Only God’s Word will abide. Our idle arguments will wither, our fine words and reasoning fall with the flowers at the end of summer. As they wither and fall, God’s glory will appear in full bloom before us.
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As stated when writing about the Distinction of Meats, Jovinian was a monk and ascetic in the fourth century who wrote against celibacy and other monastic traditions. He praised the virtues of marriage and was therefore, of course, branded a heretic.
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If one cannot in his own power do what God expects, that is, if he continues to sin, then he should do what God says is the answer. It is foolhardy to do what people say ought to be done when God has provided a different solution.
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What makes a sinner pure? Flagellations? Fastings? Offerings? Are these the things that King David did in order to be clean after his sin with Bathsheba? King David well understood who did the cleansing.
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This long argument against the demonic dogma of enforced and perpetual celibacy may seem to some as being overdone. Yet these very same problems persist 500 years later.
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The Wittenberg Reformers knew something about peddlers of religion. The hucksters of indulgences plagued the lands, bilking folks out of scarce money. There were other charlatans too, who traded wholesale in religion, exchanging false promises for the blessings of life.
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What is one to do when all attempts have been made to reason with people who have willfully gone astray? There are people — yes, even in the churches — who willfully ignore Scripture, insisting instead on their own bent reasoning.
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The devil’s lies brought sin and death into the world. Knowledge of this should provide godly people with ample courage to stand for the truth. Part of that truth is that God uses both self-discipline and marriage as means of faithfulness.
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A further edition of the Lutheran Confessions adds, “God has now so blinded the world that adultery and fornication are permitted almost without punishment; on the contrary, punishment is inflicted on account of marriage.”
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We do not like to think of a wrathful God. Yet a holy God is by default, angry at times. His anger is stirred by willful disobedience, by those who think they know better than he does.
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Those who prohibit marriage, enforcing celibacy as a necessary good work, have become a laughingstock. Even their own dare to laugh when others make sport or even scorn their ways. For these ways are not God’s ways; perpetual celibacy is a human invention.
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The churches and seminaries should be places where people may safely flee the passions — not run straight into them, and with more abundance and variety than was known elsewhere.
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We should never place so-called common sense before Holy Scripture. We may imagine that we understand something perfectly well, yet God’s way are not our ways. What once seemed entirely sensible to us looks quite different through the eyes of faith.
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Marriage should never be considered an obstacle to salvation, nor as a life filled with sins. Quite the opposite is true. The Apostle Paul praises the married life for its unique ability to keep one from sin.
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Not only was celibacy not the thing in Rome or in the monasteries, unchastity was on display in these places — as it is now. This hypocrisy was well-known to the people.
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Marriage should never be considered an obstacle to salvation, nor as a life filled with sin. Quite the opposite is true. The Apostle Paul praises the married life for its unique ability to keep one from sin.
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Programs of austerity for the sake of meriting favor with God are useless. Indeed, they are harmful. These things make us think that we are the cause of our own salvation.
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These false teachings come about by not understanding the principal teaching of the New Testament, the one from which all good doctrine springs, and the central tenet of the Lutherans. That principal belief is that we are saved by God.
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Those who enjoy their ease and indolence, without the benefit of the Word of God, and having no regard for it, live their lives without worry or guilt. These conditions brought the most debauched lifestyles upon the Church, just as they do in our times.
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There must be good order in all things. I once did marriage counseling with a couple whose problems always seemed to come back to talk about sex.
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We neither require nor need any acts of purification. For it is God alone who cleanses hearts. King David knew this to be true. What work of cleansing did he do after his sin with Bathsheba?
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The ceremonial code in the law of Moses, those things concerning what is clean or unclean, do not pertain to Christians. Christians are freed from all the ceremonies of Moses, not only from the laws concerning uncleanness.
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On Saturday about Noon, in the midst of running one more household errand, I complained (again) to my wife: “I’m not going to get anything done today!”
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Whether or not we concur with the rhetorical comparisons used by Melancthon, we may understand his point. That is, we cannot earn the favor of God. Rather, because of Christ’s work, those who believe are regarded as righteous by God.
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Whenever some religious notion enters our heads, making us imagine that we must do one thing or another in order to earn God’s grace, we may confidently declare that thing to be false.
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It is the heart that must be changed, not necessarily one’s vocation or position in life. One may think that he must become a pastor in order to be on heaven’s path.
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Nothing is pure, if it is done outside of faith and God’s Word. An unbeliever may practice the most ascetic spiritual disciplines. He may fast, study, meditate, remain celibate, and feed the poor, but none of this is pure if it is exercised without faith.
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If ever there were a single word that summed up the Lutheran Confessions, it is the word faith. Everything depends upon faith in God, and that depends upon God’s grace.
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But the main point here is that marriage remains a holy estate even if one person is not a believer — not because of the beliefs of the person, but because of the God who ordains marriage.
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Christ himself says here that married people are joined together by God. He is quoting Moses and then adds that it is God who joins them together.
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Christ himself says here that married people are joined together by God. He is quoting Moses and then adds that it is God who joins them together.
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