What's up with all the aliens?

I don't know if you've noticed the trend of new planets, that are almost certainly inhabitable, popping up in the news every few weeks. With much ado they proclaim that "we finally got one", followed by a much less publicized rebuttal a couple of weeks later when they discover that it is either too hot or too cold or doesn't have an atmosphere or is made up entirely of peanut butter or whatever.

Now to be generous I'll assume that the premature announcements of unconfirmed results are more due to the fear of someone else publishing it first, or grant money about to dry up, rather than dishonestly trying to promote certain worldview agendas. It's an issue I take with scientists in every field, not just this one.

But either way, It has struck me that the pattern seems to be exactly the same as that of the elusive "missing link" (that's still missing last thing I heard). But it took me a while to connect the dots. Because as christians, we don't really have much of a horse in the space race. However, evolutionists do.

To me, it hasn't been such a big deal whenever a telescope sees a sign of water on a celestial body. I'd be surprised to see them bring home a rock that contains primitive life like bacteria or amoeba, but it wouldn't really rock the foundations of my faith at all. Even if they should find a way to bypass the laws of physics and travel to a remote planet and discover a highly advanced civilization of space squirrels, It really wouldn't bother me theologically. The Bible doesn't say it's there, but nor can I see any reason it wouldn't be.

After all, there are beautiful flowers hidden in remote rain forests that will never be enjoyed by human eyes. There are gemstones and crystals hidden in the deep of the earth, which exist only to glorify the creative genius of God, without anyone else knowing of them. What he may have hidden away for himself in different worlds is a subject I'll want to explore in eternity when I have the time and occasion for it, but as of now whatever it may be won't affect me other than move to appreciate his creation more.

But while the issue is not too urgent for us, it is very much so for evolutionists. Since their theory is founded on the presumption that life will be brought into existence spontaneously from non-life and from there develop into more advanced life forms it is an embarrassment that not every planet is inhabited with at least some form of life. It does seem very conspicuous, doesn't it, that with so many billions upon billions of worlds ours is the only one where life has appeared.

Of course there are excuses. To hot, too cold, no water, toxic chemicals, and so on, but still they keep finding life here on earth in the most unlikely and hostile environments. Even places more hostile than other planets.

So it's easy to see why every uninhabited planet, just like every missing link, is a constant embarrassment to evolutionists. Because it's a constant reminder that the theory in which they have put their faith doesn't hold up to the evidence. And it's worth a few billion dollars of research grants to get that quieted, isn't it?

Nope, you still can't divorce (1Cor 7:15-16)

Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? (1Cor 7:15-16)

This is a very controversial piece of text, since many are very eager to read into it something that isn't there. But let's start with the easy part. What everyone can agree on is that if the unbelieving spouse leaves, then let them leave. You don’t have to club them over the head and drag them to a dungeon in your basement so you can keep them around. When you have done everything you can to win them over, and at the end of it all they still decide to leave, then there’s nothing you can do about it.

The part that gets controversial is the question of what it means that the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases. Most theologians say that it means they are free to divorce their unsaved spouse and marry someone else. The text doesn’t specifically say that though. It just says they are not under bondage. That could very well mean under bondage to live together as husband and wife. After all that was the command the whole chapter started with. That is the basic doctrine that Paul is expanding on in this context.

And from looking at the Greek text a very strong case could be made for saying that the bondage referred to is not the marriage bond that God has bound them together with. First of all the word used here, dedoulotai - a form of douloo, is not the same as the Bible uses elsewhere when it talks about the marriage bond. Actually the word used means slavery, which is why some translations instead say that the brother or sister is not enslaved. I’m sure you’ll all agree with me that being bound to a spouse is not the same thing as being enslaved, even if they are an unbeliever.

In addition the phrase “not under bondage” is written in the perfect passive indicative tense. And we all know what that means, don’t we?

*chirp, chirp*

Well if we don’t we can do like I did and read about it on the Internet. It means that it is a present condition arising out of a past action. Which means that the believing spouse neither is, nor has been enslaved in such cases.

That means that if you are going to say that not enslaved meas free to remarry, you are saying that the spouse is not bound to the marriage, and never has been bound to the marriage. Even before the unsaved spouse leaves. But that would totally contradict verse 12-13, which say a marriage to an unbeliever is still valid. And that means we have to discard that interpretation.

So that that all this verse says is that a believer is not enslaved to an unsaved spouse who leaves them. They are free to not live together as husband and wife. Nothing more, nothing less.

Verse 16 confirms this interpretation. “For how do you know whether you can save your spouse?” What interpretation of the previous verse makes sense in combination with this one? Try it! If they leave, you are free to remarry, because you don’t know that staying single is going to save your spouse? That doesn’t fit together. This does: If they leave, you are free to let them go. But am I not responsible for staying with them and bringing them to Christ? No. How do you know whether they ever will be saved, and whether you’ll be the instrument to bring them there?

Making sense of 1 Cor 7:14

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. (1Cor 7:14)

Now what do we have here? This is one of those verses that has always left readers scratching their heads. The lack of context has led to some strange interpretations, such as the idea that someone could achieve salvation simply by being married to a believer, or have a believing parent.

Others have used this to argue that there is clearly a transaction of holiness from parents to children, so therefore we should baptize infants.

But let’s take a closer look at the verse, and see if we can’t make better sense of it after all.

The verse starts with the word “for”, which binds it to the previous verse. You should not break off a marriage with an unbelieving spouse, for the unbelieving spouse is sanctified through the believing one. If that wasn’t so your children would be unclean.

I want you to notice that Paul doesn’t say “their children.” He says “your children.” That’s interesting. He is speaking in third person about those who are in mixed marriages, but then he switches to second person. So the children who would be unclean is not the children of an unbelieving spouse. It is the children of everyone in the Corinthian church.

Now that probably only made matters worse when it comes to understanding this verse. So let me explain how I read this verse.

I believe Paul is making a parallel between the relationship between a husband and wife, and the relationship between parents and children. He is saying that if those who are in mixed marriages can’t live with their spouse because they haven’t come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, then you couldn’t live with your children either. Not until they had been saved.

He is agreeing that there is a problem with being married to an unbeliever. The holy and the unclean under the same roof. What is set apart for God being mixed with what is unclean. But the issue isn’t limited to those mixed marriages. It is an issue that exists in every Christian home where there are children who haven’t come to know God.

But in God’s eyes that does not make the christian unclean, but rather it makes the non-christian set apart in a certain sense because of the christian.

Do not divorce! (1Cor 7:10-13)

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife. (1Cor 7:10-13)

But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away.

Now we move on to the instructions to those who are already married. First to those where both spouses are children of God, and then to those where one spouse is not saved.

So to those who are married, he doesn’t say anything on his own, but reminds them of the words of the Lord Jesus when he dealt with the same question. “What God has put together, let no man separate.” And “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery”

I want you to look a little at the language used here though. It says the wife must not leave, or separate from, her husband. And then, remarkably it says “but if she does...” We’ll get back to that part later.

Then it says a husband must not divorce, or send away, his wife. There’s no “but if he does” in this case.

I don’t think the point here is to distinguish between men and women. I don’t see any hints of that elsewhere in the Bible. “Do not divorce” seems universal. Rather I think what Paul is doing is including both men and women, and distinguishing between divorce and separation.

So his command is the same as the Lords command: Do not divorce! And then he adds, do not separate either! But if you do, don’t further violate your marriage covenant, and seek to be reconciled to each other again.

Be careful so that you don’t interpret “but if you do” as a permission to break the command. “Do not separate” is still valid even if it is followed by “but if you do”. And the “but if you do” basically tells you to undo what has been done in the breaking of the commandment. It is a gracious provision to get you back on the track that you left, but you’d still be better off never leaving that track in the first place.

Then he goes on to address those who are married to someone who isn’t saved. When he says that these instructions are from himself and not from the Lord, he is not saying that this particular portion of scripture is not the word of God. That it’s just something that he made up on his own without any divine inspiration. What he’s saying is that Jesus didn’t specifically talk about the issue of mixed marriages during his ministry on earth..

This really is another case of “but if you do”, because as Christians we are commanded not to be bound together with unbelievers.

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? (2Cor 6:14-15)

And in verse 39 in this chapter when we get to the instructions for widows, Paul says they can marry whomever they want to, but with one stipulation. They must be “in the Lord”. They have to be believers.

So this provision seems to have been made primarily for those who were already married before they were saved, and therefore had an unbelieving spouse, although there might have been some who had foolishly let themselves be bound together with an unbeliever after they had been saved as well.

This teaches us something about the nature of marriage. These are people who were married before they knew God, in a pagan temple, according to pagan customs. Their covenant was not established before God. But still he holds them to it. He considers their marriage to be valid, and expects them to honor it. In God’s eyes they are married even though it wasn’t a Christian marriage. I’m just pointing that out because you may find it useful when counseling people who come to Jesus with a complicated past when it comes to marriage.

Check back on Monday to see if there's an exception to this rule if you're married to someone who isn't saved (hint: There isn't)

God's word to the single (1Cor 7:8-9)

But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. (1Cor 7:8-9)

Having laid out some principles about marriage and singleness, Paul now moves on to give more concrete advice, first to the unmarried and then to the married. We'll deal with the unmarried today, and move on to those who are married on Wednesday, Lord willing.

To the unmarried and to widows he says it is good for them to remain single. We talked a little about why last time, and we’ll talk more about it later. If you are single you don’t have to worry about all the things that married people worry about. You have fewer responsibilities, and more time to devote to serving God.

If I may be so bold, I want to point out one thing that Paul doesn’t touch on here, and that is that while some are called to be single and some are called to be married, all of us are called to be single in seasons of our lives. Even if you know you are ultimately called to marriage, you still have to be single until you get married. And since it is the exception that spouses die at the same time, there’s a good chance that you will go through another unmarried season as a widow or widower.

So if you are called to marriage, you are still called to seasons of singleness as well. And if you are in one of those seasons, in spite of your gifting and calling, God has a plan and purpose for that. A lot of us, myself included, wasted many of the extra opportunities that season brought by focusing too much on making it end.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the single season to end, because along with unique opportunities it brings unique temptations. It is better to marry than to burn with passion. Marriage is a high calling, bu it is not your primary calling. Your primary purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Marriage is one way to do that. While you’re waiting to get there, you can still glorify God and enjoy him in other ways. If you can’t glorify God as a single person, you can’t glorify him as a married person. If marriage is the primary purpose of your existence, then God isn’t It’s as simple as that.

Marriage or singleness - What's best? (1 Cor 7:6-7)

But this I say by way of concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. (1 Cor 7:6-7)

A concession means that an exception is made to the general rule. An accommodation made necessary by extraordinary circumstances. The rule that the exception is made to is the one we see in verse 2: Each man is to have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

Of course when a single man like Paul says that every man should have his own wife, it’s natural to ask why he doesn’t have one himself. If singleness is not spiritually superior to marriage, then why doesn’t he, as their spiritual father, take a wife.

Paul deals with this question with tremendous wisdom. He says he wishes everybody was like him; single and satisfied living his life in celibacy. But he also recognises that that his ability to be satisfied without a wife is a special gift from the Lord that not everybody has. From his vantage point he sees many advantages to being single. In stead of focusing on a wife and children he is able to devote his life totally and completely to Christ in ways that no married man can do. He is able to travel the world, to dangerous places where Christians are persecuted for Christ’s sake. All his time and energy can be put into proclaiming the Gospel.

It is important for us not to miss the last sentence in verse 7, though. Each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that. Like the Corinthians we’re inclined to ask the question “What is best?” The answer is that what is best depends on your calling and gifting.

If you are going to travel like Paul to preach the gospel in places where it’s likely that you and your family will face severe persecution, and in addition God has gifted you in a way that allows you to be satisfied as a single man without facing any great temptations because of it, then it is probably best for you to remain single, in the same way that it was best for Paul to be single.

However, if God has called you to be a husband and a father, or a wife and mother, then it’s probably best for you to marry.

As we go through the rest of this chapter over the next weeks, that will be a reoccurring theme. How you apply this chapter to your life depends on your particular calling and gifting. We don’t get absolute answers. Just the right questions to ask, so that we can find the right answer for ourselves in our unique situations.

Don't quote this verse to your wife (1 Cor 7:3-5)

The husband must fulfill his duty to his 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. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control (1 Cor 7:3-5)

Paul goes on to warn married Corinthians, that there is no spiritual gain in abstaining from sex with your spouse. To the contrary, you owe it to each other, and depriving each other will put both of you in serious spiritual danger. If you do, you’ll be tempted to fulfill your God-given desires for marital intimacy in less God-honoring ways.

So false gnostic ideas of spirituality is what is in view here. That is what the verse talks about, and that’s the context in which we are to use it. But there is another use that is very tempting to some, and I want to take a couple of minutes to warn you against that use in hopes to bless your marriages and point out the importance of always practising good hermeneutics.

If you are blessed to be married, you’ve probably noticed that you are two separate people, and as such you are almost certainly different. And one of the differences that most often cause conflicts in marriages are the different levels of physical desires and needs.

I’ll direct this advice to the husbands, although some times it’s reversed. This is my challenge to you, men: If this is an area of conflict in your marriage, then make a commitment today to never quote this verse to your wife. You may win the argument with it, but you’ll lose your wife’s heart. In stead be a man and sacrifice for her. You be the one who yields to her! You find out what her needs are and meet them. Study your wife. Love her like Christ loves the church. Make her want you by loving her sacrificially. Not by legalistic duty.

Now notice that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this Bible verse. What I’m telling you is that this verse is not for this use. The issue Paul is addressing is the idea that abstaining from sex in marriage makes you more spiritual. If that is the issue in your marriage, feel free to make an exception to my rule, and quote this verse to your wife every day. In that case this truth would liberate her to fully enjoy all of God’s gifts in marriage.

But most likely that is not your issue. That is not an idea that is very prevalent in our culture at all. So all you would achieve by quoting this verse is using guilt to pressure your wife to do something she for some reason is reluctant to do. There are two great dangers here. First you put her soul at risk by leading her into legalism. Second, you take away any inclination she might have to enjoy it. If you make sex a duty it will cease to be a joy.

With this in mind, we get to the exception that Paul makes. That is, that you may by mutual consent abstain for a period of time for the sake of prayer. There are times in our christian walk when we pray about certain things with great urgency. Often when we or someone we love are going through a great trial, or we have an important decision to make that we don’t feel a peace about. Whatever the situation is, God puts this urgency on our hearts and draws us into prayer in such a special way that everything else becomes unimportant. Even food. And this can go over a period of hours or days or longer.

I’m sure you would agree with me that if you are in such a state it’s not a good time for your spouse to come and suggest you take a trip to the bedroom. The good and understanding husband or wife will in stead join their spouse in prayer, and agree to put their immediate physical needs on hold until God has released their spouse from their calling to urgent prayer.

Abstaining from sex, in itself, is not spiritual, just as abstaining from food in itself is not spiritual. But some times you do it, not for the sake of false spirituality or legalism, but because God moves you to do it.

Hands off the ladies? (1 Cor. 7:1-2)

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. (1 Cor 7:1-2)

Paul’s first sentence in this chapter invites us to do a little bit of speculation. What were the things about which they wrote? Actually it doesn’t take too much speculation to get a rough idea. In the rest of the chapter he answers questions about marriage versus singleness. Although the questions aren’t stated, the answers give us a pretty good idea of what kind of questions they might have been.

He answers that while singleness is good, marriage is also good, and each have their strengths and weaknesses based on the particular gifting you have, what your calling is, and other circumstances. He answers that those who are married to unbelievers should do their utmost to preserve those marriages. And he says that while those who are single have more freedom to serve the Lord, those who are married should not divorce so that they can share in this privilege.

Apparently the idea that celibacy was superior to marriage had gained some traction in Corinth. In some ways it’s easy to understand, considering the prevalence of sexual immorality there as we have seen in the last two chapters. And Paul himself was a single man, so perhaps they thought he would agree with them that, for the sake of avoiding such carnal pleasures, it was better to avoid sex altogether, even in the context of marriage.

That idea stems from a heresy known as gnosticism, and the basic premise it that the material world is inherently evil, and that there is a special knowledge (gnosis) that allows us to break free from the physical realm into the spiritual. This usually involves various practices of self-denial and self-abasement. Paul confronts this more directly in his letter to the Colossians:

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. (Col 2:20-23)

So answering their first question he says yes, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. It is good for a man to live a celibate lifestyle, but only insofar as that doesn’t put him in a situation where he’s tempted to commit immorality. But because of the risk of immorality, every man who desires a wife should be allowed to have one, and every woman who desires a husband should be allowed to have one without being subjected to man-made commandments of self-abasement.