses apanadiplosis--the repetition of an important
word for emphasis and powerful effect. It is not considered rhetorical, but
a vulgar (common) use of language by the fifth century B.C. Greek orators.
By so doing, he hit the Corinthians right between the eyes with their own
arrogance. Paul begins in verse 17 with the doubling of the Greek word
KAKAOMI, which means to boast and to glory in something. Then Paul
continues in verse 18 with the verb SUNISTEMI, which means to commend
oneself for achievement, but has two different subjects. Paul uses harsh
paralepsis, which is a rhetorical device in which the speaker pretends to
pass over something quickly which he in fact deliberately mentions and the
listener finds offensive.
(a) The protocol plan of God for the Church is never a
system of self-promotion.
(b) Self-promotion is a system of arrogance that
conflicts with the grace of God, Jam 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5.
(3) Paul deliberately insulted his audience very rapidly and
then apologizes with sarcasm. Paul made his point in his apology. He knows
his readers are going to be mad because of what he has just wrote. So he
knows he must now soften up. In 2 Cor 11:1-2, Paul continues with
epidiorthosis and prodiorthosis. The fact that Paul takes the reproach upon
himself is epidiorthosis. Epidiorthosis means to correct a previous
impression or excusing an unpleasant statement by taking the reproach on
yourself. Prodiorthosis is an anticipatory correction. It is used to
soften his tone. Paul now moves to the softer tone of conciliation. This
is Paul's genuine statement of love for the Corinthians. Now Paul uses the
doubling of the Greek word ANECHO, which means to endure with a willingness
to listen or to patiently endure someone. Paul takes the blame to himself
to hold their attention until he can get to the major subject. The polite
form of ANECHO is the imperfect tense. The harsh form is the present tense.
Paul uses the voluntative imperfect, which expresses a wish in a very soft
tone, polite and unoffensive. Finally in verse 2, he uses the doubling of
the verb ZELOO and cognate noun ZELOS, which has two meanings, being jealous
of someone or being devoted to someone. Devotion is profound dedication
toward someone, faithfulness, strong love motivation. Paul is not talking
about jealousy here. He is expressing his love for his congregation by
making whatever sacrifices are necessary to teach them doctrine. He teaches
by analogy the importance of the spiritual life of the Church Age and
relates it to the Christian institution of marriage. How can you be the way
you are, when you are in the greatest marriage that ever existed?
(4) The corporate testimony of Christian marriage dramatizes
not only the significance of the spiritual life of the Church Age, but at
the same time the invisible hero impact on the prehistoric angelic conflict.
Paul is the spiritual father of the Corinthian believers. Paul evangelized
the Corinthians and this is the devotion of the spiritual father. As their
spiritual father, Paul prepared the legal wife, the Corinthian believers,
for the wedding ceremony through the teaching of mystery doctrine.
(5) Condemnation and exhortation are a painful part of
doctrinal teaching. But if a pastor loves his congregation, he must fulfill
the teaching of the whole realm of doctrine, no matter who is hurt. The
pastor must be honest. The pastor must prepare people for doctrine.
Condemnation and exhortation often result in the arrogant and subjective
reaction of antagonism and rejection. That is a good thing, because it
means they are getting the message. The pastor is never responsible for
winning a popularity contest. Censor and disapproval in Bible teaching is
necessary; for the believer must understand the problem before he can use
the solution. Unless the believer is aware of failure and carnality in his
own life, he seeks no solution.
(6) Betrothal to Christ is analogous to salvation. Paul
betrothed the Corinthians by evangelizing them and by giving them all the
information they needed to live the spiritual life. The whole concept of
Christian marriage becomes the perfect illustration for the baptism of the
Spirit. You are in Christ and can never get out of being in union with
Christ, 1 Cor 12:12-13; Gal 3:26-28. We have all been placed into union
with Christ and we have all been betrothed to one Husband. This is the
analogy. Presentation to Christ as the husband is analogous to the rapture
of the Christ. Apostles and pastors are responsible for presenting
believers as winners (pure virgins) at the resurrection. The second Advent
is the beginning of the wedding feast.
(7) In 2 Cor 11:2, Paul did not extend the metaphor to
include the wedding feast. This is because the wedding feast, which is
related to the eschatology of the second Advent and the fulfillment of the
four unconditional covenants to Israel, is not a part of the mystery
doctrine of the Church Age and the apostle's present objective in the
context. So for the sake of continuity, Paul moves on to the basis for the
corporate testimony of Christian marriage.
e. 2 Cor 11:3, "But I am concerned that just as the serpent
completely deceived Eve by his cunning misrepresentation and skill of
deceitfulness that perhaps your thinking may be corrupted from the noble
simplicity [characteristic of the souls of heroes] and virtue, which is with
reference to Christ."
(1) In this verse, we have the contrast between the
Christian marriage metaphor in the previous verse and the failure of the
perfect marriage in the garden of Eden. No one will ever have as good a
marriage as Adam and the woman. How do you ruin a perfect marriage in
perfect environment? You destroy a perfect marriage by having a volition
with no virtue and values. Even a perfect marriage must have capacity to
appreciate that marriage, and the capacity comes from virtue and values.
(a) The man and the woman had a certain thought
pattern, which we would call lust. But we cannot call it lust because lust
did not exist until after the original sin. They also had all of the
appearances of arrogance, but you cannot call it arrogance as a sin because
they were perfect. Even if they had arrogance, they did not know it.
(b) God created them without a conscience. They did
not know anything about right and wrong, good and evil, because they were
perfect. They did not have to know the difference between good and evil
because they were perfect. As long as they remained perfect, the knowledge
of good and evil was totally irrelevant. Therefore, it was very difficult
for them to destroy the perfect marriage.
(c) Perfect environment is not the solution to anything
in life. Happiness is not perfect environment. Fulfillment of the lust
pattern of the sin nature does not make us happy. The sin nature has a lust
system, whereby one thinks that his environment would be improved if he just
had this or that. Without virtue and values, there is no happiness in life.
Virtue and values is the secret to happiness in life. Everything you see in
life apart from virtue and values will never make you happy. The most
miserable people in the world are people who are failing in their marriage.
Happiness is not a person, success, money, pleasure, but is virtue and
values produced by the four spiritual mechanics of the protocol plan of God
for the Church.
(d) In the garden of Eden, there was no sin nature.
You cannot have a perfect marriage if you have a sin nature. By execution
of the spiritual life, you have the opportunity to have a better marriage
than existed in the garden of Eden.
(2) God created man perfect with everything they needed, Gen
1:27, "And God created the man in His own image, in the image of God He
created him; male and female, He created them." The man and the woman were
designed to be different, but both of them have one thing in common. They
were created to provide a testimony against Satan and the fallen angels.
Extrapolated from the essence of God are certain characteristics which were
entered into the soul of mankind. The image of God includes: self-
consciousness ("I am"), self-perception ("I think"), the function of
volition ("I ought"), and self-determination ("I will").
(a) They did not need a conscience--the knowledge of
good and evil. There conscience was hanging on a tree, Gen 2:16-17, "And
the Lord God [Jesus Christ] commanded the man, saying, `From any tree in the
garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil you shall not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it dying you
will die.'"
i. This mandate is given to the man because he is
the one in authority. Whenever God gives a negative prohibition, He always
surrounds us in grace in order to motivate us from His grace to avoid
disobedience.
ii. The qal infinitive of the Hebrew verb MUTH is
translated "dying." The second use of the verb MUTH is the qal imperfect
and is translated "you will die." "Dying" refers to spiritual death. "You
will die" refers to physical death. As a result of spiritual death,
physical death would eventually occur.
(b) Marriage was designed to test volition and freedom.
Both the husband and wife had the freedom to succeed or fail. True freedom
always gives you an option. The safeguards of freedom include authority and
blessing (the virtue and values needed by perfect persons to have capacity
for their perfection). You are responsible for every decision you make.
Are you going to take the responsibility to use the four mechanics of the
protocol plan to glorify God? You have to know the word of God to make good
decisions. The use of the rebound technique of 1 Jn 1:9 is taking
responsibility for your personal sins. You are responsible to God for what
you do not know. Ignorance is no excuse. People fail in marriage because
they will not take responsibility for their decisions. Instead they destroy
their marriage by the arrogance of self-justification. Failure in sin did
not destroy the marriage of Adam and the woman.
(c) Jesus Christ created mankind as an extension of the
prehistoric angelic conflict, in order to establish a basis for the appeal
trial for Satan and the fallen angels. Jesus Christ created human beings as
rational creatures in order to duplicate in human history identical
circumstances to the prehistoric angelic conflict. The prehistoric angelic
conflict began with the original sin of Satan and terminated in the trial
and condemnation of all fallen angels, Mt 25:41. Jesus Christ created human
beings to resolve the prehistoric angelic conflict through their thinking.
Satan and mankind had one thing in common--volition.
(d) Satan's argument against God in his appeal trial is
based on the perfect marriage in the garden of Eden. He says the perfect
marriage failed. That is a fact. Then he distorted this fact by saying
that he and his fallen angels do not deserve the lake of fire. He took a
true fact and distorted it into a false premise. Then he uses an analogy.
He says that God made us perfect and we failed. That is a fact. He says
that God made Adam and the woman perfect and they failed. That is also a
fact. Then he has a false conclusion, "If I and all fallen angels are
sentenced to the lake of fire for our failure, why shouldn't Adam and Eve,
who also failed in perfect environment, be sentenced to the same lake of
fire?" Satan's argument ignores the fact that fallen angels had the
volition and options to accept God's solution, but rejected it. Every
rational creature ever designed must take the responsibility for their own
decisions.
(e) To test freedom in the garden of Eden in the human
race, God provided one tree. In so doing, He duplicated the conditions of
the fall of Satan. The tree in the middle of the garden is God providing
the options, Gen 2:16.
(f) The teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ in the garden
of Eden was designed to produce virtue and values for the first marriage.
Both virtues and values of the divine institution of marriage become
motivation for the obedience to the divine mandate of Gen 2:17. The man and
the woman were free to accept or reject the doctrinal teaching of our Lord.
They were free to discard the virtue and values that made their perfect
marriage work. Marriages only work where there are virtue and values.
(3) Why did the first marriage fail?
(a) The first marriage failed because the wrong
concepts regarding happiness existed in the garden. Happiness is volition
and values extrapolated from metabolized Bible doctrine circulating in the
stream of consciousness. The Lord Jesus Christ reinforced Adam and the
woman's perfection with the teaching of virtue and values as they were
pertinent every day in the garden.
(b) Both the man and the woman had volition in their
souls and options, and were responsible for their own decisions. They were
free to fail and had no excuse for their failure. The problem with the
woman was that she thought that happiness consisted in knowing everything.
The problem with the man was that he thought that happiness consisted in
having a relationship with the woman.
(c) The woman in the garden did not have values. She
wanted something more. This made it easy for Satan to deceive her. No one
deceives a woman until she first deceives herself. The woman in the garden
manifested a complete lack of values in her dialogue with Satan. She was
deceived because her values were not in place. When she partook of the
fruit, her virtue was gone. She had the freedom to fail, and she did. If
you do not have virtue and values, you will never be happy and nothing can
make you happy. Lack of virtue and values is what destroys the perfect
marriage. The problem with the woman in the garden was that she thought
happiness consisted in knowing everything. She had a great lust to know
more than anyone else could possibly know. She thought knowledge about
everything would make her happy. The Lord Jesus Christ taught the woman and
gave her the knowledge she needed, but that knowledge was not enough for
her. Because a woman is a responder, she has a great desire to know more.
The woman wanted to know about good and evil. Great masses of knowledge may
be necessary for your job, but are irrelevant to your personal life and
happiness. She assumed in her dialogue with Satan that the knowledge of
good and evil would make her happy. She did not take the responsibility for
her decision and blamed the serpent. This was self-justification and
exactly what Satan did in his trial.
(d) Adam had no values either. Adam was with Eve at
the time of her fall. Gen 3:6 says he was standing beside her when she
partook of the fruit. Adam looked on his wife in spiritual death as the
first sinner and sees her for the first time and wants her more than ever,
but knew he could only have her through spiritual death. His happiness was
to continue fellowship with her at the expense of no fellowship with Jesus
Christ. When Adam realized that he could not have his wife in the garden,
he joined her in the original sin. At this point Adam surrendered all of
the values he had learned. He lost his values and virtue from his own
volition. Loss of values always means loss of virtue. Virtue and values
always protect you from going the wrong way. He destroyed his own
leadership and the chain of command from the Lord to the woman.
i. Rapport with God must precede rapport with
people. Rapport with the woman through spiritual death was far more
important to Adam than fellowship or rapport with God, hence, Adam lost his
virtue and values with spiritual death. When you compromise or reject
doctrine to have rapport with friends, then you have lost your values and
virtue. Rapport with God is infinitely more important than rapport with
people, even in the most intimate relationship of husband and wife. If you
do not have rapport with God, you will never be happy in anything. There is
no happiness apart from rapport with God.
ii. Do not let other people make decisions for you
with regard to Bible doctrine. When rapport demands compromise with
doctrine including sin and evil, then you have just lost any possibility for
true happiness, unless you can rebound and keep moving.
iii. If you have no values as a believer, you are
never going to be happy. You cannot make it without virtue and values. The
virtue and values reach their peak inside the integrity envelop. Virtue and
values is far greater than perfect environment. You have the opportunity
for far greater happiness than the garden of Eden. You lie to yourself when
you say, "If I only had this or that I would be happy." You have options,
but do not waste your options on wishing for something. Capacity for life
is gone without Bible doctrine producing virtue and values.
(e) Scar tissue of the soul was the only thing left at
the moment that both had sinned. Scar tissue of the soul destroys every bit
of doctrine you ever learned. There is no true happiness in life for
spiritual death apart from the divine solution, and the first divine
solution is salvation through faith alone in Christ alone. There is no true
happiness for the believer after salvation apart from virtue and values, and
virtue and values can only reside in the seven compartments of your stream
of consciousness through the ministry of God the Holy Spirit taking Bible
doctrine and metabolizing it in your soul. Therefore, there is no happiness
for the Christian apart from the function of the three spiritual skills
producing the virtue and values of our unique spiritual life.
(f) The man and woman knew they had a problem and
thought it was their nakedness, which they saw as evil for the first time,
when they sinned. They knew that they must adjust to this problem of
nakedness. They attempted to have rapport with each other by covering their
nakedness. Their first act in spiritual death was an act of morality. They
have their eyes on the problem rather than the redemption solution.
(g) The man and woman had always been naked, but with
virtue and values it was never a problem. They had to learn virtue and
values to have capacity for their perfection. Spiritual death removed
virtue and values, so that nakedness was now a problem. Everyday in the
garden Jesus Christ came and thought Bible doctrine for the maintenance and
capacity for blessing in the perfect marriage. Marriage always has to be
sustained by virtue and values, which gives the capacity for that
relationship. There is no such thing as a successful marriage unless there
is some form of virtue. Virtue and values reach their peak inside the
integrity envelope. From that integrity envelope originate all the virtue
and values of life. Even the one perfect marriage in history needed
maintenance. There never has been a marriage that did not need maintenance.
Virtue and values provide that maintenance. There is no happiness in this
life without virtue and values.
(4) The woman believed the lies and insinuations of Satan
because this was what she wanted to hear. The woman, being a responder,
wants to hear certain things. She was deceived because she wanted to be
deceived.
(5) God has designed our spiritual life to be a system of
thinking. God speaks to us through our thinking. Your thinking is either
adherence to your spiritual life in thought or rejection of your spiritual
life in thought. The worst form of degeneracy is the function of the three
arrogance skills. You always have the option to accept or reject the
teaching of doctrine. This is why the subjunctive mood is translated "that
perhaps your thinking will be corrupted." This is why the perfect marriage
failed--their thinking was corrupted. Two kinds of thinking was corrupted--
the thinking of the woman, who sinned in ignorance, and the thinking of the
man, who sinned in cognizance. No matter how smart any of us are, there is
always the potential that our thinking may be corrupted. We protect
ourselves from this by living in Bible thinking. When we reject doctrine,
our thinking becomes corrupted. The perfect marriage failed in thinking.
(a) Phil 2:5-7, "Keep on thinking this [metabolized
doctrine in the stream of consciousness] in you which was also in Christ
Jesus, who though He existed in the essence of God, He did not think
equality with God a gain to be seized, but He laid aside His privileges,
taking the form of a servant, having come to be in the likeness of mankind."
(b) With the spiritual life and its thinking, two
believers in a Christian marriage can have a far better marriage than the
perfect marriage in the garden of Eden.
(c) Rapport with God means you have to think like the
humanity of Christ during the incarnation. If you are going to have rapport
with God, you must think the way Jesus Christ in His humanity thought in the
testing and the proving of the prototype spiritual life. The only way to
think as Christ thought during the first Advent is to utilize the four
spiritual mechanics. The mystery doctrine of the Church Age is classified
as the thinking of Jesus Christ, 1 Cor 2:16. The spiritual gift of pastor-
teacher is the agent for the communication of Bible doctrine, and God the
Holy Spirit is the teacher of that doctrine, therefore, the mentor of the
spiritual life for every Church Age believer. Faithful teaching of Bible
doctrine results in epignosis--metabolized doctrine circulating in the seven
compartments of the stream of consciousness through the filling of the
Spirit. This means that the spiritual life of the Church Age is a system of
thinking--thinking Bible doctrine which results in rapport with God.
Rapport is based on a similar system of thinking.
(d) Coalescence of bodies is not the basis of true
rapport in marriage; there must be the rapport of souls. The rapport of
souls demands metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of
consciousness. The only way there will be this rapport in the souls of the
husband and the wife is through the unique spiritual life of the Church Age.
When a man or a woman find there soul rapport or best friend in someone
other than their husband or wife, that marriage is dead. Your closest
friend should be someone with whom you have rapport of doctrinal thinking--
the coalescence of souls based on Bible doctrine. Never allow your opinions
and enthusiasms in life to destroy your rapport with others, especially in
marriage.
(6) Gen 3:12-13, "And the man said, `The woman whom You gave me,
she gave me from the tree, and I ate.' Then the Lord God said to the woman,
`What is this you have done?' And the woman replied, `The serpent deceived
me, and I ate.'"
(a) The woman in spiritual death lost all respect for Adam.
When she took over the situation, she persuaded Adam to abandon his virtue
and values. The higher you go as a leader the greater must be your morality
and integrity and values. Your flaws will catch up with you. All flaws
have a root, and the root is arrogance. The man entered into the arrogance
skills--denial and projection.
(b) The woman also entered into the arrogance skills--denial
and projection. Self-absorbed people, whether male or female, are
vulnerable to flattery and deception. She was vulnerable to flattery and
deception, so that she became erratic and capricious.

R. Partnership in Marriage.
1. Introduction.
a. True love is located in the soul, not in the body.
b. True love is virtue-love in the soul extrapolated from your
very own spiritual life.
c. The source of true love is the virtue in the soul extrapolated
from the unique adult spiritual life of the Church Age, the treasure house
of all history.
d. The unique adult spiritual life of the Church Age exists in
three stages: spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual
maturity. Each stage is related to a love category of the advanced problem
solving devices: personal love for God is related to spiritual self-esteem,
impersonal love for mankind is related to spiritual autonomy, and occupation
with Christ is related to spiritual maturity. You use the basic problem
solving devices to pass providential preventative suffering to be promoted
to spiritual self-esteem. You use personal love for God and impersonal love
for mankind to pass momentum testing to be promoted to spiritual maturity.
You use occupation with Christ to pass evidence testing to be promoted to
maximum glorification of God.
e. The believer enters this unique spiritual life when he enters
the door of hope on God's agenda. The door of hope is the dividing line
between spiritual childhood and spiritual adulthood. It is the first
tactical objective of the unique spiritual life. It is the sixth problem
solving device deployed on the FLOT line of the soul and is tantamount to a
personal sense of destiny. It is the first stage of the adult spiritual
life and as such is classified as spiritual self-esteem.
f. God designed everything in life related to people under a
principle that authority exists. Being under authority is not demeaning,
especially when God ordained that authority.
2. Christ's love for the Church is the highest love that could ever
exist. This is the love expected of the man as the ruler of the woman in
marriage. The wife is mandated to be subordinate to her husband, to obey
her husband, to be under the authority of her husband as to the Lord. The
highest love a woman can have in marriage is respect. But this respect is
not as high a love as the love expected of the man. This shows that there
is no equality in marriage.
3. The bride and the groom are partners in life, each forsaking mother
and father to cleave to the other. They share a common name, a united
household, a common experience, a love which blesses and transcends all the
cares and trials of life. They have common interests and occupations. They
have become co-workers for common ends. They hold property and possession
in common. They have one history and one destiny.
4. Partner denotes a part of the whole or entirety. Partnership is
the status of association and participation in a single entity; hence,
association and participation. Marriage is a contract, creating a
relationship of joint interest; therefore, a partnership between two
individuals, male and female as husband and wife. The basis for this
relationship is stated in Gen 2:18, "...I will make him a helper as his
counterpart." God created the woman as the man's "counterpart" (NEGED in
the Hebrew). Counterpart means one of two parts that fits. It also means a
part that answers to the other part. The wife answers to the husband.
5. Partnership in marriage has a dual connotation.
a. The first connotation is authority in marriage, which
establishes a senior/junior partnership with the husband in command.
Partnership does not set aside authority. There is no equality in
partnership.
b. The second connotation is equality in marriage through
conjugal love or sexual relationship as both recreation and pleasure for
both the husband and the wife. There is equality only in sex in marriage.
Equality in recreation does not destroy authority in marriage.
c. Compatibility in marriage is enhanced by the unique spiritual
life of the Church. Compatibility in marriage is enjoyed by mutual
pleasures derived from the virtues and values of life. Sex in marriage is a
reminder that the coalescence of bodies means partnership and one destiny.
Sex in marriage does not destroy or abrogate the divine system of authority
in marriage. It is designed to enhance it.
6. The two relationships, authority and sex, are not contradictory,
but mutually supporting; for both require the virtue-love and the integrity
on the other side of the door of hope. Authority in marriage is functional,
demanding true love and virtue in the coalescence of souls. Sex in marriage
is a coalescence of the bodies, which demands true love and virtue-love,
resulting in equality in marriage.
7. All compatibility and rapport in marriage depends on virtue-love
located on the other side of the door of hope where we enter only on God's
agenda. Therefore, all compatibility and rapport in marriage results from
the four spiritual mechanics of the protocol plan of God to the Church.
8. It is never demeaning to be under authority. It is not demeaning
for the wife to be under the authority of her husband. Being under
authority is not dishonorable or a loss of your dignity. It is not
demeaning but beneficial for children to be under the authority of their
parents. Being under the authority of law is not demeaning but beneficial.
The believer being under the authority of God and the word of God is not
demeaning but beneficial. God makes war against abusive authority as well
as against the arrogant person who rejects authority.

S. Marriage protects and preserves the human race.
1. Jesus Christ created the man and the woman as witnesses for God
against Satan in his the appeal trial of his sentence to the lake of fire.
Our Lord immediately united the man and woman in holy matrimony. Marriage
was designed for the survival of the human race as its most basic element.
2. All members of the human race are witnesses for either God as the
Prosecution or for Satan as the defense. As the human race multiplies,
Satan began his attacks on the human race. One of his greatest attacks was
the infiltration of angelic creatures with females in order to destroy the
human race, Gen 6:1-10. Four marriages saved the human race--Noah plus his
wife, and Noah's three sons and their wives.
a. The greatest attack that the genius of Satan ever had was an
attack on the genetic human race and the line of Christ, and an attack on
marriage. Gen 6:1-13; Jude 6-7; 2 Pet 2:4-5; 1 Pet 3:18-22.
b. Certain demons prior to the flood had bodies. These demons
attacked the human race by sexual intercourse with the daughters of men,
which produced a half angelic and half human offspring.
c. The antediluvian demon attacks on the human race and the
Tribulational demon attacks (Rev 9:1-12; Rev 9:13-23; Rev 12:7-17) on the
human race both involve visible demons. Demon attacks in the postdiluvian
dispensations involve invisible demons.
d. "The sons of God" in Gen 6:2 is an incorrect translation. The
Septuagint (or LXX), which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament,
uses the word "angels" (HOI ANGELOI TOU THEOU) cf. Job 1:6 and 2:1 in the
LXX.
e. The infiltration of marriage in both antediluvian and
postdiluvian civilizations is a part of Satanic strategy in winning his
appeal trial.
f. The objective of the genetic attack in the antediluvian
civilization was to frustrate the incarnation of Christ in hypostatic union.
It was also an attack on the divine institution of marriage. He tried to
destroy all the witnesses for the Prosecution and create a mistrial.
g. Satan attacked Adam's seed through the murder of Abel. Then
Satan attacked Abraham's seed when Sarah was found in the harem of the
pharaoh of Egypt. The next attack was pharaoh's mandate to kill the male
line of Israel, Ex 1:10,15-16. The next attack was pharaoh's attempt to
destroy Israel in the pursuit at the Red Sea, Ex 14. Then there was the
Haman conspiracy to destroy Israel in the book of Esther. There were many
attacks on the line of David.
h. Gen 6:1ff.
(1) Gen 6:1, "Now it came to pass, when mankind had begun to
become numerous on the surface of the earth that daughters were born to
them,"
(2) Gen 6:2, "Now the sons of the gods [demons] saw that the
daughters of mankind were beautiful; and they took for themselves women,
whomever they selected."
(3) Gen 6:3, "Then the Lord said, `My Spirit will not
contend with man forever [as in a courtroom], because he also is flesh [true
humanity]; consequently his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.'"
Mankind had one hundred and twenty years before the flood would destroy
corrupt humanity--the half human half angelic creature.
(4) Gen 6:4, "The Nephilim [the fallen ones] were on the
earth in those days. Therefore also afterward, when the sons of the gods
had sex with the daughters of men, and had children by them, these
[children] were the heroes who from ancient history were famous men."
(5) Gen 6:5, "Then the Lord observed that the evil of
mankind was great on the earth, and that every motive of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil at the time."
(6) Gen 6:6, "The Lord changed His mind [an anthropopathism]
that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart."
(7) Gen 6:7, "The Lord said, `I will blot out man whom I
have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping
things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.'"
(8) Gen 6:8, "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord."
(9) Gen 6:9, "The following is the family history of Noah.
Noah, a justified man, uncontaminated in his genealogy; Noah walked with
God.[Noah had a good spiritual life.]"
(10) Gen 6:10, "Noah sired three sons: Shem, Ham, and
Japheth."
(11) Gen 6:11, "Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of
God; furthermore, the earth was saturated with violence." There is a
parallel passage in Mt 24:37ff, "For the coming of the Son of Man will be
just like the days of Noah. [It will have terrible violence.] For as in
those days before the flood they were eating and drinking [hedonism and
preoccupation with self], marrying and giving in marriage [preoccupation
with sex], until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not
understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming
of the Son of Man be."
(12) Gen 6:12, "God looked at the earth, and behold, it was
corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth." True
humanity was almost extinct on the earth.
(13) Gen 6:13, "Then God said to Noah, `The end of all flesh
has come before Me; for the earth has become saturated with violence because
of their presence. Now behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.'"
i. Every bit of the corrupted humanity would drown in the Flood.
The demons were imprisoned in Tartarus. 2 Pet 2:4-5, "For if God did not
spare the angels when they sinned, but incarcerated them in pits of darkness
in Tartarus, He delivered them over to be guarded for future judgment; and
did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah..." Compare Jude 6,
"And the angels who had not kept their status quo, but abandoned their own
dwelling places, He has guarded them with eternal chains under thick
darkness for the judgment of the great day." Compare 1 Pet 3:19, "by means
of Whom [the Spirit] also] He [Christ] went and made proclamation tot eh
spirits now in prison [Tartarus], who once were disobedient, when the
patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of
the ark, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were brought safely through
water."
3. Marriage was the first divine institution to keep the human race
from self-destruction. Marriage is always a major issue in the stability
and survival of the human race. But above all, the extrapolation of
Christian marriage in the Church Age is extremely important because it is
related to the unique spiritual life of all human history.
4. The purpose of Christian marriage is the greatest testimony against
Satan in his appeal trial. Christian marriage is the greatest challenge to
the postsalvation spiritual life.
5. No nation and no individuals are better than their marriage.
6. Failure in marriage is failure in life.
7. Christian marriage is the final answer to Satan in his appeal
trial. Satan kept objecting to the fact that God did not condemn Adam and
the woman to the lake of fire after they committed their original sin.
Satan's objection is answered by God during the dispensation of the Church
Age with Christian marriage.
8. Very few believers ever succeed in Christian marriage because they
do not have the spiritual life of the Church Age: the filling of the Holy
Spirit, metabolized doctrine in their stream of consciousness, the ten
problem solving devices deployed on the FLOT line of the soul, and the
execution of the three stages of the adult spiritual life.

T. Christian marriage is the corporate testimony against Satan.
1. A corporation is an association of individuals created by law
existing as an entity. It is a group of two or more people united in one
body. A corporation includes:
a. Organization.
b. Authority. The husband is the authority.
c. Objectives. Once you have organization and authority in any
organization, you have objectives. There are tactical and strategic
objectives. The objective is to glorify God through advance in the
spiritual life.
d. Policy. Objectives must be defined in terms of policy.
Policy has to do with recovery from sin, what we should do, what we should
avoid.
e. Principles.
f. Doctrines. Principles and doctrines come from the policy.
2. The divine institution of marriage is the first corporation in all
of history. It only takes two or more people to form a corporation.
Marriage will created and established for the purpose of stability and the
base of operation for the perpetuation of the human race, and from that
perpetuation to create witnesses for the Prosecution in Satan's appeal
trial, which is coterminous with human history.
3. The authority and organization of the divine institution of
marriage has been basically the same since the creation of mankind by the
Lord Jesus Christ. Each corporation always has one male and one female.
Man was given rulership of the world, which was nothing compared to
rulership in marriage.
4. The first corporation is created by our Lord Jesus Christ. A
perfect woman was created by Jesus Christ and immediately the first
corporation was formed. The man and the woman were created as a husband and
a wife. The first thing Jesus Christ did with the man and woman was to form
an organization. So He performed a wedding ceremony. They were given a
wedding present of the perfect environment of the world and specifically the
garden of Eden.
5. The next thing our Lord did was to define the relationship in terms
of authority. The man had the authority over the woman.
6. The next thing our Lord did was to define the objective. Our Lord
protected them, gave them Bible classes every day, provided a language for
them. The objectives, policies, principles and doctrines were defined
daily. The authority and organization of the divine institution of marriage
has been basically the same since the first corporation. They were created
perfect and did not need to have a conscience. They did not need to
understand the difference between right and wrong. All they needed was one
test. This test duplicated the circumstances of the prehistorical angelic
conflict with regard to divine institution number one--volition.
7. Mankind was perpetuated as the witnesses in Satan's appeal trial.
8. The divine institution of marriage was also designed to make sure
that the human race would not destroy itself. God created marriage to
protect the human race from self-destruction. Nations survive because they
have x number of good marriages. Stability in the laws of divine
establishment and whether freedom with continue depends on what the parents
do with their authority regarding their children.
9. Because the Church Age is the rebuttal phase of the Prosecution in
Satan's appeal trial, the Christian institution of marriage was extrapolated
from the divine institution of marriage as the corporate testimony to refute
Satan's argument. The corporate testimony of the Christian institution of
marriage is God's answer to Satan, and God waited all of this time to do it
because Jesus Christ had to be judged first for every sin before this issue
could come before the supreme court of heaven. So the corporate testimony
of the Christian institution of marriage is God's answer and the refutation
of the Satanic strategy to appeal the divine sentence from the supreme court
of heaven as stated in Mt 25:41. Therefore, the Christian institution of
marriage is specifically related to the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
The analogy to Christian marriage is Christ and the Church. You have the
greatest responsibility as a single Christian, and that responsibility
increases dramatically when you marry.
10. There are three witnesses for the Prosecution in Satan's appeal
trial.
a. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect spiritual life and
fulfilled the royal law--"you shall love your neighbor as yourself"--even
while bearing our sins on the Cross.
b. Every individual who has believed in Christ.
c. The corporate testimony of Christian marriage in the Church
Age.
11. The great danger to marriage and failure in marriage comes by
putting yourself above the royal law through fornication, adultery, or other
sexual sins, bitterness, hatred, revenge, vindictiveness, the sins of
arrogance.

U. Marriage: Aggressive Love And Leadership.
1. God created a husband and wife. In the creation of the husband and
the wife, they both had aggressive love and responding love, and it was
directed toward God. When it came to their marriage, the aggressive love
and responding love were separated. Enduring devotion and respect both
existed in the husband and wife because they each had a spiritual life. Out
of this came their worship for God the Son. Their intensive love for Jesus
Christ ended up with deference and admiration for Him. They had enduring
loyalty to Him and honored Him. Their worship of Christ was their defence,
admiration, honor, esteem, consideration, and partiality.
2. The husband was mandated to have in his leadership enduring
devotion for the wife. She, in turn, was to have respect for him. The
husband must have intensive love for the wife and she will respond with
deference and admiration for him. (Both husband and wife must have
integrity in marriage.) Enduring loyalty is mandated of the husband and the
wife responds with honor. The husband is mandated to consecrate his wife
and she responds with esteem. The husband is mandated to have dedication
toward his wife and she responds with consideration and partiality toward
him.
3. Marriage was designed to take any man and make a leader out of him.
A woman should never marry a man unless he is a leader. How do you know he
is a leader? He has to demonstrate aggressive love, which is a lot of
thoughtfulness for you. It is enduring devotion, intensive love so that it
arouses your deference and admiration. He demonstrates enduring loyalty
which you honor. He demonstrates consecration which arouses your esteem for
him. He demonstrates dedication toward you, which arouses your
consideration and partiality toward him. None of this is based on emotion.
It is all based upon thought.
4. Eph 5:31 quotes Gen 2:24-25, "For this cause a man shall leave his
father and his mother, and he shall have sexual intercourse with his wife;
and the two shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife knew that they
were both naked and were not ashamed."
a. The principle behind sex in marriage is the coalescence of
souls in love and the coalescence of bodies as a result of soul love.
b. Any sex outside of marriage is putting yourself above the law
and is blasphemy against God. No one ever gets away with it. The supreme
court of heaven deals with it. Some believers never recover from it because
they do not know rebound. No nation ever survives the degeneracy that comes
from flaunting marriage. Marriage is always a weather vane to show what is
going to happen in a nation.
c. Eph 5:31-32 says, "For this reason a man shall leave his
father and mother and shall have sex with his wife, and the two shall become
one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to
Christ and the church."
d. The third divine law of marriage emphasizes mutual
responsibility, and mutual responsibility always starts with the husband.
Eph 5:33, "However, you husbands also, each one of you individually must
love his own wife as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects
her husband."
(1) The husband must have spiritual self-esteem, a personal
sense of destiny. Loving your wife as yourself is impersonal love for all
mankind. This is motivated by personal love for God the Father.
(a) The command to the husband is given in the
imperative mood. The command to the wife is given in the subjunctive mood,
which means she must make an important decision as a subordinate.
(b) The aggressive and responding love for God are
separated between the husband and wife in the third divine law of marriage.
The man has aggressive love of enduring devotion and the wife has the
responding love of respect.
(c) Both husband and wife have both categories of love
for God (enduring devotion and respect) in their soul. They are equal in
their respond to God. They are equal in their spiritual life.
(2) When a husband and wife fulfill their roles of
leadership in the man and the response of respect in the woman, they provide
leadership for their children, and the nation will flourish for another
generation.
(3) Soul love always produces integrity, the true romantic
function of love. Outside of this there is nothing but disaster. Guilt and
shame destroys sex. These are built-in punishments to sex outside of
marriage. Guilt and shame produce scar tissue in the soul.
(4) "Mystery" is used here in a technical sense for doctrine
that was never understood in the Old Testament, but is now understood in
Church Age doctrine.
(5) True leadership in marriage is based on true love as per
the Scripture. The husband is to love the wife as Christ loved the Church
and the wife is to respect her husband. Leadership demands responsibility,
not brutality.
(6) Every husband is an individual and different.
(7) Loving self is not arrogant preoccupation with self, but
refers to the believer-husband being responsible for his very own spiritual
life. He is responsible for using his own volition to learn and utilize the
fantastic spiritual life he has been given. He is responsible for the
development of impersonal love for all mankind and personal love for God,
out of which will come the most fantastic leadership. The secret to
leadership is love.
(8) Loving self reflects the status of spiritual self-
esteem, the first tactical objective of the spiritual life. The Christian
husband is responsible through his study of the word of God to develop
impersonal love for his wife and personal love for God and then apply these
two categories of love in forgiving his wife's failures. The only true
response a man will ever get from a woman is from having personal love for
God and impersonal love for his wife's failures. No woman ever feels
comfortable in a marriage where she is not forgiven for some stupid thing
she has done.
5. The attack on Christian marriage and destruction of Christian
marriage is described in Eph 4:30-31, "Stop grieving the Holy Spirit of God,
by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness: both
anger [from emotion] and wrath [a hidden reaction anger based on
bitterness], both clamor [excited, loud verbal brawling] and slander
[malicious defamation of character] must be removed from you, along with all
malice."
a. Without rebound (1 Jn 1:9) we do not stop grieving the Spirit,
we perpetuate carnality, and bitterness, anger, hatred, slander, and malice
become a way of life which we justify. We become divorced from the reality
of the spiritual life, the filling of the Holy Spirit.
(1) If you reject rebound, your life becomes hell on earth.
(2) Rebound allows God to pick up these sins of bitterness
and remove them.
(3) Redemption is the work of God. The soul is redeemed at
the moment of faith in Christ. The body is redeemed at the Rapture of the
Church.
b. Marriages are destroyed by bitterness and malice.
(1) Bitterness is a terrible sin of arrogance. Bitterness
is what caused Satan to ask for an appeal trial. Bitterness is evil; it is
more than sin.
(2) Bitterness and malice always combine arrogance and
emotion. Bitterness is the start and malice is the result. Bitterness is
the worst mental attitude because it includes inhuman cruelty, harshness,
anger, animosity.
(3) Bitterness turns love into hatred, happiness into
malice, blessing into cursing. Bitterness is the fuel that runs the three
arrogance skills (self-justification, self-deception, and self-absorption).
Bitterness sponsors the three arrogance skills. If you lie to yourself, you
have no capability for true love.
(4) Bitterness is a catalyst that produces irrationality.
It causes the activity of the emotional sins. It is the pin of the grenade
which explodes and destroys your spiritual life.
(5) Bitterness produces scar tissue of the soul, which blots
out all the metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness. Therefore,
bitterness contradicts the unique spiritual life of the Church Age.
(6) Bitterness destroys Christian marriage. It nullifies
the corporate testimony of Christian marriage. Divorces are the function of
evil bitterness. Bitterness is what happens when a woman is disappointed
with the man she marries. Bitterness is what happens when a husband is
disappointed and wishes he had married someone else. Bitterness always pops
up in a relationship between a husband and a wife. Bitterness destroys a
marriage even though there is no divorce, no separation of any kind.
(7) Marriage is also attacked and destroyed by fornication
and adultery. Marriage protects the human race from self-destruction, which
is why the punishment for adultery and fornication is so severe from the
supreme court of heaven.
(8) Principles.
(a) If you live in Eph 4:31, you have destroyed all
capacity for true love in life.
(b) If you have destroyed all capacity for love, you
will spend your entire Christian life grieving the Holy Spirit.
(c) If you grieve the Holy Spirit, you have entered
into perpetual carnality, 1 Cor 3:1-3.
(d) If you enter a life of perpetual carnality, you are
the most miserable of persons as a born again believer in Jesus Christ.
(e) If you are the most miserable of persons as a
believer in Christ, you have a problem.
(f) If you have a problem, you have garbage in your
subconscious.
(g) If you have garbage in your subconscious, you do
not want doctrinal solutions because they are God's solutions. You want
self-centered solutions of arrogance. Therefore, in Christian marriage you
live in Eph 4:31.
(h) Divine solutions always begin with rebound; for you
are living on the wrong side of the royal law.
(i) You are at the crossroads of a dilemma. The road
of perpetual carnality leads to the road of double punishment from the
supreme court of heaven. The other road leads to "The joy of the Lord is
your spiritual power," Neh 8:10. Whom the Lord loves, He punishes, and His
punishment hurts.
c. Bitterness has five nouns which are all synonymous and
appositional concepts that describe bitterness: anger, wrath, shouting,
slander, malice.
(1) Bitterness starts whining and complaining. Once
bitterness is launched in the soul, all true love is pushed out of the soul.
(2) Bitterness is followed by anger. Anger is really
passionate lust in the Greek. From passionate immorality comes anger. The
emotional sin of passionate lust drives out thought and adds only feeling,
which leads to irrationality and anger. A bitter person will never take
responsibility for the cause of their bitterness, and from that point on
will never take responsibility for their failures. Many bitter people
consider themselves to be perfect. Bitterness is irrational. They think
they have righteous indignation, but they do not.
(3) Wrath is a reaction based on bitterness and hatred,
vindictiveness and implacability. When hatred is added to anger you have
wrath.
(4) Then the spouse reacts and looks for reasons to
downgrade their opposite number. Clamor is shouting, loud verbal fighting,
loud verbal brawling. All of these things lead to slander.
(5) Malice is the lust to hurt someone because of your
bitterness, anger, and hatred. You seek revenge on the object of your
anger, hatred, wrath. This destroys what is left of the marriage.
6. Eph 4:32, "Instead become kind toward each other, compassionate,
forgiving each other, just as God also through Christ has forgiven you."
a. Kindness is the exact antithesis of bitterness. You have the
road of bitterness and the road of kindness. The road of bitterness is the
road of carnality. The road of kindness is the spiritual life. Bitterness
is what you do to yourself when you get into double punishment.
(1) Kindness is how you solve the problem within your own
soul and then with your modus operandi.
(2) When you are kind, you are thinking about someone
besides yourself; you are not filled with your own self-importance.
(3) Every spouse in Christian marriage is mandated to be
kind to their spouse. Impersonal love for all mankind is being kind.
Personal love for God and personal love for a few in this life is kindness.
b. To be compassionate means to stop thinking about yourself and
to think about your spouse. It is a synonym for kindness. It is mental,
not emotion. Self-centeredness is the antithesis of being compassionate.
c. Each spouse is to forgive each other as Christ has forgiven
us.
(1) Because of the salvation work of Christ, at the moment
of faith all sins are forgiven and God can bless us. When a husband
forgives a wife, he never brings it up again. When a wife forgives a
husband, she never brings it up again. When you bring up past failures
again, that is malice, bitterness, and vicious fighting between two
believers, which is evil.
(2) The only forgiveness that counts in the life of any
believer is the forgiveness that forgets it and never brings it up again.
There is no virtue-love where you remember past failures of a spouse. We
are to forgive as Christ forgave the Church. This is why we are to love as
Christ loved the Church.
(3) The forgiveness of others is the function of the
prototype spiritual life, which we inherited from our Lord Jesus Christ.
(a) Forgiveness is always a function of grace. Being a
function of grace, forgiveness is amplified for the believer because we are
to forgive as Christ forgave us.
(b) This is the test of your integrity in the spiritual
life. If you cannot forgive as Christ forgave, you have done nothing in the
spiritual life.
(c) No marriage is a successful marriage without
forgiveness.
(d) You do not forgive unless you put behind you
forever the wrongs other people do to you. You are told to forgive
everyone. The motivation for this is personal love for God the Father, not
your spouse, and not your emotion.
(e) You are judged by this principle. When a person
truly forgives, they truly love. There is no love in the person who
forgives and then brings that failure back up again. Everyone will be
tested at one time or another on whether their love is true or not. True
love forgives. You put every wrong behind you as spiritual royalty.
d. 1 Cor 11:30-31, "For this reason many are weak [warning divine
discipline] and sick [intensive divine discipline], and a number sleep [the
sin unto death]. But if we would judge ourselves [but we are not doing it],
we should not be judged."
(1) This passage describes the accumulation of unforgiven
postsalvation sins in three categories.
(2) Each one of us has the right to be the judge of our own
lives. We are priests and represent ourselves before God. God has given us
the right to be a judge of ourselves. However, the Corinthian believers
were not doing this.
(3) We judge ourselves by the use of 1 Jn 1:9, the rebound
technique. Without rebound and purification from all wrongdoing we do not
have the right to continue the spiritual life and have harmonious rapport
with God.


Ok, U now have what U asked for, ball's in Ur Court! Are U going to Learn from it or become a "Loser" by blowing it Off??? John

Wait? What century are we in? This is just a mess of a question....

Part #4 Enjoy! John

DOCTRINE OF MARRIAGE
(Part 4)

N. Marriage and The Mystery Doctrine of the Church Age.
1. Doctrine related to the Church Age is called a mystery in the New
Testament.
a. Rom 16:25-27, "Now to Him who is able to stabilize you
according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, on the basis of
the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret long ages past, but
now it has been revealed through the Scriptures of the prophets, on the
basis of the mandate of the eternal God, and it has been made known to all
the nations, for the purpose of obedience to doctrine; to the only wise God,
through Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory forever. Amen."
(1) "Long ages past" refers to all previous dispensations
and to eternity past and the prehistoric angelic conflict. Your marriage is
something far more important than ever before in history.
(2) "Through the Scriptures of the prophets" refers to the
apostles and prophets of Eph 3:5 who wrote the New Testament and taught it.
b. 1 Tim 3:16, "And by consent of all great is the mystery of
spiritual life: the unique One who became visible by means of the flesh,
this same One was vindicated by means of the Spirit, He was observed by
angels, He was proclaimed among the Gentiles, He became the object of faith
in the world, He was taken up into the place of glory."
(1) The prototype spiritual life of our Lord Jesus Christ
during the first Advent was a mystery never revealed in the Old Testament.
Never before in history was the filling of the Spirit a reality. The
ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was entirely different.
This was not known in the Old Testament.
(2) The concentration and the focus of the elect and fallen
angels was greater at the point of the hypostatic union than at any other
time. This part of the hypostatic union was not known in the Old Testament.
This means that demons and elect angels are watching Christian marriages,
because it is a part of fulfilling the uniqueness of the Church Age. Just
as the humanity of Christ was observed by angels, so you are observed by
angels.
(3) While certain aspects of our Lord's first Advent were
prophesied by the Old Testament, other aspects were totally unknown to the
human writers of the Old Testament, such as the humanity of Jesus Christ
pioneering four spiritual mechanics which became the operational spiritual
life of the Church. For example, the filling of the Spirit.
(a) Jesus Christ taught in the power of the Spirit, Jn
3:34.
(b) Jesus Christ performed miracles by the power of the
Spirit, Mt 12:28.
(c) Jesus Christ lived under the power or filling of
the Holy Spirit, Lk 4:14.
(d) Jesus Christ endured the Cross through the filling
of the Spirit, Heb 9:14. The fact that our Lord would be judged on the
Cross for sins was taught in the Old Testament, Isa 11:2; 42:1. The fact
that our Lord received the imputation of human sin and remained on the Cross
through the filling of the Spirit was not revealed until the New Testament,
Mt 12:18.
2. Under the mystery concept there are three great doctrines which
must be emphasized: the uniqueness of the Church Age, equal opportunity for
every believer to fulfill the plan of God, and the relationship between the
mystery doctrine and Christian marriage of the Church Age.
a. The uniqueness of the Church Age is seen in the seven things
God the Holy Spirit did for us at salvation, especially the baptism of the
Holy Spirit, Gal 3:26-27, "For you are all the sons of God through faith in
Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed
yourselves with Christ." To be baptized into Christ means to be identified
with Christ.
b. The equal opportunity for every believer to fulfill the plan
of God is seen in Gal 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile [no racial
distinctions], there is neither slave nor free man [no class or social
distinctions], there is neither male nor female [no gender distinctions];
for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
c. The relationship between the mystery doctrine and Christian
marriage as seen in Eph 5:32. Only during the Church Age do the fantastic
and unusual systems of mandated virtue exist for marriage. Once the
Tribulation begins, marriage will go back to the precedence that was
established in the Garden and in the Old Testament dispensations.
3. The mystery doctrine of the Church Age is related to the
prehistoric angelic conflict, Eph 1:2-10, "Grace to you and prosperity from
God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Worthy of praise and
glorification is the God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ, since
He Himself has elected us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we
should be holy and blameless before Him in virtue love; He has predestined
us for the purpose of adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ
according to the grace purpose of His will, resulting in the praise of the
glory of His grace, by which grace He graced us out in the Beloved; by Whom
we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, on the basis
of the riches of His grace, from which [riches of grace] He has made us
super rich by means of all wisdom and the objective way of thinking, when He
made known to us the mystery of His will on the basis of His gracious
intention which He purposed in Him with reference to the dispensation of the
fullness of times, the summing up of all things in Christ, things pertaining
to heavenly creatures and things pertaining to the earth."
a. If you are motivated by what you know, you should also be
motivated by what you do not know, but is revealed in the mystery doctrine
of the Church Age. True motivation is based on cognition of the mystery
doctrine. Not knowing the mystery doctrine should motivate you to want to
learn and understand more of it.
b. If you hear the teaching of Bible doctrine and do not
understand it, you can be motivated to learn that doctrine by awareness of
your ignorance. Humility gives you the motivation to be a good student. No
one ever becomes a good student in anything unless they know that they do
not know and therefore they want to know, and therefore they learn.
c. If you hear the teaching of Bible doctrine and you understand
it, you should be motivated by metabolized doctrine in your stream of
consciousness to deploy the ten problem solving devices on the FLOT line of
your soul. This is the strongest motivation that can ever exist.
d. You can be motivated by cognition or you can be motivated by
ignorance or by a combination of the two. Cognition of Bible doctrine
motivates the Church Age believer to function under the four spiritual
mechanics.
e. Ignorance of Bible doctrine should motivate the believer to
learn the four spiritual mechanics and to utilize them to glorify God as a
winner believer, as a witness for the Prosecution in Satan's appeal trial.
The believer's credibility as a witness for the Prosecution is also related
to marriage. Christian marriage is a part of the testimony against Satan in
his appeal trial.
f. Marriage of two believers is the proving ground for the
mandates which demand the highest form of virtue that has ever existed. The
basis for fulfilling these mandates are two tandem problem solving devices--
personal love for God the Father and impersonal love for all mankind. When
the woman starts to react to her husband, the solution to her problem is
responding to the Lord Jesus Christ with personal love for God and
responding to her husband with impersonal love. The husband is mandated to
love his wife with a leadership or virtue love as Christ loved the Church.
True, honorable, virtue love expresses itself in sacrifice for the wife.
That is the stability in the national entity.
4. Part of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age is a new phenomenon
called Christian marriage, Eph 5:32, "This is a great mystery; but I am
speaking with reference to Christ and the church."
a. Precedence for marriage as a divine institution was
established in the garden of Eden with the divine creation of the husband
and the wife. Both were the model husband and wife: perfect, beautiful,
brilliant. It was the perfect marriage in perfect environment. After the
original sin of our first parents, the divine institution of marriage
included both believers and unbelievers. No changes were made over many
thousands of years until the dispensation of the Church. The revelation of
the mystery doctrine of the Church Age added a new dimension to marriage.
This new dimension only exists in the Church Age, because this is the only
dispensation where every believer can take the fantastic portfolio of
invisible assets and parlay them into execution of the spiritual life of the
Church. Since the mystery doctrine is revealed in the New Testament
epistles only, it established a new modus vivendi for Church Age believers
only. This includes the mystery doctrine pertaining to Christian marriage.
b. The biblical distinction between the divine institution of
marriage and Christian marriage for the Church Age only. When Christian
marriage was extrapolated to become part of the rebuttal phase of Satan's
appeal trial, it became a Christian institution derived from a divine
institution. A Christian institution is for Christians only. A divine
institution is for believers and unbelievers. In the Church age, Christian
marriage has been given the highest standards that have ever existed or will
exist in the human race. The standards for Christian marriage exceed the
standards for any organization or any individual in human history. God has
separated Christian marriage from the divine institution, and in so doing,
He has made it part of resolving the prehistoric angelic conflict. The
great mystery is the marriage of believers in this dispensation only.
Christian marriage in the Church is a unique testimony to what God has
ordained for the Church Age.
(1) The divine institution of marriage which began at the
creation of mankind is perpetuated through the entire history of mankind on
earth.
(2) The divine institution of marriage is ordained by God
for both believers and unbelievers in every historical dispensation.
(3) The sin of Adam and the woman in the garden of Eden
resulted in several modifications of the divine institution of marriage.
For example, the purpose of sex in the Garden was for recreation only.
Recreation is defined as refreshment by means of sexual intercourse of a
husband and wife in marriage only. But after the fall of man and subsequent
spiritual death, a second purpose was added to sex in marriage--procreation
for the perpetuation of the human race. The perpetuation of the human race
was necessary for Satan to have an appeal trial for himself and all fallen
angels.
c. The word "mystery" refers to the unique doctrines of the
Church Age which were never before revealed in history. The Church is the
unique dispensation of all time. These aspects of marriage were not known
in the Old Testament. During the Church Age, Christian marriage has taken
on far greater aspects than ever before. The believer's credibility as a
witness for the Prosecution in the rebuttal phase of Satan's appeal trial is
related to Christian marriage. Married believers have a very special
witness for the Prosecution and all angelic creatures are watching this very
carefully. The pastor-teacher is mandated to communicate these things.
(1) 1 Cor 2:7, "But we communicate God's wisdom in a
mystery, the hidden assets, which God predestined before the ages for the
purpose of our glory." So great is this spiritual life, it will be
demonstrated in eternity that the invisible heroes of the Church Age are the
greatest believers who ever lived in all human history.
(2) 1 Cor 4:1, "Let mankind regard us in this manner, as
ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God."
(3) Col 1:24b-27, "...I do my share on behalf of His body
(which is the church) in filling up that which is lacking in Christ's
afflictions. Concerning which I have become a minister with reference to
the dispensation from God which was given on me for your benefit to fulfill
the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from past
dispensations and generations; but now has been revealed to His saints, to
whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this
mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ indwelling you, the confidence
of glory."
(4) The mystery doctrine of the Church Age is related to the
teaching mystery of the pastor-teacher, Eph 3:2-6, "In as much as you have
heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for your
benefit; that through revelation the mystery doctrine was made known to me,
just as I have already written in brief. And by referring to this, when you
read it you ought to be able to understand my technical knowledge about the
mystery of Christ, which in other dispensations was not made known to
mankind, but has been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the
agency of the Spirit, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and members
together of the same body, and sharers together of the same promise in
Christ Jesus through the gospel."
(5) 1 Tim 3:9, "with a pure conscience keep holding the
mystery even doctrine." The phrase "with a pure conscience" refers to the
use of 1 Jn 1:9 to name your sins to God.
(6) Col 2:2, "that their hearts may be encouraged, having
been held together by means of virtue love and resulting in all riches from
the full assurance of the technical knowledge, because of the epignosis
knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ."
5. God created a new category of marriage for the Church Age and He
gave to it the highest form of standards that have ever existed in a
relationship between any two people in the human race. If these standards
are met in a generation, you can count on having a pivot of mature believers
and you can count on blessing for the nation. But if these standards are
not met, you can count on divine discipline for the nation.
6. The mystery doctrine of the Church Age is related to the gospel,
Eph 6:19-20, "and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in
the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the
gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may
speak boldly, as I ought to speak." The mystery doctrine of the Church Age
related to the gospel means that certain aspects in the presentation of the
gospel were unknown in the Old Testament, such as the fact that every Church
Age believer is an ambassador for Christ.
7. Principles.
a. The humanity of Jesus Christ in hypostatic union established
precedence for the spiritual life of the Church Age. The mystery doctrine
of the Church Age places great emphasis on the relationship of Christian
marriage and the unique spiritual life of the believer in this dispensation.
The revelation of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age added a new
dimension to Christian marriage. This is dramatized through the unique
divine mandates given to the believer in Christian marriage. Christian
marriage in the dispensation of the Church is a testimony in the rebuttal
phase of Satan's appeal trial in human history. Therefore, as goes the
spiritual life of the believer so goes marriage.
b. This means that until the Incarnation and first Advent the
unique spiritual life of the Church Age was unknown and never used. The
unique spiritual life of the Church Age comes in two categories. The
prototype spiritual life pioneered and tested by the humanity of Christ in
the dispensation of the hypostatic union. The operational type spiritual
life which belongs to each one of us at the point of salvation.
c. Two standards of precedence coexist in the Church Age. In Eph
5:31-32, we have this system of precedence related to marriage. Precedence
from the garden of Eden is noted in the quotation of Gen 2:24 in Eph 5:31.
Something has been added to all of the precedence for marriage that was
established in the garden of Eden during the Church Age as a part of the
mystery doctrine of the Church Age. No unbeliever can love his wife as
Christ loved the Church. The standard required of the believer husband is
much higher.
d. There is a higher precedence for marriage during the Church
Age than at any other time in history because of the spiritual life.
Marriage during the Church Age fulfills principles related to the
prehistoric angelic conflict and to the uniqueness of the spiritual life.
Christian marriage during the Church Age calls for more modus operandi of
the spiritual life than has ever existed before. The mandates given to
believers in marriage during the Church Age are of the highest level that
has ever been given in the history of the human race. After the Church Age,
these standards will no longer be operational. This relates directly to
your spiritual life. There is only one higher form of marriage than the
marriage in the garden of Eden--Christian marriage in the dispensation of
the Church. All of the precedence established in the garden of Eden carried
over after the fall of mankind, until the higher standards of the Church
Age.
e. It is the precedence of our spiritual life that makes
Christian marriage unique. Christian marriage in the dispensation of the
Church is part of the testimony that once and for all condemns Satan and all
fallen angels to the eternal lake of fire. Therefore the standards for
Christian marriage are much higher than the standards for unbeliever
marriage. Therefore the spiritual life given to us demands a virtue
produced by the filling of the Holy Spirit and metabolized doctrine
circulating in the stream of consciousness.
f. Freedom, Authority, and Values in Marriage.
(1) Freedom without authority is anarchy. Authority without
freedom is tyranny. There is no equality in anarchy or tyranny. Equality
has never been available through any human function. Only God can create
equality through regeneration.
(2) To avoid anarchy, freedom must have values. To avoid
tyranny, authority must have virtue. The testing ground for this principle
is Christian marriage. Authority in marriage belongs to the husband, but
this authority must be exercised in virtue love inside the integrity
envelope. Personal love for God provides both motivation and correction of
action in marriage. Freedom in marriage belongs to both spouses, but such
freedom must be exercised from the spiritual values related to the four
spiritual mechanics. Therefore, freedom and authority in marriage are not
in conflict. They are designed by God to establish a principle of testimony
for the rebuttal phase of Satan's appeal trial.
(a) The husband and wife are given divine mandates.
When God gives you mandates, it means you have freedom to execute that
mandate. The source of your freedom is volition.
(b) When a husband exercises tyranny toward his wife,
he has taken from her the most valuable thing he could have--her freedom.
No woman can love a man without being free to do it. That is true of
friendship, romance, and marriage. A woman can never love a man when he
violates the third law of marriage--forgive as Christ forgave. How can a
husband expect his wife to love him, when he is a loser through jealousy,
bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, etc., and becomes vicious and
vile. You take a woman's volition from her and she has no way of loving
you.
(c) As a responder, the woman can get into anarchy.
Her anarchy occurs when she transfers her affection to another man. A woman
can only respond to a man in freedom. If you have no values, you are not
capable of love. The highest form of love is found in the woman as a
responder. Why? Because capacity for love expands where one is under
authority. It takes a greater capacity for love to respect a man and be
under his authority. Respect has to be the mandate for the Christian wife,
because she is under the authority of her husband. When a woman respects
her husband, there is no danger of her transferring her affection to some
other man outside of the marriage.
(d) Virtue and values always meet in one place,
coalescence of bodies and coalescence of souls. Premarital sex can destroy
an otherwise fantastic marriage long before the marriage occurs.
(e) Freedom in marriage belongs to both spouses, but
must have values to avoid anarchy. Freedom must be exercised on the basis
of spiritual values related to the mystery doctrine of the protocol plan of
God. God has provided for the believer a whole system of values related to
the spiritual mechanics.
(f) A marriage between two believers in the Church Age
is the ultimate in Christian service. Because the great Christian service
is fulfilling the spiritual life by which you have a testimony in the
greatest trial in all of human history.
(3) Freedom in marriage demands a personal sense of
responsibility. Having freedom does not mean anything unless you have a
personal sense of responsibility with that freedom.
(4) Freedom without responsibility is apathy. Apathy is
tantamount to negative volition to Bible doctrine.
(5) Negative volition to Bible doctrine means failure to
deploy the tandem problem solving devices.
(6) Therefore, apathy means failure to live inside the
integrity envelope. Failure to live inside the integrity envelope means
failure of the spiritual life. Failure in your spiritual life means failure
in Christian marriage.
(7) Marriage is the testing ground for the spiritual life.
Every test to advance you in your spiritual life is related to marriage.
The greatest Christian service is performed by invisible heroes, especially
those in marriage.
(8) If you are motivated by what you know, you should also
be motivated by what you do not know about the mystery doctrine of the
Church Age. If you hear the teaching of Bible doctrine and you do not
understand it, you can be motivated to learn that mystery doctrine by
awareness of your ignorance. If you hear the teaching of Bible doctrine and
understand it, you should be motivated by metabolized doctrine circulating
in your stream of consciousness to deploy the ten problem solving devices on
the FLOT line of your soul as the only means of fulfilling the protocol plan
of God and glorifying God as an individual believer or a believer in
marriage. You can be motivated by cognition or ignorance or combination of
both. Cognition of Bible doctrine motivates the believer to function under
the four spiritual mechanics as they are opened to your view through Bible
teaching. This requires full understanding of the mystery doctrine.
Ignorance of Bible doctrine should motivate the believer to learn the four
spiritual mechanics and how they operate. Therefore, cognition changing
ignorance into epignosis knowledge of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age
includes perception of the unique status and responsibility of Christian
marriage in the Church Age.
g. The laws of evidence in a trial as found in the Old Testament
say that there must always be two or more witnesses, Deut 17:6, 19:15; 2 Cor
13:1. The witnesses must be interrogated separately, privately, and their
testimony must agree. The testimony against Satan in the rebuttal phase of
the appeal trial has three witnesses--the Lord Jesus Christ during the
Incarnation, the witness of believers during the Church Age who execute the
protocol plan of God, and the institution of Christian marriage. The
purpose for you being alive after salvation is to be a witness for the
Prosecution. The strongest testimony against Satan is the witness of two
Church Age believers in a marriage situation. The organizational testimony
against Satan is Christian marriage in the fulfillment of the three divine
laws of marriage. This is the highest form of greatness that has ever
existed in the human race. It requires a virtue, an integrity and an honor
that has never existed before and will never exist again after the Church.
h. God has provided a system of values related to the four
spiritual mechanics, which are the means of glorifying God during the Church
Age. During the first Advent, the humanity of Jesus Christ pioneered and
tested the prototype spiritual life under the greatest possible stress that
has ever existed in human history with the result that believers during the
Church Age were given the greatest operational spiritual life in all of
human history.
i. The love that the Christian husband must have for his wife is
a love that cannot be fulfilled by an unbeliever or by a believer who does
not know the mechanics of the spiritual life. Christian believers have the
greatest responsibility in marriage that has ever existed in the history of
the human race. Never in history did God command a husband and wife to
forgive as Christ forgave. No one could do it until Christ came and the
filling of the Spirit was given.
j. The fact that Christian marriage is being watched by angels is
taught in the following passages.
(1) 1 Cor 4:9, "For, I think that God has exhibited us
apostles last of all, as men condemned to death; because we have become a
theater to the universe, to angels as well as mankind."
(2) Eph 3:10-11, "in order that at the present time the
multifarious wisdom of God may be known to the [demon] rulers and the
[demon] authorities in the heavenly places by agency of the Church in
conformity with the plan of the ages which He accomplished through Christ
Jesus our Lord."
(3) 1 Tim 5:21, "I solemnly charge you in the presence of
God and Christ Jesus and His elect angels, to maintain these doctrinal
principles without bias, doing nothing in partiality."
(4) 1 Pet 1:12, "It was revealed to them that they were not
serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced
to you through those who preached the gospel to you by agency of the Holy
Spirit sent from heaven--things into which angels bend down to get a clear
look."
(5) Lk 15:10, "In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in
the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who changes his mind."
k. Christian marriage is a part of the witness for the
Prosecution in Satan's appeal trial. The three divine laws of Christian
marriage demand the highest and greatest system of honor, integrity, and
virtue ever assigned to the divine institution of marriage. This unusual
system of divine mandates is the monopoly of Christian marriage during the
Church Age.
8. Marriage as a Corporation.
a. Marriage is the first corporation in history. A corporation
is an association of individuals, created by law, existing as an entity,
hence, any group of persons united into one body. Marriage is a system of
corporatism, that is, the principles, doctrines, and organization of a
corporation.
b. The divine institution of marriage as the first corporation in
history was created by God at the beginning of the human race. In the
Church Age only, extrapolated from the divine institution of marriage is the
greatest system of service ever assigned to any group of people. This
system of service is the Christian institution of marriage. The corporation
of marriage has authority. Authority in marriage belongs to the husband.
Therefore, to avoid tyranny the husband must have virtue. The basis for
that virtue is the four spiritual mechanics of the protocol plan of God for
the Church. Freedom in marriage belongs to both spouses, but such freedom
must have values to avoid anarchy. God created the man to be a leader and
God created the woman to be a follower. Every Christian husband should be
great. If not, he will pay the price.
c. The spiritual values of the corporation called Christian
marriage must be related to the four spiritual mechanics of the protocol
plan of God for the Church and they must be used consistently. Freedom
demands a personal sense of responsibility in which the divine laws of
Christian marriage are executed inside the integrity envelope, which is
deployed through the two tandem problem solving devices.
(1) Personal love for God the Father provides motivation and
correction of reaction in marriage.
(2) Impersonal love for all mankind provides the highest
form of honor, virtue, and integrity.
d. Freedom without responsibility is apathy. Apathy is
tantamount to negative volition to the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
Such apathy from negative volition means failure to live inside the
integrity envelope. Failure to live inside the integrity envelope means
failure to fulfill the operational type spiritual life given to each one of
us at the moment of salvation as the filling of the Holy Spirit.
e. Marriage has been an issue in Satan's appeal trial since the
first man and woman failed. Satan has constantly argued that if the first
marriage failed in perfect environment, no marriage can succeed. Since
marriage is a testing ground for the spiritual life, marriage is a part of
the testimony of Satan's appeal trial coterminous with human history. The
spiritual life of the Church Age has nothing to do with the Old Testament
believers. We do not take our spiritual life from the Old Testament. No
Old Testament believer was ever filled with the Spirit, a royal priest, an
ambassador for Christ, in union with Christ, indwelt with all three members
of the Trinity, and many other things. The spiritual life in the millennium
is not nearly as great as during the Church Age.
f. Part of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age is a new
phenomenon that never existed before the Church Age began. It is called
Christian marriage.
(1) Precedence for marriage was established in the garden of
Eden with the divine institution of marriage. The man and the woman are
entirely different in every way. Man was created with the responsibility.
The man's responsibility toward the woman always demanded morality.
Morality toward the woman has always been the stability of society. Society
is no better than the sum total of its marriages. The man and the woman
were designed by the Lord Jesus Christ with different souls. They do not
think alike. They were designed to be together as long as both shall live.
Satan understood that when the woman is not responding to the authority of
the man, she is reacting. This is why Satan attacked the woman.
(2) The first marriage was composed of a perfect husband and
a perfect wife in perfect environment. The tree of the knowledge of good
and evil was the only test of volition under perfect environment because
under perfect environment knowledge of what is good and what is evil is not
necessary.
(3) After the original sin of our first parents, the divine
institution of marriage was not terminated, but the sin nature was added, so
that now the institution of marriage includes both believers and
unbelievers.
(4) Jesus Christ invented Christian marriage in which
husband and wife are both born again. There are two other categories:
unbelievers marrying unbelievers, and believers marrying unbelievers.
(5) There are three witnesses against Satan in the rebuttal
phase of his appeal trial. The first witness is the humanity of Jesus
Christ. The second witness is any Church Age believer who executes the
protocol plan of God for the Church. The third witness is Christian
marriage. In Church Age marriage, the divine institution demanded an even
higher attitude toward the woman because the woman was created as a
responder. God's answer in Satan's appeal trial to the attempted
destruction of marriage by the demon invasion of the human race in Genesis
chapter six is Christian marriage during the Church Age. The believer can
never use the excuse that they made a mistake in marrying an unbeliever to
get out of that marriage.
(6) No changes in the divine institution of marriage were
made over thousands of years until the dispensation of the Church. The
revelation of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age added a new dimension
to marriage--the marriage of two believers. Mystery doctrine establishes a
modus vivendi which is designed to give the highest form of service to God
that has ever existed in the human race. This means that Christian marriage
is one of the most highly sensitive corporations in the history of the human
race.
9. The Attack On The Divine Institution Of Marriage.
a. Marriage came under attack by Satan. This is described in
Genesis 6.
b. Satan's strategy included a plan to destroy marriage and true
humanity on the earth simultaneously. This was a genetic attack on the line
of Christ.
c. Two categories of demons exist at the present time.
(1) Those who have bodies, who at present are not permitted
to operate on planet earth because they violated the rules of the angelic
conflict and had sex with human women.
(2) Those without bodies, who are classified as disembodied
spirits, who are operational during this phase of human history. In 1 Tim
4:1 they are described as deceitful spirits who teach the doctrines of
demons.
d. Demons with bodies invaded the earth because of the great
beauty of women. Gen 6:1-13 described the demon attack to destroy true
humanity by having sex with women to produce creatures who were half angel
and half human. The Hebrew phrase BENI HA ELOHIM, translated "sons of God",
is used only for angels, Gen 6:2, Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7. The purpose of this
invasion was to seduce the beautiful women of the world resulting in the
destruction of true humanity, so that Jesus Christ could not come as true
humanity.
e. The result of angels having sex with human women was a super
race of beings that were half angel and half human, thus destroying true
humanity. In Gen 6:4 this corrupted race is called in the Hebrew HA
NEPHILIM or "the fallen ones." These creatures are described throughout
Greek mythology.
f. Gen 6:3 describes an outbreak of violence such as had never
existed before and would eventuate in the destruction of the human race, so
that the humanity of Christ could not come into the world. So God gave that
race 120 years to be evangelized by Noah. Only eight people (four married
couples) remained as true humanity and the rest of the corrupted human race
was destroyed by the Flood. The demons were imprisoned under the earth in
Tartarus, 2 Pet 2:4. In Jude 6 we have a reference to the same thing.
g. The Christian institution of marriage in the Church Age was
created by God to answer this event in the rebuttal phase of Satan's appeal
trial. Since Christian marriage is the third witness against Satan, there
is a special warning to all believers in 2 Cor 6:14-16a, "Do not lend
yourselves to being unequally being yoked together with unbelievers; for
what do righteousness and lawlessness have in common? Or what fellowship
[soul rapport] has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with
Beliar [the Greek word for evil, used for the personification of Satan], or
what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the
temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God.'"
(1) When a believer marries an unbeliever, you eliminate
yourself from being a witness for the Prosecution under the third category
of witnesses for the Prosecution.
(2) As a believer, you are still responsible for fulfilling
the divine mandates for marriage during the Church Age, but the unbeliever
is not under these divine mandates for marriage because they cannot
understand the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
(3) Therefore, the believing spouse must go it alone in that
marriage to be a witness for the Prosecution.
(a) The believer married to an unbeliever in the Church
Age has only one option in fulfilling the protocol plan of God--to go it
alone.
(b) If the believer remains married to an unbeliever,
and he should, he or she must face the additional problem of living alone
inside the integrity envelope or reacting to the other spouse which is
failure to fulfill the spiritual life. There is no legalism or manipulation
of your spouse inside the integrity envelope. Freedom does not manipulate.
Manipulation is tyranny. Go it alone means that marriage becomes a
distraction to glorifying God through the four spiritual mechanics of the
protocol plan. Therefore, it is much more difficult to glorify God when you
have to go it alone.
(c) Often the unbeliever spouse is antagonistic and
bitter toward the believer spouse who is interested in Bible doctrine.
(d) If the unbeliever is religious, there will never be
agreement in marriage.
(4) As a believer married to an unbeliever, you are lending
yourself to the Devil's deal. You have compromised yourself to Satan.
(5) Marriage is not a partnership; it is a participation; it
is a corporation.
(6) Light and darkness are mutually exclusive. Believers
and unbelievers in marriage are mutually exclusive. "Fellowship" here means
soul rapport. There can be no soul rapport between a believer and
unbeliever in marriage. The children of this marriage are sanctified, set
apart, or blessed because of the believer parent. The blessing will be
delayed if there is a divorce and it will not exist if the believer fails to
execute the four objectives of the spiritual life.
(7) The temple of God refers to the believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ and idols, where demons like to live.
h. The first witness option is for the believer to follow the
example of the apostle Paul and remain unmarried. As a single person, Paul
is the role model for going it alone. Every believer, whether single,
married or divorced, has equal opportunity to become a winner believer and
invisible hero. Some roads are more difficult than others. The second
option is given to Christian marriage, which has the highest system of
honor, integrity, and virtue under the mandates of the three divine laws of
Christian marriage. The third option is for the believer to remain married
to an unbeliever and to go it alone with the four spiritual mechanics.
10. The Creation of a New Category of Marriage.
a. In the Church Age, we have two categories of marriage.
(1) The divine institution category is the first category of
marriage in the Church Age and it has three subcategories.
(a) The husband and the wife are both unbelievers.
(b) The husband is an unbeliever and the wife is a
believer. She has no right to divorce him because he is an unbeliever.
(c) The husband is a believer and the wife is an
unbeliever. The Christian husband of an unbeliever still has the
responsibility to love his unbelieving wife as Christ loved the Church.
(d) If you marry an unbeliever, you have no right to
use your Christianity as an excuse for getting out of that marriage. If
they want to stay married to you, then you have no right to divorce.
(2) The Christian institution category is the second
category of marriage in the Church Age.
(a) The Christian institution of marriage is defined as
two believers united in holy matrimony.
(b) Christian marriage is the testing ground for the
greatest and highest spiritual life in all of history--the operational type
spiritual life. This is its greatest function in corporate testimony
against Satan in his appeal trial. The spiritual values of this corporation
are related to the four spiritual mechanics of the protocol plan of God for
the Church.
(c) The Church Age believer has the greatest spiritual
freedom as a part of God's grace. This freedom demands a personal sense of
responsibility, which was never before assigned to the human race and will
never again be assigned after the resurrection of the Church. The divine
laws for Christian marriage must be executed inside the integrity envelope
developed through the tandem problem solving devices.
(d) Freedom without responsibility is apathy. Apathy
is tantamount to negative volition to the mystery doctrine of the Church
Age.
(e) Such apathy from negative volition means failure to
learn and use the four spiritual mechanics of the operational type spiritual
life in your very own portfolio of invisible assets.
(f) Spiritual dynamics in Christian marriage include
the greatest objectives ever assigned to believers in all of human history
before the Church Age began and after the Rapture. Never in human history
has such great objectives been assigned to believers.
(g) We are therefore challenged in the Church Age for
the greatest service ever designed for being a servant of God. The ultimate
in Christian service is invisible heroship of the winner believer either as
a single person or as a believer in the status of marriage.
(h) The Christian institution of marriage is the divine
answer to the failure of the divine institution of marriage in the garden of
Eden.
(i) The successful Christian marriage is based on the
fact that both spouses are positive to doctrine, learn and use the four
mechanics of the protocol plan of God, and glorify God to the maximum by
being winner believers and invisible heroes.
(j) The unsuccessful Christian marriage occurs when
both spouses fail to use their equal opportunity to execute the protocol
plan of God by failure to learn and use the four spiritual mechanics. Both
spouses become loser believers.
(k) When one spouse fails to use equal opportunity to
execute the protocol plan of God, the positive spouse must use the principle
of "go it alone." You do not have the right to divorce your spouse because
they are negative to doctrine.
(l) Going it alone is the most important thing in the
spiritual life. You have to decide for yourself about doctrine, and no one
can decide for you.
(3) The divine institution of marriage and the Christian
institution of marriage coexist during the Church Age. The Christian
institution of marriage is extrapolated from the divine institution of
marriage. This is another unique factor of the Church Age.
(4) No unbeliever husband was ever mandated to love his wife
as Christ loved the Church. The secret to marriage from the man's
standpoint is not love, but virtue. If the Christian husband is not in the
integrity envelope, then he does not have the capacity, the virtue, the
honor, or the integrity to fulfill his responsibility. Failure in the
integrity envelope eventuates in arrogance and the arrogance skills. One of
the great problems in the United States today is that Christian husbands
have almost universally failed to have virtue, honor, and integrity from the
integrity envelope.
b. 2 Cor 5:17, "Therefore if any one [is] in [union with] Christ,
[he is] a new spiritual species; old things have lost their power; behold,
new things have come into existence."
(1) Because of the uniqueness of the Church Age and because
of the revelation of that exclusive body of doctrine pertinent to the Church
Age only, new things have come into existence.
(2) One of the most important is Christian marriage. New
things include: the filling of the Spirit, a completed canon of Scripture, a
new spiritual life based on four spiritual mechanics, the highest standard
of honor, integrity and virtue is assigned to Christian marriage, new divine
mandates related to Christian marriage.
(3) This is why two standards of precedence for marriage
coexist in the Church Age. Precedence for the divine institution of
marriage for believers and unbelievers is Gen 2:24; Eph 5:31. Precedence
for the divine institution of Christian marriage is Eph 5:22-30, 32-33.
c. If you are in anything in life where there are two or more
people and you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the
greatest responsibility in the world to produce honor, virtue, and integrity
from that spiritual life. Therefore, you should be on a different standard
altogether from those who work with you in an organization. Your respect
for authority and doing your job as unto the Lord demands a higher standard.
The same is true with regard to marriage. You should have an attitude that
represents the highest standards of honor, integrity, and virtue. You have
the responsibility of going it alone as a believer, if necessary, to produce
honor, integrity, and virtue.
d. The unbeliever can never execute the divine laws for marriage
given to the believer. No unbeliever wife can obey her husband as to the
Lord. The mandate to obey the husband is part of the divine institution,
but something has been added as a part of the mystery doctrine of the Church
Age. The husband is mandated to love his wife as Christ loved the Church.
No unbeliever husband can fulfill this mandate toward his wife. Obeying
these mandates is designed to serve God in a way that has never existed
before in human history.
11. The Principle of Going It Alone.
a. In a corporation as in marriage, you have two different kinds
of people--believers and unbelievers. You also have two different
categories of modus operandi. When people do their job right as believers,
they do it as unto the Lord because they have the highest motivation from
living in the integrity envelope. There are others who are unbelievers who
do their job under establishment principles. Only people who live by
principle truly succeed in life. If you are not living by principle, you
are not living, you are only existing.
b. Marriage is the testing ground for the establishment principle
that freedom without authority is anarchy and authority without freedom is
tyranny, and to avoid anarchy freedom must have values and to avoid tyranny
authority must have virtue. Therefore, marriage is always the key to
stability in society. The authority is the mystery doctrine revealed in the
New Testament epistles. The anarchy is the confusion located in the
believer's soul as a result of too many bad decisions from a position of
weakness. Anarchy is confusion, chaos, disorder in the soul of the believer
who rejects Bible doctrine or the Christian marriage that fails for the same
reason.
c. Freedom without cognition and use of the four spiritual
mechanics becomes apathy and irresponsibility. Freedom in marriage belongs
to both spouses, but such freedom must have values to avoid the anarchy of
confusion, chaos, and disorder in the individual's soul. The spiritual
values of the corporation called marriage must be related to four spiritual
mechanics of the protocol plan for the Church. Freedom demands a personal
sense of responsibility in which the divine laws of Christian marriage are
executed inside the integrity envelope. Decisions you make today will
effect you tomorrow.
d. Christian marriage is a dividing instrument when one spouse is
positive toward Bible doctrine and is motivated to learn all that God has
provided for the Church Age believer, so that the believer can become an
invisible hero--the highest form of Christian service.
e. There are three categories of believers who are subject to
going it alone.
(1) Believers who are not married and have never been
married.
(2) Believers who are unmarried and were formerly married.
(3) Believers who are married to an unbeliever or negative
believer. Going it alone does not mean to get out of marriage. If you are
married to an unbeliever or to a believer who is negative to God's plan, you
can still fulfill God's plan for your life by advancing to spiritual
maturity. You may never get married and have to go it alone.
f. 1 Cor 7:8, "Now I say to the unmarried and to widowers that it
is good for them to remain even as I." Paul recommended that believers
remain single if possible, because marriage has the greatest stress for
distraction if virtue of the spiritual life is lacking.
g. 1 Cor 7:10-11, "But to the married I give orders, not I, but
the Lord, that the wife should not depart from her husband (but if she does
depart, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband),
also the husband should not leave his wife."
(1) This is not really talking about divorce, but the
purpose for this is to address the problem of going it alone when you are
unequally yoked with an unbeliever or gotten out of a bad marriage to a
believer. If a spouse does depart, they should remain unmarried so that
they can go it alone and be a witness for God against Satan without
distraction.
(2) The worst marriage you can be in is a marriage to a
loser believer.
h. 1 Cor 7:12-13, "But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if
any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with
him, let him not leave her. Also a woman who has an unbelieving husband,
and he consents to live with her, let her not leave her husband."
(1) "Not the Lord" means that the Lord did not cover this
subject during His earthly ministry.
(2) Going it alone does not mean using an unbelieving spouse
as an excuse to get out of a bad marriage. You do not have the right to
leave a woman who wants to continue to be married to you. It is possible
that when the unbelieving spouse sees the fantastic integrity you have from
execution of the protocol plan of God, they may become a believer.
i. 1 Cor 7:14-15, "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by
the agency of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the agency
of her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now
they are holy. But if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the
Christian husband or wife is not under bondage in such cases, but God has
called us in the sphere of tranquility."
(1) "Sanctified" means that the believing spouse becomes the
basis of blessing by association for the other spouse.
(2) There is hope for the marriage of a believer and
unbeliever succeeding even though it is a violation of the divine mandate
not to become unequally yoked to an unbeliever. This marriage has a better
chance of succeeding than when there are two believers in a Christian
marriage and one of them is antagonistic toward doctrine. A marriage
between two believers where one is advancing and one is not creates the
greatest possible antagonism that the sin nature can muster, and when the
sin nature is in control of a negative believer, there is nothing worse.
The negative believer has refused to enter into values from their own
volition. The believer who does that goes through every form of
reversionism.
(3) If the unbelieving husband or wife walks away from the
marriage of their own volition, let them go. You have just been freed from
bondage. If a negative believer leaves you, let them go. God has not
mandated enslavement in marriage to an unbeliever or negative believer who
deserts a positive believer in marriage. Once the spouse departs, the other
believer is free to go it alone. You do not go it alone by jumping into
another marriage. You are missing the opportunity of a lifetime. Take the
time to reach the four objectives of the spiritual life. Then you will have
everything intended for the right woman, if God decides to send you one. No
one ever waited on the Lord and became a loser. The loser is the believer
who does not wait on the Lord. God will provide all of your needs at the
right time. If you do not need another spouse and grow up spirituality, God
will protect you through the doctrine in your soul from entering into
another bad marriage. Marriage is not finding the right person; marriage is
being the right person.

O. The Order of Necessity.
1. The order of necessity has three basic concepts: creation, the
fall, the Church Age.
a. Necessity is used here in the sense of being necessary or
indispensible regarding the human race. There are three categories of
necessity regarding the origin and function of the human race in history.
The first is the order of necessity at creation. The second is the order of
necessity at the fall of mankind. The third is the order of necessity in
the Church Age with special emphasis on the corporation of marriage.
b. At the moment of creation of mankind, two divine institutions
were absolutely necessary to resolve the prehistoric angelic conflict--
volition and marriage.
(1) Of all of the places and times when you need principles
of doctrine, it is in prosperity and perfect environment.
(2) Marriage was absolutely necessary at the creation of
mankind for the protection of mankind.
(3) At the moment of creation, God provided volition as the
problem solver. However, volition can also create problems, and it did.
c. At the fall of mankind and resultant spiritual death, the
second order of necessity, salvation through faith in Christ, became
indispensible. When man sinned, a second order of necessity began because
of spiritual death. Salvation through faith in Christ was indispensible
only after man used his volition to sin. Mankind was created without a
conscience. The man and woman did not need a conscience because they were
perfect. They did not need to know the difference between right and wrong
or good and evil because they were perfect. Therefore God ordered man not
to eat of the tree of conscience (good and evil).
(1) As a part of the second order of necessity eternal life
was absolutely necessary for time and eternity.
(2) Another part of the second order of necessity is
procreation, which was added to recreation in sex for the perpetuation of
the human race. Sex is the monopoly of the corporation of marriage.
d. The third order of necessity is the unique structure of the
Church Age with emphasis on the Christian institution of marriage as part of
the mystery doctrine of the Church Age, because the Church Age is the
rebuttal phase of the Prosecution against Satan in his appeal trial. The
third order of necessity is an answer to the failure of Adam and the woman
in the Garden.
(1) The greatest system of service to God in all time is the
invisible heroship that comes when one husband and one wife live in holy
matrimony as a Christian institution. The impact of Christian marriage on
the whole angelic realm is phenomenal.
(2) The divine institution of marriage under perfect
environment did not prevent the original sin. Therefore the corporation of
marriage has to be vindicated. It is vindicated by any Christian couple in
marriage who both advance to maximum glorification of God.
(3) The third necessity has to answer the problem of how two
perfect people in a perfect marriage in perfect environment can fail. In
every generation of the Church Age there are a few Christian couples who
make it to spiritual maturity and glorify God by vindicating the divine
institution of marriage. Successful Christian marriage answers Satan's
contention that he won the case when mankind fell in the Garden. This is
the greatest Christian service anyone can ever have.
(4) The only corporate testimony against Satan in the Old
Testament was the nation of Israel. The only corporate testimony against
Satan in the Church Age is the Christian institution of marriage.
2. The corporation of marriage has never stopped functioning in human
history and will continue to function throughout human history. The divine
institution of marriage has three categories.
a. An unbelieving husband and an unbelieving wife.
b. A husband who is an unbeliever and a wife who is a believer.
c. A husband who is a believer and a wife who is an unbeliever.
3. The Christian institution of marriage has two categories.
a. A believer husband and a believer wife in a successful
marriage.
b. A believer husband and a believer wife in an unsuccessful
marriage.
4. Every facet of the Church Age is indispensible: the filling of the
Spirit, Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, the three
spiritual skills, ten problem solving devices, your royal priesthood, the
Christian institution of marriage as the greatest system of Christian
service that has ever existed. Two believers in marriage can now have far
greater happiness--a life with the maximum amount of significance--than Adam
and the woman had in the Garden. It is the answer of the Lord Jesus Christ
to Satan with regard to the fall of Satan and the angelic revolution.

P. The Third Law of Christian Marriage.
1. The third divine law of Christian marriage emphasizes the mutual
responsibility in the interaction of both spouses and is, therefore, part of
the corporate testimony of Christian marriage.
2. Scripture.
a. 1 Pet 3:1-9, "In a similar manner, you wives, remain under the
authority of your own husbands that if any of them are disobedient to the
word, they may be won over without a word through the behavior of their
wives, when they see your blameless manner of life associated with your
respect. Your beauty should not come from external appearance only--your
hair styling, your jewelry, or your clothing; but the hidden person of the
right lobe associated with the imperishable quality of a humble and quiet
spirit, which has great value in the sight of God. In this way in former
times the holy women, who also had confidence in God, kept adorning
themselves by obeying their husbands. Like Sarah who obeyed Abraham, and
called him lord, you have become her daughters, if you do what is intrinsic
good and if you do not fear any fear. Likewise you husbands, live with your
wives on the basis of knowledge, giving honor to the woman as to a weaker
vessel also as a joint heir of the grace of life, since she is a woman, so
that your prayers may not be hindered. To sum up, everything should be
harmonious, sympathetic, impersonal love, compassionate, and humble in
spirit; not giving back evil for evil, or insult for insult, but on the
contrary blessing instead; because for this purpose you were called that you
might inherit [escrow] blessing."
(1) There are three parts to this passage.
(a) The Christian institution of marriage as the
rebuttal phase of the Prosecution for Satan's appeal trial, verses 1-4.
i. The impact of the second divine law for the
Christian institution of marriage, verses 1-2.
ii. The importance of the woman's inner beauty,
verse 3.
iii. How that inner beauty is defined, verse 4.
(b) The divine institution of marriage as an
illustration that inner beauty is not a part of the mystery doctrine except
what God has provided for it in the Church Age, verses 5-6.
i. The inner beauty principle of the Old
Testament, verse 5.
ii. The inner beauty illustration, verse 6.
(c) The continuation of the Christian institution of
marriage, verses 7-9.
i. The first divine law of Christian marriage,
verse 7.
ii. The corporate testimony of the Christian
institution of marriage, verses 8-9.
(2) In the illustration of verse one, we have a husband who
is an unbeliever or a Christian husband who has rejected Bible doctrine.
The response of silence rather than the nagging of reaction is the issue
here. No wife is ever going to have inner beauty and true spiritual
greatness unless she recognizes the authority of her husband. Every person
is a loser who does not recognize authority. You will never make it in life
on your overt beauty. Nagging never advances a wife's cause, only the
fulfillment of the spiritual life of the Church Age does, which has impact
both in the home and her social periphery. Nagging is reaction. A reacting
woman cannot solve her problems. When a woman is reacting, she is
functioning under the arrogance skills, is at her absolute worst, and is
trying to punish her husband. Reaction is a form of punishment to the
person who is reacting. This only hurts herself. Nagging is often the sign
of loss of values or of no values. The Christian wife must make an issue
out her love-respect for her husband rather than emphasizing her husband's
flaws, sins, and failures. The issue must be what God has done for the
wife, not the flaws, sins, or failures of her husband. The issue is
respect, love, and obedience that wins over the man. The wife who nags her
husband has misplaced her spiritual values. She does not even have a
spiritual life.
(3) Therefore, the wife must possess inner beauty, which
results from your spiritual life under the filling of the Holy Spirit and
momentum from metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of
consciousness through the filling of the Spirit. There is no greater form
of love than a woman respecting a man. When a woman is not responding to
her husband, she is reacting. When a woman reacts to the man she loves, a
vacuum is created in her soul which drains the inner beauty right out of her
soul. She neglects and rejects the problem solving devices and becomes
vulnerable to flattery and response to the wrong person. When the woman
starts to react, she loses her values in life. She uses personal love for
God the Father as the solution to the situation. This calms down the
reaction, removes it, and replaces it with tranquility, so that her inner
beauty will again shine forth. Then she uses impersonal love to respect her
husband again. This is a blessing to her husband and to everyone who comes
into contact with her.
(4) The spiritual woman does not neglect good taste in outer
appearance, but she has inner beauty to reinforce that good taste. Wives
should not neglect their overt appearance, however the emphasis is always on
inner beauty. Good grooming plus inner beauty of the soul is irresistible
to the husband. Your values must first emphasize inner beauty, but never
neglect your grooming.
(5) A humble and quiet spirit is of the greatest value in
God's values. The humility described here is a soothing, calm, patient
composure in the presence of irritation from others. Without a quiet
spirit, you are going to be an arrogant, noisy, obnoxious person. The
woman's inner beauty includes the following:
(a) Self-conscious, because spiritual self-esteem and
occupation with Christ exist rather than whining and mewing self-pity.
(b) Metabolized doctrine in the right lobe becomes
obedience to her husband from the function of impersonal love as the
integrity envelope of her personal love response to her husband.
(c) Volition makes decisions regarding her husband on
the basis of the divine rules for marriage rather than human viewpoint.
(d) The woman's inner beauty is designed by God to
execute the protocol plan and to fulfill her responsibility to her husband
from metabolized doctrine in the stream of consciousness.
(e) The quiet spirit is freedom from arrogance,
humility from the function of the four spiritual mechanics. The quiet
spirit is the stability of the soul inside the integrity envelope, which
lives in harmony with others and avoids the arrogance function of reaction,
so that the channel of response to her husband is never closed by the
arrogance skills.
(f) Loss of values means loss of coalescence of souls
in marriage, so that even sex in marriage is a hypocrisy of a twisted soul;
for reacting to someone you love results in responding to the wrong person.
(6) The virtue of inner beauty keeps the woman from holding
back her soul while giving her body to her husband. Virtue is always free
from hypocrisy. The wife who truly loves her husband and has attained
virtue love of respect for her husband never holds back her soul while
giving her body to her husband. The husband who possesses his wife's body
without her soul has nothing. It is the coalescence of souls which
accompanies the coalescence of bodies in the sexual relationship that
results in the trip back to the garden of Eden.
(7) We often have fear in our souls, which is under control
by our spiritual life. There are many circumstances when we have fear in
our souls which is normal. The issue is not being frightened by the fear.
David had fear in his soul, Ps 56:3, "What time I am afraid, I will trust in
You." Sarah had her fears (that Ishmael would replace her son Isaac) but
she dealt with them. The fear is there to be dealt with, to be handled. It
could be the fear of death, fear of crime, etc. The issue is handling the
fear and not letting it tie you up in knots.
(a) The more things you surrender to fear, the more
things you fear.
(b) The extent to which you surrender to fear, the
greater your capacity for fear.
(c) The greater your capacity for fear, the more you
increase the power of fear in your life. The major thing is to deal with
fear, so that it has no power in your life.
(d) The more you increase the power of fear in your
life, the greater your failure to learn and fulfill the four spiritual
mechanics of the protocol plan of God for the Church Age.
(e) People who live by fear are intimidated by life.
(f) Fear focuses on and is preoccupied by the problem,
but the problem solving devices focus on the divine solution.
(g) Fear is an emotional sin, therefore irrational--a
major distraction to the deployment of the problem solving devices.
(h) Fear is a sin of arrogance. Therefore it results
in the function of the arrogance skills in contrast to the spiritual skills.
Fear in the soul is controlled, resolved, eliminated by the advanced problem
solving devices.
(i) Fear of death will not prevent dying, but it will
prevent living your very own spiritual life.
(j) Fear and function in your spiritual life are
mutually exclusive.
(k) Scripture.
i. 2 Tim 1:7, "For God has not given us the spirit
of fear, but of power and of virtue love and of self-discipline [or good
judgment]."
ii. 1 Jn 4:18, "Fear does not exist in virtue love;
but virtue love drives out fear, because fear has punishment, and the person
who fears has not been matured by virtue love." Virtue love drives out fear
because virtue love is far greater than any system of fear. If you
entertain fear, fear will punish you. Fear is never a fear until it is in
your soul.
(9) Living with a wife requires patience and knowledge--the
knowledge of Bible doctrine. The woman is not a weaker person. She is in a
weaker status quo, being under the authority of the man. She is very
vulnerable to reaction, which makes her weak. You must live with your wife
on the basis of your knowledge of your wife. You must understand those who
are under your authority. Leadership assigns honor to the one who is under
authority. No one can learn anything unless they are under authority.
Being in charge is often very frustrating, especially when the principles
related to your authority are not understood and your authority is rejected.
Joint heirs of the grace of life means that both the husband and wife have
their very own spiritual life and portfolio of invisible assets with equal
privilege and opportunity to execute the protocol plan of God.
(10) Failure to use the four spiritual mechanics to execute
God's plan for your Christian marriage results in loss of certain escrow
blessings for both time and eternity. When you have a corporate testimony
against Satan, you have a double blessing.
b. Eph 5:32-33, "(This [the first two divine laws of Christian
marriages in verses 22-30] is a great mystery; but I am speaking with
reference to Christ and the church.) However you husbands also, each one of
you individually, let him so love his wife as himself; and the wife see to
it that she respects her husband."
(1) The command to the husband to love his wife is the
durative present active imperative from the Greek verb AGAPAO, which means
to have virtue love for someone. This is the highest form of virtue love.
The command to the wife to respect her husband is the durative present
middle subjunctive from the Greek word PHOBEO, meaning respect. Respect is
defined as a form of love, as admiration for a person based on the quality
and the traits of the person involved. Respect is esteem and deference
given to a person based on their virtue, honor, and integrity. This is a
most unusual structure in the Greek. This mandate is in the subjunctive
mood used as an imperative--an idiom from Hellenistic Greek.
(2) The Christian husband's authority is executed in a way
that a woman could never resist. When a husband has a personal sense of
responsibility or spiritual self-esteem, the coalescence of souls is
irresistible to the woman.
(3) The reflexive pronoun HEAUTOU ("himself") refers the
action back to its own subject. This emphasizes that every believer has his
very own spiritual life and is responsible for using his or her own volition
to learn the mechanics of the spiritual life. The reflexive pronoun also
emphasizes the status of spiritual self-esteem or a personal sense of
destiny. The reflexive pronoun emphasizes the mutual responsibility of each
spouse to take each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in
health, in adversity and in prosperity, as long as you both shall live.
When you walk out of a relationship after you have taken a vow to stay in
that relationship, you destroy yourself as a believer.
(4) The third divine demand of Christian marriage is the
highest form of service and the highest demand that God has ever made on
believers in any dispensation of history. This is invisible service of the
highest order.
(5) When the woman fulfills her part, she is the most
magnificent of creatures. Respect is a great combination of grace
orientation and humility, which produces the most fantastic inner beauty in
the woman. No woman with respect for her husband above all others will ever
give the idea to another man in her presence that she has somehow
transferred her affection away from her husband.
(6) God created the woman to have inner beauty as the basis
for civilization and the only basis for a virtuous culture. The inner
beauty of the woman is an inspiration in so many ways and the highest
motivation men can have. When a woman fulfills her rightful place in
history, then you have the most fantastic culture. When response exists and
the woman reveres one man in her life, then you have the highest form of
civilization and the greatest motivation for a virtuous culture.
(7) The tragedy of the destruction of the client nation is
the fault of the man, who has no longer become a virtuous leader. Instead
men have become abusive, petty, arrogant. Marital failure is a disaster,
not only to the individuals involved, but to the society in general.
Marriage is a stabilizer of society.
(8) The Christian wife's capacity for respect as the highest
form of personal love is the direct result of the husband's leadership. But
if he fails in that leadership, this does not give the wife the excuse to
react. A reacting person is out of fellowship and has set aside their
spiritual life. The solution for her is personal love for God the Father
and impersonal love for her husband. Virtue love is the system for
upgrading personal love to virtue. Both the husband and the wife must use
the advanced problem solving devices to restore virtue to their
relationship.
c. Eph 4:31-32, "All bitterness both anger and wrath and verbal
brawling and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice.
Instead become kind to each other, compassionate, forgiving each other, just
as also the God by the agency of Christ has forgiven you for your benefit."
Interaction through virtue begins in the home.
(1) The answer to perfect environment in the Garden is the
Christian institution of marriage in the worst of environments. The
Christian institution of marriage has the opportunity for far greater
happiness than ever existed in the Garden or will ever exist during the
Millennium. The commands of the three divine laws of Christian marriage are
Church Age doctrine that never existed before because this is the rebuttal
answer to the failure of the divine institution of marriage in the garden of
Eden.
(2) Irresponsibility cannot succeed in life or in marriage
with either spouse. When you are reacting to someone you love, you respond
to the wrong person, someone you do not love; hence, the importance of
personal love for God the Father. When you have personal love for God the
Father, it saves you a tremendous amount of unhappiness, misery, and
discipline in life. It prevents you from responding to someone you do not
love. Personal love for God the Father is a problem solving device to
protect you from reaction. It causes you to respond to God instead of
reacting to others.
(3) Nothing is ever won by irresponsibility or reaction.
Irresponsibility to God will cause you to have a life of reaction and
produces a loser in the male or female. Nothing is ever won by reaction.
When women react, they are punishing a man. A woman drives away a man to
whom she is constantly reacting. It shows she has yet to have personal love
for God the Father. Impersonal love provides the highest form of personal
integrity. Never try to punish someone by reaction. It makes you a loser.
Impersonal love toward all mankind is the power that converts reaction into
virtue love and provides objectivity which squelches the chaos of the soul.
(4) Bitterness is the result when a Christian husband and
wife choose the old sin nature for their system of values in marriage. The
Greek word THUMOS, translated "anger," describes the emotional sin of anger,
irrational anger. The Greek word ORGE, translated "wrath," describes a
reaction anger based on hatred, vindictiveness, implacability, and
bitterness.
(5) The spiritual life given to Christians, not
environment, is the solution to the problems that relate to Christian
marriage. The believers who go the way of the sin nature are looking for
perfect environment. They want to go back to the point of failure. They
are looking for the perfect mate who they call their right man or right
woman. However, you have taken a vow--for better or for worse. Environment
is not the issue and will not make you happy. Having the right values is
the issue. But if you relate your values to environment, you will become a
loser. The spiritual life emphasizes the coalescence of the soul, and it is
the coalescence of the souls that makes coalescence of bodies. The man does
not have to be handsome; he has to be a leader.
(6) Being kind to each other is the function of impersonal
love as a problem solving device. Compassion is the thinking of impersonal
love for all mankind. Mutual compassion is far better than environment.
The power that makes a marriage is the power of the filling of the Holy
Spirit.
(7) The third divine law of Christian marriage has certain
things in common for mutual responsibility and accountability. On the
negative side they have the same sin nature. On the positive side they have
the same spiritual heritage and same spiritual objectives.



Part #3 Enjoy! John

DOCTRINE OF MARRIAGE
(Part 3)

L. Relationship Problems and Solutions.
1. If we cannot live with ourselves, it is unlikely we could ever
live with anyone else. If a man and woman are lonely and unhappy, they can
double their loneliness and unhappiness through marriage.
2. One of the greatest problems in marriage is the autonomy-intimacy
issue. The question is how to be oneself, yet remain in compatibility or
rapport with one's spouse.
a. There is the tension between the autonomy of the "I" and the
interpersonal relationship of the "we."
b. Being a separate and individual person, and at the same time
being in a close relationship with another in marriage runs counter to many
of the romantic ideals.
c. Before true amalgamation occurs in marriage, each spouse must
recognize the other as a person, and as a person who also has an old sin
nature. You cannot change your spouse to suit yourself.
d. No one reaches the status of compatibility when the woman
keeps chasing him for what she cannot get, and the husband keeps running
from what he lacks. The wife desires closeness and intimacy, and thinks,
"If only my husband would change." And the husband desires to be
individualistic and self-sufficient. But if he tries to tell her who he
is, she becomes critical and antagonistic.
3. Bitterness, disillusion, and resentment all result from believing
three myths about marriage.
a. That marriage is a panacea for life.
b. That marriage is the ultimate in happiness.
c. That marriage is a problem-solving device. In reality,
marriage is a problem-manufacturing device, and it is related to the three
stages of Christian degeneracy: implosion, which is self-fragmentation;
explosion, which is polarized fragmentation; and reversion, which is the
eight stages of Christian degeneracy.
4. People are no better in marriage than they are as people. People
who are winners in life are winners in marriage. People who are losers in
life are losers in marriage. Losers are not believers who fail, but
believers who do nothing about their failures.
a. Only the protocol plan of God and problem-solving devices can
change a loser into a winner. You can only change yourself, you cannot
change your spouse.
b. Changing yourself always begins with the rebound technique of
1 Jn 1:9.
c. Most losers in marriage try to solve marital problems by
changing their spouse to conform to their standards. If that does not
work, they change spouses. Both in marriage and the Christian way of life,
you can only change yourself, and not others.
d. Divorce is rarely a solution to marital problems, because
after divorce, you are still the same person - a loser. A fragmented
person in marriage is a fragmented person outside of marriage. Do not
blame marriage for the fact you are a loser. Blame yourself for negative
volition.
5. Marriages do not work without spiritual self-esteem. Spiritual
self-esteem is where effectiveness in marriage begins. Spiritual self-
esteem is the envelope of impersonal love in marriage just as it is in the
Christian modus vivendi. All relationships must begin with the filling of
the Holy Spirit.
6. Psychological and human viewpoint solutions are no solutions to
marital problems.
a. While most people cite unfaithfulness, money, personality
conflicts, relatives, children, etc., as the reason for failure in
marriage, they are describing symptoms, not causes.
b. The answer to problems in marriage is found only in the
problem-solving devices.
7. Why do marriages fail?
a. Marriages fail because people are failures as human beings.
b. Marriages fail because people get married for the wrong
reasons: security; libido; peer pressure; escape from unpleasant
circumstances; for a meal ticket.
c. Marriages fail because believers make bad decisions while in
one of the three stages of Christian degeneracy.
d. Marriages fail because believers get married to solve their
problems, not realizing that this will intensify their problems.
e. Marriages fail because believers assume that marriage is a
state of happiness. They have been unhappy all of their lives, and now
they want to be happy. They think that all they have to do is get married.
8. Principles of happiness related to marriage.
a. You cannot build your happiness on self-gratification. This
includes alcohol, drugs, success, approbation, or beauty.
b. You cannot build your happiness on a moment of time,
pleasure, stimulation, success, approbation, power, or a moment of sex.
c. You cannot build your happiness on someone else's
unhappiness.
d. You cannot build your happiness on marriage. This means
marriage is not designed for happiness; marriage is designed for virtue.
e. Virtue is designed for happiness, when achieved - when you
attain one of the problem-solving devices - sharing the happiness of God.
Therefore, marriage depends on the virtue involved in the fulfillment of
the problem-solving devices, because the problem-solving devices equate
virtue with happiness.
f. Marriages fail because believers become involved in the three
stages of degeneracy: implode, explode, and revert.
g. The greatest cause for failure in marriage is also the
greatest cause for failure in life - arrogance.
9. The first and greatest difficulty people have after marriage is
unrealistic expectation.
a. When people reject doctrine, they tend to expect too much
from someone else. They get their eyes on people.
b. Unrealistic expectation is part of the arrogance complex. It
is the arrogant fragmentation of the believer.
c. Unrealistic expectation means that very few people are loved
the way they want to be loved, and very few people are treated the way they
want to be treated. Entering marriage with this attitude results in
nothing but disaster.
d. The believer in marriage who is not loved the way he wants to
be loved or treated the way he wants to be treated becomes frustrated and
reacts toward his spouse.
e. Unrealistic expectation is a state of unhappiness. In fact,
it combines the arrogance of unhappiness with subjective preoccupation with
self.
f. Unrealistic expectation starts out in arrogant shock.
Arrogant shock means subjectivity. Subjectivity means preoccupation with
self. People are more preoccupied with self after marriage than they ever
were before marriage.
g. The combination of arrogant preoccupation with self and the
arrogance of unhappiness inevitably produces a loser. The key is always
unrealistic expectation. When you add arrogance to arrogance, you have a
locked-in loser in marriage.
h. Unrealistic expectation is the state of unhappiness in
marriage in which the believer blames everyone else for his miserable
circumstances. Unrealistic expectation never takes the responsibility for
one's own decisions, and always transfers the blame to anyone in the
periphery. The spouse fragments his own life and then blames others. This
changes the person's personality, often creating a pall of gloom. One
miserable person often creates another miserable person.
10. Another problem after marriage is role-model arrogance.
a. The combination of subjective preoccupation with self,
unrealistic expectation, plus subjective preoccupation with the other
spouse develops role model arrogance, which quickly destroys anything
anticipated prior to the wedding.
b. There are three categories of subjective preoccupation with a
spouse: role-model arrogance; the feet-of-clay syndrome; iconoclastic
arrogance.
c. "Role" is defined as a proper or customary function of an
individual as the other person thinks they should be. The role-model a
person assigns before marriage does not turn out to be what was expected.
Therefore, the person gets into unrealistic expectation.
d. We assign a role to our spouse in marriage. When anyone
departs from their assigned role, there is reaction by the other person.
This is why people try to change their spouse. This is why wives nag their
husbands, and why husbands bully their wives.
e. We expect others to be perfect or to fit into our unrealistic
expectations, and at the same time we have a role-model standard for
ourselves. We see ourselves unrealistically as we see others
unrealistically. This is the function of arrogant subjectivity.
f. In role-model arrogance a husband may excuse himself for his
sins, failures, and flaws, and at the same time condemn his wife for the
same sins, failures, and flaws. We never see our flaws, yet see our
spouses' flaws perfectly.
g. The husband may make a role-model out of his wife, and she
does not meet his unrealistic standards. Therefore, he judges her for her
failures to fulfill his unrealistic expectations. While being guilty of
many things himself, he blames his wife. The wife does the same thing to
her husband by assigning to her spouse the role-model of the perfect
husband or father.
h. Role-model arrogance gravitates toward the sin nature trend
of self-righteous arrogance, hence, becomes guilty of polarized arrogance
in the field of legalism. This results in role-model arrogance making a
hypocrite out of self and a victim out of one's spouse.
i. Role-model arrogance rejects or neglects the problem-solving
devices of the protocol plan of God and substitutes arrogant subjectivity.
j. Most men place an inordinate amount of importance on making
the woman obey them. This comes from the narcissist syndrome. No man has
the right to bully the woman. Some men only get married for perpetual
approbation and attention from the wife. He wants his wife to constantly
be kind, wonderful, tender, loving and thoughtful. She is not capable of
these unreasonable expectations.
k. The role-model created by the arrogant wife is created out of
illusions related to a kindness or tenderness that she has never before
known.
l. Arrogance always exaggerates unrealistic expectations into
illusions. And from illusions come hallucinations. The attraction stage
of romance is the most vulnerable stage for creating an idol.
m. The arrogant believer takes an attractive person, and from
either delusion, idealism, or romantic illusion creates an idol of
perfection out of the opposite number. Then he marries the idol of
perfection which he has created in his own imagination and emotions. He
has created an illusion and assigned to it a role-model. Once the feet-of-
clay, the person's flaws emerge, the spouse seeks to destroy the idol which
he created. This is iconoclastic arrogance. The husband often reacts with
brutality.
n. Iconoclastic arrogance is total divorcement from reality in
human relationship.
(1) It is defined as subjective preoccupation with other
people resulting in disenchantment and disillusion. Iconoclastic arrogance
is unrealistic expectation because it assigns perfection to another without
taking cognizance of the fact that all of us have old sin natures.
(2) When the iconoclastic believer discovers some sin or
flaw in his spouse, he becomes disenchanted with his partner in marriage
and reacts. Discovery of the feet-of-clay produces hostility and the
reaction of self-fragmentation, which motivates destroying the other
spouse.
(3) Iconoclastic arrogance rejects all problem-solving
devices. The arrogant iconoclast never takes responsibility for being
arrogant. Illusion created by arrogance becomes illusion destroyed by
arrogance. Arrogance destroys what arrogance creates.
11. A man might be able to motivate his wife to change in some areas,
if he fulfills the divine rule to love his wife. And a woman may motivate
a man to want to please her, if she executes the divine rule to obey the
man. But the real issue with the wife is respect.
a. The only thing that really counts with a woman is having her
respect, not her love. Respect from a woman is infinitely more important
than her love because love gets tangled up in her emotions, and she becomes
irrational. But a woman becomes very stable when she respects a man.
b. A man can gain a woman's respect by living his life in
relationship to a woman on the basis of principle. When the woman seeks to
compromise your principles, cut her off. Better to have her respect rather
than her love. When a woman respects a man, then she fulfills the
principle of obeying and submitting.
c. When a woman respects a man, her attraction to that man is
not based on beauty, muscles, or sex, but is based on character. Obedience
has never been a problem for a woman who respects a man.
12. Most of the problems in marriage come from the mistakes made in
getting married in the attraction stage of romance. The two people still
do not know what the other person is like; they only have overt attraction.
Do not marry in the attraction stage and expect success in marriage. This
is very difficult.
13. Personal love, spiritual self-esteem, and virtue in marriage.
a. Personal love in marriage has neither strength nor staying
power to make a success of marriage apart from virtue-love. Virtue-love is
personal love inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
b. Personal love in itself is vulnerable to self-destruction
from the arrogance complex. Personal love by itself is vulnerable to the
emotional revolt of the soul. What you do not need is an emotional
marriage.
c. Personal love in both romance and marriage demands residence
in the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
d. Impersonal love only becomes effective at the point of
spiritual self-esteem. Personal love in marriage cannot be effective
without the integrity envelope of impersonal love and the status quo of
spiritual self-esteem.
e. Lack of spiritual self-esteem, next to arrogance, is the
major destructive factor in marriages. A husband minus spiritual self-
esteem is a monster in marriage.
f. Virtue-love in marriage functions in the three stages of
spiritual adulthood: spiritual self-esteem, the effective function of
impersonal love; spiritual autonomy, which is the optimum function of
impersonal love; spiritual maturity, which is the maximum function of
impersonal love. There are six characteristics of spiritual self-esteem.
(1) Self-confidence, which results from postsalvation
epistemological rehabilitation or doctrinal inculcation.
(2) Self-realization, which results from wisdom or the
application of metabolized doctrine to experience.
(3) Self-direction, which is that spiritual momentum from
doctrine that changes self under the principle: you cannot change others,
you can only change yourself.
(4) Self-identity, which is the function of grace
orientation, combined with a personal sense of destiny.
(5) Self-motivation, which combines personal love for God
the Father with occupation with Christ.
(6) Self-vindication, which is tantamount to execution of
the protocol plan of God. Self-vindication means four things:
(a) Becoming an invisible hero.
(b) Being a member of the pivot in the client nation.
(c) Receiving distribution of escrow blessings for
time.
(d) Glorifying God in the angelic conflict.
g. Impersonal love has a legitimate subjective function as well
as a legitimate objective function. The legitimate subjective function of
impersonal love is love of self; impersonal love loves its own virtue.
(1) Eph 5:28, "Husbands ought to love their own wives as
their own bodies." The husband loves his own virtue, which is the basis
for fulfilling the principle of loving his wife with impersonal love, not
personal love. This is subjective virtue. Spiritual self-esteem
subjectively goes toward its own virtue. The greatest value a woman could
have is a husband in spiritual maturity.
(2) "He who loves his wife, loves himself." This is not
arrogance, but virtue-love related to spiritual self-esteem.
(3) Eph 5:29 illustrates the principle, "For no one ever
yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and provides tender care for it,
just as Christ the Church." Jesus Christ loves the Church with perfect
personal love because He loves His own righteousness, which is divine self-
esteem. In spiritual self-esteem the husband loves his wife as he loves
his own body.
(4) As a result of spiritual self-esteem and impersonal
love going inward, personal love inside the integrity envelope of
impersonal love is directed toward the wife. Note that impersonal love has
two directions: toward self in spiritual self-esteem; toward the wife in
the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
(5) A normal believer in spiritual adulthood does not
despise his own virtue. The believer loves his own virtue attained through
Bible doctrine; therefore, the emergence of spiritual self-esteem.
h. The virtue of spiritual self-esteem has two objective
functions toward the woman in marriage: the effective function of virtue-
love; the effective and proper use of the husband's authority in marriage.
Spiritual self-esteem plus personal love in the integrity envelope fulfills
the true responsibility of the husband toward the wife.
i. True virtue produces both love and happiness in marriage.
The problem is that people put love before virtue, and that is backwards.
j. Spiritual self-esteem defined.
(1) Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of the
adult believer's impersonal love directed toward his wife and toward
himself.
(2) Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of the
husband's personal responsibility toward his wife. When a husband has
spiritual self-esteem, he has something far better than personal love
outside the integrity envelope.
(3) Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of the
believer's impersonal love toward the entire human race.
(4) Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of the
problem-solving devices of the protocol plan of God.
(5) Spiritual self-esteem is the stabilization of the
believer's life through freedom from arrogance and Christian degeneracy.
k. What is the evidence of spiritual self-esteem in your life?
(1) Tranquility of soul.
(2) Stability of mentality. Never feeling threatened by
others; never succumbing to peer pressure.
(3) Composure marked by self-assurance.
(4) Grace orientation to life.
(5) Doctrinal orientation to reality.
(6) Good decisions from a position of strength.
(7) Personal control of your life through doctrinal
conceptualism.
(8) A personal sense of destiny.
(9) Self-confidence from wisdom, the application of
doctrine to your experience.
(10) Poise, the believer under spiritual self-command.
l. Spiritual self-esteem is the beginning of suffering for
blessing that advances the believer to spiritual maturity. People testing,
thought testing, system testing, disaster testing are all handled by
spiritual self-esteem. You advance to spiritual autonomy and get the tests
again.
m. Virtue related to marriage.
(1) Virtue is defined as the grace-righteousness and
integrity produced by the believer who is living within the integrity
envelope of impersonal love. The believer is virtuous under the following
conditions:
(a) Execution of the protocol plan of God.
(b) Attainment of spiritual adulthood.
(c) Consistent postsalvation epistemological
rehabilitation.
(d) Understanding and using the problem-solving
devices.
(2) Virtue is the monopoly of God, and only God gives it.
This is why marriage counseling is useless. Virtue is that quality of
intrinsic good that can only be manufactured by God the Holy Spirit and
doctrinal conceptualism.
(3) Virtue is not proving one's worth; the believer who is
trying to prove something cannot improve.
(4) Everyone sins in marriage, but not everyone is virtuous
in marriage.
(5) Marriage is not designed for happiness or love, but
marriage is designed for virtue, and virtue is designed for happiness and
puts power into love. Whatever destroys virtue in marriage destroys
happiness in marriage, and turns love into a disaster. Unhappiness in
marriage is simply a manifestation of one's failure to execute the protocol
plan of God.
(6) The demand syndrome, on the part of either spouse, is a
total lack of virtue. It means that personal love is outside the integrity
envelope. Instead of the demand syndrome directed toward self, there must
be trust directed toward one's spouse. How do you trust anyone? By having
spiritual self-esteem, which is directed toward your spouse in trust. You
base your trust on who and what you are, not who and what they are. That
is the function of the third stage of the faith-rest drill. Losers do not
trust anyone, including themselves.
n. A successful marriage depends upon a successful spiritual
life. A successful spiritual life depends on the filling of the Holy
Spirit plus momentum from metabolized doctrine.
14. No believer can have a successful marriage apart from a successful
relationship with God.
a. Relationship with God is the basis for every blessing that
comes out of marriage. Therefore, Bible doctrine must be number one on
your scale of values and must be applied to every situation in life.
b. If your relationship with God is a failure, your relationship
with people and in marriage is a failure.
c. There is no solution to the problems of marriage in
psychology and human viewpoint. All solutions for the believer come from
application of the principles of Bible doctrine. You cannot have
application without knowledge of doctrine.
15. Marital problems are symptoms; the disease is human failure in
life. No marriage can be successful without virtue on the part of one or
both partners. There are two sources of virtue in marriage.
a. For the unbeliever, virtue originates from the observation of
the laws of divine establishment, or morality without arrogance.
b. For the believer, virtue originates from two sources.
(1) Constant postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation,
which results in momentum and spiritual maturity.
(2) Understanding and using the problem-solving devices of
the protocol plan of God.
16. You cannot change your spouse in marriage; you really can only
change yourself. This change requires spiritual energy in three spheres:
learning, thinking, and solving.
17. Authority related to marriage.
a. Life is a system of authority. Humility recognizes
authority; arrogance rejects it. Happiness does not exist where authority
is rejected. Arrogance always considers any form of authority demeaning.
Arrogance is a loser in life, because arrogance always rejects authority.
b. Arrogance destroys morality because arrogance does not
recognize authority, and all morality is based on authority.
c. Humility turns morality into virtue so that virtue-morality
carries the husband and wife in the marriage of two unbelievers. Under the
grace policy of God, humility benefits from authority; arrogance is
destroyed by rejection of authority.
d. Virtue-morality avoids moral degeneracy.
e. In the case of the Christian marriage there is no substitute
for the virtue produced by the inculcation of Bible doctrine under the
filling of the Holy Spirit.
f. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the basis for perception,
metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.
g. Virtue from Bible doctrine is the highest expression of the
interpersonal relationship of marriage.
18. The single, divorced, and widowed woman.
a. Taboos in the selection of a mate for the single woman - see
the Doctrine of Marriage, Part 1, point E.
b. The problems of the divorced woman - see the Doctrine of
Divorce.
(1) If the divorced woman was married to her right man,
then she should remain single, so there is a possibility that a
reconciliation can occur. 1 Cor 7:11, "But if she does leave her husband,
let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband; also the
husband should not divorce his wife." No matter what the cause of divorce
or what justification exists for the divorce, do not jump into a new
marriage. There should be a long elapse of time (one or two years) to give
opportunity for spiritual recovery and the recovery from the problem of
"damaged goods."
(2) The law of status quo also applies. 1 Cor 7:27, "Are
you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a
wife? Do not seek a wife." Give yourself a chance to enter into spiritual
self-esteem before you get another wife.
(3) The problem of young children in the home and the
potential of remarriage.
(a) If you have the right of remarriage and your
children are still young, but the potential new husband will not accept
them, do not marry him. Do not force your children into having to put up
with someone who does not like them. You cannot build your happiness on
your children's unhappiness. If the children do not accept a potential
step-father, be cautious about marrying him. Be sure they have a valid
reason for their rejection.
(b) But if there is compatibility, then marriage is a
possibility. The issue also concerns your children, not just your love for
a man. When you have responsibility for children, do not forget them
because of love for a man.
(c) The problem is that the potential husband is not
only marrying you, but he is accepting the responsibility of fatherhood of
children by another man, and this requires a virtue which many men do not
possess.
(4) If you are a mother completely occupied with your adult
children by a previous marriage, do not marry.
(a) Your obsession with the success or failure of your
adult children by a previous marriage will destroy a second marriage.
(b) If you marry a man who has custody of children by
a previous marriage, you will have problems which may be more than you can
handle unless you are spiritually an adult.
(c) If both a woman and a man have possessive adult
children, the chances are slim that the marriage will succeed because the
children will constantly interfere and be critical.
(d) Children are often the victims of divorce and
remarriage, especially where the parents are arrogant and self-centered,
and looking for self-gratification.
(5) 1 Cor 7:28, "But if you should marry, you have not
sinned. Yet such a one will have trouble in this life. And I am trying to
spare you." This is a statement about a first marriage, but the principle
applies to a second marriage as well.
(6) 1 Cor 7:39-40, "A wife is bound as long as her husband
lives. But if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whomever
she wills, but only in the Lord. But in my opinion she is happier if she
remains as she is."
(a) Before a young widow remarries, she must have
objectivity. She must have wisdom to analyze the potential second husband
in the light of self-fragmentation. If he is jealous of her deceased first
husband, the marriage will not work.
(b) Do not remarry simply because you are lonely or
want a legal sex partner. These motivations will cause the marriage to
fail.
(c) As the number of marriages by one person increase,
the possibility for happiness decreases. Even marriage to a right man is
severely tested and no guarantee of happiness.
c. The problem of the widows.
(1) Widows are those women who have lost their husbands by
death and have not remarried.
(2) 1 Cor 7:8-9, "But I say to the unmarried and to the
widows that it is good for them to remain even as I [unmarried]. But if
they do not have self-control, let them marry. For it is better for them
to marry than to burn with passion."
(3) Young widows are prone to marry on a wave of libido; 1
Tim 5:11, "But refuse to put younger widows on the list, because when they
feel sensual desire in disregard of Christ, they want to get remarried."
(4) There is a good reason for young widows without
children to be remarried, given in 1 Tim 5:14-15, "Therefore, I want young
widows to get married, bear children, keep house, and give the enemy
[Satan] no occasion for reproach; for some young widows have already turned
aside to follow Satan."
19. If the woman makes a bad decision and marries the wrong man, her
life is one of intolerable slavery. If she marries the right man, her life
is characterized by fantastic happiness and grace blessing from the Lord.
There is no in-between in marriage, except boredom. Marriage is either
virtue or degeneracy, happiness or misery, freedom or slavery. Romance and
courtship is the most critical part of a woman's life, apart from
salvation.

M. The Authority Analogy to Marriage, Eph 5:22-25.
1. Eph 5:22, "Wives, render obedience to your husbands as to the
Lord."
2. Eph 5:23, "For the husband is the head of [the authority over] the
wife, even as also Christ is the head of the Church, He Himself being the
savior of the body [the Church]."
a. The husband is the authority in marriage. Because he has the
authority, he is mandated by the Bible to exercise that authority through
leadership rather than tyranny.
b. Only the husband's arrogance can destroy his authority in
marriage. This is because arrogance destroys virtue and morality. In
arrogance the wife does not recognize her husband's authority; and in
arrogance the husband abuses his authority.
c. Compare the chain of command given in 1 Cor 11:3, "But I want
you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the
head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ."
(1) This passage can only be understood as rulership,
authority, supremacy.
(2) "God is the head of Christ" is a reference to the
Hypostatic Union and incarnation, when Christ subordinated Himself to the
Father's plan.
(3) "Head" does not mean source or origin, and has never
been used this way in the history of Greek literature. It means maximum
authority or superior rank. This does not mean that man are better than
women in all areas, or in all respects. But men do have the authority.
d. Christ as the head of the Church clearly illustrates the fact
that the husband is the authority in marriage. Just as Christ is the ruler
of the Church, so the husband is the ruler over the wife. The fact that
Christ is the supreme ruler of the Church is taught in Eph 1:22-23; 2:16,
4:4-5; Col 1:18, 24; 2:19.
e. This analogy demands leadership rather than tyranny from the
husband. Our Lord's rulership is perfect leadership. He has a perfect
policy of grace and perfect discipline. By analogy, the husband should
have the same leadership.
(1) The authority of the husband is designed to enforce
divine policy, to protect, care for, and cherish the wife in marriage,
rather than to change her personal standards. He has no right to try to
change her personal standards, which includes what local church she chooses
to attend.
(2) Leadership demands thoughtfulness. It is one thing to
have authority; it is another thing to exercise it properly.
(a) Authority demands a sense of responsibility, not a
sense of arrogance and tyranny. You cannot have leadership in authority
without a strong sense of responsibility.
(b) The man's first consideration is to take care of
his wife before he takes care of his own needs.
f. Above all things in marriage, the husband must be a spiritual
leader. As a spiritual leader the husband executes the divine commands,
such as Eph 5:29 and Col 3:19. This is because the husband's motivation is
based on the motivation of impersonal love.
g. Divine rule number one in marriage is the basis for the
husband's function as a ruler over the wife.
(1) Eph 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ
also loved the Church, and delivered Himself over as a substitute for her."
(2) Col 3:19, "Husbands, love your wives, and stop being
bitter against them."
(3) In both mandates the husband must exercise his
authority over the wife through the function of personal love inside the
integrity envelope.
h. The husband learns in marriage to distinguish between
leadership and management.
(1) One of the distinctions between leadership and
management is the distinction between policy for the organization and the
personal standards of individuals within the organization.
(2) The leader has personal standards which he can only
apply to himself. But he does not try to change people in the organization
to conform with his personal standards.
(3) The responsibility of leadership and authority is to
enforce policy and to fulfill the objectives related to the organization.
Therefore, he applies his own personal standards only to himself, and uses
his authority to fulfill policy objectives and the function of the
organization. You cannot change others, you can only change yourself.
(4) Management seeks to impose personal standards on others
under his command. Management becomes the degeneracy of bureaucracy.
(5) God invented marriage and established the policy. The
husband must understand and enforce the policy in love, not in tyranny. To
be a leader the husband can only enforce the policy of marriage; he cannot
change his wife's personal traits to satisfy himself.
(6) Good spiritual leadership recognizes that only Bible
doctrine can change any of us, and that both husband and wife must take the
responsibility for their own decisions regarding perception of doctrine.
(7) Through fulfillment of the divine rules for marriage,
the husband becomes a leader with the full use of impersonal or virtue-
love. However, when the husband becomes an arrogant bureaucrat, he is a
bully in marriage. He seeks to impose his standards on his wife.
(8) You cannot change your wife in marriage; you can only
change yourself. Marriage is more than finding the right woman; it is
being the right man. Each individual in marriage may have to modify
personal standards as they learn doctrine.
(9) Authority orientation demands that both husband and
wife conform to God's rules and policies in marriage. The wife is under
both the authority of her husband and Bible doctrine. If there is a
conflict, then she must put the matter in the Lord's hands, while obeying
her husband.
(10) All men are hypersensitive in their arrogance.
Leadership can never afford to be jealous because jealousy results in
inordinate ambition and competition, and the relaxed mental attitude of
leadership in the function of authority is lost.
i. There must be no contradiction between the role of the
husband and the wife in marriage. To avoid contradiction, both must be
avid students of the Word of God. They must be consistent in their
perception, metabolization and application of doctrine.
j. Spiritual growth in the protocol plan of God results in
success in marriage. Success means that each partner fulfills the mandates
of the Word of God with regard to that relationship.
(1) The husband must be a leader in the spiritual life of
both marriage and the family.
(2) The divine policy in marriage can only be executed by
fulfillment of the protocol plan of God through postsalvation
epistemological rehabilitation, doctrinal conceptualism, and understanding
and using the problem-solving devices.
(3) Leadership can be learned, attained, or acquired
through learning and applying doctrine.
k. Do not get married without some form of spiritual
compatibility. Spiritual compatibility is the key to all the categories of
compatibility in marriage. This is especially true of sexual
compatibility. The sex act is one time in marriage when no authority is
involved. Either partner can initiate sex, but it is a learning process.
l. The divine policy of marriage.
(1) There are three divine rules in marriage.
(a) Husbands, love your wives. This can be
accomplished only through integrity and humility.
(b) Wives, obey your husbands. She must respect her
husband's integrity, virtue, and humility. Her virtue demands obedience.
(c) Forgive each other as Christ has forgiven you.
This includes forgetting past failures. Forgiveness must be learned.
(2) The equation for the execution of the policy for
marriage is impersonal love plus humility equals necessary integrity. Each
use impersonal love to execute divine rules one and two.
(3) Since impersonal love is virtue-love, the secret to
success in marriage is virtue (the positive side) and avoiding arrogance
(the negative side).
(4) The husband is the leader. Therefore, he initiates all
the characteristics of impersonal love for the enforcement of divine
policy. The wife is a follower. Therefore, she responds to impersonal
love from her husband, and obeys him without destroying her individuality
or her personal standards.
(5) Impersonal love keeps the husband from abusing his
authority, bullying his wife, or superimposing personal standards on her
and trying to change her. Impersonal love provides the wife with humility,
objectivity, and teachability, so that obedience to her husband is neither
demeaning or humiliating. Impersonal love motivates both husband and wife
to forgive each other as God by means of Christ has forgiven us.
m. Virtue-morality avoids moral degeneracy. Every stage of
moral degeneracy is related to some form of arrogance. Virtue, originating
from metabolized doctrine, is the highest expression of human interaction
in marriage.
n. "He himself being the savior of the body" is an unfinished
analogy.
(1) If the head of the woman is the man, and the head of
the Church is Christ, then it follows that there is an analogy between the
wife's relationship to her husband and the Church's relationship to Christ.
(2) The salvation work of Christ on the cross is the basis
for Christ being the savior of the body.
(3) The husband's impersonal love as the integrity envelope
for his personal love for his wife is the protector of the wife. In the
function of the husband, he has provided temporal security for his wife.
(4) The husband's authority is established through the
doctrinal analogy between Christ and the Church. The husband's authority
can never be properly exercised apart from spiritual self-esteem.
(5) The doctrinal analogy suggests that the wife's
compliance demands knowledge of doctrine, the problem-solving devices, and
a virtue which can overcome the misuse of the husband's authority.
(6) The authority of Jesus Christ over the Church demands
knowledge of Bible doctrine and the function of virtue by the husband and
the wife.
(7) Likewise, the authority of the husband over the wife
demands a knowledge of Bible doctrine and the function of virtue.
(8) Hence, both authorities exist, whether they are
recognized or not. And both authorities depend on doctrinal conceptualism
and virtue.
(9) The authority of Jesus Christ over the Church is a
fact, but its recognition demands doctrinal inculcation, resulting in
spiritual adulthood.
(10) The authority of the husband is a fact, but its
recognition demands spiritual momentum through doctrinal inculcation,
resulting in motivational and functional virtue on the part of the wife.
If the husband has spiritual self-esteem, then she will have respect for
him.
o. Summary.
(1) All the counseling in the world cannot produce from the
outside what it takes to produce a successful marriage. It depends on your
knowledge, use, and application of doctrine.
(a) It does not depend on people on the outside. You
cannot take your problems of marriage outside of marriage and get them
solved; only Bible doctrine can do it.
(b) When you reach spiritual self-esteem, you have to
tell yourself what to do to solve your problems. People on the outside
cannot handle your marriage; only you and your spouse can.
(2) Compatibility and rapport in marriage originate from
the two involved; not by changing their personalities, but by spiritual
growth.
(3) Most people try to solve their marital problems by
changing their spouse. But you cannot change your spouse, you can only
change yourself. What you are in marriage is no different from what you
are.
(4) If you are lazy about doctrine, you are lousy in
marriage.
3. Eph 5:24, "But as the Church is subject to Christ, so also you
wives are subject to your husbands in all things."
a. The authority of Jesus Christ over the Church is analogous to
the authority of the husband over the wife in marriage.
b. The husband cannot exercise authority without leadership.
His leadership is based on virtue-love, spiritual self-esteem, and a sense
of responsibility. His first thoughts must always be to care for his wife
before himself. This is what it means to have authority rather than to be
a bully and push other people around. The husband cannot fulfill his
responsibility without spiritual growth.
c. The Church, as the body and bride of Christ, through
perception of Bible doctrine, recognizes the authority of Jesus Christ and
seeks to please Him. If we do not have respect for our Lord in the sense
of loving Him, then we have respect for Him in the sense of fearing His
discipline. We respect Him for His love and grace policy, as well as for
His justice.
d. The Christian wife, through perception of Bible doctrine,
begins to recognize the authority of her husband and seeks to please him.
The woman chooses the man to be her authority of her own free will; now she
must submit to the authority she has chosen.
4. Because of these analogies, in which the authority of the husband
is compared to the authority of Christ over the Church, the ladies who are
single must be extremely careful in the selection of a husband.
Carelessness in making the decision regarding a husband has made life
intolerable for the woman and placed her in a position where only the
overruling grace of God can provide a solution. There are no instant
solutions.
5. Eph 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church,
and gave Himself as a substitute for her."
a. Husbands must possess at least three characteristics to make
a marriage successful: virtue-love, spiritual self-esteem, and a sense of
responsibility.
b. This verse is a divine mandate in which God makes a direct
positive demand on all husbands. This mandate requires active virtue
rather than active arrogance. Personal love minus impersonal love is
active arrogance.
c. This verse is a mandate to impersonal love as the virtue
envelope for personal love. Husbands are commanded to love their wives
with impersonal love.
d. Personal love is virtue-dependent for its validity and
effectiveness. There are two ways of inserting virtue into personal love.
(1) The way of the unbeliever - extrapolation of virtue
from the laws of divine establishment.
(2) The way of the believer - extrapolation of virtue from
postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation and execution of the protocol
plan of God.
e. The weakness of personal love is that it always emphasizes
the attractiveness of the object. The strength of impersonal love is that
it always emphasizes the virtue of the subject. Virtue-love is defined as
personal love inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
(1) Personal love is an option in life. You are never
commanded by the Bible to have personal love toward anyone. But impersonal
love is mandated by Scripture. You are commanded to love your neighbor as
yourself - impersonal love.
(2) Impersonal love is motivated by love for God;
therefore, it is nondiscriminating. Personal love is motivated by
attraction; therefore, it is very prejudiced. Impersonal love is a
problem-solving device; personal love is a problem-manufacturing device.
(3) Impersonal love is manufactured from Bible doctrine.
Personal love is manufactured from human viewpoint, lust, vanity, emotion,
human desire, arrogance, self-gratification, criminal motivation.
(4) Impersonal love is sustained by the inventory of Bible
doctrine in your soul. Personal love is sustained by the attractiveness
and the mutual admiration that develops in the relationship.
(5) Impersonal love is a relaxed mental attitude toward
all. Personal love is an intense and possessive attitude toward a few.
Impersonal love is free from arrogance; personal love is hamstrung by
arrogance.
(6) Personal love has no virtue in itself; it is virtue-
dependent. Impersonal love is consistent in solving the problems of human
relationship. It is consistent in the face of admiration or antagonism.
It handles both with virtue.
(7) Personal love is vulnerable to Christian degeneracy
through arrogance. Therefore, it must depend on the integrity envelope of
impersonal love both for the inculcation of virtue and to overcome the side
of your life that yields to certain temptations from the old sin nature.
f. Spiritual self-esteem is the beginning of the effective
function of impersonal love as a problem-solving device in the protocol
plan of God. Impersonal love is one of the most important things you
acquire at the point of spiritual self-esteem.
g. Principles regarding impersonal love. (See also the Doctrine
of Impersonal Love, Part 1, G.)
(1) Divine and human power are mutually exclusive. Divine
power is available through the protocol plan of God. Human power is self-
developed.
(2) God has provided His divine power and enablement for
the execution of the protocol plan and success in marriage.
(3) Therefore, God has excluded human power and ability
from the fulfillment of the protocol plan; and God has excluded human
ability as the means of making a success in marriage.
(4) The use of human power or legalism excludes divine
power and divine grace. Therefore, it causes the believer to fail to
execute the divine mandates regarding marriage.
(5) Human ability and power cannot and does not execute the
divine mandate "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church, and
gave Himself as a substitute for her."
(6) Human ability on the part of the wife cannot fulfill
obedience to her husband as is protocol in the Lord. The mandates of
marriage are not executed by human power.
(7) God has found a way through His grace policy of
providing the ability to execute all divine mandates, both in marriage and
in the protocol plan of God.
(8) In marriage, impersonal love as the integrity envelope
provides both capacity and ability for the husband to love his wife as
Christ loved the Church and gave Himself as a substitute for her.
(9) The husband's authority requires that he have the
necessary virtue and integrity. The greatest initiation of love a man can
make is personal love inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
(10) Impersonal love is that virtue whereby the integrity of
the subject exceeds the unattractiveness of the object. Being
unconditional, impersonal love emphasizes the virtue and honor of the
subject rather than the attractiveness or repulsiveness of the object. The
filling of the Holy Spirit replaces the energy of the old sin nature.
h. When Christ gave Himself for the Church, it was impersonal
love, not personal love. By analogy the husband has the responsibility for
virtue-love toward his wife. His personal love must be inside the
integrity envelope of impersonal love or the marriage will not work. This
is the kind of virtue that is required of the husband as the leader and
authority in marriage.
(1) Out of the husband's impersonal love for all mankind
comes his personal love for his wife.
(2) Out of our Lord's impersonal love for all mankind comes
His personal love for the Church. Our Lord's impersonal love for all
mankind is manifested through the doctrine of unlimited atonement, while
our Lord's personal love for the Church is manifested by the imputation of
divine righteousness at salvation.
(3) The Church did not exist when Jesus Christ went to the
cross and died for the sins of the world. Nevertheless, His impersonal
love toward the Church is manifest in that all the sins of the Church were
judged on the cross.
(4) Premarital virtue demands the attainment of impersonal
love before marriage.
(5) To enter marriage without virtue or impersonal love
means malfunction, failure, the breakdown of love in marriage.
(6) Without the virtue of impersonal love in marriage,
personal love has neither the problem-solving capabilities nor staying
power.
(7) Our Lord's impersonal love for all mankind emphasizes
the presalvation status of the Church as spiritual death.
(8) Our Lord's personal love for the Church emphasizes the
postsalvation status of the Church as newness of life or +R.
(9) Unlimited atonement precedes the formation of the
Church. Therefore, our Lord's impersonal love in unlimited atonement
precedes His personal love for the Church manifest in the imputation of
divine righteousness. Application - the believer should attain impersonal
love for all mankind prior to marriage. This ensures success of the
marriage.
(a) Unlimited atonement is a demonstration of God's
impersonal love for all mankind.
(b) 2 Cor 5:14, "The love for Christ keeps on
motivating us. In fact, we have reached this conclusion, that One died as
a substitute for all mankind [unlimited atonement]."
(c) 2 Cor 5:19, "God, by means of Christ, was
reconciling the world to Himself by not imputing their sins to them."
(d) 1 Tim 2:6, "Who gave Himself as a substitute for
all mankind."
(e) 1 Tim 4:10, "Because we have confidence in the
living God who is the savior of all men, especially of believers."
(f) Tit 2:11, "For the grace of God, which brings
salvation to all mankind, has appeared."
(g) See also Heb 2:9; 1 Jn 2:2; Jn 3:16.
(10) The application of the doctrine of unlimited atonement
is the basis for the formation of the Church as the body of Christ or the
royal family of God. The application of impersonal love for all mankind to
the doctrine of marriage is the insertion of virtue into the divine
institution.
(11) Without impersonal love the husband cannot fulfill this
command to love his wife; the wife cannot fulfill the command to obey her
husband; and neither partner can execute the divine rule to forgive each
other.
i. Success in marriage demands that impersonal love be developed
prior to marriage, if possible, under the principle that premarital virtue
guarantees the success in marriage.
j. No believer can be successful in marriage unless he has the
right priorities. The right priorities mean doctrine first. Relationship
with God is based on metabolized doctrine. Success in marriage, therefore,
demands doctrinal conceptualism.
k. The doctrinal analogy to our Lord's impersonal love as the
integrity envelope of personal love is located in the phrase "and He gave
Himself as a substitute for her." The doctrinal analogy to our Lord's
personal love for the Church is located in the phrase "just as Christ also
loved the Church." The analogy demands that we understand the nature of
impersonal love and its necessity for obeying divine mandates regarding
marriage.
l. The believer is helpless to love his wife as Christ loved the
Church. Therefore, God has provided the means to execute this command by
the development and attainment of impersonal love through spiritual growth.
N. The Sanctification Analogy to Marriage, Eph 5:26-33.
1. Eph 5:26, "That having purified her [Church], He might cause her
to be sanctified by means of the washing of the water [doctrine] with the
word [communication of the Word of God]."
a. Union with Christ, "having purified her," is analogous to the
husband's union with his wife in marriage. Experiential sanctification,
"He caused her to be sanctified," is analogous to the husband's
relationship to his wife in a successful marriage.
b. Experiential sanctification includes two basic concepts.
(1) The filling of the Holy Spirit. The filling of the
Holy Spirit provides the enabling power to fulfill the responsibility of
leadership in the execution of the husband's authority. It does not come
from natural leadership ability.
(2) Postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation or
doctrinal conceptualism. Just as we need daily washings, it takes many
lessons in Bible doctrine for the experiential sanctification of the soul.
c. Water can be used three ways in the Bible when it is used as
an analogy. These uses never refer to water baptism.
(1) The water of salvation, Isa 55:1; Rev 22:17.
(2) Water analogous to the Holy Spirit, Jn 7:37-39.
(3) The water of Bible doctrine, Eph 5:26.
d. The phrase "with the word" is the instrumental of manner,
which indicates the manner in which experiential sanctification is carried
out - with the communication of doctrine.
2. Eph 5:27, "That He [Jesus Christ] might cause her [the Church] to
be presented to Himself as a glorious Church, having no stain [sin] or
wrinkle [human good] or any such categories as these [evil], but that she
should be holy and unblemished."
a. The marriage analogy.
(1) By analogy the groom is our Lord. The bride is the
Church. The bride is prepared for presentation to the groom (the wedding
ceremony) by resurrection or rapture and the judgment seat of Christ.
(2) The groom is accompanied by his friends. The friends
of the groom are the Old Testament believers and tribulational martyrs.
John the Baptist explained this in Jn 3:29 as himself being a friend of the
groom.
(3) The friends of the groom gather at the house of the
groom and then accompany the groom to the home of the bride where he picks
up the bride. Then the groom takes the bride to some other home for the
wedding feast. When the groom and bride enter this home, that constitutes
marriage. The wedding feast then lasts for several days, during which time
the bride and groom will slip away to consummate the marriage.
(4) The friends of the bride wait outside the place where
the wedding feast will take place and wait for the bride and groom to
enter. Those who survive the Tribulation, the millennial saints, are the
friends of the bride. Jewish unbelievers will wait to go into the feast,
but will not be allowed to enter. Matt 25:1-13.
b. At the time of writing of the New Testament there were three
stages involved in a marriage.
(1) The marriage contract. The father selected a wife for
his son, following the pattern of Gen 24:3 or 38:6. The betrothal, in
which a legal representative of the groom met with the parents of the bride
and drew up a contract which included a dowry. The parents of the bride
had to pay for the groom to take the bride off of their hands. When the
contract was signed, the couple were legally promised, but not married.
This is analogous to salvation.
(2) The wedding ceremony. This was the transfer of the
bride to the home of the groom, to the parents home, or to a friend's home.
(3) The wedding supper. This feast lasted for several
days. Rev 19:7-8. The bride will be in a resurrection body, wearing the
uniform of glory, purified from having an old sin nature.
c. "Unblemished" means there is no old sin nature, no personal
sins, and no evil in the resurrection body. It refers to the perfection of
every believer in resurrection body for all eternity. God is perfect;
therefore, His plan is perfect. There is no place for sin, human good, or
evil in that plan. The perfect plan demands the utilization of divine
power for the execution of this plan. Human good plus sin equals evil.
Human power is a contradiction to God's plan for the Church Age believer.
d. The application of ultimate sanctification to marriage.
(1) The authority application.
(a) The husband is the authority in marriage.
(b) Authority means responsibility. Hence, the
husband is responsible for the proper care of his wife.
(c) The husband's authority can only be exercised
under the principle of virtue-love and spiritual self-esteem, that is, by
the development of the integrity envelope of impersonal love and love for
his own integrity. Leadership means the necessity for the development of
virtue. Every husband is designed in marriage to be a leader. This
leadership comes through postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation,
through the development of virtue and spiritual self-esteem.
(d) There is an analogy between ultimate
sanctification and the husband's accountability in marriage. Just as Jesus
Christ will cause the royal family of God to be presented to Himself in
ultimate sanctification, so the husband as the responsible authority in
marriage is accountable to God for the care of his wife. Since the husband
is the authority, he is accountable to God for the handling of his
marriage, just as Christ is responsible for the care and handling of the
Church. This means no tyranny, no abuse of authority. There is a
relationship between the way the husband exercises authority and the sex
life of the couple.
(2) The application of Christian degeneracy and Christian
activism.
(a) This means Christian involvement in various
activities to achieve political goals, which only end up white-washing the
devil's world.
(b) Our responsibility as Christians is to evangelize
and execute the protocol plan of God, whereby we enter into the pivot of
mature believers which maintains the client nation to God.
(c) At best, Christian activism results only in
manufacturing human good. At worst, it ends up in Christian cruelty,
tyranny, abuse of power, and makes all unbelievers criminals. Violence is
never justified in a client nation.
(d) The principle is to "render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar's," such as military service, free enterprise in the
economy, voting, serving on juries, recognizing civil authority, and
obeying the laws.
(e) As Christians, we have the responsibility to
execute the protocol plan of God, advance to maturity, become a part of the
pivot of mature believers, and so become invisible heroes who preserve the
nation. We are to learn doctrine daily, precept by precept, and continue
to grow spiritually.
(f) Separation of church and state provides the
options of freedom. We are the products individually and collectively of
our own decisions.
3. Eph 5:28, "So, husbands ought also to love their own wives as
their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself."
a. The husband's personal love in marriage has neither the
strength, the ability, nor the staying power to fulfill this divine rule
outside of the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
(1) The integrity envelope of impersonal love contains two
factors for life: the characteristics of spiritual self-esteem, and
personal love inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love. Personal
love comes from these two factors.
(2) These two concepts cannot be divorced. Personal love
inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love is the way in which
authority is exercised in marriage.
(3) Personal love outside of the integrity envelope of
impersonal love is vulnerable to self-destruction through the arrogance
and emotional complex of sins.
(4) Personal love outside of the integrity envelope of
impersonal love undergoes self-fragmentation in the arrogance complex.
This is called implosion.
(5) Personal love outside of the integrity envelope of
impersonal love is also subject to the sins of emotionalism, such as:
fear, worry, anger, anxiety, hatred, self-pity, guilt, violence.
(6) This means that emotionalism has two serious problems
in marriage.
(a) Emotion has no doctrinal content; therefore, no
problem-solving capability. Emotional revolt of the soul is irrational,
devoid of reason, devoid of common sense, and devoid of wisdom.
(b) Emotional sins destroy love, or change it into
anger, hatred, or self-pity, which means the permanent or temporary absence
of spiritual self-esteem.
b. To love your wife as your own body means that just as a
normal man takes responsibility for health and care of his own body, so the
husband in spiritual self-esteem takes care of his own wife. This is an
illustration of the virtue-love mandated to the Christian husband in
marriage.
c. The husband's love for his wife is expressed in two
interrelated categories - the subjective concept and the objective concept.
(1) The subjective concept - impersonal love is directed
toward the characteristics of spiritual self-esteem inside the integrity
envelope of impersonal love. The man who has these characteristics is
aware of them as a part of his grace orientation. Inside the integrity
envelope, you never take credit to yourselves for having these
characteristics. You recognize they are the result of the grace of God.
Therefore, you respect these characteristics in you. This is spiritual
self-esteem.
(2) The objective concept is the function of personal love
that resides inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love and is
directed toward the wife, friends, etc.
d. Spiritual self-esteem in the husband is the basis for the
fulfillment of the divine rule in marriage "husbands, love your wives, just
as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself as a substitute for her."
(1) Without spiritual self-esteem the husband cannot
properly exercise authority over his wife. Without spiritual self-esteem
he cannot successfully exercise authority anywhere in life.
(2) Without spiritual self-esteem you are going to feel
threatened by something, and you are going to get emotional because you are
going to be afraid of something. Whatever causes fear in you wipes out any
possibility of spiritual self-esteem.
(3) Without spiritual self-esteem the husband becomes a
bully, a tyrant, and inevitably a loser in marriage.
(4) Without virtue-love the husband cannot fulfill the
mandate to love his wife, nor can he exercise authority over his wife.
e. Success in marriage depends on the attainment of spiritual
self-esteem and virtue-love.
f. "He who loves his own wife loves himself."
(1) If you do not love yourself - spiritual self-esteem,
you do not love your wife - virtue-love. Spiritual self-esteem and virtue-
love go together. Virtue-love is not effective unless there is spiritual
self-esteem. You cannot love your wife unless you have spiritual self-
esteem.
(2) If the man loves his own body and cares for it, then by
analogy he also loves his own wife and cares for her because he has virtue.
The virtue is his spiritual self-esteem.
g. The relationship between spiritual self-esteem and virtue-
love is the subject of this verse. Spiritual self-esteem is the effective
function of virtue-love in two directions: toward virtue in self, which is
the subjective function of spiritual self-esteem; and toward one's wife,
which is the objective function of virtue-love in marriage.
(1) Spiritual self-esteem is the basis for impersonal love
toward one's wife.
(2) Spiritual self-esteem gives stability to personal love
inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
(3) Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of the
husband's impersonal love directed toward self. Spiritual self-esteem is
the effective function of the husband's virtue-love directed toward his
wife.
(4) Spiritual self-esteem is the effective function of the
believer's impersonal love toward the entire human race. Spiritual self-
esteem is the basis for the effective function of the problem-solving
devices of the protocol plan of God. Spiritual self-esteem is the basis
for the husband's effectiveness in exercising his authority in marriage.
4. Eph 5:29-30, "For no one ever yet hated his own body, but
nourishes and provides tender care for her, just as Christ also the Church,
because we are members of His body."
a. The first half of this verse is the negative illustration of
spiritual self-esteem. It is a reference to normal people, not abnormal
people.
b. The last half of the verse is the positive illustration, and
explains the analogy of Eph 5:28, "So husbands ought to love their own
wives as their own bodies."
c. Love is related to the exercise of the husband's authority,
which is manifest in his care for his wife. Where love is the motivation,
the husband is kind, thoughtful, tender, and self-controlled to guide the
woman in their relationship.
d. Since the husband and wife are one body, just as Christ and
the Church are one body, the husband does not love his wife simply as he
loves his own body, but his love goes beyond this into the status of unity.
e. His body joined to his wife making them one flesh is the
issue. In this category, the husband's virtue is manifest by his not
showing authority in sex. Each has authority over the other in sex.
f. The analogy here shows that spiritual self-esteem is the same
whether exercising authority or in a situation where authority does not
exist. Spiritual self-esteem remains the same and is not threatened.
g. Just as the policy of Christ in ruling the Church is grace
motivated by the combination of love and integrity, so the policy of the
husband in ruling the wife is grace motivated by the combination of love
and integrity. This is the analogy. The husband rules the wife in grace
as Christ rules the Church in grace.
h. The wife is part of the husband's body, and is to be treated
in love, integrity and grace. And since the two are one flesh, if the
husband takes care of his own body, then obviously he is going to take care
of his own wife. This means that the major function of the husband in
marriage and in the use of his authority is a sense of responsibility.
(1) The husband's authority demands virtue-love rather than
arrogance, bullying and tyranny. Just as the head rules the body in the
function of life, so the head rules the body in the function of marriage.
When the body rules the head, you have lust, fornication, and all the
sexual distortions.
(2) Authority demands love and a sense of responsibility.
Otherwise, the woman will never have respect for the man. The woman is
never commanded to love the husband; she is commanded to respect him. From
respect comes obedience and love response. But virtue-love and spiritual
self-esteem are commanded of the husband.
(3) Authority demands virtue, and in the spiritual realm
the function of grace. Leadership must never be divorced from the virtue
that must accompany leadership.
(4) Authority must recognize the privacy, freedom and
magnificence of the woman as a responder, so that from her own free will
she will respect her husband and lovingly obey her lord and master.
(5) When sex is an expression of love, then authority is an
expression of virtue.
5. Eph 5:31, "`For this reason a man shall leave his father and
mother, and he will have sex with his own wife, and the two will be one
flesh.'"
a. This verse quotes Gen 2:24. The precedence for marriage goes
back to the garden of Eden.
b. Marriage has two unique separations. The first is separation
from parents.
(1) There are two close relationships in life: between
children and parents; and between husband and wife. And both of these
relationships must be separated from the parents.
(2) The dividing line of separation between the two
intimate relationships is sex. Sex is a wall that separates husband and
wife from their parents and the rest of society. Sex forms the invisible
walls of the castle of marriage. This is the basis for the stability of
society. The foundation of the castle of marriage is Bible doctrine, the
thinking of Christ.
c. God ordained that the human race be trained and prepared for
life by parents. God ordained that marriage would be a special
relationship for adults only; a system of unity, a system of privacy, a
system of intimacy. Marriage is a castle that excludes all others.
d. God invented sex to be the unity of marriage and the
separation from all others in life. Sex establishes a wall of privacy and
intimacy around that marriage. Sex is the monopoly of monogamy.
e. The divine institution of marriage came before the divine
institution of parents and the family.
(1) Marriage must be isolated from parents and society in
general under the principle of sex.
(2) Therefore, sex portrays the beauty of interdependence
in marriage, just as Bible doctrine portrays the believer's interdependence
on God.
f. Prior to marriage, the family represents the wall of
protection for human beings in childhood. The relationship of parents and
children does not include sex. In marriage, husband and wife, who were
formerly children, transfer from family unity to marital unity, from family
privacy and intimacy to marital privacy and intimacy.
g. Leaving father and mother at the point of marriage is a major
permanent change of station. The transfer must be complete. Marriage is
in jeopardy when one or both spouses are still children in the sense of
failure to comply with the mandate to leave father and mother.
(1) This does not mean that you never see father and mother
again. But it does mean that father and mother do not run your lives. You
make your own mistakes and successes.
(2) The transfer from family to marriage does mean that new
priorities exist. A spouse replaces dependence on parents with deference
to parents. The parents are responsible to not interfere with the new
marriage; not to interfere with their children's new found freedom.
6. Eph 5:32, "This mystery is great. But I am speaking with
reference to Christ and the Church."
a. There are only two areas of precedence for marriage: the
relationship between the man and woman in the garden of Eden, and the
mystery doctrine of the Church concerning marriage. Information given
during the Dispensation of Israel about marriage only concerns divorce and
marital problems; it does not provide any precedence.
b. The mystery doctrine of the Church Age is used as an analogy
for the relationship between the Christian husband and wife in marriage,
and the relationship between Christ and the Church. The relationship of
Christ and the Church both illustrates and establishes precedence, as well
as analogy, for the relationship between Christian husband and wife.
7. Eph 5:33, "However, you also, each one of you individually, let
him so love his wife as himself; and the wife, see to it that she respects
her husband."
a. Your problems concerning marriage must be handled
individually with the doctrine in your own soul. It is better for doctrine
in your own soul to tell you what to do than to follow someone else's
advice, no matter how good that advice may be. Doctrine in your own soul
must do the job.
b. The first half of this verse is divine rule number one for
marriage. This is a mandate to husbands to have personal love toward their
wives inside the integrity envelope of impersonal love, and to have
spiritual self-esteem. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved
the Church, and gave Himself as a substitute for her. This was taught in
Eph 5:25 and is repeated here. Compare also Col 3:19, Eph 5:28; 1 Pet 3:7.
c. The last half of this verse is divine rule number two for
marriage. The wife is to have respect for the husband and obedience to the
husband. She is not commanded to love her husband. Her respect is the
strongest possible love she can have for a man. Respect in the woman is
equivalent to virtue-love in the man. Therefore, there is something
stronger than "I love you" from the woman, and that is respect. 1 Pet 3:1.
d. See also Col 3:18, "Wives, obey your husbands, as is protocol
in the Lord." How can the wife obey her husband after she has seen his
flaws, failures and weaknesses? She does so by obedience to this command.
(1) Wives who have not grown up are commanded to obey their
husbands because it is a part of the protocol plan, Eph 5:22-24.
(2) Wives who cannot obey their husband because they do not
respect him must do obey unto the Lord, and so solve the problem of
obedience.
(3) Neither good personality nor handsomeness in a man
means strength; but many women assign their ideals to a handsome and
attractive man. But once they marry that type, they find out he is not
what they thought he was.
(4) A lot of women are merely tolerating their weak
husbands, but have no respect for them.
e. In divine rule number two, three things are required: the
wife respects her husband; the wife obeys her husband; the wife wins her
husband through behavior - the execution of the protocol plan of God. By
execution of the protocol plan of God, the wife becomes a blessing by
association to her husband.
f. The ultimate solution to marital problems is the spiritual
solution.
g. For the wife, obedience cannot exist apart from respect for
her husband, except where she can substitute respect for the Lord. Respect
must precede authority orientation in marriage. Far better to have a
woman's respect, than her so-called love. Since the wife is under the
authority of her husband by divine mandate, respect and admiration for her
husband is far stronger than love, especially a love outside the integrity
envelope of impersonal love.
h. When a leader properly exercises his authority, he will be
loved or hated at different times; but always he will be respected.
Respect eventually becomes admiration.
i. A wife under the authority of her husband is incapable of
love until he has exercised his authority in terms of virtue-love and
spiritual self-esteem, so that her obedience, respect, and admiration
eventually are welded into the strongest category of affection.


The Bible is full of contradictions and due to the difference in cultures today and the ones that existed when it's fairytales were written there are even more contradictions for the faithful to wrap their heads around.

Should we stone our disobedient children to death? Should wives literally obey their husbands? Is extramarital and/or homosexual sex the business of anyone other than the consenting adults engaging in it?

Many Christians today claim that the more disagreeable of those rules were something like god's laws for the Jews of those days but today's Christians can just take them as suggestions. This is, of course, cherry picking typical of their ilk.

Either it's god's law or not. Personally, I say not.

BTW - good Q. +4 from me.

Instead of "Crying Here", why don't U become acquainted with Scripture by studying it so U don't get embarrassed by asking such childish questions that lead people to question Ur sincerity & realize Ur "Argumentative Purposes"??? Ur of the same "Mold" that Supposedly wants an "Answer" that doesn't have to be read & then claims "It's too Long" when U get a "Good Answer"!!! U want to know about "Marriage"? Good, Here's the Doctrine on it, Part #1!!! John

DOCTRINE OF MARRIAGE
(Part 1)

A. Introduction.
1. Application principles. These principles explain every problem in
marriage, in romance, and in human relationship.
a. Application without truth is false.
b. Application without facts is folly.
c. Application from emotion is the life of the loser.
d. Application without principle is distorted thinking.
e. Application without doctrine is distorted learning.
f. Application without virtue is distorted living.
2. You cannot base doctrine on experience. You cannot base doctrine
on what you see other Christians doing or failing to do. You base doctrine
on what the Word of God says. Neither empiricism or rationalism is the
source of absolute truth. If experience contradicts the Bible, then the
Bible is correct.
3. Application of doctrine cannot be made without inculcation of the
principles of doctrine. You are designed to learn doctrine and apply it
from your own soul. You have to learn doctrine, metabolize it, apply it,
and use it to solve problems. The pattern is learning, thinking, solving.
For the Christian, the basic solutions to marriage are spiritual, which
means they are doctrinal solutions.
4. All psychological solutions and multiapplication answers from
counseling are not only human viewpoint, but are someone else's thinking.
You cannot solve your problems using another person's mind.
5. Marriage changes people.
a. While marriage inevitably changes people--for the better or
for the worse--they are basically no better in marriage than they are as
people. Winning and losing lifestyles carry over into marriage.
b. Disobedience to biblical principles in childhood (Eph 6:1-3)
can put scar tissue on the soul which does not surface until faced with the
pressures of marriage.
c. In the spiritual life, however, everyone starts at zero in
marriage and, through learning and applying Bible doctrine has the
opportunity to become a winner.
6. There are three stages in the man/woman relationship.
a. Attraction.
(1) This first stage is that characteristic of a person
which elicits interest or attention, hence, an attractive quality in
another person.
(2) There are two man/woman relationships in which
attraction occurs: romance, marriage. Attraction begins in romance.
(3) Attraction is generally overt and emphasizes physical
appeal. It can include many things, such as allurement, enticement, or
fascination. Attraction may include physical beauty, overt personality, or
seeing the fulfillment of one's personal standards (the knight in shining
armor).
(4) Attraction is the reconnaissance stage of the man/woman
relationship. It has to do with the superficialities of life, such as
dress, appearance, personality, manners, smell, sex appeal. This is the
empirical approach. It is a dangerous stage because you assume that what
you see is what you get, and that is rarely true in marriage.
(5) Attraction is the blind stage of romance or marriage.
A person often sets aside, ignores, or is blinded to the flaws or potential
flaws in the object of romance. You don't see the real person.
(6) Since attraction is often based on libido, most people
get married in this stage; and that is a great disaster.
(7) The attraction stage has not come to grips with the
problems the other person has or can create, and has not resolved any of
the problems of incompatibility, or even recognized the existence of
incompatibility.
(8) The attraction stage has not yet faced the facts of
life. Another person's problems may be the catalytic agent that destroys
the relationship.
(9) Concentration on the object of love in the attraction
stage has a very narrow field of vision, often resulting in the erroneous
conclusion that the object of your love is the only person in the world for
you.
(10) This false confidence of subjectivity rejects or
ignores warning signs against marrying this person. Rationalization,
simply dismissing it from the mind, or reaction results.
(11) People who get married in the attraction stage have
very little chance of success, but it can be overcome by strong spiritual
growth.
(12) When the believer is overpowered by emotion in the
attraction stage, virtue and stability in romance are virtually eliminated.
The removal of virtue and wisdom, caused by emotional revolt of the soul,
is in direct contrast to the normal and legitimate emotional function of
romance and love.
(a) Emotional revolt of the soul results in blotting
out everything that sustains love. This is because emotion has no
doctrinal content, no ability to think or reason.
(b) Emotional revolt of the soul often emphasizes
premarital sex, and therefore, handicaps marriage.
(c) Emotional revolt of the soul brings into romance
two categories of sins: the sins of arrogance (jealousy, bitterness,
vindictiveness, implacability, revenge, slander, gossip, maligning) and the
sins of emotion (fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, anger, violence, murder).
(d) Emotion is irrational arrogance which blots out
reality and virtue and ignores the problem-solving devices.
(e) While emotion can respond in love and does, it
cannot be love.
(f) Emotional arrogance is a system of converting
reality into illusion and hallucination.
(13) The strength of romantic love is virtue, which is
produced by consistent post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation. From
this comes biblical conceptualism, which is the transition from attraction
to compatibility.
b. Compatibility.
(1) Compatibility is the capacity of a man and a woman to
combine and remain together without undesirable after effects.
(2) Compatibility is a mutual tolerance, motivated by three
categories of virtue-love: personal love for God the Father, impersonal
love for all mankind, and occupation with the Person of Christ.
(3) Compatibility is a total adjustment to the other person
so that he or she is the most important person in the world to you.
(4) While attraction is the blind stage of romance,
compatibility is the enlightened stage. In this stage you have learned the
strengths and weaknesses of the object of your love, and you have already
resolved most of the problems of relationship. Whatever the sins, failures
and weaknesses of your partner, they do not diminish your love for him or
her.
(5) Compatibility is the problem-solving stage of romance;
therefore, it is the best time for marriage. Those involved have used the
privacy of their own priesthood to solve the problems.
(6) In compatibility both male and female take
responsibility for their own decisions. Tolerance and understanding
prevail in this stage.
(7) When attraction in romance becomes disappointment or
disillusion, you can end the relationship forever. But when attraction in
marriage becomes disappointment or disillusion, you cannot jump out and be
in the directive will of God.
(8) Compatibility must be established before marriage, not
after marriage. Do not get married in the attraction stage, but first
attain compatibility. Compatibility will blend in with the problem-solving
devices. Compatibility is the stage of virtue-love. No decision should be
made about marriage until you have all the facts; and all the facts are not
in until you have reached the stage of compatibility.
(9) The greatest manifestation of compatibility is
conversation. A successful marriage is a long conversation that seems all
too short. Your moment-to-moment compatibility is in conversation.
(10) Premarital sex destroys those standards of virtue upon
which compatibility is based. Premarital sex causes the fornicators to use
emotion as the strength of their love, and emotion has no strength. The
strength of romantic love is virtue, which is produced by learning,
thinking and solving problems using Bible doctrine.
c. Rapport.
(1) Rapport is the harmonious stage of romance and
marriage. This is the status quo of sympathy and empathy, the spiritual
identification with the object of your love.
(2) This is the fusion of opposites in the understanding of
feelings, thoughts, and attitudes of the object of your love.
(3) This is the fulfillment of the divine mandates of
marriage.
(a) Col 3:18-19, "Wives, be subordinate to your
husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not
be bitter against them."
(b) Eph 5:22, 25, "Wives, be subordinating yourselves
to your own husbands as to the Lord." "Husbands, love your wives just as
Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself as a substitute for her."
(c) The husband is required to have personal and
impersonal love in marriage. The wife is required to have enforced and
genuine humility, objectivity and teachability. This means that the
husband teaches the wife in marriage. His personal and impersonal love
motivate him to teach her.
(4) Rapport is where the wisdom of application of
metabolized doctrine pays great dividends in human relationships, including
how to rear children. Children bring out the worst in men. Parents teach
their children to lie when they are too tough on them.
7. An ode to a loser.
Personal love in the human race always begins, then turns out base.
Minus virtue, it cannot stand; Loss of control, it's out of hand.
Love is the victim of its own decision; Life without virtue has no
precision.
The arrogant cannot give it; The loser cannot live it.
Frustrated love becomes an obsession; The lover fails and loses
possession.
You cannot hold a husband or wife; For minus virtue, all is strife.
So think again before you leap; Without virtue, life is cheap.
Your love becomes a real frustration; Leaving you as a bitter
illustration.
8. Poems and one liners cannot solve the problems of marriage, even
when true. For example:
a. Intimacy should not destroy privacy.
b. Love is motivation for communication. But it takes more
energy to communicate than it does to copulate.
c. Possessive people are possessive because they are preoccupied
with themselves.
d. The arrogant male does not take responsibility for anything
in marriage; therefore, he reverses the role with the woman.
e. Marriage is the triumph of habit over hate. A good husband
is a man who is unattractive to other women.
9. Marriage for the Christian is the most difficult, the most
challenging, and the place of more failures than anything else in life.
Failure in marriage is a failure of the believer's own spiritual life.
10. Marriage is designed by God as a divine institution for both
believers and unbelievers.
11. As marriage progresses it retrogresses, because the attractiveness
begins to disappear as people age. Flaws that were hidden by youth and
attractiveness become manifest in older people. In a good marriage, as the
two people grow older and become less attractive, the relationship becomes
sweeter. You cannot go back in time and undo past failures.
12. Any relationship in life must be founded on principle. In order
for marriage to continue, there must be an understanding of principles of
Bible doctrine. You cannot build a marriage on human viewpoint practical
application or on philosophical writings. You must know and apply biblical
principles.
13. No marriage will last without impersonal love, just as no believer
can advance to maturity without impersonal love.
a. Legalism and moral degeneracy as well as immoral degeneracy
destroy marriage.
b. Marriages do not fail because of financial problems,
unfaithfulness, or other controversies but because believers fail to
execute the protocol plan of God, especially in the area of impersonal
love.
c. Out of impersonal love comes true personal love.
d. When people depend upon emotional love and emotional
entertainment, they have no ability to choose the right person to marry.
14. There are three basic enemies of marriage: bitterness, jealousy,
and anger. Anger represents all the emotional sins. You cannot be in a
state of Christian degeneracy and be successful in marriage.
15. Personal Love and Intimidation.
a. Personal love in marriage depends upon impersonal love as a
problem-solving device. You cannot have full capacity for personal love
when you are intimidated. Intimidation begins in romance, not in marriage.
b. Intimidation in marriage eliminates capacity for love and
substitutes fear. Fear introduces emotional and irrational sins which
complicate the marital relationship.
c. The husband can be intimidated in two categories.
(1) By a strong woman who assumes the masculine role in
marriage.
(2) By a weak woman who intimidates by nagging, self-
righteous arrogance, or legalistic activism. A woman in polarized legalism
is always right in her own eyes and is always trying to superimpose her
viewpoint on her husband.
d. Intimidation in marriage becomes a problem without solutions
when one or both partners are ignorant of the problem-solving devices.
16. The unharnessed woman in marriage rejects the authority of her
husband. Therefore, she will inevitably enter the three stages of
Christian degeneracy. 1 Cor 11:8-9, "For the man does not originate from
the woman, but the woman from the man; for indeed, the man was not created
for the woman, but the woman was created for the man." When the woman is a
blessing to the man, the woman gets the greater happiness. This is why
women are greater in making sacrifices and in patience.
17. Marriage is a test for your spiritual life, since it is a problem-
manufacturing device. What passes for goodness in single life often
becomes a flaw in romance and marriage; therefore, marriage demands the
best from every believer.
18. All human relationships emphasize the prime importance of
consistent inculcation of Bible doctrine. No relationships in life are
more dramatic than the relationship between the man and woman in marriage
or between parents and children.
19. What you really depend on in life will determine the status of
your marriage. To depend on Bible doctrine means ultimate (not immediate)
success. To depend on the advice of others means confusion, misdirection,
and ultimate failure. Success or failure in marriage in a reflection of
your spiritual life. Defeat isn't bitter if you don't swallow it.
20. Marriages fail for two general reasons.
a. Getting married in the attraction stage of romance.
b. Never growing up in marriage. This means never attaining the
stages of compatibility or rapport.
21. In romance and marriage two categories of learning are necessary.
a. For unbelievers and believers - the laws of divine
establishment.
b. For believers only - Bible doctrine from which virtue and the
problem-solving devices are extrapolated.

B. Romance, Marriage and Premarital Sex.
1. Sex before marriage, or fornication, generally occurs in the
attraction stage. It is a sin of polarized antinomianism. Sex before
marriage creates tremendous handicaps in marriage. Fornication is
voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons. It is
distinguished from the word adultery, which is voluntary sexual intercourse
of a married person with someone other than a spouse.
2. The couple involved in fornication are in the process of
destroying the very standards of virtue required for a successful marriage.
Sex before marriage substitutes emotion for good standards, and no marriage
ever succeeded on emotion.
3. Premarital sexual intimacy destroys the standards of virtue on
which compatibility and rapport are founded. This causes the fornicator to
encapsulate his romance in deceit; hence, the basis for romantic love
becomes not only the sin of fornication but the sins of arrogance and
emotion. After premarital sex you have very little chance of getting out
of the attraction stage.
4. Premarital sex not only destroys the standards on which attraction
is based, but causes the fornicators to switch to their emotions for the
motivation and strength of their love. Human personal love cannot be
carried by emotion. Emotion plays a part in love when it is a response to
normal things, but emotion destroys love.
a. Emotions are irrational. Love and romance are not irrational
unless they are based solely on emotion. Emotions have no doctrinal
content, no ability to reason, no ability to apply doctrine, no common
sense, and no content for solving problems and perpetuating human love.
b. In premarital sex, you drop the standards of Bible doctrine
and pick up emotional revolt of the soul. Loss of standards through
premarital intimacy and reverting to emotional revolt of the soul destroys
the very foundation and ability for a successful marriage.
5. The strength of romantic love is virtue. For the unbeliever this
virtue is attained through adherence to the laws of divine establishment.
Virtue is attained in two ways by the believer:
a. Doctrinal conceptualism, which is consistent post-salvation
epistemological rehabilitation.
b. Understanding and using the problem-solving devices of the
protocol plan of God.
6. Loss of standards through premarital sex creates two categories of
problems which destroy both romance and marriage.
a. The problems of the arrogance complex: self-fragmentation
through mental and verbal sins.
b. The problems of emotional control of love or romance.
7. Premarital promiscuity in the attraction stage of romance destroys
the possibility of entering the compatibility and rapport stages of
marriage. Intimacy destroys attraction when it precedes compatibility.
There is always the problem of reaction from failure in romance due to
premarital sex. There are four categories of reaction.
a. The reaction of entering a life of promiscuity with many sex
partners. This results in Christian immoral degeneracy.
b. The reaction of seeking comparable chemical stimulation in
drugs and alcohol.
c. The reaction of depression, self-pity, and even suicide.
d. The reaction of revenge through the function of polarized
legalism and resultant Christian moral degeneracy.
8. Biblical warnings against premarital sex.
a. 1 Cor 6:18, "Flee fornication. Every sin that a person
commits is outside of his body, but the one who practices fornication sins
against his own body." Premarital sex destroys the rhythm and success in
sex between one man and one woman in marriage.
b. 1 Thes 4:3-4, "For this is the will of God, your
sanctification, that is, that you abstain from fornication. That each one
of know how to possess his own vessel [your wife] in honor."
c. 1 Cor 5:11, "But now I write to you not to associate with any
man who is called a brother, who happens to be a fornicator." To succeed
in marriage you must avoid the believer or unbeliever fornicator.
d. Heb 13:4, "Let marriage be held in honor among all; and let
the marriage bed be undefiled. For fornicators and adulterers God will
judge."
9. Promiscuity before marriage creates handicaps in marriage. A
premarital promiscuous man cannot perform adequately, and the premarital
promiscuous woman is always thinking of someone else who did it better.
a. The handicap of self-gratification. Both men and women enter
into premarital sex simply to satisfy their own libido. There is no
genuine love or sense of responsibility for a sex partner in this kind of
fornication. This is especially true of the man. The woman is simply an
instrument for his self-gratification. This leaves the woman frustrated,
which often results in lesbianism.
b. The handicap to compatibility and rapport stages of romance
and love. Premarital sex makes a direct attack on two of the postulates of
marriage:
(1) Marriage is more than finding the right person,
marriage is being the right person. Premarital sex eliminates being the
right person, so that finding the right person is frustrated with regrets.
(2) A happy marriage is a long conversation that always
seems too short. Premarital sex eliminates the possibility of ever
attaining compatibility or rapport.
10. Premarital sex destroys a marriage long before the marriage
occurs. Marriages are often destroyed by the patterns of sexual life in
childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. Premarital sex often results
in Christian immoral degeneracy, which eliminates the virtue prerequisite
for a successful marriage.
11. Promiscuity destroys discernment.
a. The attraction stage is the most vulnerable to premarital
sex, which always destroys the spiritual life.
b. Premarital sex eliminates the understanding and use of the
problem-solving devices you need and substitutes the irrationality of the
emotional sins. For example, fear, worry, guilt, hatred and anger are
emotional sins which often result from premarital sex. Emotion takes over
and erodes the standards on which true love is based.
(1) Promiscuity leads to emotional revolt of the soul,
which converts genuine personal love into pseudo-love; for it removes
personal love from the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
(2) The irrationality of emotional revolt of the soul takes
over the life and erodes virtue standards on which true love is based.
(3) Entrance into marriage with premarital sexual
experience handicaps the marriage. The only recovery from this problem is
the accurate use of rebound followed by both grace and doctrinal
orientation and the proper use of the other problem-solving devices.
12. Premarital sex destroys the possibility of compatibility and
rapport as the years of the marriages increase. Society becomes unstable
when a large number of marriages lack compatibility and rapport. Too many
unhappy marriages among believers in a nation causes instability and the
function of Christian degeneracy, which has an adverse effect on the
nation. As goes the status of marriage, so goes the nation.
13. God's reasons for forbidding sex before marriage.
a. Periods of unrestrained licentiousness are followed by
periods of unrestrained guilt and depression.
b. Licentiousness often ends in suicide because of the deep
depression.
c. You are responsible for your own decisions. Two categories
of decisions are involved in premarital sex: the volition of the male, who
is usually the initiator; and the volition of the female, who is generally
the responder. The more you learn about grace as the divine policy, the
more you take responsibility for your own decisions. Premarital sex is
fool's paradise.
d. The road to disaster is paved with sex, drugs, and excessive
alcohol, which means that the debauchery kids never make it. They are
losers in the spiritual life and in marriage. God had good reasons for
forbidding sex before marriage. God is not unkind, unfair, or trying to
deprive you of any fun in life. He knows the end from the beginning.
e. No one is ever the same after salvation; we are either better
or worse.
f. A male with virtue will never take a female past her own
volition in the sphere of intimacy. The man must always be in control of
the man/woman relationship.
g. The man who does not respect your volition, ladies, is the
wrong man for you.
14. In a nation and society that depends on the divine institution of
marriage and family the consequences of the destruction of marriage are
devastating.
a. Most divorces occur in the first five years of marriage,
which means the victims are often very young children. They enter a period
of shock and acute depression, so that even while playing they cannot
overcome their fear, depression and loss of security.
b. One of the many dangers of premarital sex is the development
of an arrogant and erotic self-gratification in which a single person wants
sexual sensation rather than a true love relationship.
15. The increase of Christian degeneracy means the decrease of both
spirituality and the utilization of the problem-solving devices in romance
and marriage.
16. Just as the believer must continue to learn doctrine to advance in
the protocol plan of God, so good sexual response in marriage is a
continual learning process. Good sexual response in marriage includes the
four categories of the sexual cycle: volition, excitement, orgasm, and
resolution (a general relaxed feeling of well-being and muscular
relaxation).
a. Premarital sex destroys sexual response in all four
categories of the sexual cycle.
b. Premarital sex often hinders sexual energy in the marital
relationship resulting in impotence.
c. Sexual compatibility is related to mutual response of both
husband and wife in the fulfillment of the four categories of the cycle of
sex. This results in mutual pleasure derived from the husband's love and
thoughtfulness in first satisfying his wife. Mutual orgastic experience is
often a matter of the husband's ability to learn his wife's response system
and to control his own response to correspond with her response. This is
sex in compatibility and rapport stages of marriage.
d. It is impossible for an alcoholic husband or wife to find
mutual satisfaction in sex.
e. Sex was created by God as a binding force in marriage.
f. Illustration: paraphilia.
(1) Paraphilia involves fetichism, transvestism, pedophilia
(sexual activity with young children), bestiality, exhibitionism,
voyeurism, sexual masochism, and sadism.
(2) Arousal in paraphilia includes: preference for non-
human objects; preference for sexual activity with humans which involves
real or simulated suffering; sexual activity with nonconsenting partners.
(3) Since paraphiliac imagery is necessary for erotic
arousal, it must be included with masturbation, in which the person
establishes false rhythm for sexual satisfaction, and may never achieve
satisfaction in sex as a result.
(4) Such activity often results in guilt or shame, and even
depression which further complicates mutual sexual response in marriage.
Sex was designed for the pleasure of two people, not one.
(5) No man is qualified to be a successful lover in
marriage who practices voyeurism. Voyeurism means looking at strangers in
the act of undressing, and watching strangers engage in sexual activity as
a means of sexual arousal. If you add masturbation to this, you have a
person who will be a loser in marriage. Do not confuse voyeurism with
normal sexual activity in marriage which involves sexual excitement in
observing nudity, undressing or sexual activity with your wife or husband.
(6) No wife wants a husband whose sexual arousal is based
on being bound, humiliated, or made to suffer. Sexual sadism is the
motivation behind rape.
17. Every premarital sexual involvement in some category of
fornication destroys the possibility of having the marvelous blessing God
designed for you in postmarital sex.
18. Premarital sexual activity often hinders interpersonal marital
relationship. Postmarital sexual activity is a learning process; and
nothing you picked up in the gutter is going to help you with that learning
process.
19. 1 Cor 6:18 says that fornication is sin against your own body.
This means there is a physiological factor in sexual arousal as noted by
the phrase "one flesh" in Gen 2:24.
a. "One flesh" involves biological rapport as well as mental,
soulish, and spiritual rapport. Biological rapport is difficult, and even
impossible, if there has been premarital sex. Premarital sex destroys the
biological conditioning for one man or one woman in the marital status.
b. Libido is the function of biological sex. But the maximum
effectiveness of sex in marriage also depends on the status quo of the
soul, the function of the spiritual life, the attainment of spiritual
contentment and growth. Premarital sex numbs the normal biological sexual
responses.
c. 1 Cor 6:18 implies that premarital sex decreases the source
of sexual energy in marriage. This is why sex becomes dull for married
persons.
20. Premarital sexual experience establishes the attitude a person
will have toward sex for the rest of his life. Because premarital sex is
sinful, it implies that the orgastic quality will be less than under the
optimum circumstances of marriage. God designed sex in marriage as a
reinforcement of the relationship.
21. Premarital sex in adolescence is generally not satisfying, but
frustrating, not fulfilling in itself. This frustration results in bad
interpersonal peer relationships, and has an effect on future marital
relationships.
22. Chronic premarital sex does affect marriage and marital
adjustment. Optimum sexual blessing and satisfaction occurs among couples
who are virgins at the point of marriage.
23. Eph 5:3 warns us, "But fornication and all licentiousness, or
insatiable erotic desire should not even be mentioned among you, as is
protocol for the saints." Why? Because for the single this becomes an
arousal factor for premarital sex.
24. Marital compatibility, or marital love, is reinforced by
premarital chastity in both sexes. Premarital virtue is favorable to one's
own marriage and adjustment to one's own spouse in marriage.
25. Principles.
a. There is a correlation between premarital virginity and
postmarital happiness, especially for the believer who enters the marriage
with personal love inside the integrity envelope.
b. Sexual responsiveness is related to the quality of the
marriage.
c. The quality of the marriage is based on the following
principles:
(1) Understanding and using the problem-solving devices of
the protocol plan of God.
(2) Perception, metabolization, and application of Bible
doctrine under doctrinal conceptualism.
(3) Entrance into marriage in the status quo of premarital
chastity.
(4) Recovering from premarital sexual activity through the
attainment of spiritual adulthood.
d. Sexual responsiveness in marriage increases or decreases as
the quality of the marriage increases or decreases.
e. Marriage quality and responsiveness influences each other.
Therefore, they are mutually interdependent.
f. What is brought into the marriage by each partner determines
the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual quality of that marriage.
26. The more premarital sex partners one has, the more difficult it is
to adjust to one person in marriage.
a. Each premarital sexual relationship tends to be conditioned
to the response pattern of other persons, or a composite from
lasciviousness.
b. Many premarital sexual encounters produce a variety of
responses and rhythms. Therefore, the sexual act results in a specific
response pattern for each individual involved. A new premarital sexual
encounter does not extinguish the previous pattern of the previous sexual
relationship.
c. Therefore, promiscuity eventuates in a sexual conditioning to
a composite of all of one's sexual affairs. The pattern of effective
sexual relationship in marriage may be permanently or temporarily damaged,
depending upon the spiritual status quo.
27. The spiritual factor in God's overruling grace policy whereby the
believer recovers from the destructive effects of fornication includes
rebound and reaching spiritual adulthood. But rebound alone is not the
entire healing factor. Until one reaches spiritual self-esteem, there is
no true recovery from premarital sex.
28. Unrestrained fornication and promiscuity do not lead to freedom,
but to bondage. Premarital control of sexuality is liberating, for it
avoids the handicaps brought on by fornication.
a. Undisciplined, obsessive, uncontrolled premarital sexuality
hinders effective sexual relationship in marriage.
b. Premarital chastity produces a self-control which makes the
husband an effective lover of his wife.
29. The security and environment of virtue-love offers optimum
circumstances for developing compatibility and rapport in marriage.
30. The husband and wife who reach marriage in virginity and virtue
create a more enduring happiness through their understanding and the
utilization of Bible doctrine. This overflows into their sex life, for
they have great satisfaction in learning to respond fully and completely to
each other.
31. Sex is the equality in marriage. Though the man is the authority
in marriage, he becomes a responder in sex. The woman is obedient to the
man in marriage, but she can become aggressive in sex. Both are designed
for aggressiveness and response in sex. This is how sexual rhythm is
created.
32. In romance there is always some possibility of violating the
principle of no premarital sex.
a. Premarital sex causes those involved to lean on emotions to
the point where they often become irrational. This means loss of standards
by which love-compatibility can be attained with a member of the opposite
sex.
b. Intimacy in the attraction stage destroys a relationship, for
God designed romance and marriage to place compatibility first.
"Compatibility first" means to explore how a person thinks, to discover
what they really are, what is the dark side, what is the bright side, what
are the flaws in a person.
c. Intimacy destroys attraction when it precedes compatibility.

C. The Active and Passive Voice in Romance and Marriage.
1. Definition of the active and passive voice.
a. In the active voice, the subject produces the action of the
verb.
b. In the passive voice, the subject receives the action of the
verb. The subject is acted upon by someone or something else.
2. There are two categories of active living: active virtue and
active arrogance. There are two categories of passive living: passive
virtue and passive arrogance.
3. Active virtue means following the divine rules related to life and
marriage. There are three divine rules in marriage that are designed to
produce virtue in marriage. And virtue is the basis for all happiness in
marriage.
a. Husbands love your wives, Eph 5:25.
b. Wives obey your husbands, Col 3:18.
c. Husbands and wives forgive each other as Christ forgave us.
Eph 4:32.
4. In active virtue, the believer applies doctrine to his spiritual
life, solves his own problems, and overcomes his own failures. Active
virtue is:
a. Consistent post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation and
application of doctrine. This is learning doctrine, thinking doctrine, and
using doctrine to solve problems.
b. Understanding and using the problem-solving devices of the
protocol plan of God.
c. Execution of the protocol plan and subsequent glorification
of God.
d. Active virtue is the function of Christian service in four
categories.
(1) Related to your royal priesthood, there is intercessory
prayer, giving, and all the functions of spiritual adulthood.
(2) Related to your royal ambassadorship, there is
missionary activity, witnessing, Christian administration.
(3) Related to your spiritual gift.
(4) Related to the laws of divine establishment.
e. Active virtue always has an object.
(1) The first object in active virtue is God Himself, which
includes personal love for God the Father, occupation with Christ, and
understanding the ministry of God the Holy Spirit.
(2) People in general are the object of active virtue.
This is the function of impersonal love and forgiveness of others.
(3) Marriage and romance are the objects of active virtue.
f. Active virtue is the function of impersonal love toward all.
(1) 1 Jn 4:10-11, "In this is virtue-love, not that we
loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for
our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another."
(2) 1 Cor 13:4-8a, "Love is forbearing and kind; love is
not jealous; love does not brag; love is not arrogant; love is not
unmannerly, nor selfish, nor irritable, nor mindful of wrongs; love does
not rejoice in injustice but joyfully sides with the truth; love can
overlook faults; love is full of hope, full of truth, full of endurance;
love never fails."
(3) Mandates for impersonal love can be given without
mentioning the word love, as in Eph 4:31-32. "All bitterness, both anger
and wrath, both quarreling and slander, must be removed along with all
malice. But become kind toward one another and forgive each other, just as
God also by means of Christ has forgiven you."
g. Active Virtue in Scripture.
(1) Eph 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives [impersonal love]
just as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself as a substitute for
her." Active virtue by husbands is impersonal love.
(2) Col 3:19, "Husbands, love your wives [personal love]
and do not be bitter against them." Active virtue by husbands is personal
love.
(3) Eph 5:22, "Wives, be subordinating yourselves to your
very own husbands as to the Lord." Obedience is active virtue in the wife.
A woman is incapable of loving where she cannot subordinate herself from
her own free will. The Lord must have number one priority in your life.
(4) Col 3:18, "Wives, be subordinate to your husbands as is
fitting in the Lord." God did not design a system where the man is to be a
bully.
5. Active arrogance is the function of Christian degeneracy. In
active arrogance, the subject produces his own problems and sins.
a. Active arrogance includes mental attitude sins, emotional
sins and all the sins involved in pulling the pins of the grenade and
fragmenting yourself. Moral arrogance causes far more divorces than
immoral arrogance.
b. Active arrogance is the believer involved in the cosmic
system. Active arrogance is reversing the roles in marriage (the man
becomes feminine and the woman masculine).
c. In passive arrogance the subject is acted upon by something
or someone else. Passive arrogance includes any form of arrogant
subjectivity, guilt, self-pity, unrealistic expectation, role-model
arrogance, and succumbing to the temptations of the old sin nature.
d. Illustrations of active and passive arrogance.
(1) The active virtue side is sensitivity and
thoughtfulness of others which stems from grace orientation. The active
arrogance side is self-gratification to the exclusion of satisfying the
spouse in sex.
(2) The passive virtue side is the avoidance of
hypersensitivity, self-pity, and guilt. The passive arrogance side is
hypersensitivity, self-pity and guilt.
6. In passive virtue, the believer is acted upon by God the Holy
Spirit to understand Bible doctrine. The subject is acted upon to function
under grace. The subject receives love, respect honor from the execution
of the protocol plan of God. The subject responds to Bible teaching with
perception and metabolization. Passive virtue is reception of the teaching
of Bible doctrine resulting in spiritual momentum. When acted upon by
Bible doctrine, active virtue applies this doctrine to the life. Passive
virtue is not receiving the grace of God in vain. Passive virtue is to
receive divine discipline and to profit from it.
7. In passive arrogance, we are acted on by the old sin nature, by
guilt, by others who dislike or hate us, or by a bullying husband or a
nagging wife. In passive arrogance, the food gets stuck in your teeth (the
teaching of doctrine is of no benefit). In passive arrogance, the man
depends on the praise and approbation of others to bolster his ego. When
praise and approbation are cut off, the believer in passive arrogance is
deflated, discouraged, despondent, depressed. In passive arrogance the
subject is acted upon by arrogance, guilt, self-pity, role model arrogance,
unrealistic expectation, iconoclastic arrogance, or emotion; we receive the
action. The sin nature acts on us resulting in Christian degeneracy,
implosion, explosion, and reversion. You react to passive arrogance from
others with active arrogance.
8. The timing of active and passive living.
a. No one can live his life totally in the active or totally in
the passive sphere. When to be passive and when to be active is a matter
grace orientation and the other problem-solving devices. The wisdom of
spiritual self-esteem knows when to use active virtue and when to use
passive virtue.
b. Grace timing originates from grace orientation. Spiritual
adulthood is the status of effective grace timing in the function of active
and passive virtue. It takes cognitive self-confidence, cognitive
independence, and cognitive invincibility to know when to use active
virtue, when to use passive virtue, and how to avoid active and passive
arrogance.
c. When it comes to sin we are never helpless; when it comes to
grace we are always helpless. We are absolutely helpless in the status of
marriage. If we are ever going to have a successful marriage, we must
recognize that we are helpless and that God has provided everything to make
it work. God has provided all of the answers in active and passive virtue.
d. God has revealed in the Bible how to function in this
synchronized system of grace timing. The only timing that is worthwhile is
grace timing.
9. Principles for a successful marriage or the results of virtue in
marriage.
a. Intimacy does not destroy privacy where you have active and
passive virtue. But intimacy does destroy privacy where you have active
and passive arrogance.
b. Marriage is not designed for the husband to be a bully or to
suppress the woman's volition, but promotes it and directs it toward the
man in response to his love. Anything a man does to destroy or limit the
volition of a woman is disastrous. The greater the sphere of the woman's
free will, the greater can be her motivation and capacity to love the man.
c. In active virtue, the man's volition has two directions in
marriage.
(1) Impersonal love for all mankind, which produces
capacity for personal love.
(2) Personal love for his wife, which is the function of
the husband in marriage.
d. In active virtue, the woman's volition has two directions in
marriage.
(1) Obedience and response to the love of her husband.
(2) Training and teaching children.
e. Love becomes motivation for communication.
f. The Bible must never be left out of marriage.
g. A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too
short.
h. Virtue never feels threatened by any aberration on the part
of a partner in marriage.
i. Marriage is more than finding the right person; it is being
the right person.
10. Husbands act on wives and wives act on husbands, resulting in a
good or bad marriage. The husband who fails in marriage uses active
arrogance in bullying not only his wife but his children and pets. Passive
arrogance causes the man to revert to his childhood through pouting and
sulking.
11. In romance, the woman often becomes disenchanted and terminates
the relationship. Male active virtue understands this and allows the woman
her privacy and never bothers her again. But male active arrogance bothers
the woman and makes a pest of himself.
12. Whether we succeed or fail depends on whether we function from
active virtue or active arrogance. When we act on someone or something
else we do so from active virtue or active arrogance.
13. God invented marriage; He is the expert on marriage.
a. Because God is the author of marriage, there should be virtue
in marriage. Anything invented by God can only function on the principles
of doctrine.
b. God the Father performed the first marriage ceremony. The
man and woman were sinless and lived in perfect environment, and they still
failed. God made some rules so that marriage could be wonderful, but most
people have forgotten or never knew the rules.
c. The woman is more aggressive than the man. In the Garden she
aggressively took the forbidden fruit and brought it to the passive man.
14. The weak man in marriage.
a. The weak man acts on someone else. The weak man enters into
premarital sex, which destroys his standards and locks him into the
attraction stage.
(1) Premarital sex is the guarantee that you will never
have a happy relationship in marriage apart from regeneration and spiritual
growth. The same is true of the woman. Once she engages in premarital sex
with multiple partners, she will never be able to respond successfully to
one man.
(2) God designed sex for recreation in marriage, not just
procreation. There is no meaning to bringing children into the world
unless there is a system of rapport established in sex, in which the woman
is completely and totally satisfied in sex. The man must understand
everything necessary to satisfy a woman.
b. The weak man enters into active arrogance and pursues the
woman until she has no privacy and cannot stand him. Male active arrogance
pesters the woman because of wounded arrogance and she reacts and rejects
him.
c. The weak man bullies his wife, stifles her volition, and
abuses his God-given authority in marriage. Authority is given to the man
by God. He also bullies his children and causes abnormal fear and
resentment in them.
d. The weak man is unfaithful in attraction and in marriage.
e. The weak man in passive arrogance depends on flattery,
praise, and approbation from women. But God ordained marriage so that the
woman would look up to the man. When the woman cuts off the flattery, the
man in passive arrogance is despondent and deflated.
f. The weak man has no grace orientation in his life. The weak
man feels threatened by doctrine, reacts to it.
15. The weak woman in marriage.
a. Because men have a tendency to become hypersensitive in their
relationship with a woman, it is generally conceded that women are stronger
than men in certain areas of life.
b. There are two categories of women in life.
(1) The weak woman, whose arrogance is both passive and
active.
(2) The strong woman, whose virtue from doctrine is
expressed in both active and passive virtue.
c. The passive arrogance of the weak woman is her subjective
preoccupation with self, her unrealistic expectation, her role model
arrogance, her feet of clay syndrome, followed by iconoclastic arrogance,
and her evil motivation from her guilt complex. She idolizes a man; then
when she sees his feet of clay, she cuts him down. That is passive
arrogance motivating active arrogance.
d. The active arrogance of the weak woman is manifest by her
intrusion into the privacy of others. She is always trying to change
others to conform to her faults or legalistic ideas.
e. The weak woman cannot execute either the protocol plan of God
or the divine mandates regarding her husband or the general rules of
marriage.
f. The weak woman becomes involved in the pattern of Christian
degeneracy. Christian degeneracy destroys marriage.
g. In active arrogance the weak woman is always trying to change
others to conform to her false and legalistic ideas and standards.
h. In passive arrogance she never tries to change herself.
(1) Locked-in arrogance sees no reason for self-improvement
or changing self in any way.
(2) You cannot change others; you can only change yourself.
(3) Man has a destiny. When he gets married, his destiny
must continue. The weak woman will often cut off a man's destiny because
it does not please her.
(4) In marriage the woman must walk around the man, not the
man around the woman.
i. In marriage the woman needs a soul lift, not a face lift.
The soul lift originates from obedience to the divine mandates.
j. In passive virtue the woman responds to her husband in
obedience. In active virtue the woman functions in enforced and genuine
humility, and objectivity.
16. Active and passive virtue require two things: consistent filling
of the Holy Spirit and consistent perception of doctrine resulting in
spiritual momentum. For both husband and wife, God must have number one
priority. Therefore, husband and wife must learn doctrine together, or
simultaneously. Perception of Bible doctrine is the real togetherness in
marriage.
a. There are three crisis points for learning in life.
(1) At physical birth, when we must learn knowledge related
to life in general.
(2) At regeneration, when we must learn Bible doctrine
related to the protocol plan.
(3) At marriage, when we must learn the rules and
principles related to the man/woman relationship, romance and matrimony.
(a) It is important to learn and recognize the three
stages of man/woman relationship: attraction, compatibility, and rapport.
If compatibility and rapport are not achieved in romance, do not get
married.
(b) If compatibility and rapport are not achieved in
romance, do not get married.
(c) The believer is designed by doctrine to solve his
own problems, including the problems of romance and marriage.
(d) Since marriage was invented by God, He has
revealed in the Bible how it works and how it becomes successful.
(e) Most problems in marriage are symptoms, the
disease is failure in the spiritual realm. Deal with the disease and the
problems will be solved.
b. Marriage was never designed for outside interference,
including counseling.
c. Fellowship with God must precede fellowship with people. If
your fellowship with God is a failure, your fellowship with people with be
a failure. Fellowship with people includes romance and marriage.
Fellowship with God and people is based on spiritual growth and momentum:
the perception, metabolization and application of Bible doctrine.
d. To have application without principles of Bible doctrine is
the human viewpoint of depending upon psychological counseling and
superficial panaceas.
e. General principles related to marriage.
(1) Contradictions cannot and do not exist in the protocol
plan of God. Supposed contradictions are eliminated through consistent
post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation and through understanding and
using the problem-solving devices.
(2) The believer cannot account for his actions in
undefinable terms. Therefore, he must resolve marital problems on the
basis of doctrinal principles, not on the basis of counseling or someone
else's thinking.
(3) The believer cannot execute the protocol plan of God
through sharing, counseling, Christian fellowship, emotions, or ignorance
of Bible doctrine.
(4) Cognitive self-confidence in the sphere of Bible
doctrine causes the believer to advance from the attraction stage of
romance or marriage to the compatibility and rapport stages, where marriage
has the best chance of success and survival.
(5) Spiritual self-esteem demands that the believer
identify the role and importance of Bible doctrine in his life. Therefore,
the believer cannot afford volitional default where Bible doctrine is
concerned.
(6) Once the believer attains spiritual adulthood he
follows the policy of conceptualism. Spiritual conceptualism involves
three factors:
(a) Learning, which is perception and metabolization
of doctrine.
(b) Thinking, which is application of doctrine to
experience.
(c) Solving, which is understanding and using the
problem-solving devices.
(7) Emotions are not adequate for spiritual conceptualism.
Emotions are not tools of cognition, nor the criteria for the protocol plan
of God. Thinking is a cause; emotion is an effect. Doctrinal
conceptualism eliminates emotion as a criteria for the Christian life.
(8) The privacy of the believer's royal priesthood is the
sphere for doctrinal conceptualism and problem-solving. When the believer
depends on others for guidance and counseling, he is weak; he contradicts
the protocol plan of God; he subverts his own royal priesthood. God does
not test us until we are prepared for it. You are designed to solve your
own problems.
(9) You cannot solve the problems of life from morality
without virtue. Morality minus virtue is self-righteous arrogance. This
is the motivation for nagging. Personal love has no problem-solving
capability.
(10) Response to God avoids reaction to mankind. Response
to God is the function of two problem-solving devices: personal love for
God the Father and occupation with Christ. Reaction to mankind is avoided
through impersonal love. Reaction to life in marriage becomes a problem-
manufacturing device, divorcement from reality, loss of common sense, loss
of wisdom, and movement into panic palace.

D. God's Grace Policy Related to Marriage.
1. We cannot justify ourselves in spiritual death. In grace God
justifies us at the moment of salvation through personal faith in Christ.
2. We cannot justify sin in our lives as Christians. In grace God
cleanses us from post-salvation sinning and restores us to fellowship with
Himself through the rebound technique of 1 Jn 1:9.
3. We cannot justify blessing from God through our works or Christian
experience. In grace God justifies blessing to believers, both winners and
losers, through logistical grace.
4. The grace policy of God rules our lives. We cannot go back and
rectify our sins and failures; and this includes our failures both in
marriage and divorce. But we can go forward under the grace policy of God.
And we can execute the protocol plan of God and glorify Him.
5. You cannot change the past, but as long as you are alive you can
change the future. The consequences of past sins and failures are in God's
hands, but the future belongs to you under the principle of logistical
grace. It isn't what we do that counts, but what God does that counts.
6. The sins of marriage and divorce are no different than the sins of
any other category of living. Therefore, if you discover that you are
living in adultery, rebound once, forget it, and keep moving in your
current marriage.

E. Taboos in the Selection of a Mate.
1. If you are a believer, do not marry an unbeliever, 1 Cor 9:5; 2
Cor 6:14-15. If you become a believer after having been married to an
unbeliever, do not seek a divorce. You have the opportunity to evangelize
your spouse.
2. If you are positive to doctrine, do not marry a person who is
negative to doctrine or your biblical convictions. Spiritual compatibility
is the only hope for resolving many of the problems in marriage.
3. Do not regard marriage as the solution to the problems of life.
Marriage is not a problem-solving device, but a problem-manufacturing
status. The more problems you carry into marriage, the less chance the
marriage has of succeeding. If you cannot solve your problems while alone,
you cannot solve them in marriage.
4. Do not marry on a wave of libido, which is tantamount to getting
married in the attraction stage. This is especially true in teenage
marriages.
5. Do not marry a person involved in substance abuse, which includes
alcohol and drugs.
6. Do not marry to escape from an unhappy home life, abusive parents,
or an unhappy set of circumstances.
7. Do not marry a status symbol, for security, or because of peer
pressure. Status symbols are usually troublesome persons. Do not marry
for money, or to improve your economic situation, or for financial
security. Do not go in debt to get married. Do not believe that two
people can live as cheaply as one person.
8. Do not marry because you love and want children. Children do not
improve a marriage, nor do they ever save a marriage.
9. Do not marry a person for his or her beauty or attractiveness
alone. Beauty gives little indication of the real character of a person.
Beauty blinds the ignorant, the shallow, the superficial, and the
nondiscerning person. Beauty can be a disguise for flaws and defects.
These need to be recognized before marriage. Beauty fades and is often
corrupted by arrogance. Without virtue, beauty is often susceptible to
flattery.
10. Do not marry a person unless you are in the compatibility stage of
your relationship. The compatibility stage has five characteristics.
a. Spiritual compatibility. If you can't agree on doctrine, the
same pastor, the same local church, you will have trouble. This is the
most difficult of all compatibilities to recognize.
b. Mental compatibility. This is discovered through
conversation.
c. Physical compatibility. This is determined after marriage,
and the discovery is fun. Sex is a learning process.
d. Economic compatibility is agreement on how to handle
finances.
e. Recreational compatibility. This is a most important
compatibility in the attraction stage.
11. Avoid getting married under peer pressure. It is better to take
your time and avoid making a mistake.
12. The Septuagint says in Prov 18:22, "Whoever finds a good wife
receives grace from the Lord. But he who divorces a good wife divorces a
blessing and takes a woman who is unchaste and stupid." The Hebrew says,
"He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains grace from the Lord."
It appears that the LXX may not be a part of the Word of God, but the
principle is certainly true.
14. Do not marry a neurotic person, which is dangerous to the soul and
mental compatibility. This type is too unstable, too emotional, too
hysterical, too self-centered, and too self-destructive to adjust to
marriage. No marriage to a neurotic person ever works out.
15. Do not marry a divorced man except under those circumstances
dictated by the Word of God: his former wife has died; he divorced his
wife prior to salvation; his former wife has remarried; he is the innocent
party of an adultery divorce; his divorce involved the desertion of his
former wife.
16. Do not marry any man unless you can submit to his authority in
three categories: his spiritual authority; his mental authority; his
physical authority. The mental and spiritual are far more important than
the physical.

F. The Principle of Responsibility in Marriage.
1. There are three times in life when learning is imperative: at
birth, at regeneration, at the point of marriage.
2. Irresponsible people cannot make marriage work.
3. Irresponsibility is exhibited by the following characteristics:
a. Not being answerable or accountable to a higher authority.
b. Not being capable or qualified for responsibility. This is
caused by failure of human maturity or failure of spiritual growth.
c. Rejection or ignorance of doctrine--regarding this study, the
rules for marriage.
d. Failure to take the responsibility for your own decisions.
e. Ignorance, emotionalism, and lack of common sense all
contribute to irresponsibility.
f. But the greatest problem with believers is failure to
understand and use the problem-solving devices.
4. Irresponsibility in marriage is related to premarital sex.
a. The importance of premarital responsibility is taught in 1
Cor 7:1, "It is honorable [good] for a man not to touch [premarital sex] a
woman."
b. The purpose of marriage is taught in 1 Cor 7:2, "But because
of fornication [premarital sex], let each man have his own wife, and let
each woman have her own husband." Sex is forbidden before marriage and
encouraged after marriage. The success of sex, rapport, and compatibility
in marriage depends on the avoidance of premarital sex.
c. Solomon was guilty of sexual sins, Eccl 7:25-29. He seduced
many women, and it destroyed his sexual ability. One of the worst things a
woman can do is marry a man of many sexual conquests. It is tantamount to
sexual abuse of women. You can never abuse a woman and get away with it.
Solomon could not find a virtuous woman because he was out of fellowship
all the time.
5. Irresponsibility and the desperation syndrome.
a. People in the desperation syndrome display three
characteristics:
(1) They demand instant answers.
(2) They want immediate help.
(3) They insist on counseling.
b. This is not the way you learn God's rules. It takes time.
c. The desperation syndrome has compounded the problems of many
people.
d. Impatience for miracles or quick answers can be classified as
the aspirin panacea. Impatient, desperate people fail to realize that it
took years to become losers. Therefore, you do not instantly become a
winner or quickly patch up the problems of Christian degeneracy.
(1) No one can solve your problems for you. You must solve
your problems within the framework of your own spiritual life. That means
using the privacy of your priesthood to solve your problems.
(2) You cannot instantly solve problems that took years to
develop. You cannot learn all the doctrine you need in a few minutes.
(3) Instant and desperate solutions are not solutions at
all.
(4) When you have lost control of your life through
negative volition to doctrine, there are no instant solutions except
rebound and keep moving. It will take time to mend and heal the wounds of
Christian degeneracy.
(5) Desperate people want simple solutions. Desperate
people are emotional people, and emotional people are irrational.
Irrational people cannot understand anything except simple things.
(6) Desperate people want short-term solutions--nothing
that cuts into their time.
(7) Desperate people want convenient solutions.
(8) Desperate people never get anything solved.
(9) Desperate people want instant relief from their
accumulated problems.
(10) You cannot recover in a day what you lost over a long
period of apostasy.
e. Marital problems are symptoms of the disease. You cannot
remove the symptoms permanently unless you cure the disease. The disease
is fragmentation, reversionism, and Christian degeneracy. You may
temporarily separate yourself from the symptoms, but you still have the
disease. To cure the disease you must expose yourself consistently to
doctrine and learn to think and solve your problems through the use of the
problem-solving devices.
f. What causes desperation?
(1) Living in the three categories of Christian degeneracy.

(2) Failure to understand and use the basic problem-solving
devices.
(3) Emotional arrogance and emotional revolt of the soul.
Emotional arrogance converts reality into illusion and hallucination.
(a) Emotional arrogance includes: the concept that you
cannot be saved unless you feel saved, and you are not spiritual unless you
feel spiritual.
(b) Emotional revolt of the soul includes: alleged
speaking in tongues, fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, anger, guilt, self-pity,
and violence.
g. The desperate person is the product of his own bad decisions.
However, he refuses to take the responsibility for his decisions and
remains in a state of arrogant subjectivity. This means loss of humility,
objectivity, authority orientation, and teachability.
h. The desperate person usually wants to justify his decisions
and actions. He wants marriage counseling that is quick and easy. He
never provides all the facts to the counselor.
i. To recover, the desperate person must start with the fact
that he is still alive, and therefore, God has a plan for his life. He
must rebound, and then decide on a plan of consistent exposure to Bible
doctrine. Since desperation is not the status of application of doctrine,
the believer must learn and use the problem-solving devices as quickly as
possible.
j. The desperate person always wants sublimation, stimulation,
attention, the right to divorce and remarry, and has "restarted" his life
many times. There is no such thing as a new start in life. Rebound just
gives you the opportunity to recover and learn the rules.
k. Desperate people are not designed to deduce from doctrine the
solutions to problems caused by accumulated bad decisions from a position
of weakness. The deeper you dig the hole, the longer it takes you to climb
out of it. This is why divorced people should wait at least a year before
remarrying.
l. Instant solutions are not permanent solutions. You may have
separated yourself from the symptoms, but not the disease.

G. The Divine Rules of Marriage.
1. The Responsibility of the Husband.
a. God is perfect; therefore, His works are perfect. Since God
invented marriage for imperfect people, He had to make rules for its
success.
b. God set forth rules both before and after man sinned. God's
mandate for the first marriage in the Garden: do not eat of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, i.e., do not sin. That rule still applies
to all marriages. The more you sin after marriage, the more difficulty you
have in marriage.
c. When we ignore these rules, marriage is a failure. There is
no such thing as a neutral marriage; it either succeeds or fails.
d. There are divine rules today for each spouse in marriage: 1
Cor 7:3, "Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also
the wife to her husband." Each has a duty to the other.
(1) Marriage is more than finding the right person; it is
being the right person.
(2) To be the right person a believer must be cognizant of
the divine rules for marriage.
e. The motivation of impersonal love as the integrity envelope
for personal love is found in Eph 5:25, "Husbands, love [impersonal love]
your wives just as Christ also loved the Church [personal love] and gave
Himself on behalf of her [impersonal love]."
(1) The present active imperative of the Greek verb AGAPAO
means to love from your virtue, virtue-love. The progressive present is
used for an action in progress, present linear aktionsart. This principle
is true as long as marriage exists on the earth. Husbands produce the
action by impersonal love as the integrity envelope for personal love in
marriage.
(a) It is impersonal love that gives strength, honor,
integrity, capacity to personal love. Many relationships do not work out
right because you have naked personal love with no impersonal love
protecting it.
(b) This is the first divine rule of marriage. This
rule demands impersonal love for all mankind as a problem-solving device
and as the basis for giving virtue to personal love.
(c) No one succeeds in marriage without impersonal
love.
(d) This mandate requires active virtue in marriage
rather than active arrogance. Arrogance is the great destroyer of the
integrity envelope.
(e) God designed marriage. God is perfect.
Therefore, anything He designs is perfect. The design is perfect for
imperfect persons. God has provided in His grace and wisdom for our
imperfections and failures in marriage. God also warns about the things
that cause marriage not to succeed.
(2) Principles of personal and impersonal love.
(a) Impersonal love emphasizes the virtue of the
subject; personal love emphasizes the merit or attractiveness of the
object.
(b) Impersonal love is unconditional; personal love is
very conditional.
(c) Personal love has no built-in or inherent virtue.
Personal love is a system of human attraction which is related to the
object of that attraction. Personal love is not virtuous in itself, for
any person without virtue can fall in love or have a friend. Personal love
emphasizes the object. Personal love is virtue dependent.
(d) Because personal love has no inherent virtue, it
often results in vulnerability to the tragic flaws of life related to
degeneracy. Personal love produces such things as jealousy, bitterness,
vindictiveness, self-pity, anger, slander, self-justification, revenge,
etc. Personal love complicates life by combining the problems of two
people, which intensifies the stresses of life.
(e) The weakness of personal love is generally related
to the attraction stage. But the object must remain attractive for
personal love to be perpetuated. Personal love based on attraction always
fades. Lack of reciprocation in personal love frustrates, causing
bitterness, disillusion, reaction, and self-justification.
(f) Personal love is conditional; impersonal love is
unconditional. Any time you have a conditional situation, you knock out
virtue. Personal love depends on the attractiveness of the object;
impersonal love depends on the virtue of the subject.
(g) The object of impersonal love can be known or
unknown, a friend or enemy, beautiful or ugly, attractive or repulsive,
honorable or dishonorable, good or evil. Impersonal love is an integrity
envelope which perpetuates its own virtue and honor without reaction,
retaliation, prejudice, or discrimination. Impersonal love cannot be
destroyed by hatred, antagonism, animosity, or hostility. Impersonal love
takes its virtue from life inside the divine dynasphere.
(h) Impersonal love functions on the basis of who and
what the subject is, not who and what the object is. Impersonal love
disregards malice, hostility and substitutes the virtues of tolerance,
courtesy, humility, objectivity. It never depends on flattery,
approbation, patronage, or attention.
(i) Impersonal love solves the problems of
relationship with self, before solving the problems of relationship with
others. Impersonal love begins to function best when the person is in
spiritual self-esteem.
(j) Being unconditional, impersonal love is the virtue
of the subject overcoming the problems related to the object. Impersonal
love is that virtue whereby the integrity of the subject exceeds the
unattractiveness and repulsiveness of the object.
(k) Impersonal love is the only category of human love
for others which possesses virtue and problem-solving capabilities in human
relationships.
(l) The contrast between personal and impersonal love.
i. Impersonal love is manufactured from that
wisdom known as metabolized doctrine. Personal love is manufactured from
human viewpoint in the mentality of the soul: emotion, lust, vanity, or
the pattern of Christian degeneracy (such as jealousy).
ii. Impersonal love is a virtue from God; personal
love is the arrogance of mankind or the expression of self-consciousness.
iii. Impersonal love is directed toward the entire
human race; personal love is directed toward a few.
iv. Impersonal love is sustained by metabolized
doctrine in the soul; personal love is sustained by the attractiveness of
the object, or entering into a mutual admiration society with the object.
v. Impersonal love is a relaxed mental attitude
toward mankind; personal love is often a very intense and possessive
attitude toward a few.
vi. Impersonal love is free from arrogance and
functions on genuine humility; personal love is hamstrung by arrogance.
vii. Relationship with self is stabilized and
poised through impersonal love, while relationship with self is
disconcerted and upset by the traumatic experience of personal love.
viii. Impersonal love is the mandate of the protocol
plan of God; personal love is optional toward people. Impersonal love is
the imperative of the Christian way of life; personal love is the option of
life.
ix. Impersonal love is motivated by love for God;
therefore, it is nondiscriminating. Personal love is motivated by
attraction; therefore, it is very discriminating and prejudiced.
x. Impersonal love is a problem-solving device;
personal love manufactures problems, except where impersonal love exists.
xi. Impersonal love is one of the imperatives of
the Word of God; personal love carries warnings from the Word of God.
xii. Impersonal love is consistent when faced with
animosity and antagonism on the one hand, and love and admiration on the
other. Personal love is vulnerable to Christian degeneracy through
arrogance and emotionalism. Therefore, personal love must depend on the
integrity envelope of impersonal love to overcome vulnerability and
individual tragic flaws.
xiii. Spiritual self-esteem is the beginning of
effectiveness in the function of impersonal love as a problem-solving
device.
f. One of the great problems in marriage is the believer's
failure to distinguish between divine policy for marriage and the
individual's personal standards.
(1) The divine policy for marriage is threefold:
(a) The husband must love the wife.
(b) The wife must obey the husband.
(c) Each are to forgive as Christ forgave.
(2) The difference between leadership and management is the
distinction between the concept of policy for an organization and your own
personal standards. Marriage demands the function of policy by the
husband, but he does not superimpose his personal standards on his wife.
You apply your personal standards only to yourself, and enforce policy on
those under your control. Leadership enforces principle and policy;
management superimposes personal standards on others.
(3) Husbands fail because they are bureaucrats, bullies,
arrogant managers. They seek to impose their personal standards on their
wives. This is not the policy of marriage. Leadership motivates authority
orientation. Bureaucracy motivates revolt.
(4) As the spiritual leader, the husband executes the
divine commands given in Eph 5:25 and Col 3:19. By fulfilling these
mandates the husband becomes the leader in marriage.
(5) You cannot change others, you can only change yourself.
The policy of marriage is impersonal love, not your personal standards.
The husband has no right to superimpose his personal standards on his wife,
only the divine policies of the Word of God.
(6) In spiritual growth the believer changes his personal
standards to comply to protocol from the privacy of his own priesthood. In
apostasy the believer abandons his standards.
(a) The standards of spiritual childhood are not the
same as the standards of spiritual adulthood. You do not bully others to
live up to your standards. As you grow spiritually your standards will
change.
(b) Variation in standards reflects your spiritual
status quo or lack of it. But you don't give up things to grow up
spiritually. You use the divine problem-solving devices to change your own
standards.
(c) Problem solving demands that the believer
understand and use grace mechanics to change his own life and standards.
And he cannot superimpose those standards on another person. Your personal
standards reflect your upbringing, your background, and you don't
superimpose your background on others.
(7) The policy of the protocol plan of God belongs to all
believers, but your personal standards belong to you. Only the teaching of
doctrine can change someone's standards. This is why counseling is not
valid. To superimpose your personal standards on others is polarized
legalism. Only Bible doctrine has the power to change the standards that
have come from our upbringing and background.
(8) In the local church, the pastor is the leader who is
responsible for communicating divine policy. He does this by teaching the
Word of God on a consistent basis.
(9) In marriage it is essential that each partner maintain
the privacy of the other partner by not broadcasting your problems to
others.
(10) You cannot change your spouse, you can only change
yourself. The only changes that count are the changes made from within
your own soul through the influence of Bible doctrine. This is why changes
from outside pressure are not valid, e.g., counseling, pressure from your
spouse, or support of friends. You cannot execute the Christian way of
life from the thinking of someone else. You cannot solve your problems
from your own soul as long as you are getting outside help.
(11) Your standards reflect your relationship to the Lord.
Your standards do not belong to the other Christians in your periphery.
They are under the authority of divine standards, not your personal
standards. You are responsible to comply with the standards of Christian
organizations when you enter those organizations. This includes such
things as observing taboos, the dress code, etc.
(12) In the same way the wife enters into the organization
of marriage and must comply with its standards. Both the husband and wife
must have impersonal love which they use as an integrity envelope. The
husband uses his impersonal love to fulfill the command to love his wife.
The wife uses her impersonal love to fulfill the command to obey her
husband. Without impersonal love the husband takes advantage of the wife.
And if the wife has no impersonal love, she has no way of responding to the
man.
(13) The reason for these two divine rules that form the
policy for marriage is that:
(a) The husband is the leader, therefore he initiates
love for the enforcement of divine policy. Impersonal love keeps him from
bullying the woman by superimposing his own personal standards rather than
the divine policy for marriage.
(b) The wife is a follower, and therefore obeys her
husbands enforcement of divine policy without surrendering her privacy or
personal standards. Impersonal love provides the wife with humility and
authority orientation, so that she can comply with divine rules while
maintaining her own personal standards.
(14) Policy belongs to a group; personal standards belong to
the individual. Believers with many different standards assemble for Bible
teaching under the policy of the local church. Your personal standards are
subordinate as long as you are under the policy of the group.
(15) God designed rules for marriage to make it possible for
marriage to be a source of virtue. Marriage is designed for virtue, and
virtue is designed for happiness. God's rules provide the virtue.
(16) Personal standards that might become an issue in
marriage should be resolved, if possible, before marriage. And after
marriage without going outside the home.
g. There are three principles which introduce the analogy of Eph
5:25. "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the Church."
(1) Out of the husband's impersonal love for all mankind
comes his personal love for his wife.
(2) Out of our Lord's impersonal love for all mankind comes
His personal love for the Church.
(3) Unlimited atonement is a demonstration of God's
impersonal love for all mankind.
(a) Scripture.
(i) 2 Cor 5:14: "For the love for Christ keeps on
motivating us. In fact, we have reached the conclusion that One died for
all mankind." 2 Cor 5:19: "God, by means of Christ, was reconciling the
world to Himself by not imputing their sins to them."
(ii) 1 Tim 2:6: "Who gave Himself a ransom, as a
substitute for all mankind." 1 Tim 4:10: "Because we have confidence in
the living God, who is the savior of all men, and especially to believers."
(iii) Tit 2:11: "For the grace of God, which brings
salvation to all mankind, has appeared." Heb 2:9: "We see Jesus, that by
means of the grace of God He should taste death for everyone."
(iv) 1 Jn 2:2: "And He is a propitiation for our
sins, but not for ours only, but also for the entire world."
(b) In order to be judged for the sins of the world
and yet stay on the cross, Jesus had to have some kind of love. It could
not be personal love because we did not yet have God's righteousness. And
God cannot love us personally unless we have His righteousness. So in
order to go the cross our Lord had to have impersonal love.
h. The precedent for impersonal love as the integrity envelope
for personal love is found in Christ's attitude toward the Church. All
precedent for the Church Age is taken from the dispensation of the
Hypostatic Union. "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the
Church."
(1) The aorist active indicative of the Greek verb AGAPAO
is a reference to our Lord's personal love for the Church. The dramatic
aorist tense states our Lord's personal love for the Church, the present
reality, with the certitude of a past event, our Lord's impersonal love for
all mankind. God the Father demonstrated His impersonal love for us in
eternity past by not imputing our sins to us, but waiting and imputing them
to Christ. This is also a culminative aorist, which views our Lord's
impersonal love for all mankind in its entirety, but regards it from the
viewpoint of existing results, our Lord's personal love for the Church.
THis is also a gnomic aorist for a doctrine generally accepted as a fact,
which may be regarded as so fixed in certainty that it is described by the
aorist as though it were an actual occurrence.
(2) In the dispensation of the Hypostatic Union God the Son
demonstrated His impersonal love by bearing our sins and being judged for
them as our substitute. In the dispensation of the Church our Lord
demonstrates His personal love for the entire royal family under three
conditions.
(a) Our Lord's personal love for the Church is
encapsulated in the integrity envelope of impersonal love. Our Lord can
now personally love the Church because He first had impersonal love on the
cross for all mankind.
(b) The imputation of divine righteousness at
salvation means that divine personal love now has a legitimate object: the
imputed righteousness of God.
(c) The baptism of the Spirit at salvation means that
every believer is in union with Christ. We are graced out in the Beloved.
God loves us because we possess the righteousness of Christ which we share
through union with Christ.
(3) Impersonal love as the integrity envelope for personal
love must exist in the man before marriage.
i. To understand this precedent we must understand God's love.
(1) Divine love is the pattern for all virtue-love as a
problem-solving device.
(2) Divine love is part of the essence of God, a divine
attribute. It belongs equally to each person of the Trinity. They have
coequal and coeternal love.
(3) Divine love is compatible with all the other attributes
of God. God is eternal, His love exists eternally. It is not sustained by
anything else. God is sovereign; therefore, His love is self-motivating.
God has never made a decision that is not compatible with His love. God is
holy; therefore, God's love is compatible with His righteousness and
justice.
(4) We are not perfect because we have an old sin nature.
That means that God cannot love us personally. But God has perfect self-
esteem, therefore, He comes up with another kind of love: virtue-love,
impersonal love, unconditional love. And like God's impersonal love for
us, husbands are to have the same impersonal love for their wives.
(5) God is immutable; therefore, His divine love is
unchangeable. His love cannot be corrupted; it does not increase or
decrease. God's love cannot be bribed by human works. Since God is love,
always has been love, and always will be love, God never falls in love.
Since God's love does not increase or decrease, it is not affected by our
sins. God loves us because we have His perfect righteousness, not because
we do not sin.
(6) God is omniscient, therefore, always acts rationally in
the function of His love. Even though God knows everything about you, it
does not change His love for you.
(7) God is veracity and truth; therefore, divine love is
rooted in every doctrine and every form of knowledge that resides in His
absolute being.
(8) God is infinite, which means He is without boundary or
limitation. He unites in Himself those perfections which belong to His
character. This means that the love of God cannot tempt or solicit to sin;
God cannot sponsor evil or human good; God cannot be complicated by
ignorance and absurdities. God's love is infinite.
(9) Principles of God's love.
(a) God's love is never frustrated or disappointed.
(b) God's love exists with or without an object.
(c) God's love is not sustained by attraction,
rapport, or any category of human merit or worthiness.
(d) Neither self-righteousness, human good, nor
morality are the basis for God's extending His love to mankind. God does
not love us because of our Christian service.
(e) Since God's love is both perfect virtue and a
problem-solving device, it cannot be divorced from either His holiness
(integrity) or any divine attribute.
(f) Since God is holy, He is perfect in both His
righteousness and justice, and therefore, cannot be anything less than
perfect or fair. When we have impersonal love, we are fair and deal with
everything from objectivity.
(g) Because God is virtuous His love is totally devoid
of sin, human good, evil or altruism. Furthermore, God's love is free from
hypocrisy, flattery, or any patronizing influence of mankind.
(h) There are three categories of God's love:
(i) God's impersonal love for all mankind.
Divine impersonal love is mentioned in 1 Jn 4:9-10, "By this, the love of
God was manifest in our case, because God has sent his unique Son into the
world, in order that through Him we might live. By this, divine love
exists, not because we have loved God, but because He loved us and sent His
Son to be a propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we
ought to love one another."
(ii) God's personal love for perfect righteousness
in others, mentioned in Eph 1:5, 2:4; 1 Jn 4:19: "We love because He loved
us first."
(iii) God's love for His own integrity (divine
self-esteem).
(i) Fellowship with the Holy Spirit is the means of
loving God the Father. Rom 5:5, "And hope does not disappoint us because
love for God has been poured out in our right lobes by means of the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us." We could not love God the Father were it
not for the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Since God is
invisible, He can only be loved through learning Bible doctrine and
subsequent spiritual growth.
(j) As we develop personal love for God, impersonal
love is developed in our lives. And impersonal love is the key to solving
problems in marriage.
j. The precedent for impersonal love is found in the last phrase
of Eph 5:25, "and gave Himself for her." This refers to Christ's
impersonal love when He went to the cross. It is impersonal love that is
the problem-solving device for marriage, along with personal love for God
the Father and occupation with Christ.
(1) The aorist active indicative of PARADIDOMI means to
give in the sense of delivering yourself over in a sacrificial way. The
culminative aorist contemplates the substitutionary spiritual death of
Jesus Christ on the cross in its entirety, but regards it from the
viewpoint of existing results, i.e., redemption, reconciliation,
propitiation, unlimited atonement, imputation, justification, etc. The
substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross was motivated by
impersonal love and resulted in personal love for the Church. As a
dramatic aorist the verb describes what happened on the cross, a past
event, the effect of which is felt in the present, a present reality of our
Lord's personal love for the Church. As a gnomic aorist the verb refers to
a universal doctrine stated in the aorist tense dogmatically.
(2) This is a reference to our Lord's impersonal love for
all. Husbands should have impersonal love for all mankind in order to make
it in marriage because personal love will not carry the marriage. Personal
love has no staying power in marriage, friendship, or romance. It must
have impersonal love to give it backbone, strength, and endurance.
(3) When our Lord was on the cross receiving the judgment
for our sins, He operated strictly from impersonal love. On the cross He
had the motivation of impersonal love.
(4) The accusative singular direct object from the
reflexive pronoun HEAUTOU, translated "Himself," emphasizes the sovereignty
of Jesus Christ as God and the free will of Jesus Christ as true humanity.
Both the sovereignty of Christ and volition of our Lord's humanity
represent the integrity envelope of impersonal love. When the action
expressed by the verb is referred back to its own subject, the construction
is called reflexive. This reflexive is very important because it indicates
what the responsibility of the husband is. Just as Christ's integrity kept
Him on the cross, so impersonal love toward all mankind undergirds
marriage.
(5) The Greek preposition HUPER plus the genitive singular
of advantage from the intensive pronoun AUTOS is translated "for her."
HUPER plus the genitive of advantage is always substitutionary. The
genitive of advantage indicates the persons on behalf of whom something is
done. So it should be translated "instead of her, on behalf of her, as a
substitute for her."
k. Personal love in marriage has no staying power, no
consistency, and no permanence without impersonal love for all mankind.
Eph 5:25 is a mandate for impersonal love.
l. So in the analogy, our Lord Jesus Christ, during His
substitutionary spiritual death on the cross, had two categories of love.
He had personal love for the Church, not yet in existence. He had
impersonal love for all mankind born in the status of real spiritual death.
m. Our Lord's impersonal love on the cross became the function
of our Lord's personal love for the Church. Our Lord's personal love for
the Church emphasizes the object as having God's perfect righteousness
imputed at salvation. Our Lord's impersonal love for the Church emphasizes
the presalvation status of the royal family in real spiritual death,
totally unattractive and unacceptable to God. In impersonal love, all
virtue always lies in the subject; the object has no attractiveness at all.
n. Therefore, the emphasis of our Lord's impersonal love is on
Himself as the subject. He was judged for our sins; He took our place; He
received the imputation of our sins. We were totally and completely
undeserving then as we are now.
o. The analogy between husbands loving their wives in marriage
and our Lord's salvation work on the cross emphasizes the fact that two
categories of love must exist in marriage, and you can't have one without
the other. That is the integrity envelope.
p. Our Lord changed from impersonal love to personal love
because we responded to His impersonal love by faith in Him. Personal love
must be linked to impersonal love not only in marriage, but even with God.
q. Without impersonal love for all mankind, there would be no
salvation. Without impersonal love for all mankind, there would be no
success in marriage or any human relationship that demands virtue.
r. Our Lord's personal love for the Church emphasizes how
impersonal love found a way to make personal love operational. This is
exactly what happens in the marital relationship.
s. No believer can have a successful marriage unless he has the
right priorities in life. Right priorities demand that God be given first
place in your life. God cannot have first place in your life unless you
make Bible doctrine your number one priority. No man can have a successful
marriage without impersonal love for his wife.
t. No believer can have a successful marriage unless he has a
successful relationship with God. If your relationship with God is a
failure, your marriage will be a failure.
u. Knowledge of doctrine must precede the application of
doctrine. And this above all includes marriage. Relationship with people
depends on the attainment of impersonal love through doctrinal
conceptualism: learning, thinking, and solving problems using doctrine.
v. Summary.
(1) Out of impersonal love for all mankind comes our Lord's
personal love for the Church as the Body of Christ.
(2) The Church did not even exist when Christ went to the
cross and died for the sins of the world.
(3) Out of impersonal love for all mankind comes the
husband's personal love for his wife.
(4) The man must have impersonal love before he even knows
that his right woman exists.
(5) To enter marriage without impersonal love as a problem-
solving device means malfunction, failure of personal love and everything
else in marriage.
(6) Without impersonal love in marriage, personal love has
no staying power, no problem-solving capabilities.
(7) Our Lord's impersonal love for all mankind emphasizes
the presalvation status of the Church as spiritual death.
(8) Our Lord's personal love for the Church emphasizes the
postsalvation status of the Church as possessing divine righteousness. Rom
3:22.
w. Husbands should avoid bitterness. Col 3:19, "Husbands, love
your wives, and stop being bitter against them."
(1) The Greek word ANER, meaning "nobleman," is used here
for the husband because, the husband must represent the concept of honor,
integrity and nobility.
(2) The verb AGAPAO is used for virtue-love, integrity-
love, honor-love, that is, impersonal love in contrast to personal love.
(a) The durative present tense is for a state of being
which began in the past and continues into the present. This is present
linear aktionsart. The integrity envelope of impersonal love should always
exist. This could also be classified as a tendential present, indicating
an action purposed, or mandated, but not occurring.
(b) Husbands produce the action by impersonal love for
all mankind and personal love for the wife inside the integrity envelope of
impersonal love. If you do not develop impersonal love, you will become
abusive as a husband.
(c) This is a command for all male married believers.
(d) God invented marriage; God makes the rules for
marriage. All of the rules come from His justice, and in the case of
Christians from His personal love. God is fair; therefore, the rules are
fair. God is love; therefore, He is interested in your welfare, and the
rules are for your welfare.
(e) No man can enter into marriage without integrity
and a sense of responsibility. The motivation that the husband must have
to execute this command is His relationship with God. Therefore, the
husband should enter marriage with two problem-solving devices: personal
love for God the Father and occupation with Christ.
x. The Greek verb PIKRAINO plus the negative adverb means to
stop being bitter. Bitterness is a sign of arrogance. See the Doctrine of
Bitterness.
(1) Bitter people cannot succeed in the plan of God.
(a) Bitterness that continues is a tragic flaw in the
character. There are all kinds of bitterness. God has never given us the
right to be bitter about anything.
(b) You cannot be bitter without malfunction in your
spiritual life. No self-fragmented believer can have a successful
marriage. Bitterness is locked-in arrogance.
(c) To the extent that you are bitter about anything
in life, to that extent you will fail in life. When people are bitter they
often slander, malign, and criticize.
(d) The answer to bitterness is forgiveness.
(2) No one who is bitter should ever get married while in a
state of bitterness. Bitterness is an enemy to marriage. If you are
bitter, do not get married until it is gone. No matter how great the
romance, bitterness will destroy it.
(3) Relationship with God precedes relationship with
people. No one can have a successful relationship in marriage unless they
have a successful relationship with God.
(4) Problems in marriage are not caused by money, sex, or
unfaithfulness. The problem in marriage is lack of virtue: lack of
personal love for God the Father, occupation with Christ, and impersonal
love toward others.
(5) Bitterness is arrogant self-centeredness combined with
arrogant self-justification. Bitterness becomes an arrogant habit that
keeps you out of fellowship the rest of your life.
y. Personal love outside of the integrity envelop is bitter,
arrogant, and self-centered. This is why men become abusive and marriages
fail.
z. Eph 4:31 says, "All bitterness, both anger and wrath, both
quarreling and slander, must be removed from you, along with all malice."
aa. Personal love inside the integrity envelop avoids bitterness
and fulfills Eph 4:32, which is the third divine rule in marriage. "Rather
become kind one toward another, compassionate, forgiving each other just as
God by means of Christ has forgiven you." Virtue-love is also described in
1 Cor 13:4-8. Love can overlook faults, is full of trust, hope, and
endurance.
(1) The problem is that personal love is not a virtue in
itself. It only has virtue while inside the integrity envelop of
impersonal love.
(2) Any idiot minus virtue can fall in love. Therefore,
human personal love is no solution of any kind.
(3) Personal love is dependent on virtue for its success
and perpetuation, whether in friendship, romance, or marriage.
(4) All biblical mandates related to human interaction are
divine commands for the function of impersonal love toward all mankind.
(5) Impersonal love inserts virtue and stability into all
categories of human love and human interaction.
(6) Personal love minus virtue will not hold a marriage
together.
(7) Personal love in romance includes many things which are
transient and temporary and have no stability, e.g., physical attraction,
lust, desire, security, temporary rapport, temporary admiration, the desire
for self-improvement, boredom and a change of scenery, social acceptance,
social advance, legitimate sex, or a desire for companionship.
(8) But whatever the motives that lead to marriage,
personal love can neither sustain nor perpetuate that marriage unless
accompanied by consistent function of impersonal love toward all mankind.
This problem-solving device can belong to an unbeliever through his
recognition of the authority of the laws of divine establishment. It can
belong to a believer through his understanding of the mystery doctrine of
the Church Age.
(9) God has found a way to provide the ability to fulfill
His mandates. Virtue-love is the ability, and is provided by understanding
of Bible doctrine.
(a) Divine power and human power are mutually
exclusive.
(b) Only the function of divine power and enablement
can cause the execution of both the protocol plan of God and the divine
mandates in marriage. We are helpless, and God has provided for our
helplessness.
(c) Human ability and human power cannot fulfill the
principle of Christ's loving the Church and giving Himself for her. That
is too high a standard to be fulfilled by energy of the flesh.
(d) Human ability and human power cannot fulfill the
principle of obedience to husbands in the protocol plan.
(e) Because of the genetic transmission of the old sin
nature and resultant personal sins in the human race, personal love does
not have the power or ability to fulfill the divine mandates regarding love
in friendship, romance, or marriage.
(f) While permanence is not required in friendship or
romance, God has designed the divine institution of marriage to be
permanent.
(g) Therefore, virtue-love as a problem-solving device
is focused on marriage as the only solution to marital problems. Personal
love for God the Father is the motivation. Impersonal love for all mankind
provides the staying power in marriage. If you have impersonal love for
all mankind, you can manage to put up with your spouse when obnoxious.
Occupation with Christ provides the priority solution to the problems of
marriage.
(10) In marriage, impersonal love for all mankind actually
provides both the capacity and the power for a husband to love his wife as
Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, and visa versa.
(11) Impersonal love for all mankind inserts virtue into
personal love in marriage, and provides the consistency, staying power, and
permanence in the relationship.
(12) Therefore, marriages don't need the band-aides of
marital counseling; they need the radical surgery of the daily perception
and metabolization of Bible doctrine.
(a) Arrogance and lack of doctrine are causing
marriages to break up everywhere today. If you are a loser as a Christian,
you are a loser in marriage. The problem is not marriage; the problem is
that you're a loser because you have rejected divine principles.
(b) Christian couples who fail to expose themselves to
the teaching of Bible doctrine cannot resolve their marital problems. The
secret to success in marriage is the life beyond gnosis, i.e., making
doctrine epignosis.
(c) Just as people have to grow up and mature in life,
so people have to grow up and mature in marriage. When you marry, you're a
baby again. You must grow up in marriage, just as you grew up in life.
(d) For the Christian, this is impossible apart from
metabolized doctrine in the right lobe of the soul, and the proper
application of the problem-solving devices which inevitably results.
(e) Some people never mature as human beings; many
believers never mature as Christians. This explains why marriages fail,
why believers are losers. They fail to execute the protocol plan of God
through perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.
(13) Therefore, personal love in human relationships is a
major issue, for it determines what kind of a person you are.
(14) Personal love minus virtue will not hold a marriage
together. Personal love minus virtue inserts false motivation, hypocrisy
and all the human gimmicks into marriage.
bb. The destroyer of marriage: arrogance.
(1) While most people cite unfaithfulness, arguments over
money, or general personality incompatibility for their failure in
marriage, they are merely describing symptoms and have not diagnosed the
real disease, which is arrogance.
(2) Arrogance is actually the greatest destroyer of
marriage, not the "other man" or "other woman." Arrogance includes
jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, anger, impatience,
hatred, revenge motivation, revenge modus operandi, self-pity, guilt
syndrome, and hypersensitivity. These are just a few of the arrogant
symptoms that destroy a marriage.
(3) So if you come to hate your mate, then you have lost a
far greater battle than your marriage; you have become a loser in the
protocol plan of God.
(4) Again, the principle is that people are no better in
marriage than they are as people. It's true that people can improve and
change, but that requires that they make Bible doctrine the #1 priority in
their life and advance spiritually.
(5) This means that the solution to marital problems is
found in the life beyond gnosis, in the execution of the protocol plan of
God.
(6) Divorce is never a solution; divorce is always an
escape.
(7) An arrogant person in marriage is an arrogant person
out of marriage; nothing has changed. This demonstrates that arrogance is
a far greater factor than anything else in the life, and that self-
centeredness is the major problem.
(8) Only cognition and utilization of the problem-solving
devices can change the person and solve problems in marriage.
cc. Other reasons why Christian marriages fail.
(1) Marriages fail because Christians marry the wrong
person, usually in the attraction stage.
(2) Marriages fail because Christians enter marriage with
false illusions and become disillusioned and frustrated.
(3) Marriages fail because Christians become involved in
the three stages of degeneracy: implode, explode, revert.
dd. Why marriages in general fail.
(1) Premarital sex destroys marriages. Eccl 7:25-29, "I
turned around my right lobe to understand, to investigate, and to search
out wisdom, including the scheme of things [man's relationship with woman],
and to understand the stupidity of evil and the madness of foolishness.
And I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose right lobe is a
snare and full of nets, and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases
God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her. `Behold, I
have discovered this,' says the man with the message, `adding one thing to
another and discovering the scheme of things, while I was still searching
and not finding. I have found one virtuous man among a thousand, but I did
not find one virtuous woman among them all. Behold, I have found only
this, that God made people virtuous, but they sought out many sexual
diversions.'"
(a) Man was designed to have sex with one woman. God
made man virtuous in this respect, but man departs from this.
(b) Premarital sex destroys marriage, and the virtue
needed for marriage and romance. Premarital sex erodes virtue, which
solves the problems of romance and marriage.
(c) Instead of looking for your right woman in
premarital sex, be sure you are the right man. Premarital sex guarantees
that you are not the right man.
(d) Solomon never found any virtuous men or women
because he never got out of the attraction stage. A strong libido has no
conscience.
(2) Marriages fail because of many misconceptions in life.
(a) The misconception that marriage means happiness.
Happiness in marriage depends on virtue-love.
(b) That marriage is a solution to the problems of
life.
(c) That marriage is a panacea to life.
(d) That children will save a marriage.
(3) Marriages fail because people are no better in marriage
than they are in single status. Marriages fail because believers are
failures as human beings. The believer who fragments his life has no
chance in marriage. Self-fragmentation is the first enemy of marriage.
Both moral and immoral degeneracy destroy marriage. Self-righteous
arrogance destroys marriage as quickly as immorality.
(4) Marriages fail because the husband or wife try to
change the other person.
(a) Only the problem-solving devices can convert the
loser into a winner in the divine institution of marriage. The principles
of marriage are the same in every dispensation because marriage is a divine
institution.
(b) In problems affecting marriage you can only change
yourself, you cannot change your spouse. You can only change yourself by
mastering and using the problem-solving devices. You cannot bully your
spouse into a course of action you want them to follow.
(c) Marriages are destroyed by people who don't know
how to solve problems. Losers do not know how to solve problems.
(5) Marriages are not destroyed by unfaithfulness, money,
relatives, incompatibility, disillusion, or children. These are effects.
The underlying cause is anger, hatred, revenge, implacability, gossip,
slander, self-righteousness, licentiousness, and other areas of self-
fragmentation. The most difficult person in the world to live with is a
person in moral degeneracy.
(6) Marriages fail because believers get married for the
wrong reasons.
(a) For a meal ticket.
(b) Escape from an unpleasant home environment.
(c) For legalized sex.
(d) For unrealistic expectation or role model
arrogance.
(e) For an overdeveloped sex drive.
(f) For peer pressure.
(7) Marriages fail because believers make bad decisions
from a position of weakness.
(8) Marriages fail because believers do not obey the
command of 1 Cor 7:3, "Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and
likewise also the wife to her husband."
(a) "Duty" means virtue, and virtue is the road to
happiness.
(b) There are a lot of duties connected with marriage.
God invented marriage and the duties that go with marriage. It is easier
to get married than to learn the rules of marriage.
(9) Marriages fail because of the arrogance of unhappiness.
(a) The arrogance of unhappiness seeks to control
others in one's environment. It does so in two ways.
(i) Making them feel guilty for alleged neglect.
Hence, it motivates attention through guilt.
(ii) It motivates attention through the arousal of
pity. Self-pity tries to get others to feel sorry for you as well. This
is the evangelism of self-pity.
(b) The arrogance of unhappiness seeks to dominate, to
control, to enslave in marriage.
(c) The illusions of the arrogance of unhappiness are:
(i) You cannot build your happiness on pleasant
environment or the details of life, such as money, success, power,
pleasure, sex, approbation, social life, friends, health, or marriage.
(ii) You cannot build your happiness on crusader
arrogance, Christian activism, civil disobedience, violence, revolution.
(iii) You cannot build your happiness on someone
else's unhappiness, i.e., by hurting others.
(iv) You cannot build your happiness on a moment
of time, a moment of pleasure, a moment of power, a moment of success, a
moment of stimulation.
(v) You cannot build your happiness on self-
gratification, drug abuse, beauty, sex, attractiveness.
(10) Summary principles.
(a) Marriage cannot make you happy, only Bible
doctrine can.
(b) Sex cannot make you happy, only Bible doctrine can
do that.
(c) Prosperity and power cannot make you happy, only
Bible doctrine can do that.
(d) Money cannot make you happy, only Bible doctrine
can.
(e) Health cannot make you happy, only Bible doctrine
can.
(f) People cannot make you happy, only Bible doctrine
can.
(g) A friendly church cannot make you happy, only
Bible doctrine can.
ee. The true nature of marriage.
(1) One of the greatest misconceptions is that marriage is
a panacea. Actually, marriage is a problem-manufacturing device.
(2) People are no better in marriage than they are as
people.
(3) People who are losers in life are losers in marriage.
(4) People who are winners in the protocol plan of God have
all the potential for being winners in marriage. The potential is related
to the use of the problem-solving devices.
(5) Losers are not people who fail, but people who do
nothing about their failures, such as using problem-solving device #1,
rebound and keep moving. To keep moving means the consistent perception,
metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine resulting in the
attainment of spiritual adulthood, and the maximum use of the problem-
solving devices of the protocol plan of God. You can't do anything about
your failures unless you understand the problem-solving devices of the
Christian way of life.
(6) Only the plan of God can change a loser into a winner.
Only God can do this, not a nagging wife or a griping frustrated husband.
God does not do this through miracles, but through your daily intake of
doctrine.
(7) Furthermore, in marriage, you can only change yourself;
you cannot change your spouse.
ff. The solution to marital problems.
(1) There is no solution to the problems of marriage apart
from the use of impersonal love for all mankind combined with personal love
for your spouse.
(2) So the solution to marital problems and the secret to a
successful marriage is life beyond gnosis (Eph 3:19).
(3) Just as people have to grow up and mature in life, so
marriage is almost like a birth. You have to start over and learn a lot of
things. You have to be able to grow up with a minimal amount of
antagonisms developing.
(4) People have to grow up and mature in marriage, just as
they have to grow up and mature in life, and just as believers have to grow
up and mature in the spiritual life.
(5) So there are three times in life when you must grow up.
(a) When you are born.
(b) When you are born again.
(c) When you are married.
(6) Each of these requires its own system of growing up.
People often fail as Christians because they did not grow up as a human
being, or they did not grow up in marriage, and the marriage became a
hindrance to their Christian life.
(7) Each category of growing up has its own rules of
progress which must be followed.
(8) The greatest people in life are those who grow up in
all three categories (if all three are pertinent).
(9) If you grow up spiritually, you will make it in the
other two areas. If you fail to grow up spiritually, you will flunk in the
other two areas.
(10) The married couple who does not metabolize doctrine has
no basis for resolving the problems of marriage.
gg. Marriage counseling.
(1) Counseling is a waste of time. All it does is provide
individual attention, stimulate arrogance, and give an excuse to drop
someone you cannot stand.
(a) Marital counseling is rarely a solution to marital
problems.
(b) Instead of solving the problem from doctrine, you
are depending on the wisdom and judgment of someone else who may be tricky
or clever, but doesn't necessarily have good judgment and definitely
doesn't have divine viewpoint.
(2) You cannot build your marriage walking on crutches,
depending on the counseling of someone else. Since counseling is
dependence on someone else to solve your problems, it becomes tantamount to
walking on crutches.
(3) It never occurs to people that counseling solutions
cannot be permanent, because those involved are failures as people, not as
spouses. Yet the counselor is dealing with you as a failure as a spouse
when the real issue is that you are a failure as a person.
(4) Being a failure as a spouse is a symptom. The real
problem is the fact that the person is a loser. So counseling is only
band-aid therapy given to a person who is badly wounded.
(5) Most people approach marital problems from the
viewpoint of subjectivity. They are only interested in justifying self.
(6) Solutions to all the problems in life, including
marital problems, must come from inside the individual rather than from
outside persons, like counselors. It must come from epignosis doctrine you
possess in your right lobe. It must come from learning and using the
problem-solving devices of the protocol plan of God.
(7) The universal priesthood of the believer demands that
each believer solve his own problems from his own inventory of Bible
doctrine. The believer must learn and use the mystery doctrine of the
Church Age.
(8) If you are married and problems develop, do not make
hasty or impulsive decisions to get a divorce until you've learned to
utilize the problem-solving devices. And if you want to divorce because
you've fallen in love with someone else, you need the problem-solving
devices twice as much!
(9) Two wrongs do not make a right. This is how losers are
manufactured; they try to correct one wrong with another wrong.
(a) But in the protocol plan of God, a wrong thing
done in a wrong way is wrong. A right thing done in a wrong way is wrong.
A wrong thing done in a right way is wrong. A right thing must be done in
a right way to be right; this is the preciseness of the protocol plan of
God.
(b) In other words, you don't solve your marital
problems by divorce.
(10) An extremely misleading epigram says "the trouble with
problems is solutions." This is true only when the believer is trying to
apply human and useless solutions to the problems of life.
(a) The epigram might be amended to say that the
trouble with problems is wrong solutions, which are really no solutions at
all. Furthermore, a wrong solution violates the principle of the protocol
plan of God, which says that a wrong thing done in a wrong way is wrong.
(b) Actually, the trouble with problems is no
solutions. No solutions include desperate, frantic dependence on others
for answers instead of on epignosis doctrine in your own soul.
(11) The basic solution to marital problems is impersonal
love for all mankind inserted into the inevitable conflicts which are
created by marriage.
2. Divine Rule Number Two for Marriage: The Responsibility of the
Wife.
a. Col 3:18, "Wives, render obedience to your husbands, as it is
protocol [fitting] in the Lord."
(1) The present middle imperative of the verb HUPOTASSO
means to submit or to render obedience. The progressive present is for
action in a state of persistance. This could also be a tendential present
for an action proposed but not occurring. The dynamic middle voice
describes the wife acting in relationship to herself. She acts for herself
and with reference to herself. This is the imperative of command.
(2) Whether it is a good or bad marriage, there must be the
principle of authority. The husband has the duty to take responsibility
for policy. The wife has the responsibility of recognizing the husband's
authority.
(a) The Bible teaches that the husband is the
authority in marriage. 1 Cor 11:9, "For indeed, man was not created for
the woman's sake, but the woman was created for the man's sake." It is a
man's world, and this is a great benefit to the woman.
(b) For the wife to render obedience or subordinate
herself to the man, she has to be motivated by both impersonal love and
personal love.
(c) God is fair and just in providing this mandate for
women. Because of the uniqueness of the woman, she is honored, respected,
and loved.
(d) Before a woman marries a man, she must be able to
answer one critical question, "Will I submit to the authority of this man
for the rest of my life?" The woman cannot answer this question in the
attraction stage of romance. Other important questions include:
i. Does he demonstrate impersonal love toward
all?
ii. Is he manly, and yet still gentle?
iii. Is he thoughtful, courteous?
iv. What is his attitude in general and toward
people in general?
(e) If you say "yes" to the wrong man who is an
emotional child, who is arrogant, or jealous, your life and marriage will
be intolerable slavery.
(3) The perfect active indicative of the verb ANEKO means
to refer, to relate. This is the impersonal use which means as it is
proper, as it is fitting, or as it is protocol. The intensive perfect
emphasizes the present state of being, the continuing results, the fact
that a thing is in the protocol plan of God. The virtuous woman producing
the action of the verb recognizing and submitting to the authority of her
husband.
(4) God has a plan for your life. The name of that plan is
called protocol. The policy for the plan is called grace. The precedence
for the plan is what happened in the dispensation of the Hypostatic Union.
Jn 1:14, 16-17. "Because from His fullness all of us have received grace
in exchange for grace." When we were saved by grace we exchanged salvation
grace for "more grace" (James 4:6).
(a) The dispensation of the Hypostatic Union was a
grace dispensation.
(b) Believers have exchanged salvation grace for
postsalvation grace.
i. Eph 3:2 calls the Church Age "the dispensation
of grace, which was given to you for your very own benefit."
ii. Jn 1:17, "...grace and truth came through the
Lord Jesus Christ."
iii. Acts 4:33, "...and the abundant grace was on
all of them."
iv. Acts 20:32, "And now I commend you to God and
to the doctrine of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you
the inheritance among all of those who are sanctified."
v. Rom 12:3, "I say through the grace which has
been given to me to everyone who is among you, stop thinking of self in
terms of arrogance, beyond what you ought to think, but think in terms of
sanity for the purpose of being rational without illusion as God has
assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from doctrine."
vi. Rom 12:6, "...according to the grace given to
us..."
vii. 1 Cor 16:23, "The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with all of you."
viii. 2 Cor 9:8, "And God is able to make all grace
abound toward you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you
may have an abundance for every good deed."
ix. Phil 1:7, "You are partakers of grace with
me."
(5) God's plan for our life is perfect. But since we are
imperfect, we do not have the power or ability to execute a perfect plan
from God. A perfect plan can only be executed by a perfect power.
Therefore, we must have the omnipotence of God combined with the grace
policy of God to fulfill God's plan, will, and purpose.
(a) The omnipotence of God the Father provided in
eternity past our very own portfolio of invisible assets and our very own
palace, the divine dynasphere, so that we can execute His plan.
(b) The omnipotence of God the Son guarantees the
preservation of the universe and the continuation of human history on
planet earth so that the divine plan will be completed.
(c) The omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit is
available inside the divine dynasphere for the purpose of executing the
plan.
(6) Protocol is a rigid, long established code and
procedure, proscribing complete deference to superior rank and authority,
followed by strict adherence to due order and precedence, coupled with
precisely correct procedure.
(a) The protocol plan of God is a system of precisely
correct procedure, which takes time to learn. It is designed for every
Church Age believer.
(b) Romance, marriage, and divorce each have precisely
correct procedure.
(c) God has only one way of doing a thing: the right
way. A right thing done in a right way is the execution of the protocol
plan of God. Wives obeying their husbands is a right thing done in a right
way.
(d) Rank and authority is always delegated by God in
His plan. In marriage He delegates the authority to the husband. Freedom
without authority is anarchy. Authority without freedom is tyranny. Both
states occur in marriage. Anarchy exists when the wife rejects the
authority of her husband.
(7) To fulfill this command the wife must have a strong
impersonal love. This mandate requires enforced and genuine humility,
objectivity and teachability for execution. The wife's active virtue is
humility and authority orientation in marriage.
(a) The active arrogance of both husband and wife
destroys the precisely correct procedure of the protocol plan.
(b) The wife's active virtue is her humility; her
passive virtue is obedience to her husband.
(8) The wife obeys the husband "as to the Lord" -
occupation with Christ, but also because it is part of the protocol plan of
God - "as is protocol in the Lord."
b. Eph 5:22, "Wives, render obedience to your very own husbands,
as unto the Lord."
(1) Ellipsis demands the insertion of the present middle
imperative participle from the verb HUPOTASSO from verse twenty-one,
meaning to render obedience, to obey, or to submit. The progressive
present tense is for an action in a state of persistance. It is also a
tendential present for an action which is contemplated but not actually
taking place. The dynamic middle voice is used to describe the wife as
participating in the results of the action of the verb or acting in
relation to herself. The participle is used as an imperative.
(2) The feminine motivation in marriage is given in the
last phrase of the verse "as unto to Lord." Occupation with Christ is the
most important problem-solving device used by the woman to fulfill this
command. The wife rendering obedience to her husband for the sake of the
Lord Jesus Christ. No marriage can succeed without the use of all of the
problem-solving devices. The wife obeys her husband because Bible doctrine
is her number one priority.
(3) The execution of this mandate requires enforced and
genuine humility, objectivity, and teachability. This also requires a love
response by the woman toward God the Father and toward her husband. The
wife can have no personal love toward her husband unless he has impersonal
love toward others and personal love toward her.
(4) If the wife never has impersonal love toward others,
she will never be able to obey this command.
(5) Warnings for both spouses.
(a) Marriage cannot make you happy. Virtue and the
attainment of +H bring happiness to marriage.
(b) Sex cannot make you happy; only the attainment of
+H.
(c) Prosperity, power, money, health, people, a
friendly church cannot make you happy--only the attainment of +H through
tenacity in learning the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
(6) Marriage is a source of unhappiness because marriage
has been distorted into a series of myths which do not come true, thereby
causing resentment by those who believed the myths. The myths are that:
(a) Marriage is a panacea for life.
(b) Marriage is the ultimate in happiness.
(c) Marriage is a problem-solving device.
c. 1 Pet 3:1-6, "In a similar manner, you wives, keep on
subordinating yourselves [rendering obedience] to your own husbands, so
that if any of them are disobedient to the Word, they may be won over
without a word [nagging] through the behavior of their wives, when they
observe your blameless manner of life associated with their respect. And
your beauty should not come from external appearance only - hair styling,
jewelry, and clothing; but the hidden person of the right lobe [must be
emphasized] with the imperishable [incorruptible] quality of a humble and
quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. For this is the way
the holy women of the past, who put their confidence in God, used to make
themselves beautiful, because they were submissive to their own husbands.
Like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham, and called him her lord, and you have
become her daughters, if you do the good of intrinsic value and do not fear
any intimidation."
(1) Beauty is found first in the woman in her overt
behavior and appearance. Beauty is found secondly in the soul.
(2) A man's respect for a woman is extremely important. A
woman's influence is far greater through respect than through personal
love, because personal love can be outside of the integrity envelop of
impersonal love.
(3) Nagging never advances the wife's cause, but her manner
of life does. It is much easier for her to nag and feel she is succeeding.
Every time she nags, it is self-justification, bitterness, and arrogance on
her part. If the woman does succeed, she has made the man weak and a wimp.
(a) You cannot make an issue out of your husband's
sins, flaws, or failures. This issue must be what God has done for you.
That is the behavior factor.
(b) No woman can be a nag and have inner beauty.
After a while she gives up on trying to change her husband but continues
nagging because she is locked into bitterness and self-justification.
(c) There are two kinds of nags: loud-mouthed, and
soft-spoken (like the incessant dripping of a faucet).
(d) Nagging should be a warning to a woman that she is
in the arrogance complex. The accuracy of the nagging makes no difference;
it is still wrong.
(4) The spiritual issue is inner beauty, not outward
appearance, but you are not to neglect how you look nor assume a slovenly
appearance makes you spiritual. Good grooming plus inner beauty is
irresistible to the husband.
(5) Characteristics of the woman's inner beauty.
(a) Self-consciousness becomes spiritual self-esteem
and occupation with the person of Christ rather than whining and
complaining.
(b) Metabolized doctrine in the right lobe becomes
obedience to the husband from the function of impersonal love as the
integrity envelop for personal love response to her husband.
(c) The woman makes decisions regarding her husband on
the basis of the divine rule for marriage rather than from human viewpoint.
Therefore she obeys him, even though he may be a jerk.
(d) The woman with inner beauty dresses with taste,
but always gives number one priority to application of doctrine and
consistent use of the problem-solving devices.
(6) The woman's inner beauty is designed by God to execute
not only the protocol plan of God but the marriage plan, and fulfill her
responsibility to her husband.
(7) The humble and quiet spirit. The quiet spirit is the
woman whose failures have nothing to do with arrogance. The quiet spirit
is freedom from jealousy, bitterness, implacability, hatred, revenge
function, gossip, slander, nagging, etc.
(8) It takes tremendous virtue-love, impersonal love, and
more grace orientation to fulfill the role of the woman in marriage.
(9) The virtue of inner beauty keeps the woman from holding
back her soul while giving her body to her husband. This is part of the
obedience factor. A woman can have sex and be very antagonistic at the
same time. The man who possesses the woman's body without her soul has a
total of nothing. Rather, he has a serious problem on his hands. Sarah
gave Abraham both her body and her soul in marriage.
(10) The things that form inner beauty are the same things
whereby you handle the problem of loneliness and you learn how to entertain
yourself. A woman who can entertain herself and handle being alone has
inner beauty.
(11) Personal love for God the Father is the wife's
motivation for obedience to her husband. Impersonal love is her function
of obedience to her husband. Occupation with Christ must be the victory of
her obedience to her husband.
d. Respect is more important than love and is also mandated of
the woman.
(1) No woman should ever marry a man she cannot respect.
Respect is far more important than love in marriage. Most women have very
poor judgment about men because they do not have principle on which to base
decisions. No woman should ever marry because of libido, personality,
etc., but because of spiritual self-esteem in the man.
(2) For the wife to obey her husband or to subordinate
himself to her spouse, she must be motivated by three categories of virtue
extrapolated from doctrinal inculcation.
(a) Personal love for God the Father, which is
motivational virtue.
(b) Impersonal love for all mankind, which the
integrity envelope. Personal love or self-esteem outside of the integrity
envelope of impersonal love is a monster as well as arrogance.
(c) Respect for what she sees in spiritual self-esteem
in the man.
(3) When the woman respects what she sees in spiritual
self-esteem and what comes from personal love inside the integrity
envelope, she responds. This is the only way the marriage will be a
success.
(4) The wife's attitude toward her husband is described in
Eph 5:33 as respect. It is only from respect that the woman is motivated
to respond. Respect is the basis for the wife's obedience of her husband.
(5) Where there is respect in the wife, there is leadership
in the husband. The most basic thing in a husband is spiritual self-
esteem. Spiritual self-esteem is the husband's foundation for leadership.
Leadership is ineffective unless there is respect.
(6) If the man does not gain the respect of the woman
through Bible doctrine, virtue, and spiritual self-esteem, the marriage
will never work. Before a woman marries a man, she should determine
whether or not she respects him and answer the question, "Can I accept the
authority of this man?" A woman cannot answer this question and
objectively know whether or not she respects a man until she moves out of
the attraction stage and into the compatibility stage.
(7) The key to the marriage is more often than not the
respect of the woman for the man. The average husband does not have
spiritual self-esteem, therefore, the woman has no respect.
(8) Authority orientation is based on respect; love is
secondary. If the woman says yes to a noble or virtuous man, she will be
able to render obedience from respect parlayed into love. Personal love is
volatile and unstable. But if the woman marries the wrong man, the
marriage will be intolerable slavery.
(9) There is no way an arrogant woman will ever respond to
the authority of her husband, nor respect his virtue. She must have
respect from virtue.
(10) There are three motivations for the wife's submission
to her husband: respect for her husband; occupation with Christ; and
because it is a part of the protocol plan of God.
3. The Third Divine Rule for Marriage: Forgive as Christ Forgave.
a. Introduction.
(1) God designed marriage for the human race. Therefore
God designed the rules to make marriage successful. It is the will of God
that marriage as a divine institution be very successful; especially
between two believers.
(2) Marriages fail because human beings have sin natures,
and human volition succumbs to the pressures and temptations of that old
sin nature. Hence, as we have seen, God has designed three rules for
marriage to make it successful.
(a) Rule number one is the responsibility of the
husband in marriage to love his wife.
(b) Rule number two is the responsibility of the wife
to obey her husband.
(c) Rule number three is the responsibility of both.
(3) Marriage is not a panacea. It is not designed for
happiness. Marriage is designed for virtue, and virtue is designed for
happiness.
(4) People are no better in marriage than they are as
people. A loser in life is a loser in marriage; and a winner in life is a
winner in marriage.
b. Eph 4:31-32, "All bitterness, both anger [emotional sin] and
wrath [mental attitude sin], both clamor [verbal quarreling] and slander
must be removed from you along with all malice. But become kind toward one
another, compassionate, and forgive each other, just as God also by means
of Christ has forgiven us."
(1) Bitterness as a part of the arrogance complex is a
cause of malfunction in marriage. See the Doctrine of Bitterness.
(2) This is an appeal to the volition of a fragmented
believer to use problem-solving devices and grace assets to recover from
the fragmented life of cosmic involvement.
(3) All malice must also be removed from you. In this
verse the expression of malice is evil. Malice is both the desire and the
motivation of the fragmented believer in inflicting misery, suffering, and
injury on someone else.
(4) The beneficiaries of grace should become the greatest
in the exercise of grace. The application of grace to others is
intensified by being a major beneficiary of grace. To benefit from grace
is to practice God's plan of grace.
(5) Capacity for impersonal love for all mankind is
compassion.
(6) Forgiveness of others is a sign of the nobility of the
Christian way of life.
4. Divine Rules on Divorce and Remarriage. See the Doctrine of
Divorce.

H. Successful versus Unsuccessful Marriage.
1. You can have either -H (temporal happiness) or +H (God's perfect
happiness) whether in a single or marital status. Minus H makes you
discontent with your lot. If you are single, you wish you were married;
when you are married, you wish you were single. But if you have +H, it
doesn't make any difference whether you are single or married. With +H and
impersonal love in marriage, you can resolve all marital problems.
2. The four divine institutions are for believer and unbeliever
alike. They are the structure of society, the basis for the perpetuation
of human life, and the basis for order in society by which each person can
fulfill his own destiny while others fulfill theirs. Neither divine
institution #1, volition, nor divine institution #2, marriage, sustained
and carried Adam and the woman in perfect environment.
3. Marriage is one of the two divine institutions which existed
before the fall when mankind was in a state of perfection on the earth.
But the marriage of Adam and the woman was a failure, as noted by their
original sin. As the first couple left the garden, God gave each one a
mandate: "Husband, work! Wife, bear children!" But God didn't tell them,
"Go forth and be happy." Throughout the Scripture, there are no mandates
to be happy in marriage, because marriage is not a state of happiness per
se.
4. A happy marriage is when two happy people enter into a state of
matrimony and in that state retain their happiness. The only happy people
who can do this are those who have perfect happiness or neutral happiness.
5. An unhappy marriage is when two unhappy people get married and
retain their unhappiness. Or it is when a happy person and an unhappy
person get married, and the unhappy person dominates and controls the
marriage so that the happy person loses his happiness.
6. A marriage can be successful when two unhappy people, believers or
unbelievers, get married and through the protocol plan of God or the laws
of divine establishment, attain happiness and live together in a state of
contentment.
7. But with regard to believers, it is impossible for them to have a
happy marriage apart from spiritual growth and execution of the protocol
plan of God. In other words, happiness in marriage is execution of the
protocol plan of God. The actual marriage has nothing to do with it; it is
a spiritual factor.
8. The best potential for a great marriage belongs to believers who
are positive toward doctrine! If the carnal believer tries to have a good
marriage through establishment, his carnality and arrogance cancel out the
establishment principles. Therefore, the believer's only hope is to grow
in grace through the perception of Bible doctrine. So a successful
marriage is possible for any two believers who are both positive toward
Bible doctrine.
9. An unsuccessful Christian marriage is when a happy person and an
unhappy person get married, and the unhappy person causes the happy person
to revert to the cosmic system.
10. A failing Christian marriage is when the happy person married to
an unhappy person changes his priorities in life so that he loses his
premarital happiness.
11. Marriage will not make you happy. If you are involved in the
arrogance of the cosmic system, marriage will intensify and increase your
misery. If you run away from that marriage, you will lose the chance to
resolve that problem. Once you run away from marriage, you run away from
life and are never the same again.

I. The Principle of Celibacy, 1 Cor 7:6-40.
1. 1 Cor 7:6-8, "But this I keep teaching by way of concession, not
by command. Yet I wish that all persons were even as I myself. However,
each person has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in
that. But I say to the unmarried, to the widows, that it is good for them
to remain even as I [celibacy]."
a. Paul does not contend that celibacy or single status is
holier than marriage. This is why Paul uses the phrase "by way of
concession."
b. The phrase "by way of concession" indicates that there are
certain principles for those in single status. This also indicates that
celibacy is definitely not for all believers. "By way of concession"
indicates that there is no mandate in the Word of God that says that all
believers should be single.
c. Neither celibacy or single status is spirituality. But both
circumstances demand spirituality and momentum under the protocol plan of
God.
d. Phil 4:11-12 mandates the principle of being content in
whatever your circumstances.
e. Verse 8 is the status quo principle. There are four
circumstances in which the law of status quo applies to a single person.
(1) The possession of the spiritual gift of celibacy, 1 Cor
7:7.
(2) The operation of the law of supreme sacrifice, 1 Cor
9:5.
(3) The older widows, 1 Tim 5: 9-10.
(4) The eunuch category, Mt 19:10-12. Not everyone can
accept celibacy. But certain people can, such as the examples given in
verse 12.
f. It is God's will that some people remain single. The divine
mandate to remain single carries with it certain blessings that are
exclusive to that status quo. God is fair, and those mandated to remain in
single status have certain blessings and happiness which are not available
to married persons.
(1) Paul is not seeking a wife; and he is not bitter toward
other believers who are married. He does not succumb to peer pressure.
(2) Therefore, Paul was able to devote all his time to
studying and teaching. The single believer has more time, energy, and
opportunity to grow in grace and serve the Lord.
(3) 1 Cor 7:32-35 teaches that marriage is a distraction to
spiritual life; therefore, certain things in life have to be done in a
state of celibacy.
(a) 1 Cor 7:33 teaches that Bible doctrine is
automatically reduced to a secondary status in most marriages.
(b) 1 Cor 7:34 says that the wife and Bible doctrine
inevitably come into conflict.
(c) 1 Cor 7:35 says that no pastor can put a restraint
on anyone in this area of life.
2. It is God's will that some believers execute the protocol plan of
God and both serve and honor the Lord in single status. It is also God's
will that some believers do this in marital status. One is not better than
the other. Marital status is just more complicated in concentrating on the
teaching of the Word of God.
3. To change from single to marital status is a solemn decision, and
should never occur apart from careful deliberation in the status of
spiritual adulthood.
4. Time is limited in marital status for the fulfillment of the
protocol plan of God. Time is consumed by the time it takes to make a
success of marriage, to train and educate children, to provide for the
family. The single person has more time for the perception and application
of doctrine. Therefore, it takes great organization, wisdom, and planning
to manage your time.
5. Summary.
(1) If you are a believer in single status, remain single until
a change is definitely and clearly the will of God for your life.
(2) Do not go out and seek a wife. God always brings the woman
to the man.
(3) Do not panic because of peer pressure. It is much better to
be single than to be married to the wrong person.
(4) Marriage is a state of terrible suffering if you are married
to the wrong person.
(5) It is easier to remain single than to get out of a bad
marriage.
(6) To get out of a bad marriage requires one of three things.
(a) Your spouse dies, and that terminates the marriage.
(b) Your spouse is guilty of desertion or adultery.
(c) Legitimate reasons for divorce where the Bible is
silent, but a life-threatening situation or bodily-injury situation exists.
(7) Take your time about changing your status from single to
married or from married to single.

J. The Problem of Single "Virgins," 1 Cor 7:25-40.
1. Verse 27 teaches the importance of objectivity coupled with virtue
in dealing with the subject of marriage. "Are you shackled to a wife?"
means things are not quite right; there is some form of slavery in
marriage. "Do not seek to be divorced." Don't try to get out of the
marriage. Don't be a child and whine that all your friends are divorcing.
"Are you divorced from a wife? Do not seek a wife."
2. One of the greatest problems people have after they are
legitimately divorced and can remarry is worrying about remarriage. If you
get divorced, one of the worst things you can do is seek remarriage. (It
will probably fall in your lap anyway.) If you can't stand to be alone,
you are a loser.
3. People are no better in marriage than they are as people.
a. Unhappy people have an unhappy marriage. Marriage is not
designed for happiness, but for winners.
b. Because winners have virtue, and marriage is designed for
virtue, winners can have happy marriages. Losers never find happiness
anywhere, especially not in marriage.
c. Remember, losers are not people who fail (everyone fails),
but people who never do anything about their failures.
d. You can do something about being a loser. The solution is
virtue first; i.e., residence, function, and momentum inside the divine
dynasphere.
4. While asceticism is wrong in forbidding marriage, the state of
matrimony is a disaster without virtue from the divine dynasphere, as verse
28 teaches.
a. Marriage is not a state of sin. Marriage is a divine
institution, and is therefore one of the most important factors in the
stability of a society. It is the index as to whether the client nation is
going up or down.
b. "Virgin" at the time of writing meant an unmarried woman.
Verse 28b says "But such ones [who get married] will have trouble in this
life."
c. No matter how wonderful your spouse is, married people have
troubles that single people never have.
d. Loneliness is the easiest problem in the world to solve. The
problems in marriage do not lend themselves to a simple solution.
e. The amalgamation of two people under one roof in marriage is
a divine institution, but it does have its trouble.
f. "And I am trying to spare you" refers to those who think
marriage is a sin, i.e., to the ascetics. Paul is trying to spare you from
the shock of your marital problems in case you enter marriage thinking it
is a panacea.
5. Without the system of God's plan, and without virtue-love in the
divine dynasphere, marriage is nothing but trouble, misery, and
unhappiness.
6. 1 Cor 7:39-40 says that if the husband dies, the wife is free to
remarry, but she will be happier if she remains single.


Part #2 Enjoy! John

DOCTRINE OF MARRIAGE
(Part 2)

K. Principles of the First Marriage, Gen 2:18ff.
1. God's motivation for creating the woman is found in Gen 2:18,
"Then Jehovah Elohim said, `It is not good for the man to be alone; I will
build [construct] a helper corresponding to him [of the same species]."
Therefore, in grace, Jesus Christ manufactured a right woman and brought
her to the man.
2. Gen 2:20-23, "So Adam gave names to all the domesticated animals,
and to the birds of the heavens, and to all the wild animals of the field,
but for Adam there was not found a helper corresponding to him. Therefore,
Jehovah Elohim [Jesus Christ] caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and he
kept on sleeping; then He took one of his ribs, and closed up the place
with flesh. And Jehovah Elohim built [BANAH] the woman out from the rib
which He had taken from man, and caused her to be brought to the man. Then
Adam said, `She is now bone out from my bones, and flesh out from my flesh;
she shall be classified Woman, because she was taken out from Man."
a. The fact that Adam named all the animals means that language
was not gradually developed, but existed in perfect form and grammar from
the beginning of man's life on the earth. Man was created with a complete
vocabulary and language. Man began on the earth with perfect intellect and
perfect expression of that intellect in language.
b. During this time, man had the free will to select a mate from
the animal kingdom, but he rejected them all in the role since man is not
an animal. Mankind is superior to the animal kingdom.
c. The Hebrew word EZER expresses the first tradition regarding
marriage and the role of the woman in life. It means a helper. "A helper
corresponding to him" means a helper of the same species - mankind. Adam
needs a human wife.
d. Note the order of relationship. First, Adam had a
relationship with God, then he had a relationship with the woman. The
first relationship in all of history was marriage.
e. In the first sleep God operated on man and took something
from man in order to create the first woman. The man's body was created
from the dust, but the woman's body was built or formed from Adam's rib.
In this way, the man's body is incomplete apart from his right woman.
f. God caused the woman to be brought to the man. This is the
principle of right woman for the right man. First you develop a
relationship with God; and then under the faith-rest drill as a problem-
solving device you wait for God to bring the right woman to you. The right
man waited for God to provide the right woman. And God did provide. When
Jesus Christ brought her to Adam, He was performing the first marriage in
history.
g. The act of bringing the woman to the man indicates divine
delegation of authority to the husband over the wife.
h. The principle of fulfillment.
(1) The woman is the completion or fulfillment of the man
as illustrated by how she came into the world from the hand of God. With
the exception of celibacy, no man is complete without his right woman.
(2) While the man fulfills the woman, the woman completes
the man. This is the concept of marriage as divine institution number two.
i. Precedence is extremely important in absolute truth, Bible
doctrine, and especially when it comes from God.
j. The first marriage can be classified as the ideal marriage.
(1) In the attraction phase, there was complete fulfillment
and completion in the physical relationship.
(2) In the compatibility phase, there was the fulfillment
and completion of the soul relationship.
(3) In the rapport phase, there was fulfillment and
completion of the spiritual relationship.
k. There were three grace gifts from our Lord. The right woman
is the oldest gift in all of history.
(1) The right woman - He built her.
(2) Salvation - He did it.
(3) Doctrine - He thought it.
l. Adam did not construct the woman; he was helpless to find
such a wonderful blessing. The precedence has not changed: man is still
helpless to find the right woman. Therefore, God, in His matchless grace,
must do the work. This requires waiting on the Lord. This requires the
man to possess spiritual self-esteem. Waiting on the Lord means that
premarital sex is like salvation by works.
m. Principles.
(1) Man is as helpless to find his right woman as he is to
save himself. Therefore, the maximum function of the faith-rest drill is
required.
(2) Marriage was established in the garden of Eden during
the first dispensation.
(3) Marriage became a divine institution when Adam and the
woman were married by God.
(4) Marriage was originally designed for two perfect
people. Marriage has only changed in that there is no longer such as thing
as a perfect person. Marriage is now designed for two imperfect people
with old sin natures having different trends. We do not make friends or
select a wife based on compatibility of old sin natures; for compatibility
of old sin natures means friends today and a falling out tomorrow.
(5) Marriage was not designed, even in the beginning, for
happiness, but for virtue; and virtue is designed for happiness. The idea
that marriage brings happiness is a myth.
(6) Happiness in marriage comes from virtue, and virtue
comes from understanding and using the problem-solving devices of the
protocol plan of God. This means that the greatest attack on the divine
institution of marriage comes from Christian degeneracy.
(7) Negative volition toward Bible doctrine destroys the
right man-right woman relationship in marriage, Jer 15:8-9, 15-21; 12:7-9;
16:1-2; 17:9-11.
(8) Just as Jesus Christ is the Shepherd or Guardian of the
believer's soul, so the husband is the shepherd and guardian of the wife's
soul. 1 Pet 2:25 cf 1 Pet 3:1.
(a) Woman are out of line who complain about their
husbands and want their husbands to change, or who try to improve the
relationship by getting the husband to initiate communication with them.
The woman should initiate communication and entertain the man.
(b) Marriage is an initiation of two people. The
woman is to win over the man by her behavior, not by communication. You
don't work everything out by talking it out. For example, your past sins
should never be mentioned.
3. The true meaning of sex in marriage. (See also the Doctrine of
Sex.)
a. Sex was designed by God to be an expression of love in
marriage. Gen 2:24, "For this cause [because the woman was taken out from
the man in creation] a man shall leave his father and his mother, and he
shall have sex with his wife; and they shall become one flesh."
(1) The phrase "a man shall leave his father and his
mother" is given before parents existed. It does not mean isolation from
parents. It does mean that marriage as a divine institution has a
principle of privacy that causes all other human relationships to become
secondary.
(a) There are two private and intimate relationships
in life: family and parents; and husband and wife. God ordained the human
race to be trained and prepared for life by parents.
(b) God ordained that marriage would be a special
relationship, a system of privacy, a castle in which there would isolation
from all normal functions and activities in life. This castle has
invisible walls which isolate a man and woman in marriage and make their
relationship special and unique. Sex is the invisible walls of the castle.
(2) The Hebrew word DABAQ means to be glued together, to
grow together into one body, to blend, to be intimately united, to have
sex. It refers to the sexual relationship. This means God is the inventor
of sex. Therefore, sex has certain rules and boundary lines.
(3) The divine rule of sex in marriage was ordained by God
in the perfection stage of the first marriage. Sex began when man was
perfect. Sex is not the cause of the fall of man. It preexisted the fall
of man.
(4) There are three stages to the first marriage from which
we derive a great deal of precedence.
(a) The stage of perfection. Sex was involved as
recreation only.
(b) The stage of spiritual death. Sex was involved in
recreation and procreation, and was distorted into adultery, fornication
and other factors.
(i) In the spiritual death stage, sex did not
lose the purpose of being the invisible walls of the castle of marriage
that shuts out the rest of the human race. Sex is designed to establish an
invisible intimacy between a man and a woman in a culture.
(ii) Sex is the principle of intimacy in marriage.
Sex can be an expression of love, but it is never so stated in the Bible.
(iii) Sex provides the walls of the castle that
isolate two people in marriage.
(iv) Sex is the monopoly of marriage.
(c) The stage of regeneration. This added virtue to
sex, making it a fantastic expression of love in marriage.
(5) There are two categories of sex.
(a) Sex in the garden was legitimate sex; and it is
always related to marriage. In marriage, sexual activity is a legitimate
expression of personal love.
(b) Illegitimate sex, which can be premarital or
postmarital. It is always related to Christian immoral degeneracy. This
destroys the invisible castle walls of marriage. God has ordained that
marriage be constructed out of privacy and intimacy between one man and one
woman. And that privacy and intimacy is far different from any other
privacy or intimacy in life.
(i) Mental and overt fornication destroys the
walls of privacy before marriage.
(ii) Mental and overt adultery destroys the walls
of privacy after marriage.
(c) You cannot have intimacy in marriage without
privacy in marriage. Fornication and adultery destroy that privacy, and
therefore, the intimacy.
(6) There are two precedences from the first marriage.
(a) The foundation for marriage is Jesus Christ, who
performed the first marriage in history. The foundation for marriage today
is the thinking of Christ, or Bible doctrine, 1 Cor 2:16.
(b) The invisible walls which isolate the marriage
with intimacy and privacy are the sexual relationship between the man and
woman.
(7) The blessing of intimacy is the sexual relationship
between a husband and a wife. Sex is the castle walls that give two people
the privacy and intimacy they will never have otherwise in any other
relationship. Physically neither the male or female is complete without
the other. God ordained sex for the completion of two bodies, by designing
them to become one.
(8) In marriage you establish your own intimacy and privacy
as an adult; the same privacy by which your parents propagated you.
(9) Sex demands virtue, tenderness, love, understanding,
thoughtfulness, and tolerance. Just as personal love is virtue-dependent,
so marital sex is virtue-dependent for its effectiveness. Sex demands
wisdom, knowledge, communication, self-control on the part of the man;
submissiveness, abandonment, joyful response on the part of the wife. When
the wife is not satisfied, there is inevitable frustration. When sex
becomes a source of frustration, the resultant unhappiness,
incompatibility, and reaction produces a great array of problems in
marriage. One or both partners may seek compensation for their
frustrations in numerous categories of sin and loss of virtue.
(10) Monogamy was ordained by God to remind mankind that
there is only one right man and one right woman. This goes down to the
fact that God creates life for every human being. And God keeps track of
all genetics and all other factors, and there is a right woman for a man,
and a right man for each woman.
(11) God invented sex for privacy and intimacy, not for
love. True love never starts with the body, but with the soul. Sex
between a husband and wife is an expression of the unity of a man and woman
in marriage. It is the quintessence of privacy between two persons. In
sex, you build a house around the person you love called privacy. "One
flesh" is a description of the walls of marriage. Sex is to complete the
other person in marriage. No one else should step inside those walls.
This is dramatized by the two leaving their mothers and fathers.
(12) God ordained sex for the completion of two bodies by
designing them to become one flesh. This is accomplished in sex.
b. The principle of 1 Cor 7:2-4, "But because of fornication,
let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.
Let the husband fulfill his duty to the wife, and likewise also the wife to
her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the
husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over
his own body, but the wife does."
(1) In sex, each has authority over one another; each can
initiate in sex. A woman having authority over another woman's body is
lesbianism.
(a) In sex, authority is canceled out because sex is
intimacy and privacy equally between one man and one woman in marriage.
(b) The woman can be the initiator as much as a man.
Each has something missing. The fact that the man is in authority does not
mean that he initiates everything. Both are initiators.
(c) Both have the right to function in a way that they
think the marriage will be effective. Both have something the other needs.
Both can initiate and respond. However, unrealistic expectation combines
with the old sin nature to destroy this principle.
(2) The Adam's rib principle is that neither male or female
is complete without the other being joined in sex. Where there is virtue,
sex is the expression of love. Where there is no virtue, sex is still the
fulfillment of the marriage.
(3) Marriage is built on the foundation of Bible doctrine,
the thinking of Christ. The solution to marital problems is principle -
the application of Bible doctrine to experience. The secret to success
between a man and woman in marriage is what they think.
(4) The self-directed versus the other directed marriage.
(a) You do not solve your marital problems by changing
your mate, but by changing yourself - the self-directed marriage. This is
the application of doctrine to your marriage.
(b) In other-directed marriages each spouse holds the
other responsible for a happy and entertaining marriage. Other-directed
marriages blames the other person.
(c) In the self-directed marriage, one spouse does not
blame the other, but takes the responsibility for his or her decisions and
actions before the Lord.
(d) In a self-directed marriage, one spouse does not
try to change the other spouse to suit his or her image of the ideal mate.
(e) In a self-directed marriage, each spouse seeks to
change self through postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation, the
application of doctrine to experience, the execution of the protocol plan
of God through the utilization of your very own portfolio of invisible
assets.
(5) Just as Bible doctrine is the foundation for Christian
marriage, so sex is the superstructure, the invisible castle walls.
(6) Marriage preceded family. Therefore, marriage has to
be isolated from parents. There is a sense in which marriage is an
isolation from society under the concept of privacy, intimacy, love,
affection, virtue, and happiness. Marriage problems are not solved by
having a family. On the other hand, being a good mother or father does not
mean destroying a marriage. Marriage is resolved on its own merits.
(7) Sex portrays the beauty of interdependence in marriage,
just as the believer is totally dependent upon God and God's grace. Sex is
not personal or impersonal love, but sex is an expression of love in
marriage where personal love is inside the integrity envelop of impersonal
love. The three stages in premarital romance have an application in
marriage.
(a) In the attraction stage, sex emphasizes
completion, the union of two bodies made into one flesh.
(b) In the compatibility stage, thinking emphasizes
the coalescence of the souls.
(c) In the rapport stage, doctrine guards the marriage
by the development of impersonal love as the integrity envelope for
personal love.
(8) If either the man or woman are full of mental attitude
sins, they cannot physically or mentally give from the ultimate source of
themselves. Therefore, they contribute to destroying the walls of the
castle. Hatred and self-justification result in the I-me syndrome, which
means the walls of the castle of marriage have been destroyed.
(9) Sex illustrates the fact that both spouses have an area
of responsibility and an area of authority in their relationship to each
other. That responsibility includes bringing virtue into marriage.
(10) Principles.
(a) Sex is not a problem-solving device in marriage.
(b) Sex is the ultimate in human intimacy, the
invisible walls of the marriage.
(c) Sex isolates monogamy from society, and makes it
the basic unit of national culture.
(d) Sex is designed for marriage only, and fulfills
two principles: recreation and propagation.
(e) Just as self-determination, property, and life are
expressions of freedom in the nation or culture, so sex is the expression
of freedom in marriage.
(f) Sex is an expression of marital relationship, not
a problem-solving device for marriage. Sex is the point of equality in
marriage.
(11) Marriage is a state of independence from all previous
relationships, like mother and father. You should grow up before you get
married. Sex was designed by God as an expression of unity. Marriage is a
castle that shuts out the outside world without making you asocial or anti-
social. The foundation of the castle is Bible doctrine.
(12) There are three rules of marriage given in the garden.
(a) Do not sin, Gen 2:17.
(b) The perpetuation of the human race, Gen 1:28.
(c) Separation from parents, Gen 2:24.
(13) The Corinthians, as Greeks, did not connect sex with
marriage but with their religion. They were promiscuous; hence, many
believers had serious problems with sex.
(14) While there are many problems and real adjustments to
be made in marriage, the real problem is not money, sex, housekeeping,
etc., but a mental attitude of personal love inside the integrity envelop
of impersonal love. You cannot build a marriage on sex; it must be built
on virtue-love.
(15) The idea that a husband should have his own wife and a
wife her own husband was absolutely foreign to the Greek concept of sex.
Greeks related sex only to the function of their religion--the Phallic
cult--to the gratification of sex and pleasure, and the propagation of the
Greek race.
(16) For the married couple sex is occasional in the time
scale of life, but depends on moment by moment compatibility and rapport
rather than libido. The woman is a responder in marriage. Consequently,
the man cannot subject her to abuse and mistreatment and expect her to
respond to his advances when he is ready to make love.
(17) Even the best sex is still part of the attraction stage
of marriage. While it may facilitate moving into compatibility, sexual
compatibility is not the compatibility stage in marriage. Sex is only an
expression of love in marriage where virtue exists.
(18) There are certain areas where sex is not fulfilled as
God intended it to be in problem marriages.
(a) If sex is lust and gratification on the part of
the man, then there is no thoughtfulness, no expression of love, no
tenderness, no appreciation of equality, no understanding of the purpose
for which God invented sex.
(b) The irresponsible husband gratifies himself, then
leaves the woman.
(c) The problem of tyranny and the demand syndrome on
the part of the man destroys any possibility of fulfilling the divine
purpose of sex in marriage. Sex is a learning process; it is not instant
success.
(d) The problem of martyrdom is created on the part of
the woman who, never having been satisfied, submits only because she is
expected to.
(e) When sex is nothing but pain, frustration and
bitterness for the woman, she learns to despise sex and begins to look
elsewhere.
(f) However, the woman cannot be fulfilled in sex if
she has unrealistic expectation.
4. The perfection stage of marriage.
a. This stage existed in the garden of Eden and carried specific
rules which applied only to the garden stage.
(1) The mandate to avoid the sin of disobedience, Gen 2:17.
(2) The mandate to have sex in the garden, Gen 2:24.
b. Certain rules were not pertinent until after the fall.
(1) The perpetuation of the human race, Gen 1:28.
(2) Separation from parents in marriage, Gen 2:24.
c. The woman did not ovulate in the garden. And no parents
existed until after the fall.
d. Parents were mentioned before they existed because the
husband is the authority in marriage. After the fall that authority was
confirmed in Gen 3:16; Eph 5:22. But God protects the woman from tyranny
by the man's learning respect for womanhood from his mother during his
childhood.
5. The spiritual death stage of marriage.
a. The original sins were committed in the status of a perfect
marriage and perfect environment. Even a perfect marriage did not protect
the first couple from committing sins.
b. In the fall, Adam was the authority over his wife. But they
reversed their masculine and feminine roles in the original sin. The woman
sinned by taking the fruit from the tree. The man did not even go to the
tree; the woman brought the forbidden fruit to him, and Adam responded to
the woman.
c. The issue was the woman's temptation of Adam versus God's
warning.
d. Adam failed in the leadership role in marriage, but his
authority was perpetuated by precedent from the garden.
e. Before the fall, sex was pleasure and recreation. After the
fall, sex was given a new dimension - perpetuation of the human race.
f. The fall was not only the failure of their marriage but the
origin of the sin nature, which constantly attacks marriage.
g. The fall indicated that their marriage was not strong enough
for them to obey God's will. People get so wrapped up in success or
failure of marriage that they forget all about God. When you leave God
out, it is impossible to succeed in marriage. Failure to understand the
principles of the Word of God is leaving God out of marriage. For the
believer not to succeed is a contradiction of the protocol plan of God for
the Church.
h. After the fall the spiritual factor in marriage was missing.
Hence, they relied on human ingenuity to solve their marital problems and
put on fig leaves. They tried to be respectable and right with each other,
rather than right with God. What proved them wrong? They hid from Jesus
Christ when He came to them.
6. The regeneration stage of marriage.
a. This is the stage of marriage that has the best grace
provision. When people believe in Christ, their previous sins are wiped
out.
b. Adam and the woman believed in Jesus Christ. One of the
results was that Adam changed the name of his wife from ISHAH to CHAWAH.
CHAWAH means to breath or to live, a reference to new life or regeneration.
Gen 3:20-21, "Now the man called his wife's name Eve [CHAWAH], because she
was the mother of all living. And Jehovah Elohim made garments of skin for
Adam and his wife, and He clothed them."
(1) Eve became the mother of the human race. This is when
ovulation began. She was created with the womb, but ovulation was dormant
until after the fall.
(2) The skins came from the sacrificing of animals, which
meant the shedding of blood. The coats of skins represent the imputed
righteousness of God which covers the nakedness of our spiritual death.
This indicates their salvation through faith in Christ.
c. Many people think they are perfect in marriage; but even if
they were, perfection is not the solution to problems in marriage. This
delusion is destructive to marriage.
7. There are three classifications of marriage today.
a. The marriage of two unbelievers, in which the laws of divine
establishment apply.
(1) It is possible for marriage between two unbelievers to
be successful. But so much depends on virtue which is extrapolated from
the laws of divine establishment. That such marriages do exist is verified
by Eccl 9:9: "Enjoy life with your right woman whom you have loved all the
days of your life of emptiness [no salvation], which life of vanity has
been given to you under the sun. For this is your portion in life [having
a right woman] and in your work in which you are working under the sun."
(2) There are two sources of blessing for the unbeliever.
(a) Making the right marriage.
(b) Having the right job.
(3) Note that happiness is extrapolated from places where
responsibility is involved.
b. The marriage of one unbeliever and one believer, in which 1
Cor 7:13-15 applies.
c. The marriage of two believers, in which Eph 5:22-33 applies.
This marriage has a better chance of success, if the spiritual factor is
added through the execution of the protocol plan of God and use of the
problem-solving devices.
8. Since the fall, all marriages unite not only the bodies, but the
old sin natures as well. Old sin natures change their trend. This is why
compatibility of old sin natures is not the basis for compatibility in
marriage.
9. Unrealistic expectation combines with the old sin nature to create
the I-me syndrome.
a. Because of the arrogance of the I-me syndrome, communication
has been accepted as a substitute for individual spiritual growth and the
utilization of the three divine laws for a successful Christian marriage.
b. Communication and the expression of emotions are considered
essential to the development of intimacy and success in marriage. This is
a myth. Communication is just as much a system for sowing the seeds of
discontent and disenchantment as the resolving of marital problems.
c. In reality, the problem-solving devices of the protocol plan
can never be replaced by the so-called "talk it out" communication approach
to marriage.
d. Unrealistic expectations create tension and frustration.
Then the couple make matters worse by attempting to negotiate their needs.
Husbands expect their wives to be slaves, while wives expect their husbands
to entertain them.
e. The I-me syndrome prevents marriages from advancing beyond
the attraction stage.
f. The man is so designed in his body that if he is in an
arrogant state, he cannot complete the concept of marriage. He cannot give
physically or mentally from the ultimate source of himself while in a state
of arrogance. And if the wife is full of unrealistic expectation and the
arrogance of self-fragmentation, she cannot give either physically or
mentally of herself. Therefore, she becomes bitter, frustrated, miserable,
full of hatred and self-justification, which leads to the I-me syndrome.
g. Christian husbands and wives must bring into the marriage a
mental and spiritual rapport. And God has given them the edge through sex.
Each lacks something in the body the other has authority over. You fulfill
your duty to your partner by advancing from attraction through
compatibility to rapport.
h. Too many couples are more interested in self-centered
thinking, such as, "What can I get out of marriage?" rather than the
doctrinal viewpoint, "What can I bring to this marriage?" Each partner
must bring something more than sex into the marriage. They must bring
virtue and positive volition toward doctrine, so that there will be
doctrinal conceptualism in their souls.
i. Marriage is a problem-manufacturing device, not a system of
happiness. Marriage was designed for virtue, and virtue is designed for
happiness. The happiness in marriage comes from the virtue in marriage,
not from the marriage itself, and not from sex.
10. The first marriage in history set the following precedents:
a. The unity of one man and one woman in marriage.
b. Separation from your family to establish your own marriage.
c. The sexual relationship as an expression of a monopoly that
belongs to a husband and a wife.
(1) Sex is the invisible wall between you and your parents.
(2) Sex creates an invisible home, a fantastic intimacy and
system of privacy. Sex demands that even among husband and wife there must
be privacy.
(3) In the function of sex in marriage there are two
authorities. The wife has authority over the husband's body, and the
husband has authority over the wife's body. When two authorities coalesce
in sex, there is equal authority, which is no authority. This means sex
does not recognize, during that period, the authority of the husband over
the wife or the submission of the wife to the husband. Where there is no
authority there must be the highest form of virtue.
(4) In sex, virtue makes demands on the husband:
thoughtfulness, tenderness, patience, self-control. Therefore, in sex, the
husband is not exercising his authority, he is exercising his virtue.
(5) The husband must realize that sex in marriage is not
the demand syndrome; he does not use his authority in marriage to force his
wife into something she does not understand or resents. Sex is not putting
your lust or desire into a slot machine. Self-gratification is an arrogant
intrusion upon the purpose and meaning of sex.
(6) On the part of the wife there must be the combination
of abandonment on the one hand and initiation on the other hand.
(7) Sex does not attack the authority of the husband, but
strengthens it where the husband possesses virtue. The sex act in itself
does not emphasize authority, but the fulfillment, unity, intimacy, privacy
of marriage.
(8) God invented sex for recreation and procreation. In
recreation, the sex act gives the husband a vacation from his function in
authority and the wife a vacation from her subordination function in
marriage. Authority is set aside in the sex act. Where authority is not
set aside, there is not intimacy. Where is authority is set aside, there
is the ultimate in intimacy. With this intimacy is created respect for the
privacy of the other person. Sex is the unity in marriage.
(9) In marriage neither male or female body is complete
without the other. Therefore, sex portrays more than any other
relationship in life the interdependence of marriage. Interdependence
means mutually dependent on each other. Interdependence rejects nagging
from the wife and bullying from the husband, the demand syndrome,
unrealistic expectation, self-righteous arrogance, self-justification,
role-model arrogance, and the feet-of-clay syndrome.
(10) Sex portrays the beauty of interdependence in marriage
just as Bible doctrine indicates the believer's dependence on God and God's
grace.
(11) Each spouse must bring into the marriage something more
than sex. God, in His marvelous sense of humor, invented sex so that each
spouse would lack something whereby the other spouse would have control
over his or her body.
(12) Sex in marriage is God's invention: God's grace design
so that for a short time the structure and authority of marriage can take a
brief holiday for recreation and refreshment.
(13) Sex can be for better or for worse in marriage. Better
or constantly improving sex depends upon the husband and the wife and their
advance to compatibility and the rapport stages.
(14) Sex was designed for husband and wife to complete each
other; and in so doing, an invisible wall is established around that
husband and wife, and unity is established behind that wall. This unity
means privacy, intimacy, a personal virtue, in which husband and wife
together execute the three divine mandates of marriage. This unity is
dramatized by leaving father and mother. You go from family privacy and
unity to marital privacy and unity.
(15) Sex was not designed for the gutter, but for the
castle.
11. Why the first marriage failed.
a. They were perfect people in perfect environment with no
relatives, no children, no sin nature, no financial or sexual problems;
Jesus Christ Himself had performed the wedding ceremony; yet the marriage
failed. Gen 3:1-5.
b. Gen 3:1, "Now the serpent was smarter than any creature of
the field which Jehovah Elohim [Jesus Christ] had made. And he said to the
woman, `Is it really true that Elohim has said, `You shall not eat from
every tree of the garden'?'"
(1) The Hebrew word for serpent, NACHASH, means to hiss, to
whisper, to be bright. The serpent appeared bright and beautiful to the
eyes. The serpent's voice sounded like a hiss to the ears when it spoke.
Adam had named the serpent for its beauty.
(2) The serpent was apparently the woman's pet; hence, was
the perfect creature for Satan to indwell in order to tempt the woman.
Demon possession occurs in animals as well as mankind, as illustrated by
the demons who indwelt the swine in Mt 8:28-32.
(3) In 2 Cor 11:3 we discover that Satan's weapon was a
mental attack. "But I am afraid, lest as the serpent who deceived Eve by
his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and
purity of occupation with Christ."
(4) Apparently, the serpent was hostile to Adam for some
reason. Perhaps the hostility was inspired by Satan, or the serpent was
antiauthority. In any case, the serpent became the agent of Satan for
which Satan gained the title of serpent in Rev 12:9. Further details of
Satan's possession are not revealed.
(5) The serpent itself is not speaking, but Satan is
speaking through demon possession. The serpent as an animal could not
speak in the human language of the garden. Satan's first and most
brilliant weapon has always been conversation. And Satan is far smarter
than any creature who has ever existed.
(6) By entering into conversation with the woman, Satan
rejects divine authority and the divine order. It was Adam who had the
authority over the woman and all animals. If Adam, who had the authority,
had fallen first, his fall would have removed the issue of volition as far
as the woman is concerned, because the woman would have simply obeyed her
husband. The woman would follow him in the fall because she is under the
authority of the man. So the genius of Satan picks the right target.
(7) Gen 2:17, "From the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, you shall not eat from it. For the day you eat from it, dying you
will die."
(a) "Dying" is the qal infinitive absolute from the
verb MUTH, a reference to spiritual death. This is what the woman will
omit. She did not believe the wages of sin was actually spiritual death,
but physical death. "You shall die" is the qal imperfect of MUTH. The
second MUTH is a reference to physical death.
(b) The wages of sin is spiritual death. Because we
have an old sin nature we eventually die physically. So the woman will
only discuss physical death, and Satan will encourage her in that (Gen 3:3-
5). She is the source of the first heresy - that the wages of sin is
physical death. That is a denial of the salvation work of our Lord on the
cross. The wages of sin is spiritual death, not physical death.
(8) Satan undermined the authority of Adam by attacking the
woman. Satan had to attack both the divine institution of marriage and the
prohibition in the garden. He understood the principle of authority and
bypassed it to attack the woman through conversation.
(a) 1 Cor 11:3, "But I intend to have you understand
that the head [authority] of every man is Christ, and the man is the head
of the woman,..."
(b) 1 Cor 11:8-9, "For man does not originate from the
woman, but the woman originates from the man; as a matter of fact man was
not created for the sake of the woman, but the woman was created for the
sake of the man."
(c) 1 Cor 11:11, "In any case, neither is the woman
anything apart from the man, nor the man anything apart from the woman,
because of the Lord." "Because of the Lord" refers to the fact that Jesus
Christ established the precedent for marriage at creation.
(d) Satan must do something about this situation God
has created. So he attacks marriage, authority, and the perfect
environment of the garden.
(i) Satan always uses agents to attack authority.
He used the serpent to establish dialogue with the woman; then he used the
woman to undermine and destroy the authority of the man; finally he used
Adam's original sin in an attempt to overthrow God. However, Satan's
victory falls short of his unrealistic expectation. This coup d'etat gave
Satan the temporary rulership of the world, which he will have until the
Second Advent, but no victory over God.
(ii) Jesus Christ, as the last Adam, will defeat
Satan in two advents. In the First Advent, Jesus Christ defeated Satan
through His salvation work on the cross (1 Jn 3:8). In the Second Advent
Jesus Christ defeats Satan by taking over the rulership of the world and
imprisoning Satan for 1000 years (Rev 20:2).
(iii) The woman was the weakest point in the
marriage because she had no authority. Therefore, Satan attacked the first
marriage at its weakest point through dialogue with the woman. Satan's
weapon was his own genius. Violence or intimidation would have alarmed
Adam and the woman and driven them into the protective custody of the Lord.
But Satan used dialogue to lure the woman away from two categories of
authority: the human authority of Adam as her husband, and the divine
authority of Jesus Christ as her God.
(e) In entering into conversation with Satan, the
woman was socially unfaithful, which was the first step toward total
unfaithfulness. Satan often attacks through the people we love most.
Perhaps she was bored with perfect sex and a perfect marriage. If a woman
does not have some interests in life, she will be bored with the best or
worst marriage. Women often become more interested in a stranger than in
their husbands. The stranger stimulates and fascinates her.
(f) Satan is a supergenius, and can outthink any human
being. Human beings are dependent upon God to resist the superior thinking
of Satan. God has provided the thinking of Christ to resist the evil
thoughts of Satan.
(9) Satan used the interrogative particle of surprise APH,
which is correctly translated "Is it really true?" The particle indicates
he was going to tell her something very important. She had lived in
harmonious thinking up to this point in her life, but now she was facing
the reality of antagonism toward her life and her lifestyle with her
husband and the Lord Jesus Christ. This was a word she had never heard
before, and women are always intrigued with something different.
(10) Throughout this dialogue Satan uses the word ELOHIM,
the title for transcendence, but not the word JEHOVAH ELOHIM, the title for
relationship. Satan used the name ELOHIM for God when he said "God has
said." The woman only knows God as JEHOVAH ELOHIM, not as ELOHIM. But
Satan uses only ELOHIM, which indicates that Satan recognizes the Supreme
Being, but he ignores the Savior, the person of Christ. He makes God an
impersonal God. To reject God's statement, "dying, you will die," you must
first reject the source. Therefore, this is an innuendo of insult to Jesus
Christ. Personal God must be changed into just a divine name to exaggerate
the prohibition in hopes of exciting the woman's mind to distrust God,
therefore, to distrust His word (Gen 2:17).
(11) The question, "You shall not eat of every tree of the
garden" implies that since God has forbidden one tree of the garden, this
somehow makes Him unfair. Satan maligns logistical grace, for God has
provided everything man needs for body, soul, and spirit. For his soul,
Adam was provided the woman, and for his spirit, Adam was provided Bible
doctrine.
(12) One tree is forbidden by God to test the volition of
man. This test is the extension of the prehistoric angelic conflict into
human history. Satan distorts this volitional test by the insinuation that
God is somehow unkind. And if God is unkind, then He must be unfair to
prohibit even one tree.
(13) This subtle turn of the conversation prepares the way
for a change of mental attitude in the woman. There was no unrealistic
expectation in her life up to this point. Satan is using dialogue to
change the woman's mental attitude from appreciation of God's grace to
resentment of God's one prohibition, to resent God's authority. If a woman
in marriage gets her mind set on one petty thing, under unrealistic
expectation she will balloon that thing up until it will destroy the
marriage. A woman's mindset can take an insignificant factor and enlarge
it into a disaster.
(14) This is the first women's liberation movement in
history. When women get "liberated," they become miserable and frustrated.
None of us were ever designed to be out from under some system of
authority.
(15) The woman begins to resent the authority of God.
Therefore, there will be resentment of God's delegated authority to the man
in the divine institution of marriage.
(a) God did two things in the garden to protect the
woman and give her great happiness: He gave her doctrine; He gave her
marriage. God performed the marriage before the Fall to protect the man
and woman from the Fall. Marriage was designed to protect two people, not
one person. Privacy protects one person. Marriage was designed as a
protection, not a problem-solving device. It was not a problem-solving
device in the garden because there were no problems in the garden. In
fact, when the problem was introduced, the marriage collapsed.
(b) Resentment and rejection of authority is the
beginning of arrogance; for Satan's fall follows exactly the same pattern.
The mental attitude of resentment of authority will ripen into open
rebellion. The woman's insubordination will place her in the Satanic trap
of arrogance. Soon she will begin to think of herself in terms of being
equal or even superior to God. When people start thinking equality, they
are really thinking superiority, especially when they have been suppressed.
This is exactly the same thinking that Satan had prior to his fall.
c. Gen 3:2, "Then the woman replied to the serpent, `From the
fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;'"
(1) She points out God's grace without realizing its
implications. God has logistically supported the man and woman in the
garden.
(2) The woman was under double authority: under the
authority of Jesus Christ who created her, gave her doctrine, and gave her
the perfect man; and under the authority of her husband designed by God to
be her own right man.
(3) The woman's dialogue with Satan is dissatisfaction with
the perfect environment provided by God's grace. The very fact that the
serpent began to address her in her language should have been a warning
signal. She should have called for Adam at once. It was time for
authority to handle the situation; she did not have the authority to cope.
We must all recognize our own limitations. Perhaps boredom and resentment
of authority made her easy prey and vulnerable to the superior genius of
Satan.
(4) The woman was no fool. She was a genius by creation.
But she may have been a malcontent woman. A rebellious woman has a
predilection for what is false. Therefore, she will distort truth, i.e.,
doctrine and principle, or she will gossip and slander.
(5) The woman's distortion of the situation indicates her
lack of positive volition toward both our Lord's authority and His
doctrinal messages.
d. Gen 3:3, "But from the fruit of the tree which is in the
middle of the garden, ELOHIM has said, `You shall not eat from it or touch
it, lest you die.'"
(1) The woman falls into the trap by following Satan's lead
in the dialogue. Satan used ELOHIM; she also uses ELOHIM instead of
JEHOVAH ELOHIM. This indicates that the woman has already accepted the
authority of Satan, a stranger, while rejecting the authority of both
JEHOVAH ELOHIM, her God, and Adam, her husband. A bored and malcontent
woman finds it easier to be nice to a stranger than to those who truly love
her.
(2) The woman not only used the unfamiliar ELOHIM, but she
added the phrase "you shall not touch it" to the Word of God. God said
"dying, you shall die" when you eat from it. Now she adds "you shall not
touch it."
(a) her misquote means that she has misinterpreted the
prohibition of Gen 2:17. She thought death lay in the property of the
tree, that the tree was somehow poisonous. But the venom was in the
serpent (Satan), and death was the result of negative volition.
(b) She was dissatisfied with the divine prohibition.
(c) She misinterpreted the prohibition because she had
a preconceived concept that eating would cause physical death; she did not
understand that the issue was in the soul and therefore death here was
spiritual.
(d) Interpolation is insertion, alteration, or
corruption of foreign matter into the text. Her interpolation reveals how
misinterpretation as well as rejection of God's authority and God's Word
spawns false doctrine.
(e) In Gen 2:17 God spoke in terms of two deaths:
spiritual and physical. However, the woman quotes only one death. Which
death? By adding the phrase "you shall not touch it," the woman assumes
that death resides in the tree; that if you touch it or taste it, it will
cause physical death. So she emphasizes physical death.
(f) She was wrong. There was no death in the tree
itself. The deaths resided not in the tree, but in the act of
disobedience. Because she emphasized the physical rather than the
spiritual consequence of sin she had to interpolate God's Word and make it
agree with her preconceived ideas.
(g) Spiritual death always precedes physical death:
"dying [spiritual death], you shall die [physical death]."
(h) The woman failed in dialogue because she added to
the Word of God "you shall not touch it," and she subtracted from the Word
of God one of the verbs (the qal infinitive from MUTH). This is one reason
why women have never had the spiritual gift of communication.
(3) The woman has a new mental attitude of human viewpoint.
This false interpretation of the wages of sin still exists today. The
wages of sin is not physical death, but spiritual death. Physical death is
a result of having spiritual death. The order is always the same.
(a) In original sin the wages of sin was first
spiritual death, then physical death.
(b) At the cross, the wages of sin was first spiritual
death (where Jesus Christ bore our sins), and then physical death.
e. Gen 3:4, "Then the serpent said to the woman, `No! Dying,
you will not die!'"
(1) This verse deals with the first theological heresy and
the first cause of problems in marriage. The first heresy in history was
that the wages of sin is physical death. Satan did not make this mistake.
(2) Satan quoted Gen 2:17 accurately, but he added the
negative adverb LO, meaning "not." He is more accurate than the woman
because he is saying "no" to the whole concept, i.e., that there is no
wages for sin. The woman only denied spiritual death. Satan categorically
and absolutely denied the truth of the doctrine that the wages of sin is
spiritual death. This makes is possible for the woman to choose her
authority in teaching: God or Satan. Satan is the father of lies, Jn 8:44.
f. Gen 3:5, "For ELOHIM knows that in the day you eat from it
your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and
evil."
(1) Satan consistently fails to recognize that there can be
a relationship between God and man. He does so by the use of the word
ELOHIM rather than the name of relationship JEHOVAH ELOHIM. By using
ELOHIM he seeks to divorce the woman's thinking from any personal
relationship with God. This will also divorce the woman's thinking from
any personal relationship with her husband.
(2) "For God knows" indicates that Satan is trying to tell
the woman what God knows and what he is afraid of. The qal active
participle of the word JADA indicates that this is not all that Satan said.
Satan attacks the justice and omniscience of God, implying that God is
unfair. Satan not only denies the connection between sin and its penalty,
but he denies the relationship between God's omniscience and God's
integrity.
(3) "Your eyes will be opened" is plural, referring to both
the husband and wife.
(a) Satan is now telling the woman that she knows what
is best for her husband; God and Adam do not know. Satan will help the
woman reject authority in life.
(b) This also indicates that Satan is implying that
she is the only hope; she must save the marriage. He is saying that Adam
needs her help in having his eyes opened; so not only must she eat from the
tree, but make sure that Adam gets some fruit to eat also.
(c) This implies that by disobeying both God and her
husband, the woman can help her husband. The end justifies the means.
(d) Satan implies that it would be a blessing for both
of them to get their eyes opened. He implies that God is holding back some
blessing from them. This gives the woman a crusade - to save her marriage
from boredom.
(4) "You will become like God" is the arrogant motivation
of Satan at the time of his fall, Isa 14:14, "I will make myself like the
Most High God."
(a) Satan implies that the woman is as good as God;
she simply doesn't know it. He implies that they will know what God knows
and better.
(b) Satan plants the seed of dissatisfaction.
Dissatisfaction in a marriage destroys marriages.
(i) Dissatisfaction is the reactor factor of the
second stage of reversionism. Hence, dissatisfaction plays an important
role in destroying marriages. The third stage of Christian degeneracy
destroys marriages.
(ii) Christian degeneracy is the destroyer of
Christian marriages.
(iii) In the dialogue Satan has stimulated her
arrogance, which is the fuel for dissatisfaction. You never find
dissatisfaction without finding some measure of arrogance involved.
(iv) Dissatisfaction demands change. Change not
only destroyed the first marriage in history, but it changed mankind from
perfection to sinfulness, from innocence to spiritual death.
(v) Arrogance motivates dissatisfaction,
stimulates insubordination, and replaces grace orientation with self-
fragmentation.
(vi) One spouse in self-fragmentation disrupts and
often destroys marriage; two spouses in self-fragmentation blow it apart.
(vii) The woman now approaches emotional revolt of
the soul, the forth stage of reversionism.
(5) The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
(a) This tree was not necessary for man to live in the
garden of Eden. In the garden, neither Adam nor his wife needed this
knowledge. (b) This tree was Satan's policy of good and
evil. His policy was based on his original sin of arrogance. In the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, there are two categories of good
involved.
(i) Human good, which is a part of Satan's policy
of evil and the basic policy by which He tries to rule the earth.
(ii) Divine good, which is God's plan for the
believer.
(c) Rom 12:21 gives us the extension of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. "Stop being conquered by evil, but conquer
evil by means of [divine] good."
(d) Sin plus human good equals evil. Human good is
the policy of Satan in trying to rule and control the world. Evil always
says the end justifies the means.
(e) God has countered evil with divine good which is
the protocol plan of God. When mankind tries to do the work of God and
establish His kingdom on earth, it becomes evil under two categories.
(i) Human good, which destroys freedom and self-
determination, because a human being rather than God is determining what is
best for you. And God has delegated that function to government.
(ii) Sin, which means the use of violence, murder
and tyranny to gain the objective. Human good combined with sin produces
evil.
(f) The tree was forbidden to Adam and his wife as a
volitional test in the extension of the angelic conflict. Man was created
with free will and self-determination as a part of his soul, just like the
angels. Satan appealed the prehistoric judgment of the Lake of Fire for
fallen angels, Mt 25:41, and man was created to resolve the issue of the
fairness of the justice of God.
(g) In the garden was the tree of life, Gen 2:9.
Apparently, it was in the middle of the garden near the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil.
(i) The tree of life was for mankind in the
status of perfection, while the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was
for mankind in the status of spiritual death.
(ii) The tree of life was grace blessing, which
was only available in the status of perfection and innocence, Gen 3:22. As
a result of sin, mankind was expelled from the garden and cut off from the
tree of life, Gen 3:24. Why? If mankind, in spiritual death, had eaten
from the tree of life, his free will would no longer be the means of
resolving the angelic conflict. The purpose in the creation of mankind
could not be perpetuated after the Fall. Expelling man from the garden was
the only way to keep his volition intact.
(iii) The first tree (of life) demanded positive
volition; the second tree (good and evil) demanded negative volition.
(6) In tempting the woman, it was Satan's objective to get
her to disobey God, to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
and to win his appeal trial before God.
(a) It was Satan's objective to persuade mankind to
become positive toward the second tree, which would make them spiritually
dead. Perpetuation of spiritual death without a solution would make Satan
the winner in the angelic conflict.
(b) But when mankind ate from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil and became spiritually dead, God cut them off
from the tree of life, and thereby provided a solution to the problem of
spiritual death. The volitional issue was perpetuated by a new tree - the
cross. The tree of life still exists in the form of the cross of Jesus
Christ. The cross is our tree of life. We eat from that tree today by one
act of faith in Christ. Eating from the tree is a picture of non-
meritorious response to Christ, an illustration of faith in Christ.
(c) Satan was successful in his first objective, but
he failed in his second. In winning the first objective - inducing man to
disobey God - Satan demonstrated that marriage is not a problem-solving
device. The perfect marriage did not keep them from sinning.
(d) Mankind had a choice in perfection; and mankind
still has a choice in spiritual death. Satan had not counted on that.
Satan can never defeat the grace of God.
(7) Therefore, marriage needs help from God, and God has
provided that help in the problem-solving devices and the ultimate
solution, the spiritual solution. The spiritual solution includes escrow
blessings for time, invisible impact, blessing by association, and being
part of the pivot. If either or both spouses attain spiritual maturity, it
brings the marriage under maximum blessing from God, and provides something
far better than the perfect environment in the garden.
(8) Man is constantly seeking to improve his environment,
but environment is no protection against evil. In fact, Satan's objective
is to create his own perfect environment in his attempts to take God's
place. But satanic good only turns out evil.
(9) In the first temptation, not only was the woman's
volition involved, but also her marriage. Even with the best of
intentions, the spouses make decisions that destroy their marriage. God
has invented Bible doctrine as the protection against Satan. Principles
solve problems, not application. Bible doctrine insulates the believer
against the satanic policy of human good and sin. Bible doctrine reveals
establishment principles whereby freedom and self-determination can exist
in the cosmic system.
(10) You can have a great marriage even though you live in
the cosmic system. But your chances of having a great marriage depend on
the principles of the Word of God, not the cleverness of counseling.
Counseling suggests conversation and communication as the solution to
marital problems. But conversation and communication are also weapons of
the old sin nature that produce mental attitude sins. Conversation as such
is not a problem-solving device. Communication is only a problem-solving
device in monologue, and only when the monologue is the teaching and
communication of Bible doctrine.
(11) If arrogance will destroy the perfect marriage or any
other human relationship, it will destroy imperfect marriages. If the
perfect marriage failed under arrogance, what will imperfect marriages do
under arrogance?
(12) This appeal to arrogance is the transfer of Satan's
weakness to the soul of the woman. It was a soulish seduction. This was
accomplished through conversation.
(13) By eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil the woman came to know good and evil. She discovers the lie of Satan.
She now understands that the wages of sin really is spiritual death.
g. Gen 3:6, "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was an object of desire to the eyes, and that the tree was
desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave
also to her husband with her, and he ate."
(1) Arrogance has been added to her genius. Once you add
arrogance to genius there is never any satisfaction. She is not satisfied
with the fact that she was a genius, or that Adam was a genius. The tree
was not designed to make her wise, but to change her status from perfection
to spiritual death.
(2) Adam was not with her when she ate. "With her" means
that he was a part of the marriage. Satan used her as an agent. Satan
will use those we love the most to defect us from God's plan.
(3) Marriages are broken up by outside influences, such as
friends and loved ones, who work on the husband or wife until there is
arrogance plus dissatisfaction. Marriages are also destroyed by the inside
influence of the old sin nature.
(4) The woman's vulnerability to conversation with a
stranger (Satan) stems from rejection of both categories of authority over
her: her husband and God. She was both socially and spiritually
unfaithful. Her social unfaithfulness indicates her rejection of her
husband's authority. Her spiritual unfaithfulness indicates her rejection
of the Lord's authority.
(5) The woman was stimulated by Satan's beautiful voice,
which through conversation filled her soul with lust for power, lust for
wisdom, lust to be equal, i.e., superior to God, and to get out from under
the restraint of being prohibited from eating of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil.
(6) The woman was stimulated by the lust of the eyes. Her
lust caused her to concentrate on the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. Lust caused her to concentrate. Any concentration that comes from
lust will inevitably result in sin. She has a new mental attitude and is
going right for that tree.
(a) Divine provision is greater than anything a
creature (Satan) can provide. Divine provision is based on grace.
(b) To become dissatisfied with divine provision means
boredom, lack of capacity for life, negative volition toward doctrine.
(c) Without Bible doctrine, the perfect marriage
collapsed.
(d) Doctrinal conceptualism is the secret to blessing
in marriage because it changes self, not someone else. It also tolerates
the failures of others and appreciates their successes.
(7) The woman was already in the equivalent of degeneracy,
emotional revolt of the soul, and scar tissue of the soul. When she
touched the fruit, she did not fall dead as she thought she would. But she
was still under temptation until she ate the fruit. When she ate, she
became spiritually dead.
(8) Adam had no conversation with Satan, therefore, his
temptation was entirely different. Adam must choose between Jesus Christ
and remaining in the status quo of spiritual life, or his wife and entering
into the status quo of spiritual death. The issue is fellowship with God,
or compatible relationship with his wife. When a man gives into a woman
who is obviously wrong because the Bible says so, it inevitably destroys
the relationship.
(9) It appears that Satan knew he could not persuade Adam
to disobey God and sin. Therefore, Satan attacked through the woman, who
could persuade Adam, because Adam loved her dearly.
(10) The difference in their original sins is given in 1 Tim
2:14, "And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman, being deceived,
fell into the transgression."
(a) The woman was deceived and committed a sin of
ignorance. But the man committed a sin of cognizance and was not deceived.
Therefore, man's sin was far greater.
(b) Spiritual death is first manifest, not by another
sin, but by human good, by legalism.
h. Gen 3:7, "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they
knew that they were naked; consequently, they sewed fig leaves together and
made themselves loin coverings."
(1) After the first sin, the first action of spiritual
death was an act of human good, the function of legalism. "The eyes of
both of them were opened" indicates spiritual death. In the status of
total depravity, God must come to them, they cannot go to God.
(2) They now had knowledge of good and evil. A conscience
becomes part of the soul of the spiritually dead. Perfection has no need
for a conscience in the soul. In perfection and innocence nakedness was
never an issue. In spiritual death and sinfulness, nakedness becomes an
issue.
(3) Nakedness now becomes a social problem demanding a
solution. There were two possible solutions to the problem of nakedness:
regeneration, which for the moment they have rejected; and legalism or
human good, which is the solution they adopt. Even in the best of
marriages, problems exist. But what really compounds problems is wrong
solutions.
(4) The new conscience was suffering from guilt reaction.
A culprit must be found to pacify the conscience; so they try to pass the
guilt on to someone or something else. They blame everything on their
nakedness; later they will blame each other. They decide that if they can
adjust to each other, then they will solve the problem. They have left God
out of the solution. They completely forget about God because they are
spiritually dead.
(5) Only God in grace can solve marital problems. He has
provided solutions through problem-solving devices and principles in His
Word.
(6) In covering their genitals (loins), they are agreeing
not to have sex. This is their solution to the problem of their guilt
complex. They will make up for what they have done wrong by denying each
other sex. By covering up their genitals, they are attempting not to
arouse each other. This is self-righteous arrogance, evil, stupid,
legalism.
(7) The first marriage is temporarily destroyed by the
function of legalism. Legalism destroys more marriages than all other so-
called causes put together. Legalism always blames the other spouse in the
marriage. Legalism is self-righteous in mindset, and self-justification in
function. Each spouse seeks to justify self by covering their genitals
with self-made clothing. Now they are going to be "good," and have no sex.
(8) Nakedness and sex in marriage was not the problem, but
an act of disobedience to God. They answered their guilty conscience by
becoming slaves to a system of penance, designed by them to assuage their
feelings of guilt. They enjoyed sex, and thought they could make up for
their failure by eliminating it. They had been naked for the whole time in
the garden and there was no one else to look at them, so nakedness
obviously was not the issue, but giving up sex. They probably refrained
from sex until they were regenerated.
(9) The guilty conscience motivated them to become "do-
gooders." They decided to give up what they liked doing the most - sex.
Spiritual death plus a guilty conscience motivates the production of human
good. They tried to improve themselves by giving up sex and putting on
clothes.
(10) Spiritual death is anthropocentric. They had the
philosophy of religion that God will accept my good works as the basis for
having a relationship with Him. People do the same thing today when they
say, "If I am right with my fellow man, then I am right with God." This is
salvation by works. Instead of turning to God for help, spiritual death
always thinks in terms of social adjustment, social action, social
improvement, crusader arrogance. The order must be reversed. If we are
right with God we have the potential of being right with people.
(11) When there is the denial of sex in marriage, the
invisible walls of privacy and protection go down and the couple is
vulnerable to any category of sin related to the trend of their old sin
natures. The legalistic approach to sex destroys marriage.
(12) Note that the first death in human history was
spiritual death, not physical death. Compare Eph 2:1; Rom 6:23, "The wages
of sin is death" - spiritual death. Physical death is the result of
spiritual death.
i. The Evidence of Spiritual Death. Gen 3:8, "Then they heard
the sound of Jehovah Elohim walking in the garden in the spiritual time of
the day [time for Bible class]; consequently, both the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim among the trees of the
garden."
(1) There is a spiritual time of the day, a working time of
the day, and a recreational time of the day. This tells us that you must
organize your life. You start with doctrine as your number one priority
and go from there. The spiritual time of the day is your capacity for
pleasure and life, your sense of responsibility and thoughtfulness of
others.
(2) Previously, the trees had been a source of blessing in
the garden. Now they are the place of fear and rejection caused by
spiritual death. Now they are only a place to hide. Without relationship
with God, there is no capacity for enjoyment. Without doctrine in the soul
and, because of spiritual death, the trees are no longer a source of
blessing and happiness. It is not the circumstances in life that cause
happiness, but the status quo of the soul.
(3) God in His grace provided the trees for Adam and his
wife in perfection and innocence. In spiritual death, Adam and his wife
used the leaves of the fig tree to adjust to each other. But that did not
help.
(4) Spiritual death distorts grace. The change is not in
the trees but in the souls of the spiritually dead couple. Hence, the same
garden, but different souls. Capacity to enjoy the trees of the garden
does not exist in spiritual death.
(5) Spiritual death is inability to solve their own
problems, so they hid themselves. In spiritual death they could not even
talk to God. The solution to spiritual death is personal faith in Jesus
Christ resulting in eternal salvation.
j. Gen 3:9, "Then Jehovah Elohim called to the man, and said to
him, `Where are you?'"
(1) He called to the man because the man was responsible,
not the woman.
(2) Jesus Christ broke the silence; that was an act of
grace. Spiritually dead Adam and the woman deserved the silent treatment.
They did not deserve to ever hear from the Lord again; but in grace He came
to them.
(3) The implication of our Lord's question is: "Adam
[addressed to the responsible one], why are you where you are?" The
question was designed to orient them to the status they were in. As God,
Jesus Christ knew exactly where they were. He also knew why they were
where they were. But He asked the question because an investigation must
begin with interrogation to bring out what is in the man's spiritually dead
soul.
(4) The first marriage was in trouble because they
emphasized the wrong thing: their nakedness and fear rather than the real
issue - their sin and spiritual death. Most marriages fail because the
couple emphasizes the wrong thing.
(5) Spiritual growth teaches you what should be emphasized;
for example, taking the responsibility for your own wrong decisions. When
you blame your spouse, you are emphasizing the wrong thing.
k. Gen 3:10, "And he said, `I heard the sound of Your voice in
the garden; consequently, I was afraid because I was naked; therefore I hid
myself.'"
(1) Adam was not hiding because he was ashamed, but because
he was worried about the consequences. Fear is the function of spiritual
death. Spiritual death produces a lifestyle of fear. Fear is a complex of
emotional sins which prevents you from thinking in terms of Bible doctrine.
Fear is a good representation of emotional revolt of the soul. Emotion
cannot solve problems; thinking solves problems.
(a) The more things you surrender to fear, the more
things you fear.
(b) The extent to which you surrender to fear, you
increase the power of fear in your life.
(c) The more things that acquire the power of fear in
your life, the more things you fear. Fear is second only to arrogance as a
destroyer of marriage.
(d) Emotion does not have the power or ability to
think or to reason; emotion as a sin has no doctrine, no common sense. 2
Tim 1:7, "God has not given us a lifestyle of fear, but of power, and of
virtue-love, and of sound judgment." 1 Jn 4:18, "Fear does not exist in
virtue-love; but virtue-love drives out fear. For fear causes [self-]
punishment. The person who is afraid has not been matured by virtue-love."
(2) When confronted by God, Adam could only hide himself.
In spiritual death man is totally helpless to do anything to enter into a
relationship with God.
l. Gen 3:11, "Then He said, `Who told you that you were naked?
Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?"
(1) God knows that Adam has eaten and is in spiritual
death. This question is designed to focus Adam's attention on the act of
disobedience rather than self-righteousness, self-justification, or
nakedness.
(2) Man's sin was disobedience, not guilt, fear, shame, or
nakedness. Nakedness was never an issue in the perfect marriage in the
garden.
(3) The hiphil perfect of the Hebrew verb NAGAD means "who
caused you to understand you were naked; who denounced you because you were
naked?" Satan did, of course. As ruler of the world in self-righteous,
crusader arrogance, Satan demanded that the man and woman get dressed.
Satan ruled that there would be no nakedness in his kingdom. So Satan
tried to improve the environment. Man lost rulership of his wife, and then
lost the rulership of the world.
(4) Satan tempted mankind, then denounces their fall and
status of sin by demanding they clothe themselves. The inconsistency of a
higher form of creation (angels) has infected the lower form of creation
(mankind).
(5) Satan demands two things in his kingdom: if you
violate his laws, you should feel guilty and you should be afraid. Satan
started out with human good rather than freedom. As a result man came
under guilt and fear, which are sins. Satan used evil to seize power and
then demonstrated his arrogant self-righteousness by denouncing the
nakedness that resulted from the original sin.
(6) Satan is trying to make a perfect world without God.
This is the basic concept of communism and socialism. This is what is
wrong with Christian activism.
m. Gen 3:12, "Then Adam said, `The woman You have given to be
with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.'"
(1) Notice the inconsistency of spiritual death. As the
former ruler of the world, Adam was the responsible person in marriage.
But even though responsible, he blames the woman. He also blames God for
giving him the woman. That is inconsistent and irrational. As long as men
blame their wives instead of their own volition, marriages fail.
(2) 1 Tim 2:14 stresses the fact that Adam was not
deceived, but the woman was quite deceived. Operation patsy blames
something or someone else for one's bad decisions, especially in the area
of sin, human good, and evil. Operation patsy is refusal to take the
responsibility for one's decisions, therefore, avoiding the blame.
(3) Adam tries to dodge the issue of his sin by blaming the
woman for tempting him. Spiritual death is inevitably inconsistent.
Spiritual death refuses to take responsibility for its own bad decisions.
(4) In blaming the woman, Adam made a disastrous mistake.
As the ruler of the world and the husband in marriage, Adam was responsible
for his own fall. He cannot be the ruler and charge anyone else for his
own mistakes. Adam blames his wife for the function of his own free will
and self-determination. He is out of sync.
(5) A weak man will inevitably accuse the wife. It is
cowardly, arrogant, and totally immature. As long as husbands fail to take
the responsibility for their own decisions and blame their wives, marriages
fail. Every person in a successful marriage assumes the consequences of
his own decisions. This is grace orientation plus spiritual adulthood.
(6) Both are equally guilty of sin, though the woman's sin
was a sin of ignorance and Adam's sin was a sin of cognizance. This is why
the old sin nature is passed down genetically through the man.
(7) In Christian marriage, the believer-spouse must be
responsible for his/her own bad decisions; otherwise, no Christian marriage
could ever be successful. Without accepting responsibility you can never
grow up spiritually. In taking the responsibility you move instantly to
the rebound technique.
(8) Adam not only blames the woman, but blames God at the
same time: "whom You gave me." Adam recognizes God's grace (God gave her
in grace), but also blames God for giving the woman to him. Again he is
inconsistent. A man can have a great relationship in marriage for a long
time; then as soon as something goes wrong he falls apart, complains,
points the finger at her, and quickly excuses his own sin.
(i) Anyone in a place of authority must be quick to
recognize their mistakes and correct them. This is leadership in
authority. (ii) Even a genius in spiritual death is
stupid.
(9) Adam will not take responsibility for a bad decision.
This tells us that his leadership was faulty. You cannot exercise
authority without leadership or in arrogance. Arrogance is destructive to
everything in its periphery. Adam lost control of the woman when he obeyed
her. In spiritual death, Adam became arrogant and accused everyone else.
(10) God could not and would not give Adam back the
rulership of the world; He will do that for the Last Adam. But He did give
him back the rulership of the woman.
(11) Mankind in spiritual death cannot love God. Therefore,
mankind in spiritual death blames God for his decisions, which is the
quintessence of human blasphemy. The Church Age believer in Christian
degeneracy cannot love God. So the believer blames God for his own bad
decisions. This is the epitome of Christian degeneracy. When anyone
shifts the blame to others or blames God for his own bad decisions, he
pulls the pin of the grenade and enters into self-fragmentation.
n. Gen 3:13, "Then Jehovah Elohim said to the woman, `What is
this you have done?' Then the woman replied, `The serpent deceived me, and
I ate.'"
(1) When properly interrogated and faced with her guilt,
the woman cannot blame either God or Adam, but she does find a patsy - the
serpent.
(2) Neither the woman or the man has the capacity to accept
the responsibility for their own decisions. Spiritual death has made them
totally immature.
(3) Since the serpent was the agent of Satan, he will be
judged. However, Satan himself is not judged, because he had been judged
long before man was created, along with all fallen angels, Matt 25:31.
o. Gen 3:14, "Then Jehovah Elohim said to the serpent, `Because
you have done this, you are cursed more than all domestic animals, and more
than every wild animal of the jungle on your belly you shall go, and you
shall eat dust all the days of your life.'"
(1) Notice that the order of sentencing is reversed from
the order of interrogation.
(2) Jesus Christ communicates with His own creatures and is
the judge.
(3) Since the serpent was the agent of Satan, he must be
judged. Judging the serpent before the promise of salvation to mankind
spotlights the separation between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed.
Note that there is only a reference to the serpent's seed and the woman's
seed. Why not the man's seed? Because Adam's sin was a sin of cognizance
and through him is passed spiritual death and the sin nature. Hence,
mankind is a part of Satan's or serpent's seed.
(4) The serpent as the agent of Satan is the representative
of Satan's policy of sin, human good, and evil. Now all men (the human
race, man's seed), being born spiritually dead, are classified as the seed
of the serpent. "Serpent" is one of the titles for Satan, Rev 12:9.
(5) The difference between the seed of the serpent and the
seed of the woman has been noted in 1 Tim 2:14. Satan was judged prior to
human history; the serpent in history. But both are excluded from
salvation.
(6) The pattern of judgment is: the serpent as Satan's
agent is judged in verse 14; salvation is promised in verse 15; the woman
is judged in verse 16; the man is judged in verses 17-19; and salvation is
then provided for them in verse 21.
(7) The qal passive participle from the Hebrew word ARAR
indicates that the crawling of the serpent is a memorial to what happens to
the servants of Satan. "Constantly being cursed" brings out the linear
aktionsart of the participle.
(8) The serpent was under the authority of Adam, revolted
against that authority, and exalted himself above mankind. Therefore, the
serpent receives the fitting and just punishment of degradation. This
punishment is noted in Lev 11:42, "Whatever crawls on its belly is
detestable."
(9) The degradation of the serpent is described as eating
dust, even as the degradation of man is described in Isa 49:23 and Micah
7:17 as licking the dust. The degradation of the serpent formed a new
category in the animal kingdom - herpetology.
(10) Capital punishment applies to all the animal kingdom
since the entire kingdom is under a curse, Gen 9:5; Ex 21:28-29; Lev 20:15-
16.
(11) The snake has no way of handling his food; therefore,
his food must lie in the dust when he eats. And when he moves, he swallows
dust. Every snake should remind you of the fall of mankind. And just as
the snake who is about to strike is repulsive to you, so is the sin of
mankind to God.
(12) By crawling on the ground the snake is vulnerable to
attack, especially in the head, his most vulnerable part. While the snake
can strike man from the ground, man can kill the snake by crushing his
head.
(13) The serpent was judged before salvation was brought to
mankind.
p. Gen 3:15, "Therefore I will put hostility [antagonism]
between you [Satan] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He
[Jesus Christ] shall crush you [Satan] on the head [bearing sins on the
cross], and you [Satan] shall strike Him [Jesus Christ] on the heel [at the
cross]."
(1) This verse is a break in the judgments. It is the
promise of salvation for mankind. Grace precedes judgment. Salvation by
grace is announced in verse 15 before the judgment of Adam and the woman in
verses 16-19. There is no offer of salvation for Satan, since he was
already judged and sentenced in eternity past.
(2) The Hebrew verb SHUPH means both to crush and to
strike.
(a) The first qal imperfect, meaning crushing, is a
reference to the double defeat of Satan. The first defeat: at the First
Advent when Jesus Christ was judged for the sins of the world. The second
defeat: at the Second Advent. In both the beginning and ending of the
millennium Satan is defeated.
(b) The second use of SHUPH refers to Satan as the
subject, and the second masculine singular suffix refers to Jesus Christ in
His two advents. The crushing of the serpent's head is the declaration of
our Lord's victory over Satan in the two advents.
(3) The woman's "seed" is a prophecy concerning the virgin
birth of Jesus Christ and the entrance of the God-Man into the Dispensation
of the Hypostatic Union; hence, a prophecy about the new tree of life,
which is the cross of Christ. Jesus Christ came into the world through the
seed of the woman.
(4) Why hostility between Satan's seed (Homo Sapiens) and
the Seed of the woman (the first title of Christ emphasizing the angelic
conflict)? God is setting the barriers for hostility in the next phase of
the angelic conflict, which will always exist in the devil's world.
(a) Satan has two seeds: all fallen angels, and
unregenerate mankind who perpetuate their spiritual death till the point of
physical death, Jn 8:44).
(b) The Seed of the woman will redeem the seed of man
(human race). When anyone believes in Christ, he will become the seed of
Christ.
(5) Satan struck our Lord with physical abuse prior to and
on the cross. The striking of the heel is a reference to our Lord's
judgment on the cross for the sins of the world.
(6) Throughout human history the volition of man is always
the key issue. Throughout history the sovereignty of God and the volition
of mankind coexist.
(7) Now that man has become a sinner like Satan, two things
become necessary: first, establish a new test - the cross - for human
volition; second, extend the human race beyond Adam and his wife.
q. Gen 3:16, "To the woman He said, `I will greatly multiply
your pain in pregnancy. In pain you shall bring forth children; Yet your
desire shall be for your husband; therefore, he shall rule over you.'"
(1) The three categories of the curse include: ovulation
and resultant pregnancy; childbirth; and subordination to the husband.
There are two kinds of pain mentioned: in pregnancy and in childbirth.
God has used childbirth punishment as the grace means of turning cursing
into blessing.
(2) The man's authority must always be exercised in virtue-
love. But the authority is not fully operational until one reaches
spiritual self-esteem. It becomes more effective as spiritual growth
increases. God never intended for man to be abusive, evil, or a bully
toward his wife. The man's authority can only be properly exercised under
two conditions: there must be the integrity envelope of impersonal love;
and there must be spiritual self-esteem.
(3) In Gen 3:13 and 1 Tim 2:14 it is clear that the woman
was deceived. Where sin is concerned, ignorance is no excuse. Where
lawlessness is concerned, ignorance or even mental illness is no excuse.
Human volition must take the responsibility for its own decisions. 1 Tim
2:15 says that the woman will be saved through bearing children. The role
of sex is redefined after the fall, forming two categories rather than one
category (recreation) in the garden.
(a) As recreation, sex provides the invisible walls
around the marriage, expressing the unity, privacy, intimacy, and
thoughtfulness in personal love.
(b) As procreation, sex provides the means of
perpetuation of the human race and the establishment of the family as the
basis for rearing and training marriage.
(4) The hiphil infinitive absolute RABAH plus the hiphil
imperfect indicates intensity. "In pregnancy" in the Hebrew is a
hendiadys, the expression of an idea by two nouns or verbs joined by a
conjunction. Part of the woman's judgment is that she began to ovulate,
became pregnant, and gave birth to children.
(6) There are various categories of pain involved after the
fall for the woman. These often cause subjectivity and bad judgment.
(a) Pre, mid, and postmenstrual pain.
(b) Pregnancy and morning sickness.
(c) Pregnancy and potential subjectivity.
(d) Pain in giving birth.
(e) Menopause and potential involuntary melancholia.
(7) The Hebrew word TESHUKAH connotes intense sexual
desire. Her sexual drive will help to establish the invisible wall around
their marriage. And will be ruled by the man. The woman's motivation for
subordination to her husband is related to various areas of life.
(a) Spiritual motivation from life inside the divine
dynasphere and momentum from metabolized doctrine.
(b) A mental attitude motivation from enforced and
genuine humility.
(c) Physical motivation from her sexual desire. It is
absolutely necessary for the man to see to it that the woman is satisfied
sexually in order to establish his authority in marriage. The man that
never satisfies his wife fails to establish his authority. He also
establishes his authority through impersonal and personal love, and by his
virtue in the function of sex.
(8) The qal imperfect of MASHAL means to rule. The husband
is responsible to satisfy his wife sexually. He is responsible to love her
from virtue-love. Therefore, more even than the wife, the husband is
responsible for growing in grace through daily perception of doctrine. In
1 Cor 11:3 the man is also said to rule over the wife.
(9) Every pregnant woman is a reminder of the curse of the
fall and the original sin of our first parents. Pregnancy is a reminder of
the woman's revolt against God and her husband. Every birth is a memorial
to divine justice. Sex gives the woman optimum pleasure, but is also the
source of great discomfort in childbirth. Physical life and spiritual
death at birth is a reminder that every member of the human race must be
born again.
r. Gen 3:17, "Then to Adam He said, `Because you listened to the
voice of your wife, and you have eaten from the tree concerning which I
commanded you, saying, `You shall not eat from it,' cursed is the ground
because of you; in sorrow you shall eat from it all the days of your
life.'"
(1) Adam had a double authority over his wife: as ruler of
the world, and as her husband. Adam was led, when he should have been
leading. He was influenced by her, when he should have been influencing
her. It was the responsibility of the man to be the teacher of the woman
in things related to their relationship. This Adam failed to do. By
subordinating himself to his wife, who had no authority, Adam became
spiritually dead and lost the rulership of the world.
(2) The Lord, as judge, makes the issue clear before he
sentenced Adam. This should be done when training children. You never
punish unless the child understands what they have done wrong. Notice that
Adam's sin is mentioned, but not the woman's. Each are responsible for
their own sin but Adam knew what he was doing. Temptation does not become
sin until volition is involved.
(3) Nature shares in the results of Adam's sin, Rom 8:19-
22. The ground will no longer self-produce food. Man must now work for
food or to earn a living. And this curse will not be removed until the
Second Advent, Isa 35. Adam also lost control of animals because of his
fall. This will also be corrected by our Lord during His millennial rule,
Isa 11:6-9; 65:25.
(4) The precedent of satanic indwelling has now been set by
the serpent, and both man and animals are subject to demon possession.
(5) The Bible does not teach that a woman cannot work to
support the family. The examples are Ruth in the Old Testament and Lydia
in the New Testament. Whether a wife works or not is a personal matter
between a man and a wife. And they should decide without any outside
interference. So both husband and wife may work in the market place. The
more a husband and wife go outside the marriage in deciding things, the
weaker the marriage becomes.
(6) "All the days of your life" means that physical life
will come to an end. This indicates that physical death is the result of
spiritual death. Life begins with spiritual death and ends with physical
death. But the first physical death occurred through murder when Cain slew
Abel. The curse of Cain is also related to the ground, for the ground no
longer gave Cain its strength. In Gen 3:18 the ground brings forth thorns
and thistles rather than freely giving of its production. And in Gen 3:19
we see Adam returning to the ground in death.
s. Gen 3:18, "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
and you shall eat the plants [vegetables] of the field."
(1) The use of thorns in the Bible.
(a) In the fall of man thorns are associated with the
curse of both mankind and nature.
(b) In Jer 12:13 thorns are related to economic
depression and disaster.
(c) Thorns are used to designate the administration of
the fifth cycle of discipline to a client nation in Isa 34:12.
(d) The unconquered Canaanites in the land of Israel
were called thorns to client nation, Num 33:55; Josh 23:13; Jud 2:3.
(e) Thorns are related to negative volition, Prov
22:5;
26:9.
(f) Thorns are described as distraction to positive
volition to doctrine, Matt 13:17, 22.
(g) Our Lord wore a crown of thorns, which signified
the doctrinal principle that He was made a curse for us when He became the
substitute for our sins. Matt 27:29 cf Gal 3:13; 1 Pet 2:24.
(h) Thorns indicate the stages of Christian
degeneracy, Heb 6:8. "Thorns" refers to implosion or self-fragmentation;
"thistles" refers to explosion or polarized fragmentation as the second
stage of Christian degeneracy; "worthless" refers to reversionism as the
final stage of Christian degeneracy; "near to being cursed" refers to the
sin unto death; and "its end is for burning" refers to the burning of human
good and no escrow blessing for eternity.
(i) In the millennial rule of Christ, the ground and
nature is released from the curse of the fall of man, Isa 55:13; Ezek
28:24.
(2) Being in the market place and having to work is very
debilitating and hard on a marriage. There is wear and tear on the person
who has to work, and the other spouse must understand this.
t. The double curse of life and death is mentioned in Gen 3:19,
"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread [the curse of physical work]
till you return to the ground [the curse of physical death], because from
it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
(1) The sweat may be inward or outward: physical or mental
labor. Man must work to survive, earn a living, and control the animal
world. This is the curse of life.
(2) But God has turned cursing into blessing, so that there
is the challenge of doing a good job as unto the Lord.
(3) Just as regeneration turns cursing into blessing
regarding spiritual death, so God's grace turns cursing into blessing with
regard to physical death. For the believer physical death is God's
victory.
u. The first marriage in regeneration. Gen 3:20, "Now Adam
called his wife's name Life, because she was the mother of all living."
(1) After the fall the woman's name is changed to CHAWAH
(life). "Eve" comes from the Septuagint, the Greek word EUA. In the Latin
Vulgate the smooth breathing accent was changed to a rough breathing accent
and we have HEVA. This was finally corrected to EVA, from which we get
EVE. (2) "Life" has a double meaning. It is the
fulfillment of the divine mandate in Gen 1:28 ("be fruitful and multiply")
and Rom 6:23 (eternal life). The woman is the source of biological life.
God is the source of soul life.
(3) While woman is the mother of spiritual death, Adam
called her "Life" as a testimony to her personal faith in Jesus Christ.
v. Gen 3:21, "And Jehovah Elohim made garments of skin for Adam
and his wife, and clothed them."
(1) The sign of their salvation is given as leather
clothing, for the animals had to die to provide the skins for man. The
leather skins replaced the fig leaves. The garments of skin are a picture
of salvation.
(2) The death of the animals depicted the work of our Lord
on the cross.
(3) The hiphil stem of the verb LABASH means God caused
them to be clothed. In the same way God causes us to have salvation.
Everything comes from God.


Where is having females as property or slaves okay? Not in Australia where I live.
Are you talking about the Old Testament? You have a point. Marriage was much more a contract in those days, and it did involve money changing hands. Yet, the money was compensation for the loss of a valued worker, since people worked hard and were valued for it. It also ensured that the woman was treated well, as she could complain (and did) if she was not. Her clan would come to her aid.

It does not mean that women were second class citizens in Old Testament times. They were not. If you read Proverbs 31, you will see how valued a woman was, and how she could have her own business and bring in money for the family and be praised for it.

You also see women like Sarah, Rebecca Rachel and Leah making their opinions felt. Rebecca was asked if she wanted to marry Isaac. She had the choice. Sarah told Abraham to get rid of his concubine. Rachel and Leah caused no end of trouble to their husband with their fighting. These were not weak ladies.

Women could inherit land if there were no sons (Numbers 27:1-8). Moses upheld the rights of the daughters of Zelopehad to inherit, against the grumblings of (probably) other male relatives of theirs who wanted the property.

Divorce was regulated by Moses so that men could not just get rid of women at any whim, but had to provide evidence of infidelity. This empowered women, who could oppose being cast off (which was a dangerous thing at a time when there was no welfare).

As for slaves, Hebrew slavery was different from all the countries around them. It was generally for a fixed time, and involved the paying back of a debt. Once the debt was repaid, the slavery was over. If it wasn't paid back within 7 years, it was cancelled. Sometimes, the master of a household decided to marry a female slave, but this was not without her consent. It usually meant a rise in status for a poor girl to marry a man of means, anyway.

It is easy to look back at things that happened between 4000 years ago and 2000 years ago and criticise them, but the Hebrew laws of marriage and slavery were ahead of their time. Jesus regulated them even more, if you look at his various discussions with people over them.

And it was because of the pressure Christians put upon the Roman government, that slavery was eventually done away with.