Renewed Mind The Family Unit

Be not conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Hi, and welcome to Renewed Mind. I'm your host, Romul Gossain, and today we have with us Dr. James White, who will be discussing with us the family unit.

Matthew 19 and Jesus’s Teaching on Marriage and Divorce

First of all, welcome to the show, James. Good to be with you. Very important topic. Yes, it certainly is. Now, I'd like to look at this subject, specifically through the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 19.

What is the family unit? What does it consist of?

Well, you know, a lot of people, when they address this issue, go to other texts that are very, very important. They're God-inspired. There's no question about it. I like to go to Jesus's own words, because in our culture, at least, people pay lip service to what Jesus said.

Most people still are uncomfortable saying, I don't care what Jesus said. And even when it comes to this issue, many people will say, well, Jesus never actually addressed the issue of homosexuality or same-sex marriage or issues like that.

The reality is He did, and He did very, very clearly, maybe not by using that terminology, but by positive teaching. He laid down principles that I believe transcend any cultural barriers, any language barriers, any time barriers.

And in Matthew chapter 19, certain people came, some Pharisees came to Jesus, because the Pharisees were divided into different groups, and they had different theories concerning the nature of divorce.

One group had more strictures on it. One, basically, if your wife burned the toast, you could get rid of her if you really wanted to, type of a perspective. And so some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?

They wanted to get Him involved in their petty squabbles, basically. So what He says to me is extremely important. Listen to these verses. He says, And He answered and said, That He who created, it's literally He who created, we put in the word them, but it's He who created from 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 they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. Now we know these words. We've attended almost any wedding service, you've probably heard these words quoted.

But I'd like us to think about what Jesus says here, and how it lays down a foundation for us in our day to answer these very difficult questions. His answer is,. And so He immediately directs them back to the Scriptures.

And that is, He holds men accountable for the revelation that has already been given in His word. So the Lord Jesus did not just, did not give to us a freedom to go beyond the Scriptures. He says, Have you not read?

He's going to do the same thing in Matthew chapter 22.

Creation, the Image of God, and the Male-Female Order

This was something, it wasn't new. Oh no. Yeah.

No, not only that. Not only is it a part of what God has revealed from the beginning, but while it was true in the days, He's going to quote from Genesis. While it was true all the way back then, the point is that by reading even what's in Genesis, Jesus holds men accountable for that as if God were speaking to them directly.

In Matthew chapter 22, He says, Have you not read what God spoke to you saying? And He quotes from Exodus. So for Jesus, we are going to be held accountable for what the word of God has said. And that's very important as we look at this.

Then notice immediately, He says, The one who created from the beginning made them male and female. So Jesus starts with creation. And He starts with the fact that we are not animals. We are not creatures that have just appeared on the scene.

We are created beings and we have a creator. That is just vitally important to recognize. And I really believe that the primary reason that there is so much confusion in the world about male and female relationships, about the nature of marriage, what marriage is, what it isn't, is because we live in a society that no longer has a creator.

We are uncreated beings who just randomly happen to have the form we have and randomly came into the existence we have. And we could be gone tomorrow and it just doesn't matter. There's no transcendent right.

There's no transcendent wrong. I do not know, Rommel, if there can be a meaningful civilization amongst a people who think they are just the result of random chance. Because law, transcendent meaning, honor, duty, love, it all goes back to whether you believe there is an objective source for any of these things, an objective way to even talk about them.

And so I'm quite concerned about my grandchildren. Don't have them yet, but I'm right there. I'm hoping. Just married my last one off. And so I even performed my daughter's wedding. And I mentioned, this was one of my texts that I utilized in that.

And there were some atheists at the wedding that weren't happy about the fact that I did that. My daughter was happy that I did that. And that was the most important thing. This text talks to us about a creator.

And we cannot have a common ground with someone who is going to attempt to discuss what marriage is, who does not believe that there is a creator, who is concerned about the entirety of our lives. We just can't do it.

So have you not read scriptures that he who created God from the beginning, that means God has had a purpose in his creation from the start. He didn't just simply go, eh, let's see what comes. He didn't.

He created with a purpose and with an intention. And from the beginning, he made them male and female. Now this, only 10 years ago. I don't know that I would have had to emphasize this point. But in my country, and I know in your country, because I just read a news story within the past six months about this, the concept of doing away with gender, gender confusion.

I read of a judge in Australia okaying gender reorientation surgery for a 10-year-old. A 10-year-old. How can this be? It's amazing to me. What's the basis of this? The idea that maleness and femaleness is nothing more than what I feel.

And it may have something to do with some genetic things. But if we can change those things, why not? Make the reality match my feelings. Here, male and female is a part of God's created order. It is a part of his purpose.

And the reason that down through the ages, the Jewish people and the Christian people have honored what it means to be a man and honored what it means to be a woman is because these are things that God has ordained for his own purpose.

Even back in Genesis, one of the revolutionary things about the Christian scriptures, the Jewish Christian scriptures, I'm not making a distinction there, and all the other religions of the world was, at the very beginning, it said that male and female possess the imago dei, the image of God.

Many people believe the image of God was primarily seen in man. And there were Christian perversions of that after the founding of the Christian faith. There were people during the early period and medieval period that really left the testimony of scripture in regards to their views of men and women.

There's no question about that. But biblically, here you have this tremendous assertion that manhood is a good thing, which it's being attacked in our society. I mean, men are represented as brute beasts as stupid individuals that can't make their way in the world, or violence is glorified, fall off on both sides of the realm.

God made men, God made females. It was a part of his intention, not just so that we can procreate the species, though that's extremely important, as we're finding out in many nations in the world where the birth rate has dropped so low that those peoples are now in great trouble of even surviving, but also the role that they have in relationship to one another.

So scripture reveals there's a creator. He has a purpose. From the beginning, that purpose is seen in the assignment of male and female. And verse five, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother.

There is a family unit. Family units beget family units. It does not say he shall leave his father and father or his mother and mother or his father and 27 mothers and one mother and 27 fathers or anything else.

He shall leave his father and mother. This was before, I believe, that the polygamous relationships in the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, where he stepped down from what God's purpose always was. And they always brought damage and difficulty in the lives of those people.

There's no question about it. Jesus's point is, from the beginning, one man, one woman together. A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So what you have is the proper family union.

And we know at times that becomes disrupted. War might kill the father and you only have widows. And that's why there's so much discussion in the Bible about justice for widows and orphans and things like that.

We know there are some times in this fallen world where that family structure is disturbed or changed. But it's never done voluntarily. You never put a child in a situation where you purposely deprive them of a father or mother.

That's spoken of against it. To make someone an orphan purposefully is a great sin in God's sight. And so you have a father and a mother. The man leaves his father and mother and he's joined to his wife, not to his wives, not to his significant other, not to his partner.

There is a role for wife just as there is a role for husband. And you have here one family unit naturally recreating itself. Why? Because that family unit ages and eventually dies. And if it has not recreated itself, the society cannot be self-perpetuating.

There cannot be a continuation of the provision of all those structures that God has provided for the proper raising of children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So leaves in father and mother, joined to his wife.

And that is not a temporary thing. This is why marriage is to be held in honor by all men. The marriage bed is undefiled. It is to be something that we celebrate. Jesus honored marriage in his attendance at the wedding in Cain of Galilee in John chapter two.

And we continue to celebrate marriage to this day, even as many in our society seek to attack what marriage is. So it is for life. It is. Well, look at it because the two shall become one flesh. Isn't that what the father and mother before did?

Yes. And would this not have been something that this man and this woman would have seen in their parents? This is the proper, this is the pattern that is to be followed. And clearly, he is to be joined to his wife, not his wives.

Yes, the Bible makes provision that should death separate someone, they're no longer bound and they can marry another if that's something that they choose to do. They're not under obligation to do that, but they can if they so choose to do so.

He is joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Is there a physical element of that? Of course there is. That's what brings about life. But there's so much more to it than that. And when we do away with marriage, when we treat marriage as if it is just something to make us feel good, a temporary relationship or a short-term relationship or something that can be undone if we just become unhappy with it, we don't really understand what it means the two becoming one flesh, having united goals, united intentions, united purposes.

This union goes far beyond merely the physical. It includes the physical. It's vital to it, but it goes far beyond that. And so much so that Jesus says, so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

True marriage is a divine act. God has joined together the man and the woman. And to either disrupt that through unnatural means. I mean, there are marriages that are disrupted by death. There are marriages that, for example, under the Old Testament law, if one of the two was to be found to be an idolater or something, they would be cut off from the people.

There were things that could bring an end to that union, even under the Old Testament law. But outside of those unusual things, what God has joined, let no man separate. And I would suggest to you that not only is the church responsible for some of the current plague of confusion because we have not honored marriage the way that it should be honored and honored those who continue in it throughout the entirety of their lives and work at it because it is work.

You have two fallen sinners living together. There's always going to be work involved in that. But I would also say that those who are seeking to redefine marriage and say what Jesus said about it is irrelevant.

I think that a man and a man together is a marriage or a woman and a woman together is a marriage. I can guarantee you it will not be long before there is a lawsuit in my land based upon these changes as to the view of marriage that will allow polygamy because we have lots of polygamists.

In the United States. And so it's the only thing that's holding it back is what the Scriptures really say. I mean, really, I mean, that's the foundation, right? That's the essence of the establishment is if you go back to Scripture, that what a family unit comprises of...

It was.

Yes. Initially, it was for Western culture. No one could possibly make the argument that historically speaking, this text, the text in Ephesians chapter 5, husbands loves your wives, as Christ is of the church.

No one could argue that these texts were not foundational in the creation of the law that in its various forms has been the foundation of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the English-speaking nations that all trace themselves back in some way, shape, or form to the United Kingdom and to the government that developed in Britain in the Middle Ages.

And there's no question that this was the foundation. And therefore to change this is to radically alter the very nature of the society itself and to, I believe, fundamentally diminish our respect for marriage itself and for life itself.

Responding to the Claim That the Bible Is Irrelevant Today

So what about some people, I mean, you use the word relevant and you said that there are some people that say that the Bible is not relevant. I mean, some people turn this into an argument between the Bible versus science.

And I say that the Bible is irrelevant for today and now because we understand that alternative lifestyles is really a genetic disposition and not so much what you can teach or the way that you are, who you are.

So what would your answer be to someone like that? Well, it's interesting.

The homosexual lobby itself seeks to avoid that kind of argument for one simple reason. If homosexuality is nothing more than a genetic marker or something that's the result of genetics, then it could be changed.

It could be quote-unquote fixed in the womb. And a lot of those folks don't want that perspective to be seen as something that's a genetic abnormality. The reality is there is no homosexual gene. Nothing has been identified.

We've mapped the entire human chromosome now, genome now, and there is no homosexual gene. Instead, let's say for the sake of argument that there are a set of traits that would increase the likelihood of one's same-sex attraction.

We know, for example, that genetically there are combinations of genes that would increase one's... There are certain people who struggle with their anger. There are certain people who struggle to maintain any type of healthy weight because they just love to eat and cannot really stop.

Or at least, well, they can stop, but they have a predisposition toward it. Or a predisposition toward alcohol. There are certain people groups that have a predisposition toward drunkenness and things like that.

The fact that there is a predisposition from a Christian perspective does not change the reality of the sin. If I have a predisposition toward anger or sin, or the sin of anger, or the sin of lust, or the sin of pride, then what's my responsibility?

To identify those things and to specifically live my life in such a way that I'm constantly fighting those things.

It doesn't make it okay or accept it. It's still wrong.

And it still must be recognized as being life-destroying. If I have anger toward others, I'm not only destroying my life, I am likely to destroy theirs as well. We need to understand that especially these things, because they strike at the very source of life itself, are life-destroying behaviors.

They are not life-affirming behaviors. And that sometimes, I don't even know how long we're going to have the freedom in Western culture to even express that opinion, let alone say it's a fact. I'm glad we still have it now, but for a Christian, you don't have any choice.

This is what Jesus taught. So what are some of the damages that would result with that type of lifestyle? I mean, with everything that God said, usually there is a result, there is a consequence. What is the consequence of living in such a way, here and now, in living in such a way which is contrary to the family unit as described in the Scriptures?

The Consequences of Same-Sex Behavior and the Complementary Marriage Union

A number of years ago, a study was done, and I wish we could do better studies than this one, but by law, we aren't allowed access to some of this information. But the Omega Death Study looked at the obituaries of individuals and discovered that, looking at a large number of people, the average, I think today, the average lifespan in my nation for a heterosexual married man is up to 75 years, and for women is 78 to 79 years of age.

That's the average expected lifespan. The Omega Death Study found that for the average active homosexual male, the average time of death was 54 years of age. That is a 20 to 21 year diminishment of the expected life.

Now, we know that smoking is bad for you, but how much does it diminish life? On average, somewhere between three to five years, something like that, and so there are billboard campaigns and everything else trying to convince you not to smoke, right?

Because you might lose three to five years of your life. 20 to 21 years, you can't say a word about it. Not only that, but I would, beyond that, want to suggest that one of the most life-destroying aspects of this is to be seen more positively in what is said here by the Lord Jesus, the joining of a man and a woman.

Anyone who's married, and I'm coming up on my 30th wedding anniversary, anyone who is married knows, as a guy, she's different than I am in so many ways. And after 30 years, I still haven't figured out all the ways.

And when I stumble and make a mistake and offend her, it's because I still haven't figured out all the ways after all this time. And we joke about that and we laugh because it's part of the reality, but you see, I am changed and I am affirmed because I enter into a relationship with someone who is different than me.

She meets my needs, I meet her needs. Homosexual relationship involves relationship with a mirror, a mirror image, not someone who is different in the complementary sense, but someone who is the same.

And it is that sameness, I think, that fundamentally alters the nature of that kind of relationship and as such, diminishes the life of those who are engaged in that kind of a relationship. And it goes back again, not only can it clearly, that relationship cannot create life, it simply cannot create life.

Two women together and two men together cannot create life. You might, well, but they can go and have somebody else do it and you can have, yeah, but you still need the other sex to do that somewhere along the line.

There is no creation of life, it is inward turning, focused upon oneself, looking for a mirror image of oneself rather than the self-giving, transforming relationship that exists between man and woman.

Now, are there men who abuse wives? Yes. Are there wives who abuse husbands? Yes. Is all that sinful? Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that God's ordained pattern from the beginning, the Creator said, male and female together, one man, one woman for life.

And it's only since we've gotten to the point where we've decided to start viewing ourselves as animals without any relationship to God and responsibility before God that we have decided that we are wiser than Him.

And the results have not been good. The results have not been good.

Christ and the Church as the Pattern for Marriage

That's right. I mean, it's so important for God. That's why God designed marriage. He had a plan in mind. And we often do say that the Bible begins in marriage and ends with marriage. And I think you mentioned earlier before that there is a very special relationship between Christ and the church.

And I'm hoping perhaps you can spend a minute or two and share that with us.

Well, as Paul said in Ephesians 5, he likened the relationship of Christ to his church as that to the husband and the wife. And it is a self-sacrificial relationship. There is self-sacrifice involved really on both parts.

But the emphasis here is upon the husband loving his wife and giving his life for her. It's vitally important. And as a result, it defines the kind of love that must exist. It's a high calling for a husband to be called to love his wife as Christ has loved the church because we always recognize that in so many situations, we are selfish.

Even in the expression of our love, we are selfish. And that means we have to keep trying. We have to keep striving for that higher and higher level. But again, I don't believe that you could make that kind of connection to a same-sex relationship.

The image is destroyed in it because the fundamental element is gone. Aside from just ignoring what Romans 1 says, where it describes same-sex relationships as contrary to nature, as something that we should naturally recognize is inappropriate.

Even beyond that, there is just such a beautiful image of the husband caring for and nurturing the wife and then she caring for him in return that just simply cannot be seen in any type of alteration of God's ordained means of marriage.

James, thank you for your time. Thank you.

As you've been able to listen and hear to James, expound God's Word for us and remind us once again the importance of marriage. Marriage is vitally important. It first and foremost demonstrates God's love towards us and in that we can share in that love through the union of marriage.

We hope that you found this episode to be a challenge and to be one of special reminder to your own personal life and needs. Please stay in tune for the very next episode of Renewed Mind. And until then, may God bless you.