September 17, 2010: Perseverance Of The Christian And The Analogy Of Marriage

Continuing the question from last week:

Your analogy of marriage seemed to me to indicate that we should not expect Christ to remain married to us if we are unfaithful to him, and yet aren't we often unfaithful to him when other things become more important to us than God?

No. I would not normally use the word "unfaithful" to describe the kind of lapses I think you are referring to.

If we say that a man has been unfaithful to his wife, we don't mean that he spent too much money on golf clubs, or that he has said something a little insensitive, or that he was watching football when he should have been leading family devotions. We mean something more serious - we mean he has been cheating, he has been sleeping with someone else. Similarly, when we say that a man is a faithful husband, we don't mean that he is perfect - who is? - but just that he is loyal and true.

That is the way the Bible itself (with few exceptions) uses the words that we translate "faithful" or "unfaithful." Faithfulness in the Bible does not imply sinless perfection, but loyalty. Here is a short list of men - all sinners! - whom the Bible calls faithful to God.

Abraham. "You found his heart [Abraham's] faithful to you, and you made a covenant with him to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Jebusites and Girgashites. You have kept your promise because you are righteous." (Nehemiah 9:8)

Moses. "But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house." (Numbers 12:7; see Hebrews 3:2,5)

Samuel. "I will raise up for myself a faithful priest [Samuel], who will do according to what is in my heart and mind." (1 Samuel 2:35)

David. "Solomon answered, 'You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart.'" (1 Kings 3:6)

Hezekiah. "This is what Hezekiah did throughout Judah, doing what was good and right and faithful before the Lord his God." (2 Chronicles 31:20)

So the Bible regularly calls people "faithful" even though they're not perfect.

Unfaithfulness in Scripture is usually a matter of having a "sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." (Hebrews 3:12). The writer of Hebrews assigns such unfaithfulness not to godly-but-imperfect men like Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David and Hezekiah, but to Israelite rebels and idolators who defied God. In the verses just before Hebrews 3:12 the writer says (quoting God), "That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.' So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'" Just as bad Israelites did not enter God's rest, so people with "sinful unbelieving hearts" (elsewhere these people are called "the wicked") will not enter God's kingdom. The Bible affirms this many times. I believe that these are the people to whom it would be best to apply the word "unfaithful". Below are four descriptions of them and their destiny:

1 Corinthians 6:9-10: Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21: The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Ephesians 5:5-6: For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient.

Revelation 21:8: But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.

The person who wrote to me asking "aren't we often unfaithful to [God]?" is certainly not a greedy lying adulterous drunk, so she has nothing to fear from these passages. But truly rebellious sinners should read them and fear. As the Psalmist says to God, "Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you."(Psalm 73:27).

Now, would Christ "divorce" someone who is unfaithful to him in the sense outlined above?

Interestingly enough, divorce is in fact one of the symbols God uses to illustrate what he does to unfaithful people. See Jeremiah 3:8: "I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries." See also Isaiah 50:1: "This is what the Lord says: 'Where is your mother's certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Or to which of my creditors did I sell you? Because of your sins you were sold; because of your transgressions your mother was sent away.'"

I think that "divorce" is actually an appropriate, stunning, robust, and most important, biblical image to keep in mind concerning what the Lord does to those who are unfaithful to him. Persevering saints, of course, don't have to worry about that. 2 Timothy 2:12 says "If we endure, we will also reign with him" - not "be divorced by him." And Colossians 1:22-23 says, "But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation — if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel." As I like to say, the "if" in those verses must be permitted to stand as written and not twisted by bad theology into "whether or not". We must endure. We must continue in our faith. We must be faithful. Faithfulness is not an option, but a biblical condition for blessedness in the presence of God. Someday Jesus will say to those who persevered, "Well done, good and faithful servant." (Matthew 25:21).

A final thought:

If a man proves unfaithful and God "divorces" him, does that mean that God himself has been unfaithful?

NO! No no no! A thousand times no! The Bible emphasizes that our sin never causes God to sin. For example, if we lie, even if every man on earth is a liar, God is still true. See Romans 3:4: "Let God be true, and every man a liar." If we are unjust toward God, he is never unjust toward us. And regarding faithfulness, "If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself" (2 Timothy 2:13). That is, even if we are sneaky and underhanded and treat God like dirt, he cannot do the same to us. It is not in his nature. (Some interpret 2 Timothy 2:13 instead to mean that God will save apostates - but that interpretation is flatly contradicted by the verse before it: "If we disown him, he will also disown us." Apostates get disowned.)

Here is one way to look at it. Imagine a married man who sleeps around but defends himself by saying: "She cheated on me first! I'm only doing to her what she did to me!" I think we can say that though he is not as bad as a man who cheats on a faithful wife, he's still an adulterer. He is doing something that God would never do: letting another's unfaithfulness goad him into unfaithfulness.

Now imagine another man who has slept with only one woman in his entire life - his wife. (Let's go further and say that he has never kissed or held hands with anyone else either.) But his wife withdraws from him, treats him contemptuously, secretly joins a lesbian group and begins a series of relationships with other women. She leaves him and files for divorce against his will. Despite her behavior he remains faithful to her, refuses to cheat on her, tells her that she can stop the divorce proceedings, return to him, and he will surely take her back.

If she insists on renouncing him even then, the divorce will go through and the relationship will be broken irretrievably. But she has been the unfaithful one, not he. If we are ever similarly "divorced" from God, it will be all our doing, not his. We will not be sent away because of the sins that grieve us and for which we seek pardon, but for the kind of willful rebellion that wants nothing to do with God.