The New Marriage

The bride and he goes, I'll call him Frank Henry. It really doesn't matter.

Let's get this over with and let's get out there. No, it's got to be right. It's either Richard or it's Robert. You get the name right. The apostle Peter said, there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved.

It is that name, verse 10 of that chapter and that name is Jesus Christ. You got to get that name right. I take Jesus Christ.

No other will do. I will become the bride of this one and this one only. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. Today, we begin a three-part series from Romans 7 called The Beauty of the Bride. Our Bible teacher, Stephen Davey, will unveil one of the most beautiful and dramatic truths found at the heart of the gospel. Of all the descriptions God gives us in scripture regarding the state of our relationship with him, there's none so compelling and so convicting as this one.

We are the bride of Christ and we belong to him forever. Keep listening as Stephen explains the ramifications of this truth both for our future and more practically for our present. Now Paul, being the master teacher that he was, begins these next paragraphs, which we have cataloged as chapter 7, by delivering a principle and then an illustration and finally an application. We could call his opening statement in Romans chapter 7, verse 1, the principle of law and limitation.

If you have your Bibles open, let's follow along as I read. Or do you not know, brethren, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? Now, some believe that Paul would be referring to the Torah, the Jewish law, thus only to the Jewish believer. However, the phrase in the Greek New Testament lacks the definite article. It simply refers to law in general.

You could literally translate it. Do you not know, brethren, for I am speaking to people who know law? And that would refer to anybody, anybody old enough to understand law, both natural and prescribed. Paul is speaking about law in general. He assumes that every Roman, every Greek, every Jew, every Gentile would have an intuitive understanding of this law in general.

Paul is asking then a rhetorical question. You do know, don't you, about law? And you do know, don't you, that law has jurisdiction only over those who are alive. In other words, you do not take corpses to court. You do not fine people for their parking tickets if they are deceased. You do not bring someone before a judge and jury if they have died. The law's jurisdiction against that individual has been broken by their death. Think of Lee Harvey Oswald, the one accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy. He was never brought to trial because shortly before his trial, he himself was assassinated, murdered before his trial began. And that ended the inquiry, at least as far as Lee Harvey Oswald was concerned.

Why? Because he was dead. The limitation of the law is that it can only enforce, it can only monitor, it can only denounce, it can only instruct and convict and sentence and condemn those who are alive. The jurisdiction of law, its influence, its sway, its power, its verdict is against those who are living.

And Paul knows, he assumes, that everybody anywhere in the world as he begins to teach these new principles understands that intuitively. Then he gives the illustration of marriage and covenant. Look at verse 2. He says, the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law concerning her husband. Now of all of the illustrations he could have used to prove the limitation of law, I would not have expected him to use this illustration. I find it absolutely fascinating that Paul, under the directive of the Holy Spirit chooses this illustration, the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living.

But if her husband dies, she's released from the law concerning the husband. Here's what's so amazing to me about the principle and this following illustration. Paul is still speaking rhetorically. He is speaking with the assumption that his audience agrees with the biblical teaching of the permanence of marriage.

In fact, here's the startling point. He is also assuming that those who are ignorant of what the Bible teaches still understand the natural law that a marriage covenant is an issue or series of vows that are intended to be kept for life. And he assumes everybody, even those who don't have the Bible, know that that's the truth.

You do know, don't you? That law loses its jurisdiction over those who died. And let me illustrate it by telling you what you know, don't you? That a woman is bound to her husband as long as the husband is alive. Paul has already declared natural law that those without the Word of God still can come to terms with certain truths of God. Romans chapter 1 dealt with that. We call that natural law, law understood intuitively even in the life of someone who doesn't have the Ten Commandments, someone who's never picked up a Bible. Natural law or that intuitive law is that which Paul declared in Romans chapter 1 where he says the unbeliever sees creation and intuitively knows that there's a creator. But they suppress that and they rewrite that and they mock that and they abandon that. But it is natural law. It is truth. And they know it because God has encoded it on their heart.

C.S. Lewis wrote that natural law is revealed in the way people talk to one another, people who know the Lord, but also people who don't know the Lord. Just listen to the way they talk to one another. He says it reveals natural law that they have right and wrong buried in their heart. He goes on to illustrate.

Someone will say, that's my seat. I was there first. Nobody said that this morning, did they? Good. Leave him alone. He isn't doing any harm.

Why should you cut in line first? Give me a bit of your orange. I gave you a bit of mine. Come on now.

You promised. Lewis stated that people understood standards of conduct simply because they had the law encoded on their heart. I don't know about you, but there are a couple of programs I like watching on television and one of them is Candid Camera. It's a great illustration of the tension between natural law and human nature.

You may not get that out of it, but I do. I just love watching that tension. If somebody does something that somebody else knows intuitively is wrong and they just don't quite know how to respond. I loved watching one clip where one guy came into a restaurant and pulled up to a counter, sat on a stool next to somebody and immediately he was part of a crew. He took the tip that the person before him had left to put in his pocket and the guy next to him just looked around. He knew why there was nothing saying. There was no notarized statement saying by that person that that belonged to the waitress and not to him.

But he knew that wasn't his property. I loved one where a guy came in to a restaurant, sat at a counter, the bar stool there next to somebody and took their fork and began to eat food out of that person's plate next to them, just sampling it. And the waitress came up, said, Would you like to order? No, no, I like this food just as great. Well, this is really good stuff here.

Good choice. The person just sitting there not knowing what to do. I read some time ago about a woman who bought a bag of cookies at the airport and while she waited in the terminal for her flight, the terminal became crowded. She bought a bag of cookies and and a magazine and a man sat next to her, although there was an empty seat between them. And the woman's reading her magazine. And at one point she reached down and she took one of her cookies and she ate it. And and that man reached over and he took a cookie and he put it in his mouth. And she looked at him and glared at him. And he just smiled at her and nodded. That went on for some time. She didn't know what to do.

She eventually was reading her magazine lost in thought. And she just reached down again and picked up a cookie. And he did, too. He picked up a cookie and put it in his mouth and smiled at her and nodded. And that so infuriated her that she took the last cookie, stuffed it in her mouth, got up and went as they were to board the plane. And she got to her seat fuming with anger, buckled herself in, opened her purse up to discover her package of cookies. Now, what had made her so angry?

And what had made him so nice? Well, she thought from her perspective that he was a thief. He had violated her rights. He was taking property that belonged to her. She was rightfully angry. He, on the other hand, was exercising kindness and patience toward a woman who had evidently lost her mind.

Not again. Both exercised compliance to natural law. And that is a gift from God.

It brings about civility and order. It stamps upon our hearts that which we know is right and that which we know is wrong, that which is a violation and that which is right and holy. In the book of Romans, Paul never condemns the unbeliever for not knowing the law. He condemns them for knowing it intuitively and saying, we're not going to believe it. We came from something other than a creator. Now Paul is assuming that everybody anywhere in the world understands the natural principle of law, that marriage is a binding covenant.

You make a series of promises and you keep them for life. Whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, Paul understands that everyone will have that embedded in their hearts. Somebody might say, well, look, Paul lived in a different era.

Paul lived, you know, he was in the village. That wasn't very sophisticated. The metropolis is vastly different from that. And things are different now.

Well, all you have to do is be a student of history, even a slight student, and you'll discover the truth is far different. The Jewish society during the days of Paul was awash with broken vows. Women were for the most part unprotected, beasts of burden.

They were easily discarded. The rabbis of Paul's day had taken Moses' declaration that allowed for divorce on the grounds of adultery that Paul will clarify in 1 Corinthians 7 that abandonment in adultery can break permanently the wedding vow. But they'd taken that and they had made hay with that. So when Moses said that a man who marries a wife, takes a wife to himself, discovers in her uncleanness, he can put her away. That uncleanness by conservative commentaries and even the study of the word etymologically knows it's adultery, it's sexual immorality.

But they had taken the word uncleanness and made it anything they wanted. One rabbi taught that uncleanness could be anything displeasing to her husband. Rabbi Hillel, the famous rabbi, taught that a wife was even unclean, considered to be so if she spoiled her husband's dinner or put too much salt in it. Talking with men on the streets, saying something against her mother-in-law, those were unclean things. He could put her away. Another famous rabbi, Akiba, even insisted that if a man found a woman who was prettier than his wife, the latter became unclean in his eyes.

He could divorce her, send her out and marry the prettier one. When Paul wrote, I know that you know that that isn't right, he assumed everybody knew it. Even though that Jewish community was living vastly different in their morals and standards. The pagan Greek world was not any better.

In fact, it was more corrupt. Prostitution and homosexuality, lesbianism, pedophilia, they were all accepted and they were acceptable to that society in the Greek world. Most of the emperors were bisexual. Even in Greek society in Paul's day, heterosexuality was considered prudish and for the weak-minded.

Emperors were simply taken to bear legitimate heirs to the family name and fortune. Demosthenes and Orator from Athens wrote these words, we have prostitutes for pleasure, we have concubines for daily cohabitation and we take wives to bear legitimate children and guard the household affairs. So when Paul wrote this, assuming the Roman knew it, even though they lived vastly differently than this, he said, I know you know it's true that what you're doing is wrong. You go into the Roman world itself and marriage was just as corrupted there. Jerome, an ancient writer, tells of one Roman woman who married her 23rd husband and she was his 21st wife. They said that in Roman days, during the days of Paul, women dated the years of their calendar by the names of their husbands. Marriage in Roman times was, one author said, nothing more than serial adultery or legalized prostitution.

One Roman writer named Juvenal wrote that women had vacated their homes and flitted from one marriage to another, wearing out their bridal veils. So when Paul wrote, I know you know, it's true that a man and a woman belong to one another for life. That was radical news to his world. It was as radical to Athens in the first century as it is today in America in the 21st century.

Still revolutionary. But he assumed they knew and he assumes we know this what we call self-evident truths that a covenant of marriage lasts for life. He isn't attempting to deal with other issues as he will deal later in the epistles as those exceptions.

But he goes on to add another self-evident truth. Look at the next verse, verse three. Then let's add to that, if while her husband is living, she's joined to another end, she shall be called an adulteress.

But if her husband dies, she is freed from the law so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man. See, Paul's point in this passage is not necessarily to declare the parameters and the guidelines for marriage, divorce and remarriage. He is simply saying that apart from what we know to be those exceptions to the marriage covenant brought about by sinful man, God intends marriage to be for life. Till death do us part is not just the nice idea we created.

Somebody came up with, well, we've got to throw that in there. That's God's idea. That's God's design that is his ideal. And that is stamped on the heart of anybody anywhere at any time in the world. Have you noticed how unbelievers treat the vows similarly to the believer? I've never met and I've seen a number of weddings and I've been to weddings between unbelievers. I've never seen a fellow come to that part till death do us part and say, that's just for Christians. You know, we can leave that part out. I've never seen an unbeliever who's a bride say, you know, when it comes time to hear him give his vows, you know, we can get to that part of that till death do us part. And it really doesn't matter if he leaves me after 20 years for somebody younger. I just I'll get the best I can out of him for these 20 years. We don't have to say that. No, we're going to say that.

Why? Where did they come up with the idea? It is the natural law of God encoded in their hearts. He assumed everybody understood it. They might deny it.

They might refute it. But they know intuitively that marriage covenants are set aside after death. So let me just for the sake of this paragraph, let me review. The principle is this. Law has jurisdiction upon only those who are alive. That's the principle. The illustration, the covenant of marriage is binding and active only as the spouse is alive. And the application, we are bound to the law as long as we are alive. And that's where he's really driving. And that's the real problem.

We've got a real problem, ladies and gentlemen. We are bound, married to the law as long as we are alive. There's no hope. Because the law is inanimate. It cannot die.

That means it's going to go on and on and on. We'll never be released. Something, someone, somebody has to die to release us from that bond. So we could be free in his analogy to remarry. Somebody has. That's the solution in verse four in his application.

Look there. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ that you might be joined or married to another, to him who was raised from the dead. This is a wonderful point. The law doesn't die.

You do. In Christ, you died. In the mind of God, when you came to the son of God by faith, you died in him, thus breaking the bond, breaking the jurisdiction.

This takes us back to chapter six, where we read that God views us by faith in Christ to have died in him, to have been buried in him and to have been raised in new life in him. We died in the covenant. Union to law is broken. The law with its holy requirements that we can never keep the law, which stands as a barrier, large doors closing our entry and hope into heaven. There's no way around it.

We can't go through it. But by faith in Christ, we died to it. And now we've been born again.

We are new creations. And we are in his analogy here, able to remarry another. And who is this other one? He says in the last part of verse four, the one who was raised from the dead. We belong to another man now, the God man, Jesus Christ. For those who come to Christ by faith, they have become the bride of Christ.

And he has become their bridegroom. No other attachments, no other binding unions, no vows we have broken. Why? Because we died. The jurisdiction of the law is completely done away. Isn't that great? So now we can offer ourselves to him, having had that union with the law dissolved by means of our death in Christ. I just think that's a wonderful truth. You know, when the Spirit of God came to your heart and your life and whispered, as it were, into your ear, he presided over this mysterious union with Christ. He presided over this death and burial and resurrection and this new creation. He presided over this marriage that was arranged by the Father before you were even born.

Then he came to you in effect and he said, Will you take this one to be your lawfully wedded husband? And you said, I do. For richer or for poorer? Yes, that too. In sickness and in health?

Yes, that too. Till death do you part? Oh, that's the good part. We have already died. We will never spiritually die ever. Thus our union with him can never be broken apart. And the Spirit says, Amen. To you who have become the bride, you can now take his name as yours. Christian. Christian.

His name is yours. Have you ever been to a wedding? If you're married, you've been to at least one.

Some of you guys said that was enough. You've been to one. You know, names matter at weddings.

Have you noticed that? You've got to get it right. I performed a wedding just this last weekend and I had to get it right. Do you, Michael, take Jessica to be your lawfully wedded wife? Do you, Jessica, take Michael to be your lawfully wedded husband?

You have to be right at those moments. Years ago when I had most of the burden of pastoral ministry without this wonderful staff of men along, I did most of the weddings and I had one wedding one weekend and the fella's name was, the groom's name was Richard. And the next weekend I married another couple and his name was Robert. You can guess what happened. That's right.

I got them all mixed up. Came to the Vow part and I said, Do you take Richard to be your lawfully wedded husband? And Robert was standing there. Everybody froze. I knew I'd done something wrong. And then everybody erupted in laughter, basically in my embarrassment in my red face. I had to get it right.

You know, the bride didn't get us out. Call him Frank Henry. It really doesn't matter. Let's get this over with.

Let's get out there. No, it's got to be right. It's either Richard or it's Robert. You get the name right. The apostle Peter said, There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved. It is that name.

Verse 10 of that chapter. And that name is Jesus Christ. You got to get that name right. I take Jesus Christ to be my husband.

No other will do. I will become the bride of this one and this one only. And when you said yes to him, he gave you his name. But then he wrote your name on the marriage certificate, otherwise known as the Lamb's Book of Life. For those of you who've trusted this one, there's a marriage feast between the church and Jesus Christ. Revelation 19 tells us that the inauguration of this kingdom will begin with this feast where in this great ceremony there will be the wedding ceremony and the great feasting that will occur between the church, which is called the bride, and her bridegroom, who is called Jesus Christ. It's interesting to me that the marriage supper here is referred to as the marriage supper of who? The Lamb.

I find that interesting. Why not the marriage supper of the king or the marriage supper of creator God or the marriage supper of the Lord of Lords? No, it's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. You see, that is the name that signifies this is the one who died to dissolve the union between us and law. And we in him, in his sacrifice, died. Therefore, the Lamb is able to take a bride. And we, the bride, can be taken by him. So I've got news for you, Christian friend. There's a wedding ceremony coming and you're in it.

Can you see the pictures? Here you stand next to the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and you think, no, I can't even imagine that. I would imagine, you know, there's this long line, you know, and I'm 20 million people away from the cake and the punch and I'll never make it there. And I don't know how God's going to reorder this whole thing, but I do know that that ceremony is intensely personal. You will be next to the Lamb. You are his bride. He knows your name.

And he has given you his. You remember, for those of you who were married, maybe coming up to it, in fact, I was talking to the bridegroom in the back just before coming out this past weekend, how strange it sounds to say she is my wife. I am her husband. Stranger still to say I belong to her. She belongs to me. I remember on my wedding day, I still remember that was an awesome thought.

This woman belongs to me and I belong to her. Paul has declared the principle, the illustration, and the application we have been released from the jurisdiction of our former spouse by death in Christ. And we have been joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead. Ladies and gentlemen, if you've come by faith to him, you happen to be married to the only perfect husband alive.

He's the only one. And we also belong to him and he belongs to us. He belongs to us forever.

Forever. Isn't that an amazingly wonderful truth for today? Each of us who are Christians have been united with Christ.

We belong to him and he belongs to us forever. Thanks for joining us today. We're glad you found Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. Today's message is called The New Marriage, and it comes from the series entitled The Beauty of the Bride. If you missed a portion of today's broadcast and would like to listen to all of it, it's posted to our website, wisdomonline.org. You might want to send this message to a friend or family member who would benefit from hearing it.

You can do that as well. When you get to our website, you'll discover that the complete archive of Stephen's Bible teaching ministry is posted there. Every message has an audio file that you can listen to and a full manuscript that you can read if you prefer. The archive of Stephen's teaching is available on that site free of charge, and you can access it anytime at wisdomonline.org. If you haven't already, I encourage you to install our app to your phone so that you can quickly and easily access all of our Bible-based resources. That app contains the audio and the transcript of each of these daily messages. We also make available the archive of Stephen's Bible teaching ministry with full-length sermons arranged by Book of the Bible. You can follow along in our daily Bible reading plan and more. The Wisdom International app will work with your smartphone, your tablet, or a smart TV.

It's free to install and use and is a great companion for your personal Bible study. If you have a comment, a question, or would like more information, you can send us an email if you address it to info at wisdomonline.org. Thanks again for joining us today. We'll continue this series over the next two broadcasts, so be with us for more Wisdom for the Heart.