KneEmail - a devotional by Mike Benson associated with Forthright Magazine
Purity
THE WORLD HAS made a god of sex and a mockery of marriage...
Jumping from partner to partner, from mate to mate, from bed to bed has become more rule than exception. "Free love", which in truth is neither free nor loving, is now running roughshod over the sacred vows of marriage. But this flippant attitude toward marital commitment should not surprise us. The problem is by no means a new one. According to Gibbons, the renowned historian, the divorce problem was one of five leading causes behind the fall of ancient Rome. Seneca spoke of Roman women as married to be divorced and divorced to be married. Many of them, not unlike their modern prototypes, were said to have distinguished the years by the names and number of their husbands. It seems some things never change.
And yet we expect better of the church. The world may have "eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin" (2 Pet. 2:14), but the church, as the bride of Christ, must remain pure and chaste (2 Cor. 11:2). Our standards are not set by Hollywood, but by the Bible. Current norms, morals, and philosophies notwithstanding, God's decree for marriage remains constant: one man and one woman for life. Aside from the death of a spouse, or the unfaithfulness of a marriage partner, there are no exceptions. (Dalton Key)
KneEmail: "And He answered an said to them, 'Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning "made them male and female," and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate" (Matt. 19:4-6)