Fornicating fathers and mothers among us – Bill Bremer
If you don’t consider yourself a Christian, don’t read this. It doesn’t apply to you. If you are a Christian caught in sin, you can repent and ask for forgiveness. Because of the blood of the Lamb, God our Father will forgive you and restore you to harmonious relationship with Him.
God our Father wants us to liberate and restore those ensnared in fornication and help the multitudes of children born illegitimately to those among us. Yes, among us. Somehow we have blinded ourselves to the fact that sexual sin is pervasive among us. Soul bruises and disorders caused by fornication are prevalent among Christian men, women and babies.
The number of Christians held captive to fornication is staggering. The U S Census tabulates the deterioration of families in our American culture, Christian and heathen alike. Four out of ten American babies and five out of twenty Colorado Springs babies are born to promiscuous non-cohabitating or cohabitating parents. Most of these babies are brought into an adverse living arrangement rather than a family with a father married to their mother. This is includes five out of twenty white children, just over one of three Hispanic children, and thirteen of twenty black children. Asian children fare the best, less then two out of ten do not live with both parents, married to each other. Christians are nearly but not quite as affected as the norm.
What we can do
We can stop looking for natural solutions for our social problems and seek God for spiritual solutions. Our own human efforts to change the world through public education, political action and government assistance are futile. Only God can change hearts. Jesus never called the Roman government to do anything for His followers. Rather, He directed believers to “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21)
The Messiah’s way of rescuing the captives from the ways of the world is to open their eyes and ears and call them to love and obey Him (Luke 4). He brought grace and truth. In the same grace and truth mode, we can share how we are saved by God’s grace. We are to sow the seed–the gospel of the kingdom–in the world. Some will take. Most of it won’t. What takes will produce up to 100 times what is sown (Matthew 13).
Each of us can be useful and productive in the kingdom through our own day-to-day one another relationships in the body of Christ. Messiah Jesus gives us many resources to liberate, restore and rebuild. The Messiah’s way is to confront evil, present liberation from the tyranny of darkness and enable us to walk in the light as He is in the light. The only way we can help the hurting is by walking in the light and helping those in the clutches of darkness one by one.
You who have a heart for the hurting, here is how you can help. Walk worthy of the Lord. Walking as sons and daughters worthy of God’s calling is a lifestyle. Adopting and living this lifestyle is the primary way we serve as God’s workers and help the hurting, because we have something they want.
We were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12
Paul shows us how to walk worthy. He begins by exhorting us not to live like the people of this world.
- So I tell you and call on you in the Lord not to live any more like the people of the world. Their minds are set on worthless things. Their understanding is darkened. Their ignorance and their closed minds have made them strangers to the life God gives. Having lost their sense of right and wrong, they’ve given themselves up to a life of lust to practice every kind of vice with greed. …
- Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, since light produces everything good and righteous and true. Ephesians 4:17-1; 5:8-9 AAT
Take the utmost care, about the manner in which you lead your lives, not as fools but as wise men, making the most of the time granted to you for these are evil days. And that being so, do not allow yourselves to lose you good sense, but come to understand instead what is the will of the Lord. Ephesians 5:15-17 Cassier
God calls us to live in this world with our eyes on Him and the future in store for us. In view of that, we are to kill what is earthly in us and live as God’s chosen and loved.
- Now if you were raised with Christ, be eager for the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right of God. Keep your mind on things above, not on earthly things. You see, you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your Life, appears, then you too will appear with Him in glory
- Kill, then, what is earthly in you: sexual sin, uncleanness, passion, evil lust, and greed, which is idol worship; these are bringing down God’s anger. Once you also practiced them when you lived in them. But now also get rid of all such things as anger, rage, malice, slander, and dirty talk. Don’t lie to one another, seeing that you have put away your old self and its ways and have put on the new self, which is continually renewed in knowledge to be like Him who made him. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is everything and in everything.
- Then, as holy people whom God has chosen and loved, be tenderhearted, kind, humble, gentle, patient; bear with one another and forgive one another if you have a complaint against anyone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. With all this have love, which binds it all together to make it perfect. Colossians 3:1–14 AAT
God’s Word is full of instructions on how to help one another grow up in all ways into the Head–Messiah (Ephesians 4). As we grow up we become working parts in the body of the Messiah, able to help the hurting. We have something to offer they want and need. One of the key ways we do this is by participating in in-depth one anther fellowship (Titus 1 & 2). When we see someone we know getting caught in the clutches of darkness, we can help them. Do you know a family member, a friend, a church member, a co-worker or a neighbor well enough to give him or her hand up?
Many Christians conveniently ignore the fact that fornication is sin. It is an affront to God. The first step in liberation is recognition of captivity.
Not long after Jesus proclaimed His mission, He rescued a captive. A woman caught in adultery was hauled before the religious leaders. As the Law demanded, they were about to stone her to death. Jesus intervened. After He rescued her from them, He concluded: “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again” (John 8:11).
“Do not sin again” goes against the grain of anything-goes Christianity. If you are in sin and you want to justify your own behavior, you can find plenty of churches big enough to accommodate any persuasion. Yet, the self-inflicted hurts and wounds of sin remain. Worse yet, they are inflicted on live-in significant-others and children born of fornication and adultery.
Speaking of the worldly who have a form of godliness, Paul tells us to avoid these:
Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of trouble. People will love themselves and money. They’ll brag and be proud. They’ll blaspheme. They’ll disobey parents. They’ll be ungrateful and unholy, without love, never forgiving an enemy, slandering. They’ll be without control, wild, with no love for what is good. They’ll be treacherous, reckless, proud. They’ll have the essence of godliness but refuse to let it be a power. Keep away from such people. Some of them get into homes and captivate weak women, loaded with sins, driven by all kinds of desires, always learning and never able to understand the truth. 2 Timothy 3:1-7 An American Translation – Beck
How can we stay away from such people if we don’t judge?
“Fornicating fathers and mothers” is a harsh title, but fitting. Since this article is addressed to Christians, I am using the word, “fornication.” It identifies sexual sin that holds many Christians captive. The politically correct shun the word because it is judgmental. Yes it is and it should be.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us “Don’t judge, so that you will not be judged. The way you judge others, you’ll be judged, and the measure you measure with will be used for you.
“Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye and don’t notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you have that log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first throw the log out of your own eye. Then you’ll see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:1-5).
Jesus comes down hard on judging others. The measure we use will be used for us. If we judge with malice, envy and hatred and exact punishment, we are in big trouble. On the other hand, we are to judge righteous judgment (John 5:30; 7:24). In the same sermon Jesus tells us to exercise righteous judgment. We are to see the evil people do, recognize it for what it is and think and act with grace and truth. We are to see clearly enough to take the splinter out of our brothers eye (7:5), judge if someone is a dog or a swine (Matthew 7:6), or a false prophet (7:15), by what they do (7:16). We are to judge actions and leave the punishment to God.
Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if any one thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Galatians 6:1-3
Church discipline does not readily apply to large gatherings of Christians because most of our churches resemble a city square meeting where all comers are welcome. As Martin Luther said, “Next, there is the German Mass and Divine Service, of which we are now treating. This ought to be set up for the sake of the simple laymen. Both these kinds of Service then we must have held and publicly celebrated in church [buildings] for the people in general. They are not yet believers or Christians. But the greater part stand there and gape, simply to see something new: and it is just as if we held Divine Service in an open square or field amongst Turks or heathen. So far it is no question yet of a regularly fixed assembly wherein to train Christians according to the Gospel: but rather of a public allurement to faith and Christianity.” Excerpt from German Mass and Order of Divine Service (1526)
In the early church, believers gathered in homes for agape feasts, which included Communion. In these small groups, church discipline was to be enforced. Paul gave the Corinthians the following instructions on how to discipline a Christian who was having an affair with his father’s wife.
- We actually hear there is sexual sin among you, and such as isn’t found even among the people of the word, that a man has his father’s wife. And you feel proud of yourselves! Shouldn’t you rather have wept and put away from you the man who did this? Although I’m away from you, I am with you in spirit, and being with you, I already decided in regard to the man who did this. Call a meeting. My spirit and the power of our Lord Jesus will be with you. Then in the name of our Lord Jesus hand such a person over to the devil, to destroy his sinful ways in order to save his spirit on the Lord’s Day.
- It isn’t good for you to feel proud. Don’t you know a little yeast ferments the whole dough? Get rid of the old yeast in order to be a new dough, as you are really free from the old yeast, because our Passover Lamb was sacrificed: it is Christ. Let us, then, celebrate our festival, not with old yeast, not with any yeast of vice and wickedness, but with the sweet bread of purity and truth.
- In my letter I wrote you not to mix with those who live in sexual sin. I didn’t mean you should altogether keep away from people who live in sexual sin in this world, from those who are greedy, who rob, or worship idols; then you would have to get out of this world. But now I write you: Don’t mix with anyone who calls himself a Christian but lives in sexual sin or is greedy, worships idols, slanders, gets drunk, or robs. Don’t even eat with such a person.
- Is it my business to judge those who are outside the church? God judges those who are outside. Shouldn’t you judge those who are inside the church? Put the wicked man away from you. 1 Corinthians 5:1-13
The man was to be removed from the protection God gives believers so he would repent and retain his salvation. Discipline is applied to bring restoration. After this man repented, Paul urged the Corinthians to forgive and comfort him (2 Corinthians 2:6-8).
The man’s sexual sin affected the whole group of believers like yeast in dough. It wasn’t good for them to overlook his sin. Yet, they were proud of being big enough to accommodate any persuasion. He was bringing his sin to the Communion Table “our festival” and violating the mode of purity and truth. “Let us, then, celebrate our festival, not with old yeast, not with any yeast of vice and wickedness, but with the sweet bread of purity and truth.”
We should not eat with, let alone participate in communion, with a brother or sister who lives in vice and wickedness.
It isn’t our business to judge those outside the church. We should judge those who are inside the church. Again, this applies only to those we join with in the Lord’s Supper, not those in the church in the public square.
Let us run the race, looking to Jesus
Now then, with all these witnesses around us like a cloud, let us get rid of every burden and the sin we easily fall into and with endurance run the race laid out before us, looking to Jesus, who gives us our faith from start to finish. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, thinking nothing of its shame, and sat down at the right of God’s throne.
Think of how sinners opposed Him and He endured it. It will help you not to get tired and give up. In your struggle against sin you haven’t yet resisted till blood has flowed. And you have forgotten the encouragement spoken to you as sons: My son, don’t think lightly of the Lord’s training or give up when He correct you. The Lord corrects whom He loves, and He whips everyone He accepts as a son.
What you endure is to correct you. God is treating you as His sons. Is there a son whom his father doesn’t correct? All sons are corrected; if you’re not corrected, you’re no sons but bastards. Furthermore, our natural father used to correct us, and we respected them. Shouldn’t we much more submit to the Father of spirits and live? They corrected us for a short time, as it seemed best to them. But, He corrects us for our good, to have us share His holiness. While we’re being corrected, it always seems unpleasant and painful. But after we’ve been trained, correction gives us the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
And so, if your hands are letting go, take a firm hold; if you feel weak in your knees, stand firm; and march on without wavering. Then a cripple will not be turned away but be made well.
Try hard to live in peace with everybody and to be holy. Without holiness nobody will see the Lord. See that no one loses God’s love, that no root with bitter fruit grows up to trouble you and so defiles all of you, that nobody lives in sexual sin or is unholy like Esau, who for one meal sold his inheritance rights as firstborn. You know that later, when he wanted to get the blessing, he was rejected. He had no chance to change his mind although he begged for it with tears.
You didn’t come to anything you could touch, to a blazing fire, darkness, gloom, a storm, the blast of a trumpet, or the speaking of a voice. Those who heard that begged to be told no more, because they couldn’t endure the order that was given: Even an animal, if it touches the mountain, must be stoned. And the sight was so terrible Moses said, ‘I am terrified and trembling.’
No, you have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Here are tens of thousands of angels, the whole festival gather and church of God’s firstborn people with their names written in heaven. Here is the Judge and God of all. Here are the spirits of the righteous who have been perfected. And here is Jesus, who gave us a new covenant with God, and the sprinkled blood that has better things to tell than Abel.
See that you don’t refuse to listen to Him who is speaking. If the others didn’t escape when they refused to listen to Him warning them on earth, much less will we if we turn away from Him who warns us from heaven. Then His voice shook the earth. But now He has promised: Once more I will shake not only the earth but also heaven. The words once more show clearly He will take away what is shaken, seeing He made it, leaving what isn’t shaken as permanent. Since we have received a kingdom that can’t be shaken, let us thank God and so worship in a way that pleases Him, with fear and awe, because our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12 AAT
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