Man, Woman, and Family in Christ – Part one

Preface

If anyone feels really competent for this task, he is probably the least qualified to deal with it. If on the other hand one feels really incompetent, this is unhappily no guarantee that he will do it well. Even so, it is essential to begin with an admission of one’s weakness, not only as a plea for human indulgence, but also as a prayer for divine help. For these are no light matters, and were we speaking of human excellence, rather than divine instruction, this would be no topic for me. If I could claim that I had never in thought or word sinned against the high ideals here set out, then I might pose as a teacher in my own right: but I cannot. If I had never failed to behave to my wife as a Christian husband should, and had never provoked my children to wrath, then I might offer my life as a model for the rest of you to follow. And if my children had always according to what I think the right timetable to be, done as I have tried to tell them (whosever fault it be when they have not), then I might make my household into a parable of perfection, and say, “Go, and do thou likewise!”

But I can do none of these things. And it is only the reflection that, if the exhorting brother waited for perfection before he exhorted, there would be a constant famine of hearing the word of the Lord, which makes it in any way fitting that this book of counsel should come from such a one as I. And the encouragement to proceed with the work came from the knowledge that the Bible itself is so rich in perfect counsel that, if we let that predominate in the pages to come, we shall not go far astray.

Another word is needed. The libraries are full of books about sex. The lecture halls are full of talks about it. The radio is full of the sounds of it, and the television and the screen of the sights of it. The streets and the taverns are crammed with the jesting and the slander of it. And dark places are full of the lust of it.

“Let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints!”, says Paul to us. And this, which certainly forbids the jesting and the lust, might seem also to discourage even discussion, exposition and counsel. And certainly it would be unhealthily fashionable if we were simply (as they put it) to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ of current emancipation, and offer our own contribution to the fermenting pile, for no better reason than to be in the swim.

But Paul himself names the things we should not name. That is to say, he names for the sake of admonition the things we are forbidden to name for the sake of unwholesome enjoyment. And not only Paul: the Bible of both Testaments is full of its own treatment of the problems and opportunities of sex. It instances its abuses, and uses them, indeed, as parables of the spiritual declension of the chosen people; its excess are forbidden, and its evils and their consequences grimly portrayed. But it reveals its delights, and uses these as parables of the greatest things in the experience of redemption and divine companionship.

The Bible is frank beyond our present intentions; but with all its frankness there is never a moment’s doubt about its principles. And it is these principles which stand in need of urgent restatement to-day.

Restatement” is a word to conjure with. In the lips of some theologians and moralists it means something perilously close to “replacement,” and men who profess to “restate the Christian ethic,” no less than those who seek to “restate the Biblical doctrine of God,” may often be striving to dress up a very un-Christian wolf in the clothing of the Lamb. It is for this reason that we must let this book be a restatement in the other sense: the true Christian position must be stated again, using as far as is seemly the language of our time, so that we shall be in no doubt as to what the Bible in general, and Christ and His apostles in particular, have to say about the way in which man, woman, and child ought to live in Christ.

“No doubt,” did I say? So, in most cases, we can rightly say. But when it comes to a discussion of what the Bible has to say when marriage breaks down, and what we are exhorted or permitted to do in picking up the pieces, then the diversity of views among men and women of good will—even those whose absolute standard is the Bible and the Bible alone —is legendary. We must try to pick our own course across this difficult terrain, but here, more than anywhere else in this book, we shall have to ask you for both loyalty to the Word of God, and an abundance of charity — to the author as well as to those in need of help.

So here it is: as they say in marriage services, “for better or for worse.” But if God grant the blessing we have sought in writing, and you, no doubt, in reading, it may yet do something to help us all in these evil days to live as becomes the Bride of Christ.