Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 17

The Moral Goodness of Wealth

Introduction
Turns out so much of the recent modern west has been pumped full of lies. Turns out it’s good to be a man, it’s good to be a woman, faithful marriage is good, children are good, families are good, hard work is good, and because all of those things are good, wealth is also good. Just because you can misuse something does not mean its right use is immoral or objectionable. Just because disasters sometimes strike, sickness or wars or betrayals happen, doesn’t mean that wealth does not remain essentially good, virtuous, and a healthy goal to strive for. 

The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, but the love of giving money, the love of serving others with wealth and possessions is virtuous. The love of employing others so that they can provide for their families and give to and invest generously in other worthy causes – that is good and glorious. A wise man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children (Prov. 13:22). It is not a mere unfortunate necessity in a fallen world. It is a glorious calling to serve others by work hard, to serve others by making money, and to serve others by using that wealth for good. The love of that kind of productivity and fruitfulness is the root of all kinds of goodness. 

Wisdom is Wealth
“For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold” (Prov. 3:14). “Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold” (Prov. 8:10). “My fruit isbetter than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver” (Prov. 8:19). 

Clearly wisdom and knowledge and instruction are better than mere gold or choice silver. Given the choice, we should pick knowledge, wisdom, and honoring our parents over money and houses and cars every day of the week. But what happens when you get that wisdom, when you receive the instruction of your parents? “Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honor” (Prov. 3:16). “Riches and honor are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness” (Prov. 8:18). “The crown of the wise is their riches: but the foolishness of fools is folly” (Prov. 14:24). “House and riches are the inheritance of fathers: and a prudent wife is from the LORD” (Prov. 19:14). 

Too often we overly spiritualize Solomon and the Proverbs. We think to ourselves that wisdom is like wealth, knowledge is like gold and silver, but, we think it isn’t really. Except that it really is. As George Gilder has been trying to convince us for decades now: wealth really is knowledge. Wealth is fundamentally surprising and helpful information. Knowing how things work, knowing how certain things can be harnessed to work for us and others, knowing how to get those goods and services to market, that is the essence of wealth. And that project, that mission is central to the Dominion Mandate and good works. Christians have been saved by grace, through faith, for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:8-10).

Zealous For Good Works
It is not merely that we should be OK with wealth. No, the Bible teaches that there is a kind of zeal we are required to have for good works, wisdom, and therefore, wealth. “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee” (Tit. 2:14-15). The gospel of grace, rightly understood, makes a peculiar people, known for their zeal for good works. And Christian ministers are required to insist on this with their people. The Christian church is to be known as a gathering of joyful people who work hard, with excellence because of they have been forgiven. 

But too often we think of “good works” as random boy scout acts of kindness. But the Bible says otherwise: “That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men” (Tit. 3:7-8). And the phrase to underline here is “careful to maintain.” Christians are to be people who are thoughtful about doing good work all the time. What is a blessing and profitable to human society? People given to good work. This is not talking about the occasional Good Samaritan emergency. We most certainly must be ready to drop everything and give and serve generously when there has been an emergency, a natural disaster, etc. But you can’t be “careful to maintain” those good works unless you run a fire department, a hospital, or the national guard or something similar. 

Most people prepare for those unexpected emergencies and needs by being careful to maintain their ordinary good work: computer programing, pouring concrete, teaching, writing, cleaning, and so on. The point is that the good work that Christians must be “careful to maintain” is their vocation, their calling, the work they do most days to serve others and provide for themselves and their families. And let us just underline this point. It is already a good and glorious work to get up, go to work, work hard with excellence and honesty, and go home with your paycheck every two weeks. Let us take a moment and honor that good work. That good work is virtuous, generous, and praiseworthy. God is pleased with it. There need be nothing selfish, nothing greedy, nothing lamentable about it. Good, honest work is good for the world. 

Conclusion
But let us press this point even further: if good, honest work is a moral good, there is therefore nothing inherently greedy or selfish about getting paid for that good work. Getting paid for the good work that you do is how you are “careful to maintain” that good work. You can’t keep going to work if you don’t eat, if you don’t sleep well, if you don’t have a house to live in, and long term, you will not be able to maintain good work in general if most folks don’t marry and have children. Being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth with good things requires lots of money, lots of resources, lots of wealth. As Pastor Doug Wilson likes to say to young men who are thinking about courtship and marriage: women are expensive. This is good and glorious and virtuous. And all of this requires wisdom.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

In the Defense of the Primacy of the Intellect

Introduction
I want to talk about the primacy of the intellect today – it’s necessity and inevitability, but first I’d like to set that up with an observation I saw recently of the new film Sound of Freedom from Angel Studios. 

I have not seen it yet, but it looks good and given the hate coming hard from the Left, it makes me want to see it even more. And right on schedule several of the more sophisticated Christian artistes have bustled up their intellectual skirts and sallied up to the microphone to share their very deep thoughts on this very, er, troubling phenomenon. As the Babylon Bee headline put it: “Hollywood Confused by New Movie that Depicts Child Sex Trafficking as Bad.” Apparently, some of the evangelical elites are also confused. 

Chick Tracts for Relativism
For example, one Jeffrey Overstreet had a few thoughts about it on Twitter, complaining about the (very real) problem of bad Christian movies, closing with a screenshot, defending his complaints with a quotation from “the great Rowan Williams.”

“And this needs saying as well: art, whether Christian or not, can’t properly begin with a message and then seek for a vehicle. Its roots lie, rather, in the single story or metaphor or configuration or shape which requires attention and development from the artist. In the process of that development, we find meaning we had not suspected; but if we try to begin with the meanings, they will shrink to the scale of what we already understand: whereas the creative activity opens up what we did not understand and perhaps will not fully understand even when the actual work of creation is done. That is why the artist is never the sole or even the best judge of the work, which rightly and properly escapes into the interpretive field of its public… …I wonder, incidentally, if this is not something we ought to be seeing in the process of the composition of the Gospels: not a story repeated, nor a story invented to make a point, as the more mechanically minded critics might argue, but a set of narratives constantly being retold, and altered in the retelling because of what the very process of telling opens up, shows or makes possible.” – Rowan Williams, “Making it Strange: Theology in Other(s’) Words,” Sounding the Depths: Theology Through the Arts.

Now, let us first give honor where honor is due: have you seen that guy’s eyebrows? Speaking of great art, there is definitely some story or metaphor or configuration or shape that requires attention and development there. But to the point, what Williams has written is nonsense. While he begins by saying something that might be reasonable, by the time he applies it to the gospels, we know we’re dealing with a former Anglican Archbishop, which is to say, somebody that shouldn’t be trusted. 

No, sir, the gospels were not told and retold and altered in some kind of mystical Hegelian blender of meaning. In the same way that you can’t mix up dirt in a bowl for a bazillian years and eventually get Rowan Williams. Only intelligence can create, and our work of “sub-creation,” as Tolkien once called it, begins by seeing what is already truly there. Certainly, good art doesn’t manhandle media into a message, like clowns twisting balloons into poodles. That really is schlock, and, let us be clear, there is plenty of so-called Christian schlock to go around. Twisting every bit of God’s world into a chick tract isn’t good art. But by the same token, pretending that art is something that just mystically develops is its own chick tract, pretending that God hasn’t spoken clearly in creation and history and in His Word, and pretending that we cannot understand what is “clearly seen and known” is a chick tract for the false cults of mysticism and relativism. 

Frankly, it is dishonest to pretend that truth is something that develops. Whatever Mr. Georg Hegel’s original intentions, Hegelianism is the Mother of Relativism. And Relativism is the mother of tyranny. Relativism pretends to be all mystical and ambiguous and evolutionary, and then it leans its tolerant rainbow knee on your neck until you submit or die. So let us be done with this muddle-headed anti-intellectualism. It’s not really anti-intellectualism, since it is patently dishonest, like the stores that sell pre-ripped jeans for a hundred dollars, where you can buy “authenticity” in a mass produced t-shirt that says, “I’m a unique sucker” or something like that. 

As many have pointed out, the claim that “there are no absolutes” is an absolute claim. Which means the people claiming that are either stupid or lying. But this is what the former Archbishop with the glorious eyebrows is doing with art and the gospels, pretending that a true artist has no idea, no preconceived notions, no message at all until he falls into some project like those poor people who do those polar bear plunges midwinter – which, come to think of it, is mindless. But human beings are made in God’s image, and they are made with intelligence, rationality, and even when they claim that they are not thinking, they have just ordered that sequence of words in an effort to express, we assume, an intelligible truth claim. 

A Clear Statement
I’m not sure this exactly a retraction, but it might be close. I don’t recall ever thinking or arguing strongly against this point. But I think there has been a certain ambiguity or fuzziness in my own thinking on this matter for a long while that deserves a clear statement and ratification. And that is simply the truth that God created human beings with a hierarchy of faculties, placing the intellect at the helm. I believe in the primacy of the intellect. And having written those words, it almost seems silly to need to assert something so fundamental, so plain, so self-evident. Here I am formulating ideas with my mind, seeking to coherently and rationally explain and articulate it in words and language that I trust will be intelligible to others who will read and comprehend and consider the validity of the claim. If God did not create us with the gift of intelligence at the helm of our existence, I suppose I wouldn’t be writing about it or even thinking about. So there it is: I believe in the primacy of the intellect, and it is incumbent upon Christians to believe this. 

The best version of the objection to this statement would seem to be objections to various forms of rationalism or positivism, granting the human intellect, reason, and logic the highest authority period, rejecting all other ways of knowing as well as other legitimate authorities. But a distinctly Christian defense of the primacy of the intellect actually begins with the primacy of the Triune God over all, the primacy of His Word, the primacy of His creation, and there in the midst of that supreme authority of His general and special revelation, we find the fact that He has authoritatively created human beings with the capacity of rational thought, communication, and language. Of course, we do not mind (pun intended) hastening to add that God created us with bodies and senses and a created order that corresponds to those great and majestic gifts: sunsets to see, fields to smell, fruit to taste, the chit-chattering of birds to hear, and the feel of soft grass under out feet. Yes, and amen. 

Nothing about a Christian defense of the primacy of the intellect need disparage these other gifts. Neither is such a defense an argument that the intellect is better at everything. Not hardly. Hands and eyes and tongues are better at many things than the mind. And yet it is absurd to argue that various body parts or other faculties are thereby superior or equal to the mind. Likewise, we must not reduce the image of God to mere intellectual capacity, as though the unborn or the senile or the mentally retarded lack human dignity. But just as we insist that the husband is the head of his wife, without denigrating her value or gifts, or just as we insist that the husband is the head of the household, even while sometimes a husband is absent by sin or death, so too it is perfectly right and true to insist that the human mind is the head of the body, while taking various exceptions into account. 

Conclusion
Perhaps the central point to underline here is that the denial of the primacy of the intellect doesn’t actually result in the dethroning of the intellect, rather, it just turns the work of the intellect into something devious, something highly hypocritical. What exactly is arguing for this non-primacy of the intellect? Is it not someone’s intellect? Words, meaning, ideas, arguments are not the most important thing, he said, breathing heavily into the microphone, with words, attempting to express meaning and ideas in the form of a persuasive argument. If you really believed that you’d stop writing, talking, or generally appealing to ideas, thoughts, or arguments.

J. Gresham Machen wrote in 1925 that the “retrograde anti-intellectual movement called Modernism… degrades the intellect by excluding it from the sphere of religion.” What Modernism has tricked so many Christians into believing is that the intellect is only trustworthy when it comes to the sciences, to hard numbers and facts, but when it comes to truth, philosophy, religion, and ethics, these are matters that are much too difficult for the human mind. In a sort of false humility, and a devious sleight of hand, our handlers have made moral, philosophical, and even religious claims about what our minds may or may not do well. And many Christians have dutifully accepted these claims and surrendered. Like an enemy combatant explaining that our machine gun doesn’t work on this battlefield, many Christians naively believed it and threw their weapons down.

Machen lays the blame at the feet of Emmanuel Kant, who claimed that the world was divided into noumenal and phenomenal realms, with the intellect well-suited for phenomenal things but unable to analyze and decipher the noumenal-spiritual-ethical realm with any clarity, resulting in what Machen called a field of theology and biblical studies riddled with an “indolent impressionism.” From our insipid worship songs to our pep rally sermons and Sunday school lessons and our Christian movie tripe, we are awash in indolent impressionism, and very few believe in the power of truth. And no wonder we are so susceptible to lies. 

As my friend Douglas Wilson recently put it to me, when the human mind bows in the temple of the Lord, it is raised to its rightful place. Rationalists insist that the human mind need not bow before the Lord, and those foolish minds are darkened. But the abuse of a faculty does not render its rightful use futile or idolatrous. May God grant a great intellectual revival to His people. May they seek the truth, loving the Lord with all our mind, and may the truth set us free. 

Don’t Let the Devil In

Sinful anger often pretends to be righteous. Someone snubs you, criticizes you, lies about you, or harms you or someone you love, and the blood rushes to your head. And it feels justified. It feels righteous. But James 1:20 says, the wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. In Romans 12:19 it says that we must not get vengeance for ourselves but instead leave room for God to do justice: as it is written: vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord. So sinful anger and wrath attempts to take the place of God: it attempts to deal out justice to those we think are wrong. But when you’re angry, you’re not thinking clearly, and you don’t really do justice. You just make everything worse. In the same place in Romans 12 it says do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. When your wife or husband says something unkind, it isn’t justice to return their harsh comment with your own biting comment. That is being overcome by evil, and it doesn’t work the righteousness of God. 

Ephesians 4:26 says be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your wrath, neither give place to the devil. This means it is possible to be angry and not to sin, but it is very difficult. So God forbids taking any anger with you to bed; do not let the sun go down on it, or else the Devil will come into your house. If you go to bed angry at your husband, your wife, your parents, your kids, your roommate, your boss, your co-worker, your ex, you’re leaving your front door wide open for the Devil to come in. Many marriages and families have so much trouble because they leave the front door open for the Devil to come in every night. The way to lock the front door and keep the devil out is by getting rid of your wrath, by giving it to God and trusting Him to get justice for you, and then confessing your sinful anger to anyone you have sinned against and asking them to forgive you by the end of every day, at the very latest. 

Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash

A Brief Calvinist FAQ

What is “Calvinism”?

Calvinism is a shorthand name for the Biblical teaching that God is Lord and sovereign over every detail in all of human existence, named after a theologian who taught this, John Calvin.

Does Calvinism teach that God has already chosen who will be saved and who will be damned?

Yes, the Bible teaches that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, from the hairs on our head, to the sparrows in the sky, and the loving election of a vast multitude to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ forever. This is sometimes called Unconditional Election: apart from anything we have done, God freely chose His own. 

Doesn’t Calvinism teach that people are puppets and have no free-will or personal responsibility?

No, Calvinism teaches what the Bible teaches, which is that God is sovereign and men are free creatures who are responsible for their own choices. “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD” (Prov. 16:1).

How can God be sovereign and predestine all things and people be free and responsible at the same time?

First, we are Christians which means we must submit to God’s Word even when we can’t do the math. Certainly, there is mystery here, as with other biblical doctrines like the Trinity. 

Second, if you already believe that God created everything from nothing and that God knew everything that would happen if He did, then you already believe that God chose every detail that would ever happen, when He said, ‘Let there be light.’ Creationists who believe in God’s omniscience are Calvinists.

Third, we should not think of God as a very large version of us, as though His will bumps into our wills and choices. He is completely Other, transcendent, on a completely different plain or dimension. His sovereignty is more like the authority of an author, an artist, a composer, and our freedom and responsibility are established by Him. 

But didn’t Martin Luther write a book called “Bondage of the Will?”

Yes, he did, and he is certainly correct that our will and desires are morally bound or enslaved to our nature. The Bible teaches that men are naturally dead in their sins and need to be made alive. This is what is sometimes called Total Depravity or Complete Inability. We cannot even lift a finger to save ourselves. 

Why does the Bible command men to repent? If they can’t really repent, why does God command them to?

The gospel offer of forgiveness and the command to repent in Christ crucified, buried, and raised, is the means by which God makes men alive. The command to repent is the same as the message Ezekiel preached to the dry bones; it is what God has determined to use. When God said ‘Let there be light,’ there was no ability for the darkness to turn itself into light, or when Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb, he had no ability to obey, but the command is the means God used. This principle is sometimes called Irresistible or Efficacious Grace. 

But why does God judge other men for not repenting if they have not been foreordained for salvation?

The Bible gives two answers to this question: the first answer is because those men love their sin and do not want to repent and so God leaves some of them in their sin, and the second answer is for His own glory – He is God and we are not. 

Where does the Bible teach this?

In Romans 9 it says, “Wherefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” (Rom. 9:18-20).

But does this mean that God is the author of evil?

The Bible teaches that God cannot do evil Himself because He is entirely holy and good, and in that sense He is not the author of evil, but He did create a world in which evil was allowed to come into existence, and He is exhaustively sovereign over every detail of that.

Where do we see God’s sovereignty over evil?

In Genesis, what Joseph’s brothers meant for evil, God meant for good. In Job, God permitted Satan to attack him, and in the prophets, we read that if darkness, wars, famines, or calamities strike, God has done it. But the central sign is the fact that the Jewish and Roman leaders committed the greatest evil in human history by crucifying the Lord of Glory, and the Bible says they only did what God had foreordained would happen (Acts 4:27-28).

Doesn’t the Bible teach that Christ died to save the whole world?

Yes, but not everyone believes. So you are left with concluding that Christ tried to save the whole world but failed, or else his death was sufficient to save the world but according to God’s plan accomplished the salvation of an enormous multitude, the vast majority of the world. This doctrine is sometimes called Limited or Definite Atonement. All those for whom Christ died will surely be saved because they were purchased by the blood of the Lamb.

Does Calvinism teach “once saved, always saved” or that it is impossible to lose your salvation?

The Bible teaches that some people can come into close covenantal contact with Christ and yet still not be truly born again. They are so close to Christ that when they fall away it can be said that they are being cut off from Christ, that they are trampling the blood of the covenant, and they are shipwrecking their faith. But the Bible also teaches that all who truly come into a saving relationship with Christ can never fully fall away. This is not because we cannot lose our salvation but because Christ cannot lose any of His own. It says in Philippians that He who began a good work in us will complete it. This doctrine is often called the Perseverance or Preservation of the Saints. 

Does Calvinism make people arrogant and judgmental, since they think that some people are not chosen by God for salvation?

While some men may certainly be sinfully arrogant and judgmental, the Bible teaches that since election to salvation is entirely of God’s grace, through faith, and faith is the gift of God, no man can boast about any part of his salvation. All men deserve judgment, wrath, and Hell, but God has determined to save a vast company that no man can number. These doctrines, understood rightly, ought to make men fall down in profound relief, humility, and grateful praise. 

Photo by Manuel Nägeli on Unsplash

Ben & Ellie

George Gilder has said that one of the greatest modern superstitions is materialism. Materialism believes that matter is all that exists. Atoms, molecules, chemicals, and bodies are all that there is, and so everything is explained by collisions and displacement, like billiard balls on a pool table. 

But Madonna was wrong, we do not live in a merely material world. We live in God’s world. We live in a world first of all with a Creator who is entirely other, transcendent, and outside of our space-time continuum. God is spirit, not material in His essence, and He created this universe freely and for His own glory. So there is already another kind of existence, the existence of the Creator God. But His transcendent spiritual reality has been infused in this world, particularly at its pinnacle in the creation of man in God’s own image, having a spirit and soul united to a material body. But we also know that God created spiritual beings, angels, and we know that some of those good spiritual beings have defected from their maker, becoming evil spirits and demons. The Bible also describes some animals as having spirits, and some angelic beings are described like great animals or monsters. Beyond that, the world is full of various mysteries that cannot be fully explained by mere material forces. From the burning bush to talking donkeys, from men carried into heaven in fiery chariots to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, we live in a world that is material and spiritual. And this has profound implications for marriage. 

When a man and a woman come together, it is not merely two bodies that are coming together, but two souls, two spirits, and with them, two families, a complex web of material and spiritual realities, to form a new thing, one flesh, one new family and household. This is why the Bible teaches that sexual sin is so harmful and why divorce is so violent. But materialism insists that we are just bodies, and so why can’t two bodies interact in one way at one time and then do something different with other bodies at other times? The answer is that we are not mere bodies; we are not mere material. 

Closely related to all of this is the fact that our bodies are not infinitely malleable. Part of the materialistic lie is that if you are merely material, then you can modify your body however you like and become whatever you desire. But the bodies that God has created us with reflect who we truly are. Our spirits, our souls, are in mysterious ways related to our bodies. We are not gender neutral spirits that get put into gendered bodies and therefore, perhaps sometimes get put into the wrong gendered body. We are spirits that are manifested by our bodies. We are male and female in God’s image inside and out, spirit and body.

The biblical name for this spiritual-material difference is glory. God has assigned different glories to men and women, male and female. The Bible teaches that the glory of men is their strength and courage, and the glory of women is their beauty and domesticity. Men build and fight; women adorn and make homes. Men are oriented to the world; women are oriented to their families. And when one man and one woman take vows before God and witnesses and become one flesh, those glories, those respective strengths come together and shine and combine and multiply with potency. 

And the Bible says that when this happens it reflects the mystery of Christ and the church, which if you think about it for a moment is really mind-boggling. How in the world could the marriage of two humans reflect that cosmic glory? Christ, who is the God-man, the Eternal Word made flesh and the Christian Church – how is it not sacrilegious to compare our human marriages to that mystical union? Well, part of the answer is that our human marriage is far more glorious than we thought. Something far more cosmic and momentous is going on. 

Ben, my charge to you is to love your wife like Christ loved the church, giving yourself up for her. While you cannot take away Ellie’s sins by your sacrifices, you are nevertheless called to love her in imitation of that kind of love. This means that the foundational way you lead your wife is through staying in fellowship with God and one another. Christian fellowship in a fallen world is only possible through confession of sin and forgiveness. In our world’s materialistic superstition, they are constantly trying new treatments for sin: money, medicine, sexual technique, personality tests, you name it. But Christ was crucified for our sins. We have fellowship with God and one another because the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us, and His blood cleanses us when we confess our sins to God and one another. Ben, you are undertaking responsibility for Ellie in all respects today, but make this the center of your love. Stay in fellowship.

Ellie, my charge to you is to submit to your husband the way the church submits to Christ in everything. It really does say everything, and this really is the way you exert the most potent influence on your husband. Peter tells wives who have husbands who don’t obey the Word to seek to win them over without a word, by their beauty, a gentle and quiet spirit, radiating from the inside out. This isn’t a manipulative powerplay on the one hand, nor is it apathetic acquiescence on the other. It is true feminine glory. And when a woman shines with gentleness and joy, it cannot help but shine on her man. Our materialistic world says that you can’t get anything done that way, but the Christian Church looks back over two thousand years and says, wanna make a bet? We do not denigrate the material. It is good, and it will all be made new. But there is more than just material, and a woman who fears the Lord is a potent force of grace.

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Photo by Yohann LIBOT on Unsplash

The Gilder Argy-Bargy

Introduction
And now we come to the great George Gilder argy-bargy. And I have to admit, I did not see this one coming. I was prepared for the Christian Nationalism skull session that is proceeding apace. In past years, I have budgeted mental space for other controversies calling us racists, pedophiles, misogynists, and various barnyard animals, but what I didn’t have on my 2023 bingo card was the charge that the ministries of Moscow are going… liberal? And why? Because Canon Press is republishing the work of one of the great 20th century full-throated attacks on feminism, Men and Marriage by George Gilder. Just wait till everyone finds out that there’s a biographical documentary coming out as well from Canon, celebrating the life and work of… you guessed it, George Gilder. 

As part of the roll-out of Men and Marriage, several quotations from early in the book have been highlighted in promotional ads and some concerned folks started sharing screenshots with highlights, to which I replied in one tweet “no lies detected.” But as the commotion heated up, Mr. Gilder and our ministries began getting tagged with such indecorous terms as “boomer” and accusing us of giving into the “longhouse” – a term coined to describe a sort of systemic leftism, and in particular, a militant feminism that has mocked, belittled, and often attempted to stamp out masculinity in modern culture. While I have mixed feelings about the pejorative use of boomer, I think I agree entirely with the problems of the longhouse. But from there, the taunts and mockery proceeded apace. Thus, in response to the heckling, I simply tweeted that I thought the “shrieks” and “freak-out” over the Gilder quotes and book was hilarious. And well, it is. 

Some people thought my characterization of “shrieks” and “freak-out” was over the top or hyperbolic, but I don’t think so. One fellow on the internets said this is early “Russ Moore, etc,” saying he’s been warning about FLF/Canon, etc. for at least a year. Others have likened the publishing of this Gilder book to the LCMS “pedochism” scandal (their recent catechism and commentary introducing many woke/LGBT talking points), with the concern that we have begun the “groomer pattern.” And another commentator was trying to argue that I wasn’t qualified to be a pastor if I couldn’t see all the problems in Gilder, which included (apparently) Trinitarian heresy. So yeah, I’m pretty sure “shrieks” and “freak out” was not too strong.

Of course there were plenty of normal, ordinary people who simply had questions. And let me be clear: having questions or even initially wondering what Gilder could possibly mean by women being “sexually superior” to men is not a “freak out” or “shrieking.” But those with reasonable questions refrained from saying things like “this is gayer than AIDS,” which incidentally showed up somewhere in my replies. Asking questions, wanting to understand, or even thinking you disagree with the sentiment and hauling out arguments to defend said disagreement is not freaking out or shrieking either. I’m not sure if people have heard yet, but we are totally down with cheerful arguments, even sharp, incisive blows to the rhetorical jugular. We do that sort of thing around here. Punching welcome, just try to keep it above the belt, as they say. But to throw a rhetorical, intellectual punch, you have to, well, do more than shoot off rockets of panic, call names, or tell everyone that this is boomer longhouse heresy. 

Sexually Superior?
So what exactly does Gilder mean by claiming that women are sexually superior to men, and how exactly is that “the prime fact of life?” Well, naturally, I would go to Genesis 2. When God created the first woman and brought her to the first man, he said, “this is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh,” which is not only the first poem in recorded human history (and a love poem at that), it is also a Hebrew superlative. If you can reach back into your grammar past, you might remember that “better” and “best” are comparative and superlative forms of “good,” respectively. We also use the “-er” suffix and “-est” suffix, as in prettier or prettiest to make comparative or superlative forms in English. The most well-known superlative in the Hebrew Bible is Holy of Holies or as it is sometimes also rightly translated, “Most Holy Place.” The Song of Songs is also a Hebrew superlative, meaning “the best song” or “the most beautiful song.” When Adam sees his wife coming to him, he exclaims that this creature is like him, only better, or we could easily translate it, superior. Adam is saying that this new creature is Man 2.0, the upgraded version. 

Adam further signifies that pronouncement by naming her “woman,” which is closely related to the word for “fire.” Whether Adam already knew the word for fire or whether he later named fire after his wife, men have been calling their wives “hot” and singing songs about their baby lighting their fire ever since. In fact, in the very same place, though our English translations do not reflect this, Adam gives himself a new name. Up until this point in Genesis 1-2, the Hebrew word for man is “adam” in every single instance, and it is translated either “man” or the proper name “Adam,” because he was taken out of the “adamah” (ground). But here in the naming of his wife, he says, “she shall be called woman [“eeshah”] because she was taken out of [“eesh”]. He is saying that his wife’s name is “glory-fire” because she was taken out of him, but her glory is so bright, so dazzling, it has lit him up. She has caused his face to shine. Or as one of your modern prophets has put it, “baby, you light up my world like nobody else.” And Paul picks up on all of this in 1 Cor. 11, insisting that the woman is the glory of man. 

Now, some folks simply objected to the notion of “superiority,” but I don’t know how else to read this text and the notion of “glory.” The Bible teaches that women are superior to men in at least some respects, and it teaches that men are superior to women in some respects. In 1 Cor. 11, it says that the man was not created for the woman, but rather, the woman was created for the man. And it also says that the man comes from the woman, speaking especially of Jesus born of a woman, but also of all other men after Adam who are born of their mother. And so Paul insists on different glories, different superiorities, and yet a glorious mutual dependence and equality, ordered in various hierarchies in marriage, family, church, tribe, etc. 

So then, in what ways are women superior to men? George Gilder has the gall to claim that woman are sexually superior. And what he has in mind here begins with her physical beauty, which gives her the initial upper hand sexually, since she is the one generally being pursued by men, who generally have far stronger sex drives, especially young men. The physical beauty of the woman the Bible also calls her glory, signified by her longer hair (1 Cor. 11). But she is also sexually superior in her power of childbearing, beginning with sexual union and conception but extending out through pregnancy and motherhood. One wise man has said that a woman’s sexual cycle begins with foreplay and climaxes when her children graduate college. This too is a woman’s glory: she will be saved in childbearing if she continues in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety (1 Tim. 2:15). Of course, apparently, to briefly allude to another controversy I saw skimming across my feeds over the last few days, we are not allowed to talk about anyone “saving” anyone except Jesus Christ. Men must not “save” women in any way, even though Ephesians 5 explicitly says that men are supposed to imitate Christ in His saving of His bride. And heavens forsooth, there be any sense in which a woman might “save” a man. I mean, that’s practically, “goddess worship.” Jeepers. 

Generalizations & Wisdom
Wait, what? Well, our friend, Aaron Renn, who has done some profoundly good work in recent years on the problems in effeminate evangelicalism and ministering particularly to men, shared another quote from Men and Marriage on the same topic of women’s superiority, specifically, “Her faculty of greater natural restraint and selectivity makes the woman the sexual judge and executive, finally appraising the offerings of men, favoring one and rejecting another, and telling them what they must do to be saved or chosen.”

And Renn noted that this is a “whopper from George Gilder. She’s the source of salvation, she’s the one that makes you truly “chosen.” She selects which “offerings” are acceptable to her. This is goddess worship.” Now I’m happy to grant someone might take these statements and run in the opposite direction that Gilder meant them. But on the surface, a charitable reading offers several profoundly true points. Women are naturally more restrained sexually. This is a biological, sociological fact. The occasional “cougar” acknowledged, it is men who generally seek a woman, and it is the woman who either agrees to a man’s offer or declines. In that sense, she is the sexual judge and executive, favoring one and rejecting another. There is no hint here that Gilder means “saved or chosen” in some kind of crass literal way. But it’s an entirely legitimate expression given the way God made the world. It is not good for men to be alone, and if ordinarily it comes as a great gift to a man to find a woman who agrees to his proposal, then he does rejoice as one who has been chosen, who has been in that sense, “saved” from his solitude. Gilder does not mean that women save men salvifically, any more than a man can save his wife salvifically in his love for her, any more than childbearing literally “saves” a woman, any more than either party should rest their inherent value or dignity in any sort of desperation for a spouse. 

This need not leave a man cowering before a woman either. A good woman has no attraction for such a man. The kind of man who is likely to win a good woman is a man who is strong, assertive, courageous, hard-working, productive, good humored, and virtuous. While a woman may be rightly said to be sexually superior in these aforementioned ways, a good man is superior in his physical strength, courage, and ability to focus on particular goals. As with all generalizations, there are exceptions, and as with truth, there are often other truths that must not be forgotten. But finite creatures cannot state all of the truths all of the time. Gilder is describing some profoundly true generalizations, but there are other true things that should be kept in mind.  

Conclusion: Sin & Responsibility
Gilder’s opening chapter begins: “The crucial process of civilization is the subordination of male sexual impulses and biology to the long-term horizons of female sexuality.” And he continues, “Men lust, but they know not what for; they wander, and lose track of the goal; they fight and compete, but they forget the prize; they spread seed, but spurn the seasons of growth; they chase power and glory, but miss the meaning of life. In creating civilization, women transform male lust into love; channel male wanderlust unto jobs, homes, and families; link men to specific children; rear children into citizens; change hunters into fathers; divert male will to power into a drive to create. Women conceive the future men tend to flee; they feed that children that men ignore.”

What Gilder is summarizing here is manifest. These are the natural inclinations of men and women. While I think some of these inclinations reflect our natural goodness before the fall (women would have still been home-oriented, child-oriented and this would have still been a great help to a man to know what his strength was for), the Fall has twisted these tendencies, leaving men far more aimless, insecure, and rootless. Again, it is not good for man to be alone. Just reference contemporary crime and violence rates. And while women certainly can turn on their own natures, killing their own children and becoming predators, even in highly broken cultures, women still tend to bear and raise children and men tend to wander, abandon, turn violent, and flee. Despite the growing epidemic of women using pornography, this is the downstream effects of the shorter-term masculine sexuality twisted and metastasized. This is why I have often described porn as inherently gay. It is driven by the sexual impulses of men: men paying, cajoling, threatening women to act like men sexually. And this doesn’t absolve the women of all their greed, lust, immodesty, and bitterness in the same industry or elsewhere. 

Civilization is built on the longer-term sexuality of women, and it is likewise built on the gracious dominance of men in most other areas. While the Bible clearly teaches the headship of men in marriage, and the submission of a wife to her husband in everything, the one place where the Bible explicitly gives a wife authority over her husband is over his body in the marriage bed (1 Cor. 7:4). In the same place, it says that the man has authority over his wife’s body, and this point really is crucial to understanding Gilder’s overall point. 

Christian authority doesn’t displace responsibility, it establishes responsibility and therefore other forms of authority. We learn this fundamentally in the doctrines of grace where the Bible insists that God is sovereign over every last detail of history, and it is this authority that establishes the responsibility of human choices and secondary causes. The authority of a Christian husband establishes and reinforces the authority and responsibilities of his wife. The authority of pastors and elders does not displace the responsibility of congregants; exercised rightly, pastoral authority builds up the duties of the congregants, lifting them to greater authority in their various spheres. 

Darwinism and every form of materialism assumes a world in which every form of power or authority displaces every other form, like billiard balls on a pool table, knocking into one another. If you read the rest of Gilder’s corpus, you will find that this is a central and dominant theme in all of his work. Gilder calls materialism the central superstition of the modern world. But Madonna was wrong, we don’t live in a merely material world. Now it’s true that you cannot have two people attempting to share the exact same responsibilities; that creates a two-head monster. Hierarchy is good, and knowing who answers to who helps everyone. But this does not mean that authority cannot overlap. It can and it does. A civil magistrate must submit to faithful pastoral authority in ecclesial matters, and a minister must submit to faithful civil authority in civil matters. Describing the superiority and necessity of a woman in some regards, need not displace a man’s superiority and necessity in many other ways. And by the same token, this does not displace true individual guilt. Assigning superiority to a woman’s general sexual instincts does not absolve her of all the ways she tends to sin sexually. Nor does it blame men for all sexual sin. 

Birth Control & Dominion

One of the things that is very striking and obvious if you look around on a Sunday morning is that we love children. The Bible teaches that children are the inheritance of the Lord, a great reward, and faithfully raised children are a central part of our warfare against all unbelief. And because of these things, someone might be forgiven for assuming that we must have some kind of rule against birth control or that we think that it is necessary for every family to have as many children as they physically can. But we don’t. 

We certainly are at war with many modern assumptions about children. We hate the idolatry of moderns that prizes barbie bodies and vacation homes and careers over the gift of children, and the modern assumption that children are a bother and a nuisance. We hate all of that. And we hate the whole abortion culture, which includes many so-called forms of birth control, which are frequently harmful to the bodies of women and are often aimed at snuffing out the lives of newly conceived babies. We are at war with all of that. 

But Christian Dominion cannot be reduced to thoughtless breeding. A husband is required to love his wife as his own body, and that means protecting her health and life as well as providing for and raising their children in the Lord. There are methods of farming, mining, logging, fishing, and hunting that really do destroy creation long term, and are not good stewardship. Christian Dominion is not merely a matter of raw, immediate numbers. Christian Dominion requires wisdom, love, thoughtfulness, and some measure of planning. 

God is the Lord of the womb; He opens and closes the womb according to His good pleasure, but that does not therefore necessitate that husbands and wives have no responsibilities in this regard. On the whole, many moderns need to come to see the strategic value and overwhelming gift of children. Walking by faith often means welcoming more but sometimes not. Godliness is not measured by sheer number of children. Godliness is measured in gratitude and joy and faith, which often results in bigger families, but not always.

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

Sabbath Conquest

“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightiest still the enemy and the avenger” (Ps. 8:1-2).

This is why we are here. The Lord who made Heaven and earth is majestic in all the earth. His Name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who died and rose again in the power of the Holy Spirit, taking away our sins and setting His glory above the heavens. We gather every Sunday to worship, to proclaim: how excellent is Your name in all in the earth. He is worthy to be praised. 

And compared to His great glory, all of our praises are like the babbling of babies and infants. Which, incidentally, is part of the reason our children are most welcome to join us in our worship. They are constant reminders to us, that we all come as little children, singing and praising and praying to God our Father in Jesus’ name. 

God promises to receive our prayers and praises and send down His potent blessings, ordaining strength in and through our worship, in order to silence our enemies and avengers. 

And yet, the word used here for the “silencing” or “stilling” of our enemies is the verb form of Sabbath. God promises to use our childlike prayers and praises to give Sabbath rest to His enemies. We know this is wonderfully true because while we were still enemies, Christ died for us. God has silenced the storms of our hearts by forgiving all our sins. While we were striving to be good enough, to earn our way into God’s good graces, He paid all our debts and welcomed us home scot-free.

So we are here to declare that He is worthy of all our praise and we are here because we are eager for our enemies to come and find that same glorious Sabbath-rest with us in Jesus Christ. And so, this is your call to worship and an open invitation to everyone that can hear my voice: Jesus said, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  

Photo by Clément Falize on Unsplash

Elijah & Evangeline

“For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:20).

In the Old Testament law, it said this: “If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her to make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins” (Ex. 22:16-17).

While this is sometimes confusing to moderns, it is actually a wonderful law for protecting the rights of women, the authority of fathers, and for deterring sexual sin. It is the origin of a dowry. A dowry is often understood by moderns to be only an inheritance that a father gives his daughter when she is given away in marriage, and while that may have been included in the ancient world, it also used to include money that a man gave to the woman he was seeking to marry as a sort of insurance policy against him leaving her. It would be enough money for the woman to live on her own and provide for herself if the man was unfaithful or deserted her. What this law required was that a man must pay that bride-price or dowry if he seduced a woman prior to betrothal or marriage, whether or not the father agreed to give his daughter away in marriage. 

This seems to be in the background as Paul addresses sexual sin in 1 Corinthians 6: Christians belong to God, and in particular, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. But if the Holy Spirit has been given to us, and He dwells in us, then we are betrothed to God, married to Him. We have been made one with the Lord. We do not belong to ourselves, any more than a husband’s body is his own, or is a wife’s body her own. When the two become one flesh, their bodies belong to one another. And how did we come to belong to God? He bought us with the bride-price of the blood of Jesus and gave us His Spirit. But there is more. 

Earlier in 1 Corinthians 6 it says that fornicators and adulterers (among other notorious sinners) will not inherit the kingdom of God, and then it says these wonderful words: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11). 

This is the center of the Christian gospel: God saves sinners. And He saves them by washing them clean, making them holy, and justifying them in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. How does this work? Justification is the doctrine of Christian courage. To the extent that we live in a land of cowards this is because we are a land that has abandoned the gospel of the Reformation, and the doctrine of justification in particular. 

And so here it is: the doctrine of justification is for guilty sinners. And it is only for guilty sinners. Good people have no need for justification. The healthy don’t need a physician. But justification is the act of God’s free grace whereby He declares sinners completely righteous for the sake and received by faith alone. In Galatians, it says that God calls those things which are not as though they are. This is the glory of justification. A moment before God’s pronouncement we are filthy sinners and the moment after we are still filthy sinners in ourselves. But God has hammered his gavel in Heaven and declared “not guilty.” Everything about us screams that we are guilty. We have been unfaithful. But God declares us “righteous.” And when we ask, “How is that possible?” God says that the penalty has been paid by another, and the righteous obedience of that Other has been reckoned to us.

The really amazing thing is that our sins were sins against God. We were betrothed to God, and we cheated on God. We cheated on God with other gods, idols, lusts. Like the prodigal son, we wasted our dowry on riotous living. And yet God in His mercy gives another. The One who did not sin, paid the bride-price for the one who did sin. 

Because the penalty has been paid, God freely forgives. This is what it means to be washed. But we need to be clear here too. When God forgives, He promises not to hold against us what we have done against Him. He promises to reckon all our sin paid for by the blood of Jesus. And this is the only basis for Christian fellowship. We are one with God because of the price that Christ paid. And we have fellowship with one another because of the price that Christ paid. And the currency is the blood of Jesus – and this blood cleanses us and restores fellowship when we confess our sins to God and one another and forgive one another for the sake of the blood of Christ. This is what it means to be bought with a price. This is what it means to be a blood-bought people. 

Elijah, my charge to you is to imitate this self-sacrificial leadership of Christ. You are being called today to lay your life down for Evangeline. This means taking responsibility for her, just as Christ took responsibility for us. Christ had reason and right to say that our problems were not His problems. But instead He drew near and claimed our problems as His own. So you must see Evangline as youself, as your own body. And as Christ has forgiven you, you must forgive her. As Christ bled and died to make you righteous, you must bleed and die for Evangeline’s good. This doesn’t mean doing whatever Evangline wants. If Christ had asked us what we thought He should when He came to earth, none of us would have been in favor of Him dying. But Christ did what we needed, what was for our good, and so we are saved. So likewise, you must study Evangeline and you must study the gospel so that you will see clearly to know what it is you must do. And it’s a pretty wonderful thing that Evangeline’s name means “gospel” – that way you will never forget. 

Evangline, my charge to you is to receive Elijah’s self-sacrificial leadership in the Lord. Elijah is not Jesus, but He is required by God to imitate to Jesus. And you are required by God to receive that imitation with all respect and honor and submission. Just as the Church receives the love of Christ with deep gratitude and honor, receive Elijah’s love and leadership and return it to him with joy and thanksgiving. Respect particularly focuses on noticing accomplishments, praising and thanking for diligence, hard work, and achievements. The first few words out of every little boy’s mouth are “watch this!” And this is because God has wired men to thrive on respect. So respect your husband. Look up to him. Seek his counsel. Serve him. And forgive him, as you have been forgiven. Just as you will be greatly blessed by Elijah’s love for you; Elijah will be greatly blessed by your respect for him. Just as you have been purchased by Christ and belong to Him, so now you belong to Elijah and he belongs to you.

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.  

Photo by Anna Vi on Unsplash

Noah & Mallory

The Bible is bookended with weddings. Genesis opens with the first creation and the wedding of the first man and the first woman. And Revelation closes with a city descending out of Heaven to earth like a Bride adorned for her husband, God and man in full fellowship, the promise of a new creation, without any tears or death or sorrow.

These two weddings highlight at least two features of all weddings. The first thing is that a wedding always points to greater glory. The first wedding of Adam and Eve already pointed to greater glory: the glory of the dominion mandate being fulfilled: the first family being fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth, and having dominion over all the creatures. Every wedding looks forward to the blessings that will come: making a home, practicing hospitality, welcoming children, grandchildren, companionship, friendship, and all the joys of life – even the comfort of walking through hardships together. But the Bible teaches that the first wedding was also already pointing toward the last wedding. Paul says when God created the first man and woman and they became one flesh, that was already pointing toward Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:32). And therefore, whenever a man leaves his father and mother and joins his wife and the two become one flesh, that great mystery is being proclaimed: the mystery of God and man united: As John heard the great voice say: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). 

This is the promise of the gospel that we begin to enjoy here in this life by faith and the gift of the Spirit: As John says in his first letter: “That which we have seen and heard we declare unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn. 1:3). This fellowship with God and all those who share fellowship with God is fruitful. God is life and light, and therefore, that fellowship is potent. But this isn’t a bland, generic fruitfulness like a bunch of coins spitting out of a slot machine. This is the gorgeous, diverse fruitfulness of the Triune God: think galaxies and mountain ranges, and sandy beaches and clear blue water full of darting creatures, cool, dark jungles buzzing with life, sunsets playing with light and colors and shadows, and a man and woman at the pinnacle of all of it: a King and Queen, full-blooded masculinity and femininity in full bloom. 

But all of this points to the second feature of all human weddings since the first one: the reality of sin and the Fall and the need for new creation, the need for tears to be wiped away and death and sorrow to be dealt with. We live in a world that has worked very hard to confuse God’s original creation order, the glory of male and female, and the glory of masculine leadership and feminine submission. And the Fall has touched every family. This is why the promise of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb is so dear to every Christian: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.”

And yet the glory of the gospel is that this final marriage has begun in this history. It is not merely something for the end of history; it is something that has begun already through the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. And the central way this is happening is through the restoration of fellowship between God and man and between all those who are united to the Father in Christ by His Spirit. It says in 1 John, if we walk in the light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all unrighteousness. 

It is possible to walk with God and one another in full fellowship without any darkness. How is it possible? By the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing us. And how does that happen? 1 John continues: if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

Confession of sin means agreeing with God that something you said or did or thought or failed to do deserved God’s wrath and agreeing with Him that Jesus died for it and saying so to God and anyone we have sinned against or in front of. And when we forgive one another, we promising to reckon sin against us as paid for by the blood of Jesus. We are agreeing that since Jesus died for it, we will not hold it against our brother or sister. The Bible says that at the very longest, you have until the end of the day to be reconciled to someone: do not let the sun go down on your anger, nor leave room for the devil. You wouldn’t dream of leaving your doors open at night, and yet many Christians go to bed with grudges and bitterness and unconfessed sin, and then they wonder why their homes are such devilish places. After many years of pastoring, I’m convinced that this is 95% of marriage happiness and success: staying in full fellowship: confessing sin and forgiving one another quickly. This is the key to fruitfulness.

So Noah, my charge to you is to lead and guard your wife like Christ leads and guards His bride, the Church, and do this principally through cleansing her with the washing of water by the Word. This means leading in prayer and Bible reading, but it also means confessing your sins and making sure that you stay in full fellowship with your wife. If you walk in the light with God and Mallory, the glory of God will make you and her shine, and you will be more of a man day by day, and she will be an even more lovely lady day by day – and your home will be a fruitful palace. And you will be able to see clearly where you are going and what you should do because the Light of God will shine on everything. 

Mallory, my charge to you is receive this leadership from your husband: submit to him and respect him in the Lord. You are a Christian woman, and this means that you have a personal responsibility to walk in the light as God is in the Light and stay in full fellowship with God and your husband. In the same way that God has given you a deep desire to make a clean home, make sure that you keep a clean heart. In the same way that it would be hard to go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink, don’t ever go to bed with a dirty dishes in your heart. Confess your sins to God and anyone you’ve sinned against. Stay in fellowship, and don’t let the devil into your home. In this way, your marriage will be constantly pointing to the final marriage, it will be full of light and fruitfulness, and it will be growing into that final glory. 

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Photo by Luis Tosta on Unsplash