Honor & Love

Ephesians 5: 1-33

The Reformer's Fire
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Exposition by Max A Forsythe

Question 70:
Which is the seventh commandment?
Answer 70:
The seventh commandment is, Thou shalt not commit adultery.

 

Once in a discussion of adultery, a member of a Masonic lodge allowed that adultery was permissible if it were not with another member's daughter or wife. Any female outside of the protection of that body however, was considered fair game! That local drinking club where he belonged was reportedly into blue movies a generation before such things became more widely available on tape and by internet. I have always been amazed at the absolute gall by which many society people judge judge morality. After all, it was the nobility and royals in England whose behavior entertained the masses for centuries on end with romantic tales of infidelity, cohabitation and demeaning scandal! So much for letting mere elite humans develop a system of ethics by which to model society.

We have only to consider the x rated reports of the once staid news magazines to understand how even contemporary leaders distort the truth of God's revelation in this regard! President James Earl Carter, at least had the proper understanding of this commandment when he explained our Lord's teaching that even the thoughts and imagination could lead one astray at this point!

We must all appreciate that hardly a person can live faithfully in the presence of the pictorial media which glorifies this sin that tempts so many into mental and wishful failure. One of my grand uncles advised me that he was glad that he wasn't a youth in the sixties. The temptations were so much more obvious than in his youth when the sight of an ankle at a stairway was enough to make the young men talk for a week or more. Of course high society had a different view of Empire waists in Napoleon's time and gazes down Pennsylvania Avenue in the gay nineties were popular with the Diamond Jim Brady's long before Silicon Valley became so respectable in our day!

The common crowd was able to live a more temperate existence, protected by a high moral tone for most of the last century and a decade of two even of this one! After a false start of modernity in the twenties, decorum prevailed through much of the thirties, forties and into the fifties. All the stops came out in the sixties and continued to unplug in the seventies. What defense may we have in our decadent era? May I suggest that we take the Lord's view on this to ascertain the element of Holiness and Honor expected.

In the military there hangs on a certain element of honor amongst soldiers who must live and die under authority. As I understood the regulations explained to me about secret clearances, I was admonished that every once in a while I might accidentally gain access to information that I had no clearance for. As a Chaplain's Assistant and temporary mail clerk I was classified for Confidential and Secret materials, because some addresses were even security issues. Once in Europe the mail clerk handed me some mail to pass across the hallway to our "top secret" communications center which everyone knew about. The breach of security went all the way up to the Company First Sergeant and Battalion Sergeant-Major who looked over the records to see that I had the proper clearance to have handled that mail. The mail clerk said that he was glad of the good luck that came his way, because he was just saving himself a short walk! Had I not had the clearance, I would have been ethically required to refrain from handling or reading anything stamped beyond my clearance, then immediately take the papers to someone with the proper clearance and turn myself in with them for examination.

In terms of our more intimate discussion today, it means that we are supposed to turn our eyes and ignore the blatant depredations of the Media. But, be careful, you might be driving behind a bus with a risque advertisement! However, the honor of our God's majesty requires a more spiritual restraint. We have to learn to grow beyond the merely visual temptations and this is indeed extremely difficult without the grace of the Spirit who can help us make our way publicly. We have to lift our vision in this commandment to understand what the Old Covenant says about our Lord's relationship to His own people. That relationship is commonly compared to a marriage.

And God is indeed a jealous God, who judged Israel for going awhoring after other gods and goddesses. Whenever Israel went after other gods the honor and love of the Lord were being violated. Thus in the sense we are pursuing here, we are to model our marriages upon the higher relationship between Christ and His bride - the Church! The New Covenant goes further than the Old by declaring that our body is not for prostitution with other gods or in sensual temples.

I made the mistake once of typing in the word Temple in a web search. Of the hundred that appeared on the screen, I don't think there was one fit for spiritual enlightenment. Too many people regard the body as an amusement park instead of a temple fit for the Holy Spirit of our God in Christ! 1 Corinthians 6: 12-15 explains this sense in these words of Paul: "

Everything is permissible for me "- but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me "- but I will not be mastered by anything. "Food for the stomach and the stomach for food" but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!

Do you want to be free from the worldly temptations described in this commandment, then put on the Lord Jesus Christ and in doing so pray carefully and continually for the grace of the Spirit to hold you back from being the worst that you really wanta be!

Now I do not want to harp on this issue in exclusion to the others, since everyone has a different weak point, and as Paul explains in our passage from 1 Corinthians, some are free to peruse R rated films since there is no personal temptation that they perceive. Some are free to partake of alcoholic beverages, where others are by genetic ordering unable. This is the permissible option that Paul notes. I might add from personal experience in previewing films for my sons over the years, that R rated films are usually less objectionable than PG or PG-13. Selecting suitable films with only a minimal 30 seconds to five minutes of objectionable material to gain the coveted rating is a great chore for parents indeed. How tragic that Hollywood producers and directors will not allow that minimal filth to be removed so that a greater majority of the best films would qualify for a more sedate G rating! In public education the teachers are generally not allowed to edit any films used for instruction because that would be censorship. However, if a television station wants to do it to fit a time frame so that more commercials can be shown, that is okay!

I remember in the sixties, when I reported to boot camp at Fort Knox. The Drill Sergeant announced that the Army would not tolerate any queering going on. The young man from Detroit next to me asked what he meant. I answered back that I hadn't the slightest idea! Oh how I wish our society were as innocent as then. It would be a pleasure for our young people to grow up on Grimm's Fairy tales where the stories encourage children that some elements of life will have a deeper meaning when they are grown up. And that is all the Grimm brothers would do that parents would be responsible for teaching!

May we within Christ's Covenant community make some minimal attempts to preserve the innocence of youth. And may all who truly belong to Christ show no hint of interest where the human heart and mind can so easily lead and entangle in gross situations usually reserved for discussion in hell. The honor of the Lord and our love for Him requires it. Amen.

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