When the Lord God had formed the whole creation he pronounced it to be very good. His vegetable and animal kingdoms were so organised as to reproduce each one after its own kind. The human pair he directed to be “fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth”, and to ensure order and right conduct in this arrangement he ordained the marriage formula: -Therefore shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” To encourage obedience to his will in this regard he endowed courtship and marriage with all the blessings of love, joy and fulfilment; but later, when rebellion had introduced abuses, he added the contrary experiences of hardship and suffering to point the worth of his gracious gifts; upon the woman he decreed pain and sorrow of child bearing, and upon the man incessant labour to support his family —unremitting toil in the sweat of his brow against the hostile environment of thorns and thistles.
In human experience the rewards of obedience must always be matched with punishment for transgression, every joy must have its counterpoint in sorrow, and every love must be thwarted by hate. The laws of God cannot be ignored with impunity, and any attempt to circumvent the divine regulation of the marriage ordinance brings condign punishment in mental anguish if not in physical suffering upon one or all of the parties. Yet, ever since that first day, human beings have rebelled against the disciplines of hardship, either secretly or openly, and their faults have been either condoned or condemned by their fellows according to the moral standards of the time.
In the ecclesia of Christ the moral standard must be of a much higher order. There can be no condoning of vices, otherwise Christ is not in their midst. And so long as the ecclesia remains loyal to its Lord the way of transgressors must be singularly hard. They have renounced their baptismal vows, they have made themselves offensive to their fellows, they are out of step with their brethren, they have repudiated their fellowship and cannot expect to be accepted upon the old easy terms. They must suffer. But worse still, the whole ecclesia must suffer along with them.
About the nature of the offence there can be only one opinion in the ecclesia—it is an infraction of the explicit regulations of God. “What God has joined, let not man put asunder”, makes it plain that breaking the marriage bond is an offence which is greater than the subsequent remarriage. But when it comes to deciding what action the ecclesia shall take, and how, insuperable problems begin to arise. The whole ecclesia struggles with the complexities of human nature; on the one side repugnance and horror aggravated by sensitive wounds, and on the other side sympathy for the sinners and desire to reconvert them to a pure pattern of life; on the one side the inflexibility of law, and on the other the flexibility of human emotions, between which there can be no satisfactory adjustment. The ecclesia is torn between conflicting opinions zealously and sincerely held.
No two offences are the same; there is always a wide variety of factors to take into account, and therefore each ecclesia being in the best position to know its own bitterness must be left to make its own decisions without outside interference. In making its decision the voice of the majority must prevail and the minority must curb its impenitence. Upon this the Apostle Paul gives inspired advice, “All the law is fulfilled in one word, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another take heed that ye be not consumed one of another”. In other words, whatever the judgment that might be passed upon the offender, it is insignificant when compared with the peace and stability of the ecclesia. If a mistake is made, and bitterness is controlled, truth and right will surely prevail in the end.
All the foregoing, however, is applied to a relatively narrow issue, but it serves to illustrate the far wider issue upon which it is based and to which the Apostle draws attention in the same chapter (Gal. 5). In verses 1 9-2 1 he names the works of the flesh. He heads the list with adultery, and adds fifteen other vices by name, five of which are concomitants of the great social sin, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, drunkenness, revelings—and then ten other supporting vices such as hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, envyings. Be it noted that all these vices, and others beside, will exclude from the kingdom of God.
These things are the wide base to social crimes, and all too often to ecclesial disorders also. Unlike adultery, which despite strenuous efforts proclaims itself from the housetops, most of the rest are secret or semi-secret sins, and even if they are looked at askance when they become known, little active discipline is taken by the ecclesia as a body to correct them. It is somewhat anomalous that only adultery amongst them is elevated to major significance and made the basis of immediate disfellowship, whereas it is only the culmination of a series of irregularities all of which are vicious in character. A little readjustment of relative moral values and a wider programme of education upon God”s disciplinary measures is part of the ecclesia”s responsibilities in these days.
Reflections on the Potter and the Clay