[AI translation] Thursday's Bible study would be on the seventh commandment in the Heidelberg Bible study, but because of the particular topicality of the subject, I would like to bring it to the wider community of the church congregation rather than to the narrow community of the Bible study. The seventh commandment, as you know, is "Thou shalt not commit adultery" or, more correctly translated, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." "What does the seventh commandment teach? Answer. And because we also with sincerity of heart despise it, let us therefore lead a life of modesty and temperance, both in and out of holy matrimony." (Q.H. Question 108 - Answer)"Is it only adultery and the like abominations that God forbids in this commandment? Answer. (Question 109 - Answer)
I said before that the subject is topical. Unfortunately, it is very topical. Not only in the world outside, but also in the Church, in the lives of those who want to follow Christ. If I think only of the marriages for which we have asked God's blessing in this church over the last 27 years, one could draw up a very sad statistic. How many of them started with happy hopes, and how many of them have since turned to hell, falling apart in sad pieces, leaving only aching ruins and wounded souls to witness.
This is not only the age of technology, not only the age of the atom, but also the age of the crisis of marriage. The reasons for all this, the temptations that the modern way of life - the fact that both husband and wife spend most of their lives working with someone else - can present to both, and the many other opportunities for the unscrupulous exploitation of sex, are many and varied. The most profound reason, the most important, is the one that the Bible talks about right at the very beginning: the radical depravity of the human heart.
Whatever interpretation we give to the story of Adam and Eve, there is something symbolic about the fact that there is a shadow cast over the very first marriage. Adam accuses his wife before God, and does not even call her by name, but says: "The woman you have given me" (Genesis 3:12). Here begins the crisis of marriage, the crisis of all marriages. And since then, the moral filth has been flowing almost like a river through the world. And since then, marriage has lost its sanctity, the body its purity, the world of thought its incorruptibility, life its innocence. And there is no one, no one indeed, who can stand before the divine law of the seventh commandment without spot. Therefore the Catechism brings out in the words of the Word unmercifully the unclean deeds, unchaste conduct, words, thoughts, and all that would provoke a man to them, and sets all uncleanness on fire under the curse of God, saying, 'God has cursed all uncleanness. But our Catechism speaks not only of the corruption of marriage, but also of the reconstruction of marriage. So I would say: the Christian order of marriage, sanctified by Jesus. It is not that Jesus procured marriage as a sacrament, like baptism and communion. No. Marriage is a creation ordinance of God. He created man so that he could entrust a part of his own creative power to him, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Genesis 1:28).
Jesus did not create marriage, but he recreates, redeems what sin has messed up and corrupted in God's creation. He restores, restores to it its original dignity and holiness. This is what Jesus does always, with the whole created world. He cleanses what has been defiled, seeks and brings back what has been lost. He lifts up and heals what has fallen and broken. You remember the devil of Gadara, who first scared the neighborhood from the tombs like a frantic ghost, naked - and after Jesus intervened in his life, he sat clothed and sane at Jesus' feet... Well, that's what the Lord Jesus does with marriage.
There is some deeper significance in the fact that Jesus, who came to earth not only to save one human soul, but to recreate the whole world, began His work of redeeming the world at a marriage ceremony, the wedding at Cana. The account even specifically notes that this was the first sign in which He displayed His glory. Yes, it is with the wedding, the marriage, that family life begins, and the family is the seed from which the human world springs. Satan knows this very well. And when he wants to corrupt God's beautiful creation, he begins to corrupt the foundations of life, and that is why he continually defiles the source of life, marriage, the family. That is why he wants to make us believe that fidelity in marriage is an outmoded custom in the modern world, that the body needs sexual pleasure as much as a glass of water, and that love without love is worthless. But that is also why Jesus honoured the marriage bond with his very presence and his very first miracle at Cana.
This is how Jesus begins to recreate the world, in a marriage ceremony, as it were, by taking marriage out of the yoke of sin and putting it back into the holy order of God. There is a profound sense in the first pages of the Bible of a paradise in which two people live bound together in the sacred bond of marriage. In the last pages of the Bible, it is again a Paradise where the heavenly Bridegroom, Christ, receives His glorified bride, His people. How can this evolutionary process arrive at this future glory when the first marriage has already been corrupted, has already reached a crisis? By the fact that in between, in the fullness of time, Jesus appeared at the marriage, and thus at its source, at its foundation, He renews human life. For with marriage we stand at the source of life. And that is why it is so important that this source remains pure, that the purity of this source is watched over by all. For those who are married and for those who are unmarried. This purity does not only mean keeping the marriage free from all moral impurity, from all impurity. It is not just about ensuring that husband and wife can always, in all circumstances, look into each other's eyes and hearts with a clear conscience. It is not only that unmarried and unmarried young people should not want to steal in advance the fruits that are really sweet in marriage. Of course, this is all included in the prohibition of the seventh commandment. This is why the Bible emphasises that God has cursed all uncleanness.
Even the marriages of non-believers can be honourable, blameless, pure. Yet for those of us who want to consider ourselves Christ's people, there is something deeper at stake. Is Jesus himself present in our marriage, or, if someone is at the threshold of this sanctuary, do we want to enter it with Jesus? It is not just a question of whether one has a marriage that is happy or tolerable in a secular sense. It is more. Is it a marriage renewed and sanctified by the presence of the redeeming Jesus? A serious believer, after he was married, was once asked by a friend in a joking way: 'So who is the man of the house, you or your wife? He replied gently: 'Neither of us, Christ. Yes, that is the Christian order of marriage. It is not only that they do not quarrel, they do not cheat on each other, they do not wink at each other, they do not only live happily, but that they live under the lordship of Jesus. It is more. That is the most. Their marriage is also in Jesus' hands. Not just their individual lives, but their married life. Their family life too.
This is the positive requirement of the seventh commandment: a redeemed marriage sanctified in the presence of Jesus. This is also the main emphasis of our Catechism: "Let us live in immaculate chastity, both within and without the holy married life." And it is precisely this positive aspect that is very important here. Because we often think we are doing a good job of fulfilling the divine commandment if we don't do this or that, if we don't cheat on our spouse, if we don't kick the harness off, if we don't behave in an unrighteous way. All this is a negative! The positive fulfilment of the law, according to Jesus, is love. Yes, love. And that is the great, grateful love for God that makes our marriage and our bodies the temple of God, and the love for one another that makes man and woman the priests of the temple. So again, is Jesus present in the marriage of Christian people? Do you know how you can tell? Because the relationship between the spouses is a representation, a picture of the relationship between Jesus and his church. In our Word, the Apostle Paul says of marriage: 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'. And he adds, "This is a great mystery to him: but I speak concerning Christ and the church." (Eph 5:31-32)
The apostle Paul therefore sees marriage on earth as a mirror, a shadow image of heaven. The relationship between a man and a woman in marriage is somewhat like the relationship between Jesus and His Church. For Jesus also left His Father and clung to His bride in heaven, the Church, and literally became one with her. One flesh. Already now the marriage of Christian people has the great dignity and destiny of exemplifying the relationship of Jesus and His Church with one another, the beauty of eternal love. Every Christian man in marriage should in fact represent Jesus (Father, Father). It is a movingly serious and great vocation. It is for this reason and because of this that the husband is the head of his wife. He is the head as Christ is the head of the Church. So this does not mean that he is his wife's boss, dictator, or commander, but as Jesus says of himself, "I am among you as one who serves" (Lk 22,27).
This is why Paul also says that a husband must love his wife as his own body, that is, as Jesus loves his church. And Jesus loved His church so much that He died for her. So with sacrificial love. Sacrificing everything for him, taking on the weaknesses, the faults, even perhaps the unfaithfulness of the other. With great, sacrificial, purifying, uplifting love. Of course, this is not the kind of love that a man can give, in a Christian marriage it is not much use, it runs out quickly, it has no such power. For marriage is not a union of two angels. The secret of the love that can truly serve the weaker is Jesus, the Jesus who does not break a broken reed. And where this love is found in the man, the other half of the sentence applies, "But as the church is obedient to Christ, so let wives be obedient to their husbands in everything." (verse 24) Not as a slave is obedient to his tyrant master, but as the church is obedient to Christ. It is an obedience which is not so much to the person of the man as to the Christ he represents.
Behold, such is the unheard-of demand made of Christian spouses. This is the positive requirement of the sanctification of Christian marriage. Let all who enter the sanctuary of Christian marriage first read what is written on the threshold: here your rights are halved, your duties are doubled. Do you accept? Here are sacred things at stake. It is about the mystery that exists between Jesus and those who believe in him. The living out of the redeeming love of Christ day by day, and proclaiming it to the world. That those who no longer believe in love, in its all-solving, all-conquering power, because they have been so disappointed in it - because they cannot know it without Christ - may know, may see that there is such power. There is! And it is the only truly positive, constructive, happy-making power. The love of Christ. Christ himself. As lived by two people in marriage, in a family.
And now let me say it again: when our Catechism speaks of all kinds of impurity, let us not immediately think of infidelity, marital triangles, and the many troubles that often rage within a marriage, about which volumes could be written and have been written. Of course, it's all part of "Don't fornicate!" Who can tell how much secret pain, tears, suffering there is within a marriage, even underneath the seemingly neat exterior. A Christian marriage, as I have just said, is unclean not only when it sinks into the mire of immorality and filth, but also when it does not rise to the heights of the love relationship between Christ and His church. Our marriage will always remain unclean until it is purified in Jesus and by Jesus, until it is redeemed and sanctified by the presence of Jesus in the family.
But this is precisely the greatest hope for even the most impure marriage. For not only was Jesus willing to go to a wedding in Cana, but He is very willing to go today to wherever He is truly invited. To you too. To us too. Even to the dining room, even to the bedroom. But after that, "Whatever He says to you, do it" (John 2:5) - as Mary warned the servants there at the wedding in Cana when the wine ran out. Yes, if he says something to you, do it! And He will most certainly say something to you. Perhaps that now you, you complaining woman, are wrong. Maybe it's that you busy man, pay more care and attention to your wife. Maybe it's to cut a thread, an emotional thread that's pulling you out of the family. In any case, it is to give more love, much, much more love to the other than you have been giving!
Do this again every day, because he is speaking for you. On this depends, on this alone depends the holiness and purity of the whole married life. And where they really do what Jesus says, the miracle always happens, just as it did in Cana. The joy and happiness that has gone out is replaced by a new joy and happiness for the family. More beautiful, more, greater than it ever was, perhaps in the very first days of marriage.
So let us try for once to really invite Jesus like this!
Amen
Date: 23 August 1964.
Lesson
Jn 2,1-11