When a Christ centered marriage places the man in the headship?

Question

Does this mean a woman has to be a submissive wife? What are the rules of being a submissive wife? Does this make a marriage better? And according to the Bible is the way it is supposed to be?

Answer 1

If you take the Bible literally as some claim to do, then a marriage between a man and a woman should be based on the man being the head and leader. This would mean that the woman would have to submit to his decisions.

Of course as with lots of other scriptural topics, many "literalists" do not pay attention to the verses in the Bible which call for this sort of partnership in marriage. (But don't dare say they "pick and choose"!)

The reality for those strong enough in faith to admit it is that we have evolved on many issues and we do not do precisely as the Bible commanded or suggested. Slavery is a prime example. Most people have also evolved in their concept of the way in which a marriage should work, although admittedly not as many men have evolved their beliefs on this as women.

I would say that most people in America view marriage today as more of an equal partnership in which both parties have an equal say and both parties contribute to the child rearing efforts. In practice, it's not always equal, of course, but our concepts and thoughts on equality are moving in the right direction.

I feel equality would make a marriage better, because both human beings were created by God and both should have equal say and give equally to the best of their abilities for the success of the overall partnership.

Answer 2

The Bible says man should love his wife the way Christ loved the church. If that is the case, and a wife were to submit to her husband, as Paul said (so Paul said it, not Jesus), it would kinda be an equal partnership, because I don't think anyone loved anything more than how Christ loved. However a lot of men forget that part of and just expect a submissive wife and think they can be domineering jerks. If God made Eve out of Adams rib, it was so she would be beside him, not under his feet or behind him.

Answer 3

No, a Christ-centered marriage places Jesus at the head. Decent Christians may disagree over how much of the Bible rules of conduct are necessary. I don't believe in submission and headship, but I'd insist my marriage was Christian. I even managed to keep my faith when my husband died at 41.

Answer 4

To make a marriage good requires love and respect from and for both people involved. It sounds to me like you need to give a lot of thought to how you feel about marriage and what you expect from it before you actually try to make a marriage work.

Answer 5

Some will tell you that a wife must be submissive in such a relationship. That would be true. However, the husband, if he is a good husband, will treat her with respect and love, not be dominating and cruel.

Answer 6

"The submission of the wife to the husband is to be “as to the Lord.” It is no longer to be the kind expected as a matter of course by cultural norms and forced upon women—who were seen as inferior to males in both Jewish and Gentile cultures. No, her submission is to be freely chosen, being there for her partner “as to the Lord,” that is, as a disciple of the Lord, as one who followed in his servant footsteps, motivated by self-giving love.

Answer 7

That is not at all what that mean.

Here go and read this Corinthians11/3-12

God is no respecter of persons. We are all equal in God. Man and Woman.

Good luck and God bless from Texas <><

Answer 8

when husband loves his wife like Christ loves His church and gave His life for it. woman would not have problem submitting.

we are not Muslims or Mormons to just like morons to submit to what ever.

husband will respect his wife and if he hears something from God will wait for his wife to hear from HIM too and they work as a team and support each other.

Answer 9

I hope this posts! 1 of 6 parts. Please read so U know where U Both Belong in a Marriage. Sorry, this Info is Not on the Web or I would have given a URL. John

DOCTRINE OF MARRIAGE
(Part 1)

A. Introduction.
1. Application principles. These principles explain every problem in
marriage, in romance, and in human relationship.
a. Application without truth is false.
b. Application without facts is folly.
c. Application from emotion is the life of the loser.
d. Application without principle is distorted thinking.
e. Application without doctrine is distorted learning.
f. Application without virtue is distorted living.
2. You cannot base doctrine on experience. You cannot base doctrine
on what you see other Christians doing or failing to do. You base doctrine
on what the Word of God says. Neither empiricism or rationalism is the
source of absolute truth. If experience contradicts the Bible, then the
Bible is correct.
3. Application of doctrine cannot be made without inculcation of the
principles of doctrine. You are designed to learn doctrine and apply it
from your own soul. You have to learn doctrine, metabolize it, apply it,
and use it to solve problems. The pattern is learning, thinking, solving.
For the Christian, the basic solutions to marriage are spiritual, which
means they are doctrinal solutions.
4. All psychological solutions and multiapplication answers from
counseling are not only human viewpoint, but are someone else's thinking.
You cannot solve your problems using another person's mind.
5. Marriage changes people.
a. While marriage inevitably changes people--for the better or
for the worse--they are basically no better in marriage than they are as
people. Winning and losing lifestyles carry over into marriage.
b. Disobedience to biblical principles in childhood (Eph 6:1-3)
can put scar tissue on the soul which does not surface until faced with the
pressures of marriage.
c. In the spiritual life, however, everyone starts at zero in
marriage and, through learning and applying Bible doctrine has the
opportunity to become a winner.
6. There are three stages in the man/woman relationship.
a. Attraction.
(1) This first stage is that characteristic of a person
which elicits interest or attention, hence, an attractive quality in
another person.
(2) There are two man/woman relationships in which
attraction occurs: romance, marriage. Attraction begins in romance.
(3) Attraction is generally overt and emphasizes physical
appeal. It can include many things, such as allurement, enticement, or
fascination. Attraction may include physical beauty, overt personality, or
seeing the fulfillment of one's personal standards (the knight in shining
armor).
(4) Attraction is the reconnaissance stage of the man/woman
relationship. It has to do with the superficialities of life, such as
dress, appearance, personality, manners, smell, sex appeal. This is the
empirical approach. It is a dangerous stage because you assume that what
you see is what you get, and that is rarely true in marriage.
(5) Attraction is the blind stage of romance or marriage.
A person often sets aside, ignores, or is blinded to the flaws or potential
flaws in the object of romance. You don't see the real person.
(6) Since attraction is often based on libido, most people
get married in this stage; and that is a great disaster.
(7) The attraction stage has not come to grips with the
problems the other person has or can create, and has not resolved any of
the problems of incompatibility, or even recognized the existence of
incompatibility.
(8) The attraction stage has not yet faced the facts of
life. Another person's problems may be the catalytic agent that destroys
the relationship.
(9) Concentration on the object of love in the attraction
stage has a very narrow field of vision, often resulting in the erroneous
conclusion that the object of your love is the only person in the world for
you.
(10) This false confidence of subjectivity rejects or
ignores warning signs against marrying this person. Rationalization,
simply dismissing it from the mind, or reaction results.
(11) People who get married in the attraction stage have
very little chance of success, but it can be overcome by strong spiritual
growth.
(12) When the believer is overpowered by emotion in the
attraction stage, virtue and stability in romance are virtually eliminated.
The removal of virtue and wisdom, caused by emotional revolt of the soul,
is in direct contrast to the normal and legitimate emotional function of
romance and love.
(a) Emotional revolt of the soul results in blotting
out everything that sustains love. This is because emotion has no
doctrinal content, no ability to think or reason.
(b) Emotional revolt of the soul often emphasizes
premarital sex, and therefore, handicaps marriage.
(c) Emotional revolt of the soul brings into romance
two categories of sins: the sins of arrogance (jealousy, bitterness,
vindictiveness, implacability, revenge, slander, gossip, maligning) and the
sins of emotion (fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, anger, violence, murder).
(d) Emotion is irrational arrogance which blots out
reality and virtue and ignores the problem-solving devices.
(e) While emotion can respond in love and does, it
cannot be love.
(f) Emotional arrogance is a system of converting
reality into illusion and hallucination.
(13) The strength of romantic love is virtue, which is
produced by consistent post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation. From
this comes biblical conceptualism, which is the transition from attraction
to compatibility.
b. Compatibility.
(1) Compatibility is the capacity of a man and a woman to
combine and remain together without undesirable after effects.
(2) Compatibility is a mutual tolerance, motivated by three
categories of virtue-love: personal love for God the Father, impersonal
love for all mankind, and occupation with the Person of Christ.
(3) Compatibility is a total adjustment to the other person
so that he or she is the most important person in the world to you.
(4) While attraction is the blind stage of romance,
compatibility is the enlightened stage. In this stage you have learned the
strengths and weaknesses of the object of your love, and you have already
resolved most of the problems of relationship. Whatever the sins, failures
and weaknesses of your partner, they do not diminish your love for him or
her.
(5) Compatibility is the problem-solving stage of romance;
therefore, it is the best time for marriage. Those involved have used the
privacy of their own priesthood to solve the problems.
(6) In compatibility both male and female take
responsibility for their own decisions. Tolerance and understanding
prevail in this stage.
(7) When attraction in romance becomes disappointment or
disillusion, you can end the relationship forever. But when attraction in
marriage becomes disappointment or disillusion, you cannot jump out and be
in the directive will of God.
(8) Compatibility must be established before marriage, not
after marriage. Do not get married in the attraction stage, but first
attain compatibility. Compatibility will blend in with the problem-solving
devices. Compatibility is the stage of virtue-love. No decision should be
made about marriage until you have all the facts; and all the facts are not
in until you have reached the stage of compatibility.
(9) The greatest manifestation of compatibility is
conversation. A successful marriage is a long conversation that seems all
too short. Your moment-to-moment compatibility is in conversation.
(10) Premarital sex destroys those standards of virtue upon
which compatibility is based. Premarital sex causes the fornicators to use
emotion as the strength of their love, and emotion has no strength. The
strength of romantic love is virtue, which is produced by learning,
thinking and solving problems using Bible doctrine.
c. Rapport.
(1) Rapport is the harmonious stage of romance and
marriage. This is the status quo of sympathy and empathy, the spiritual
identification with the object of your love.
(2) This is the fusion of opposites in the understanding of
feelings, thoughts, and attitudes of the object of your love.
(3) This is the fulfillment of the divine mandates of
marriage.
(a) Col 3:18-19, "Wives, be subordinate to your
husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not
be bitter against them."
(b) Eph 5:22, 25, "Wives, be subordinating yourselves
to your own husbands as to the Lord." "Husbands, love your wives just as
Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself as a substitute for her."
(c) The husband is required to have personal and
impersonal love in marriage. The wife is required to have enforced and
genuine humility, objectivity and teachability. This means that the
husband teaches the wife in marriage. His personal and impersonal love
motivate him to teach her.
(4) Rapport is where the wisdom of application of
metabolized doctrine pays great dividends in human relationships, including
how to rear children. Children bring out the worst in men. Parents teach
their children to lie when they are too tough on them.
7. An ode to a loser.
Personal love in the human race always begins, then turns out base.
Minus virtue, it cannot stand; Loss of control, it's out of hand.
Love is the victim of its own decision; Life without virtue has no
precision.
The arrogant cannot give it; The loser cannot live it.
Frustrated love becomes an obsession; The lover fails and loses
possession.
You cannot hold a husband or wife; For minus virtue, all is strife.
So think again before you leap; Without virtue, life is cheap.
Your love becomes a real frustration; Leaving you as a bitter
illustration.
8. Poems and one liners cannot solve the problems of marriage, even
when true. For example:
a. Intimacy should not destroy privacy.
b. Love is motivation for communication. But it takes more
energy to communicate than it does to copulate.
c. Possessive people are possessive because they are preoccupied
with themselves.
d. The arrogant male does not take responsibility for anything
in marriage; therefore, he reverses the role with the woman.
e. Marriage is the triumph of habit over hate. A good husband
is a man who is unattractive to other women.
9. Marriage for the Christian is the most difficult, the most
challenging, and the place of more failures than anything else in life.
Failure in marriage is a failure of the believer's own spiritual life.
10. Marriage is designed by God as a divine institution for both
believers and unbelievers.
11. As marriage progresses it retrogresses, because the attractiveness
begins to disappear as people age. Flaws that were hidden by youth and
attractiveness become manifest in older people. In a good marriage, as the
two people grow older and become less attractive, the relationship becomes
sweeter. You cannot go back in time and undo past failures.
12. Any relationship in life must be founded on principle. In order
for marriage to continue, there must be an understanding of principles of
Bible doctrine. You cannot build a marriage on human viewpoint practical
application or on philosophical writings. You must know and apply biblical
principles.
13. No marriage will last without impersonal love, just as no believer
can advance to maturity without impersonal love.
a. Legalism and moral degeneracy as well as immoral degeneracy
destroy marriage.
b. Marriages do not fail because of financial problems,
unfaithfulness, or other controversies but because believers fail to
execute the protocol plan of God, especially in the area of impersonal
love.
c. Out of impersonal love comes true personal love.
d. When people depend upon emotional love and emotional
entertainment, they have no ability to choose the right person to marry.
14. There are three basic enemies of marriage: bitterness, jealousy,
and anger. Anger represents all the emotional sins. You cannot be in a
state of Christian degeneracy and be successful in marriage.
15. Personal Love and Intimidation.
a. Personal love in marriage depends upon impersonal love as a
problem-solving device. You cannot have full capacity for personal love
when you are intimidated. Intimidation begins in romance, not in marriage.
b. Intimidation in marriage eliminates capacity for love and
substitutes fear. Fear introduces emotional and irrational sins which
complicate the marital relationship.
c. The husband can be intimidated in two categories.
(1) By a strong woman who assumes the masculine role in
marriage.
(2) By a weak woman who intimidates by nagging, self-
righteous arrogance, or legalistic activism. A woman in polarized legalism
is always right in her own eyes and is always trying to superimpose her
viewpoint on her husband.
d. Intimidation in marriage becomes a problem without solutions
when one or both partners are ignorant of the problem-solving devices.
16. The unharnessed woman in marriage rejects the authority of her
husband. Therefore, she will inevitably enter the three stages of
Christian degeneracy. 1 Cor 11:8-9, "For the man does not originate from
the woman, but the woman from the man; for indeed, the man was not created
for the woman, but the woman was created for the man." When the woman is a
blessing to the man, the woman gets the greater happiness. This is why
women are greater in making sacrifices and in patience.
17. Marriage is a test for your spiritual life, since it is a problem-
manufacturing device. What passes for goodness in single life often
becomes a flaw in romance and marriage; therefore, marriage demands the
best from every believer.
18. All human relationships emphasize the prime importance of
consistent inculcation of Bible doctrine. No relationships in life are
more dramatic than the relationship between the man and woman in marriage
or between parents and children.
19. What you really depend on in life will determine the status of
your marriage. To depend on Bible doctrine means ultimate (not immediate)
success. To depend on the advice of others means confusion, misdirection,
and ultimate failure. Success or failure in marriage in a reflection of
your spiritual life. Defeat isn't bitter if you don't swallow it.
20. Marriages fail for two general reasons.
a. Getting married in the attraction stage of romance.
b. Never growing up in marriage. This means never attaining the
stages of compatibility or rapport.
21. In romance and marriage two categories of learning are necessary.
a. For unbelievers and believers - the laws of divine
establishment.
b. For believers only - Bible doctrine from which virtue and the
problem-solving devices are extrapolated.

B. Romance, Marriage and Premarital Sex.
1. Sex before marriage, or fornication, generally occurs in the
attraction stage. It is a sin of polarized antinomianism. Sex before
marriage creates tremendous handicaps in marriage. Fornication is
voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons. It is
distinguished from the word adultery, which is voluntary sexual intercourse
of a married person with someone other than a spouse.
2. The couple involved in fornication are in the process of
destroying the very standards of virtue required for a successful marriage.
Sex before marriage substitutes emotion for good standards, and no marriage
ever succeeded on emotion.
3. Premarital sexual intimacy destroys the standards of virtue on
which compatibility and rapport are founded. This causes the fornicator to
encapsulate his romance in deceit; hence, the basis for romantic love
becomes not only the sin of fornication but the sins of arrogance and
emotion. After premarital sex you have very little chance of getting out
of the attraction stage.
4. Premarital sex not only destroys the standards on which attraction
is based, but causes the fornicators to switch to their emotions for the
motivation and strength of their love. Human personal love cannot be
carried by emotion. Emotion plays a part in love when it is a response to
normal things, but emotion destroys love.
a. Emotions are irrational. Love and romance are not irrational
unless they are based solely on emotion. Emotions have no doctrinal
content, no ability to reason, no ability to apply doctrine, no common
sense, and no content for solving problems and perpetuating human love.
b. In premarital sex, you drop the standards of Bible doctrine
and pick up emotional revolt of the soul. Loss of standards through
premarital intimacy and reverting to emotional revolt of the soul destroys
the very foundation and ability for a successful marriage.
5. The strength of romantic love is virtue. For the unbeliever this
virtue is attained through adherence to the laws of divine establishment.
Virtue is attained in two ways by the believer:
a. Doctrinal conceptualism, which is consistent post-salvation
epistemological rehabilitation.
b. Understanding and using the problem-solving devices of the
protocol plan of God.
6. Loss of standards through premarital sex creates two categories of
problems which destroy both romance and marriage.
a. The problems of the arrogance complex: self-fragmentation
through mental and verbal sins.
b. The problems of emotional control of love or romance.
7. Premarital promiscuity in the attraction stage of romance destroys
the possibility of entering the compatibility and rapport stages of
marriage. Intimacy destroys attraction when it precedes compatibility.
There is always the problem of reaction from failure in romance due to
premarital sex. There are four categories of reaction.
a. The reaction of entering a life of promiscuity with many sex
partners. This results in Christian immoral degeneracy.
b. The reaction of seeking comparable chemical stimulation in
drugs and alcohol.
c. The reaction of depression, self-pity, and even suicide.
d. The reaction of revenge through the function of polarized
legalism and resultant Christian moral degeneracy.
8. Biblical warnings against premarital sex.
a. 1 Cor 6:18, "Flee fornication. Every sin that a person
commits is outside of his body, but the one who practices fornication sins
against his own body." Premarital sex destroys the rhythm and success in
sex between one man and one woman in marriage.
b. 1 Thes 4:3-4, "For this is the will of God, your
sanctification, that is, that you abstain from fornication. That each one
of know how to possess his own vessel [your wife] in honor."
c. 1 Cor 5:11, "But now I write to you not to associate with any
man who is called a brother, who happens to be a fornicator." To succeed
in marriage you must avoid the believer or unbeliever fornicator.
d. Heb 13:4, "Let marriage be held in honor among all; and let
the marriage bed be undefiled. For fornicators and adulterers God will
judge."
9. Promiscuity before marriage creates handicaps in marriage. A
premarital promiscuous man cannot perform adequately, and the premarital
promiscuous woman is always thinking of someone else who did it better.
a. The handicap of self-gratification. Both men and women enter
into premarital sex simply to satisfy their own libido. There is no
genuine love or sense of responsibility for a sex partner in this kind of
fornication. This is especially true of the man. The woman is simply an
instrument for his self-gratification. This leaves the woman frustrated,
which often results in lesbianism.
b. The handicap to compatibility and rapport stages of romance
and love. Premarital sex makes a direct attack on two of the postulates of
marriage:
(1) Marriage is more than finding the right person,
marriage is being the right person. Premarital sex eliminates being the
right person, so that finding the right person is frustrated with regrets.
(2) A happy marriage is a long conversation that always
seems too short. Premarital sex eliminates the possibility of ever
attaining compatibility or rapport.
10. Premarital sex destroys a marriage long before the marriage
occurs. Marriages are often destroyed by the patterns of sexual life in
childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. Premarital sex often results
in Christian immoral degeneracy, which eliminates the virtue prerequisite
for a successful marriage.
11. Promiscuity destroys discernment.
a. The attraction stage is the most vulnerable to premarital
sex, which always destroys the spiritual life.
b. Premarital sex eliminates the understanding and use of the
problem-solving devices you need and substitutes the irrationality of the
emotional sins. For example, fear, worry, guilt, hatred and anger are
emotional sins which often result from premarital sex. Emotion takes over
and erodes the standards on which true love is based.
(1) Promiscuity leads to emotional revolt of the soul,
which converts genuine personal love into pseudo-love; for it removes
personal love from the integrity envelope of impersonal love.
(2) The irrationality of emotional revolt of the soul takes
over the life and erodes virtue standards on which true love is based.
(3) Entrance into marriage with premarital sexual
experience handicaps the marriage. The only recovery from this problem is
the accurate use of rebound followed by both grace and doctrinal
orientation and the proper use of the other problem-solving devices.
12. Premarital sex destroys the possibility of compatibility and
rapport as the years of the marriages increase. Society becomes unstable
when a large number of marriages lack compatibility and rapport. Too many
unhappy marriages among believers in a nation causes instability and the
function of Christian degeneracy, which has an adverse effect on the
nation. As goes the status of marriage, so goes the nation.
13. God's reasons for forbidding sex before marriage.
a. Periods of unrestrained licentiousness are followed by
periods of unrestrained guilt and depression.
b. Licentiousness often ends in suicide because of the deep
depression.
c. You are responsible for your own decisions. Two categories
of decisions are involved in premarital sex: the volition of the male, who
is usually the initiator; and the volition of the female, who is generally
the responder. The more you learn about grace as the divine policy, the
more you take responsibility for your own decisions. Premarital sex is
fool's paradise.
d. The road to disaster is paved with sex, drugs, and excessive
alcohol, which means that the debauchery kids never make it. They are
losers in the spiritual life and in marriage. God had good reasons for
forbidding sex before marriage. God is not unkind, unfair, or trying to
deprive you of any fun in life. He knows the end from the beginning.
e. No one is ever the same after salvation; we are either better
or worse.
f. A male with virtue will never take a female past her own
volition in the sphere of intimacy. The man must always be in control of
the man/woman relationship.
g. The man who does not respect your volition, ladies, is the
wrong man for you.
14. In a nation and society that depends on the divine institution of
marriage and family the consequences of the destruction of marriage are
devastating.
a. Most divorces occur in the first five years of marriage,
which means the victims are often very young children. They enter a period
of shock and acute depression, so that even while playing they cannot
overcome their fear, depression and loss of security.
b. One of the many dangers of premarital sex is the development
of an arrogant and erotic self-gratification in which a single person wants
sexual sensation rather than a true love relationship.
15. The increase of Christian degeneracy means the decrease of both
spirituality and the utilization of the problem-solving devices in romance
and marriage.
16. Just as the believer must continue to learn doctrine to advance in
the protocol plan of God, so good sexual response in marriage is a
continual learning process. Good sexual response in marriage includes the
four categories of the sexual cycle: volition, excitement, orgasm, and
resolution (a general relaxed feeling of well-being and muscular
relaxation).
a. Premarital sex destroys sexual response in all four
categories of the sexual cycle.
b. Premarital sex often hinders sexual energy in the marital
relationship resulting in impotence.
c. Sexual compatibility is related to mutual response of both
husband and wife in the fulfillment of the four categories of the cycle of
sex. This results in mutual pleasure derived from the husband's love and
thoughtfulness in first satisfying his wife. Mutual orgastic experience is
often a matter of the husband's ability to learn his wife's response system
and to control his own response to correspond with her response. This is
sex in compatibility and rapport stages of marriage.
d. It is impossible for an alcoholic husband or wife to find
mutual satisfaction in sex.
e. Sex was created by God as a binding force in marriage.
f. Illustration: paraphilia.
(1) Paraphilia involves fetichism, transvestism, pedophilia
(sexual activity with young children), bestiality, exhibitionism,
voyeurism, sexual masochism, and sadism.
(2) Arousal in paraphilia includes: preference for non-
human objects; preference for sexual activity with humans which involves
real or simulated suffering; sexual activity with nonconsenting partners.
(3) Since paraphiliac imagery is necessary for erotic
arousal, it must be included with masturbation, in which the person
establishes false rhythm for sexual satisfaction, and may never achieve
satisfaction in sex as a result.
(4) Such activity often results in guilt or shame, and even
depression which further complicates mutual sexual response in marriage.
Sex was designed for the pleasure of two people, not one.
(5) No man is qualified to be a successful lover in
marriage who practices voyeurism. Voyeurism means looking at strangers in
the act of undressing, and watching strangers engage in sexual activity as
a means of sexual arousal. If you add masturbation to this, you have a
person who will be a loser in marriage. Do not confuse voyeurism with
normal sexual activity in marriage which involves sexual excitement in
observing nudity, undressing or sexual activity with your wife or husband.
(6) No wife wants a husband whose sexual arousal is based
on being bound, humiliated, or made to suffer. Sexual sadism is the
motivation behind rape.
17. Every premarital sexual involvement in some category of
fornication destroys the possibility of having the marvelous blessing God
designed for you in postmarital sex.
18. Premarital sexual activity often hinders interpersonal marital
relationship. Postmarital sexual activity is a learning process; and
nothing you picked up in the gutter is going to help you with that learning
process.
19. 1 Cor 6:18 says that fornication is sin against your own body.
This means there is a physiological factor in sexual arousal as noted by
the phrase "one flesh" in Gen 2:24.
a. "One flesh" involves biological rapport as well as mental,
soulish, and spiritual rapport. Biological rapport is difficult, and even
impossible, if there has been premarital sex. Premarital sex destroys the
biological conditioning for one man or one woman in the marital status.
b. Libido is the function of biological sex. But the maximum
effectiveness of sex in marriage also depends on the status quo of the
soul, the function of the spiritual life, the attainment of spiritual
contentment and growth. Premarital sex numbs the normal biological sexual
responses.
c. 1 Cor 6:18 implies that premarital sex decreases the source
of sexual energy in marriage. This is why sex becomes dull for married
persons.
20. Premarital sexual experience establishes the attitude a person
will have toward sex for the rest of his life. Because premarital sex is
sinful, it implies that the orgastic quality will be less than under the
optimum circumstances of marriage. God designed sex in marriage as a
reinforcement of the relationship.
21. Premarital sex in adolescence is generally not satisfying, but
frustrating, not fulfilling in itself. This frustration results in bad
interpersonal peer relationships, and has an effect on future marital
relationships.
22. Chronic premarital sex does affect marriage and marital
adjustment. Optimum sexual blessing and satisfaction occurs among couples
who are virgins at the point of marriage.
23. Eph 5:3 warns us, "But fornication and all licentiousness, or
insatiable erotic desire should not even be mentioned among you, as is
protocol for the saints." Why? Because for the single this becomes an
arousal factor for premarital sex.
24. Marital compatibility, or marital love, is reinforced by
premarital chastity in both sexes. Premarital virtue is favorable to one's
own marriage and adjustment to one's own spouse in marriage.
25. Principles.
a. There is a correlation between premarital virginity and
postmarital happiness, especially for the believer who enters the marriage
with personal love inside the integrity envelope.
b. Sexual responsiveness is related to the quality of the
marriage.
c. The quality of the marriage is based on the following
principles:
(1) Understanding and using the problem-solving devices of
the protocol plan of God.
(2) Perception, metabolization, and application of Bible
doctrine under doctrinal conceptualism.
(3) Entrance into marriage in the status quo of premarital
chastity.
(4) Recovering from premarital sexual activity through the
attainment of spiritual adulthood.
d. Sexual responsiveness in marriage increases or decreases as
the quality of the marriage increases or decreases.
e. Marriage quality and responsiveness influences each other.
Therefore, they are mutually interdependent.
f. What is brought into the marriage by each partner determines
the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual quality of that marriage.
26. The more premarital sex partners one has, the more difficult it is
to adjust to one person in marriage.
a. Each premarital sexual relationship tends to be conditioned
to the response pattern of other persons, or a composite from
lasciviousness.
b. Many premarital sexual encounters produce a variety of
responses and rhythms. Therefore, the sexual act results in a specific
response pattern for each individual involved. A new premarital sexual
encounter does not extinguish the previous pattern of the previous sexual
relationship.
c. Therefore, promiscuity eventuates in a sexual conditioning to
a composite of all of one's sexual affairs. The pattern of effective
sexual relationship in marriage may be permanently or temporarily damaged,
depending upon the spiritual status quo.
27. The spiritual factor in God's overruling grace policy whereby the
believer recovers from the destructive effects of fornication includes
rebound and reaching spiritual adulthood. But rebound alone is not the
entire healing factor. Until one reaches spiritual self-esteem, there is
no true recovery from premarital sex.
28. Unrestrained fornication and promiscuity do not lead to freedom,
but to bondage. Premarital control of sexuality is liberating, for it
avoids the handicaps brought on by fornication.
a. Undisciplined, obsessive, uncontrolled premarital sexuality
hinders effective sexual relationship in marriage.
b. Premarital chastity produces a self-control which makes the
husband an effective lover of his wife.
29. The security and environment of virtue-love offers optimum
circumstances for developing compatibility and rapport in marriage.
30. The husband and wife who reach marriage in virginity and virtue
create a more enduring happiness through their understanding and the
utilization of Bible doctrine. This overflows into their sex life, for
they have great satisfaction in learning to respond fully and completely to
each other.
31. Sex is the equality in marriage. Though the man is the authority
in marriage, he becomes a responder in sex. The woman is obedient to the
man in marriage, but she can become aggressive in sex. Both are designed
for aggressiveness and response in sex. This is how sexual rhythm is
created.
32. In romance there is always some possibility of violating the
principle of no premarital sex.
a. Premarital sex causes those involved to lean on emotions to
the point where they often become irrational. This means loss of standards
by which love-compatibility can be attained with a member of the opposite
sex.
b. Intimacy in the attraction stage destroys a relationship, for
God designed romance and marriage to place compatibility first.
"Compatibility first" means to explore how a person thinks, to discover
what they really are, what is the dark side, what is the bright side, what
are the flaws in a person.
c. Intimacy destroys attraction when it precedes compatibility.

C. The Active and Passive Voice in Romance and Marriage.
1. Definition of the active and passive voice.
a. In the active voice, the subject produces the action of the
verb.
b. In the passive voice, the subject receives the action of the
verb. The subject is acted upon by someone or something else.
2. There are two categories of active living: active virtue and
active arrogance. There are two categories of passive living: passive
virtue and passive arrogance.
3. Active virtue means following the divine rules related to life and
marriage. There are three divine rules in marriage that are designed to
produce virtue in marriage. And virtue is the basis for all happiness in
marriage.
a. Husbands love your wives, Eph 5:25.
b. Wives obey your husbands, Col 3:18.
c. Husbands and wives forgive each other as Christ forgave us.
Eph 4:32.
4. In active virtue, the believer applies doctrine to his spiritual
life, solves his own problems, and overcomes his own failures. Active
virtue is:
a. Consistent post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation and
application of doctrine. This is learning doctrine, thinking doctrine, and
using doctrine to solve problems.
b. Understanding and using the problem-solving devices of the
protocol plan of God.
c. Execution of the protocol plan and subsequent glorification
of God.
d. Active virtue is the function of Christian service in four
categories.
(1) Related to your royal priesthood, there is intercessory
prayer, giving, and all the functions of spiritual adulthood.
(2) Related to your royal ambassadorship, there is
missionary activity, witnessing, Christian administration.
(3) Related to your spiritual gift.
(4) Related to the laws of divine establishment.
e. Active virtue always has an object.
(1) The first object in active virtue is God Himself, which
includes personal love for God the Father, occupation with Christ, and
understanding the ministry of God the Holy Spirit.
(2) People in general are the object of active virtue.
This is the function of impersonal love and forgiveness of others.
(3) Marriage and romance are the objects of active virtue.
f. Active virtue is the function of impersonal love toward all.
(1) 1 Jn 4:10-11, "In this is virtue-love, not that we
loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for
our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another."
(2) 1 Cor 13:4-8a, "Love is forbearing and kind; love is
not jealous; love does not brag; love is not arrogant; love is not
unmannerly, nor selfish, nor irritable, nor mindful of wrongs; love does
not rejoice in injustice but joyfully sides with the truth; love can
overlook faults; love is full of hope, full of truth, full of endurance;
love never fails."
(3) Mandates for impersonal love can be given without
mentioning the word love, as in Eph 4:31-32. "All bitterness, both anger
and wrath, both quarreling and slander, must be removed along with all
malice. But become kind toward one another and forgive each other, just as
God also by means of Christ has forgiven you."
g. Active Virtue in Scripture.
(1) Eph 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives [impersonal love]
just as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself as a substitute for
her." Active virtue by husbands is impersonal love.
(2) Col 3:19, "Husbands, love your wives [personal love]
and do not be bitter against them." Active virtue by husbands is personal
love.
(3) Eph 5:22, "Wives, be subordinating yourselves to your
very own husbands as to the Lord." Obedience is active virtue in the wife.
A woman is incapable of loving where she cannot subordinate herself from
her own free will. The Lord must have number one priority in your life.
(4) Col 3:18, "Wives, be subordinate to your husbands as is
fitting in the Lord." God did not design a system where the man is to be a
bully.
5. Active arrogance is the function of Christian degeneracy. In
active arrogance, the subject produces his own problems and sins.
a. Active arrogance includes mental attitude sins, emotional
sins and all the sins involved in pulling the pins of the grenade and
fragmenting yourself. Moral arrogance causes far more divorces than
immoral arrogance.
b. Active arrogance is the believer involved in the cosmic
system. Active arrogance is reversing the roles in marriage (the man
becomes feminine and the woman masculine).
c. In passive arrogance the subject is acted upon by something
or someone else. Passive arrogance includes any form of arrogant
subjectivity, guilt, self-pity, unrealistic expectation, role-model
arrogance, and succumbing to the temptations of the old sin nature.
d. Illustrations of active and passive arrogance.
(1) The active virtue side is sensitivity and
thoughtfulness of others which stems from grace orientation. The active
arrogance side is self-gratification to the exclusion of satisfying the
spouse in sex.
(2) The passive virtue side is the avoidance of
hypersensitivity, self-pity, and guilt. The passive arrogance side is
hypersensitivity, self-pity and guilt.
6. In passive virtue, the believer is acted upon by God the Holy
Spirit to understand Bible doctrine. The subject is acted upon to function
under grace. The subject receives love, respect honor from the execution
of the protocol plan of God. The subject responds to Bible teaching with
perception and metabolization. Passive virtue is reception of the teaching
of Bible doctrine resulting in spiritual momentum. When acted upon by
Bible doctrine, active virtue applies this doctrine to the life. Passive
virtue is not receiving the grace of God in vain. Passive virtue is to
receive divine discipline and to profit from it.
7. In passive arrogance, we are acted on by the old sin nature, by
guilt, by others who dislike or hate us, or by a bullying husband or a
nagging wife. In passive arrogance, the food gets stuck in your teeth (the
teaching of doctrine is of no benefit). In passive arrogance, the man
depends on the praise and approbation of others to bolster his ego. When
praise and approbation are cut off, the believer in passive arrogance is
deflated, discouraged, despondent, depressed. In passive arrogance the
subject is acted upon by arrogance, guilt, self-pity, role model arrogance,
unrealistic expectation, iconoclastic arrogance, or emotion; we receive the
action. The sin nature acts on us resulting in Christian degeneracy,
implosion, explosion, and reversion. You react to passive arrogance from
others with active arrogance.
8. The timing of active and passive living.
a. No one can live his life totally in the active or totally in
the passive sphere. When to be passive and when to be active is a matter
grace orientation and the other problem-solving devices. The wisdom of
spiritual self-esteem knows when to use active virtue and when to use
passive virtue.
b. Grace timing originates from grace orientation. Spiritual
adulthood is the status of effective grace timing in the function of active
and passive virtue. It takes cognitive self-confidence, cognitive
independence, and cognitive invincibility to know when to use active
virtue, when to use passive virtue, and how to avoid active and passive
arrogance.
c. When it comes to sin we are never helpless; when it comes to
grace we are always helpless. We are absolutely helpless in the status of
marriage. If we are ever going to have a successful marriage, we must
recognize that we are helpless and that God has provided everything to make
it work. God has provided all of the answers in active and passive virtue.
d. God has revealed in the Bible how to function in this
synchronized system of grace timing. The only timing that is worthwhile is
grace timing.
9. Principles for a successful marriage or the results of virtue in
marriage.
a. Intimacy does not destroy privacy where you have active and
passive virtue. But intimacy does destroy privacy where you have active
and passive arrogance.
b. Marriage is not designed for the husband to be a bully or to
suppress the woman's volition, but promotes it and directs it toward the
man in response to his love. Anything a man does to destroy or limit the
volition of a woman is disastrous. The greater the sphere of the woman's
free will, the greater can be her motivation and capacity to love the man.
c. In active virtue, the man's volition has two directions in
marriage.
(1) Impersonal love for all mankind, which produces
capacity for personal love.
(2) Personal love for his wife, which is the function of
the husband in marriage.
d. In active virtue, the woman's volition has two directions in
marriage.
(1) Obedience and response to the love of her husband.
(2) Training and teaching children.
e. Love becomes motivation for communication.
f. The Bible must never be left out of marriage.
g. A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too
short.
h. Virtue never feels threatened by any aberration on the part
of a partner in marriage.
i. Marriage is more than finding the right person; it is being
the right person.
10. Husbands act on wives and wives act on husbands, resulting in a
good or bad marriage. The husband who fails in marriage uses active
arrogance in bullying not only his wife but his children and pets. Passive
arrogance causes the man to revert to his childhood through pouting and
sulking.
11. In romance, the woman often becomes disenchanted and terminates
the relationship. Male active virtue understands this and allows the woman
her privacy and never bothers her again. But male active arrogance bothers
the woman and makes a pest of himself.
12. Whether we succeed or fail depends on whether we function from
active virtue or active arrogance. When we act on someone or something
else we do so from active virtue or active arrogance.
13. God invented marriage; He is the expert on marriage.
a. Because God is the author of marriage, there should be virtue
in marriage. Anything invented by God can only function on the principles
of doctrine.
b. God the Father performed the first marriage ceremony. The
man and woman were sinless and lived in perfect environment, and they still
failed. God made some rules so that marriage could be wonderful, but most
people have forgotten or never knew the rules.
c. The woman is more aggressive than the man. In the Garden she
aggressively took the forbidden fruit and brought it to the passive man.
14. The weak man in marriage.
a. The weak man acts on someone else. The weak man enters into
premarital sex, which destroys his standards and locks him into the
attraction stage.
(1) Premarital sex is the guarantee that you will never
have a happy relationship in marriage apart from regeneration and spiritual
growth. The same is true of the woman. Once she engages in premarital sex
with multiple partners, she will never be able to respond successfully to
one man.
(2) God designed sex for recreation in marriage, not just
procreation. There is no meaning to bringing children into the world
unless there is a system of rapport established in sex, in which the woman
is completely and totally satisfied in sex. The man must understand
everything necessary to satisfy a woman.
b. The weak man enters into active arrogance and pursues the
woman until she has no privacy and cannot stand him. Male active arrogance
pesters the woman because of wounded arrogance and she reacts and rejects
him.
c. The weak man bullies his wife, stifles her volition, and
abuses his God-given authority in marriage. Authority is given to the man
by God. He also bullies his children and causes abnormal fear and
resentment in them.
d. The weak man is unfaithful in attraction and in marriage.
e. The weak man in passive arrogance depends on flattery,
praise, and approbation from women. But God ordained marriage so that the
woman would look up to the man. When the woman cuts off the flattery, the
man in passive arrogance is despondent and deflated.
f. The weak man has no grace orientation in his life. The weak
man feels threatened by doctrine, reacts to it.
15. The weak woman in marriage.
a. Because men have a tendency to become hypersensitive in their
relationship with a woman, it is generally conceded that women are stronger
than men in certain areas of life.
b. There are two categories of women in life.
(1) The weak woman, whose arrogance is both passive and
active.
(2) The strong woman, whose virtue from doctrine is
expressed in both active and passive virtue.
c. The passive arrogance of the weak woman is her subjective
preoccupation with self, her unrealistic expectation, her role model
arrogance, her feet of clay syndrome, followed by iconoclastic arrogance,
and her evil motivation from her guilt complex. She idolizes a man; then
when she sees his feet of clay, she cuts him down. That is passive
arrogance motivating active arrogance.
d. The active arrogance of the weak woman is manifest by her
intrusion into the privacy of others. She is always trying to change
others to conform to her faults or legalistic ideas.
e. The weak woman cannot execute either the protocol plan of God
or the divine mandates regarding her husband or the general rules of
marriage.
f. The weak woman becomes involved in the pattern of Christian
degeneracy. Christian degeneracy destroys marriage.
g. In active arrogance the weak woman is always trying to change
others to conform to her false and legalistic ideas and standards.
h. In passive arrogance she never tries to change herself.
(1) Locked-in arrogance sees no reason for self-improvement
or changing self in any way.
(2) You cannot change others; you can only change yourself.
(3) Man has a destiny. When he gets married, his destiny
must continue. The weak woman will often cut off a man's destiny because
it does not please her.
(4) In marriage the woman must walk around the man, not the
man around the woman.
i. In marriage the woman needs a soul lift, not a face lift.
The soul lift originates from obedience to the divine mandates.
j. In passive virtue the woman responds to her husband in
obedience. In active virtue the woman functions in enforced and genuine
humility, and objectivity.
16. Active and passive virtue require two things: consistent filling
of the Holy Spirit and consistent perception of doctrine resulting in
spiritual momentum. For both husband and wife, God must have number one
priority. Therefore, husband and wife must learn doctrine together, or
simultaneously. Perception of Bible doctrine is the real togetherness in
marriage.
a. There are three crisis points for learning in life.
(1) At physical birth, when we must learn knowledge related
to life in general.
(2) At regeneration, when we must learn Bible doctrine
related to the protocol plan.
(3) At marriage, when we must learn the rules and
principles related to the man/woman relationship, romance and matrimony.
(a) It is important to learn and recognize the three
stages of man/woman relationship: attraction, compatibility, and rapport.
If compatibility and rapport are not achieved in romance, do not get
married.
(b) If compatibility and rapport are not achieved in
romance, do not get married.
(c) The believer is designed by doctrine to solve his
own problems, including the problems of romance and marriage.
(d) Since marriage was invented by God, He has
revealed in the Bible how it works and how it becomes successful.
(e) Most problems in marriage are symptoms, the
disease is failure in the spiritual realm. Deal with the disease and the
problems will be solved.
b. Marriage was never designed for outside interference,
including counseling.
c. Fellowship with God must precede fellowship with people. If
your fellowship with God is a failure, your fellowship with people with be
a failure. Fellowship with people includes romance and marriage.
Fellowship with God and people is based on spiritual growth and momentum:
the perception, metabolization and application of Bible doctrine.
d. To have application without principles of Bible doctrine is
the human viewpoint of depending upon psychological counseling and
superficial panaceas.
e. General principles related to marriage.
(1) Contradictions cannot and do not exist in the protocol
plan of God. Supposed contradictions are eliminated through consistent
post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation and through understanding and
using the problem-solving devices.
(2) The believer cannot account for his actions in
undefinable terms. Therefore, he must resolve marital problems on the
basis of doctrinal principles, not on the basis of counseling or someone
else's thinking.
(3) The believer cannot execute the protocol plan of God
through sharing, counseling, Christian fellowship, emotions, or ignorance
of Bible doctrine.
(4) Cognitive self-confidence in the sphere of Bible
doctrine causes the believer to advance from the attraction stage of
romance or marriage to the compatibility and rapport stages, where marriage
has the best chance of success and survival.
(5) Spiritual self-esteem demands that the believer
identify the role and importance of Bible doctrine in his life. Therefore,
the believer cannot afford volitional default where Bible doctrine is
concerned.
(6) Once the believer attains spiritual adulthood he
follows the policy of conceptualism. Spiritual conceptualism involves
three factors:
(a) Learning, which is perception and metabolization
of doctrine.
(b) Thinking, which is application of doctrine to
experience.
(c) Solving, which is understanding and using the
problem-solving devices.
(7) Emotions are not adequate for spiritual conceptualism.
Emotions are not tools of cognition, nor the criteria for the protocol plan
of God. Thinking is a cause; emotion is an effect. Doctrinal
conceptualism eliminates emotion as a criteria for the Christian life.
(8) The privacy of the believer's royal priesthood is the
sphere for doctrinal conceptualism and problem-solving. When the believer
depends on others for guidance and counseling, he is weak; he contradicts
the protocol plan of God; he subverts his own royal priesthood. God does
not test us until we are prepared for it. You are designed to solve your
own problems.
(9) You cannot solve the problems of life from morality
without virtue. Morality minus virtue is self-righteous arrogance. This
is the motivation for nagging. Personal love has no problem-solving
capability.
(10) Response to God avoids reaction to mankind. Response
to God is the function of two problem-solving devices: personal love for
God the Father and occupation with Christ. Reaction to mankind is avoided
through impersonal love. Reaction to life in marriage becomes a problem-
manufacturing device, divorcement from reality, loss of common sense, loss
of wisdom, and movement into panic palace.

D. God's Grace Policy Related to Marriage.
1. We cannot justify ourselves in spiritual death. In grace God
justifies us at the moment of salvation through personal faith in Christ.
2. We cannot justify sin in our lives as Christians. In grace God
cleanses us from post-salvation sinning and restores us to fellowship with
Himself through the rebound technique of 1 Jn 1:9.
3. We cannot justify blessing from God through our works or Christian
experience. In grace God justifies blessing to believers, both winners and
losers, through logistical grace.
4. The grace policy of God rules our lives. We cannot go back and
rectify our sins and failures; and this includes our failures both in
marriage and divorce. But we can go forward under the grace policy of God.
And we can execute the protocol plan of God and glorify Him.
5. You cannot change the past, but as long as you are alive you can
change the future. The consequences of past sins and failures are in God's
hands, but the future belongs to you under the principle of logistical
grace. It isn't what we do that counts, but what God does that counts.
6. The sins of marriage and divorce are no different than the sins of
any other category of living. Therefore, if you discover that you are
living in adultery, rebound once, forget it, and keep moving in your
current marriage.

E. Taboos in the Selection of a Mate.
1. If you are a believer, do not marry an unbeliever, 1 Cor 9:5; 2
Cor 6:14-15. If you become a believer after having been married to an
unbeliever, do not seek a divorce. You have the opportunity to evangelize
your spouse.
2. If you are positive to doctrine, do not marry a person who is
negative to doctrine or your biblical convictions. Spiritual compatibility
is the only hope for resolving many of the problems in marriage.
3. Do not regard marriage as the solution to the problems of life.
Marriage is not a problem-solving device, but a problem-manufacturing
status. The more problems you carry into marriage, the less chance the
marriage has of succeeding. If you cannot solve your problems while alone,
you cannot solve them in marriage.
4. Do not marry on a wave of libido, which is tantamount to getting
married in the attraction stage. This is especially true in teenage
marriages.
5. Do not marry a person involved in substance abuse, which includes
alcohol and drugs.
6. Do not marry to escape from an unhappy home life, abusive parents,
or an unhappy set of circumstances.
7. Do not marry a status symbol, for security, or because of peer
pressure. Status symbols are usually troublesome persons. Do not marry
for money, or to improve your economic situation, or for financial
security. Do not go in debt to get married. Do not believe that two
people can live as cheaply as one person.
8. Do not marry because you love and want children. Children do not
improve a marriage, nor do they ever save a marriage.
9. Do not marry a person for his or her beauty or attractiveness
alone. Beauty gives little indication of the real character of a person.
Beauty blinds the ignorant, the shallow, the superficial, and the
nondiscerning person. Beauty can be a disguise for flaws and defects.
These need to be recognized before marriage. Beauty fades and is often
corrupted by arrogance. Without virtue, beauty is often susceptible to
flattery.
10. Do not marry a person unless you are in the compatibility stage of
your relationship. The compatibility stage has five characteristics.
a. Spiritual compatibility. If you can't agree on doctrine, the
same pastor, the same local church, you will have trouble. This is the
most difficult of all compatibilities to recognize.
b. Mental compatibility. This is discovered through
conversation.
c. Physical compatibility. This is determined after marriage,
and the discovery is fun. Sex is a learning process.
d. Economic compatibility is agreement on how to handle
finances.
e. Recreational compatibility. This is a most important
compatibility in the attraction stage.
11. Avoid getting married under peer pressure. It is better to take
your time and avoid making a mistake.
12. The Septuagint says in Prov 18:22, "Whoever finds a good wife
receives grace from the Lord. But he who divorces a good wife divorces a
blessing and takes a woman who is unchaste and stupid." The Hebrew says,
"He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains grace from the Lord."
It appears that the LXX may not be a part of the Word of God, but the
principle is certainly true.
14. Do not marry a neurotic person, which is dangerous to the soul and
mental compatibility. This type is too unstable, too emotional, too
hysterical, too self-centered, and too self-destructive to adjust to
marriage. No marriage to a neurotic person ever works out.
15. Do not marry a divorced man except under those circumstances
dictated by the Word of God: his former wife has died; he divorced his
wife prior to salvation; his former wife has remarried; he is the innocent
party of an adultery divorce; his divorce involved the desertion of his
former wife.
16. Do not marry any man unless you can submit to his authority in
three categories: his spiritual authority; his mental authority; his
physical authority. The mental and spiritual are far more important than
the physical.

F. The Principle of Responsibility in Marriage.
1. There are three times in life when learning is imperative: at
birth, at regeneration, at the point of marriage.
2. Irresponsible people cannot make marriage work.
3. Irresponsibility is exhibited by the following characteristics:
a. Not being answerable or accountable to a higher authority.
b. Not being capable or qualified for responsibility. This is
caused by failure of human maturity or failure of spiritual growth.
c. Rejection or ignorance of doctrine--regarding this study, the
rules for marriage.
d. Failure to take the responsibility for your own decisions.
e. Ignorance, emotionalism, and lack of common sense all
contribute to irresponsibility.
f. But the greatest problem with believers is failure to
understand and use the problem-solving devices.
4. Irresponsibility in marriage is related to premarital sex.
a. The importance of premarital responsibility is taught in 1
Cor 7:1, "It is honorable [good] for a man not to touch [premarital sex] a
woman."
b. The purpose of marriage is taught in 1 Cor 7:2, "But because
of fornication [premarital sex], let each man have his own wife, and let
each woman have her own husband." Sex is forbidden before marriage and
encouraged after marriage. The success of sex, rapport, and compatibility
in marriage depends on the avoidance of premarital sex.
c. Solomon was guilty of sexual sins, Eccl 7:25-29. He seduced
many women, and it destroyed his sexual ability. One of the worst things a
woman can do is marry a man of many sexual conquests. It is tantamount to
sexual abuse of women. You can never abuse a woman and get away with it.
Solomon could not find a virtuous woman because he was out of fellowship
all the time.
5. Irresponsibility and the desperation syndrome.
a. People in the desperation syndrome display three
characteristics:
(1) They demand instant answers.
(2) They want immediate help.
(3) They insist on counseling.
b. This is not the way you learn God's rules. It takes time.
c. The desperation syndrome has compounded the problems of many
people.
d. Impatience for miracles or quick answers can be classified as
the aspirin panacea. Impatient, desperate people fail to realize that it
took years to become losers. Therefore, you do not instantly become a
winner or quickly patch up the problems of Christian degeneracy.
(1) No one can solve your problems for you. You must solve
your problems within the framework of your own spiritual life. That means
using the privacy of your priesthood to solve your problems.
(2) You cannot instantly solve problems that took years to
develop. You cannot learn all the doctrine you need in a few minutes.
(3) Instant and desperate solutions are not solutions at
all.
(4) When you have lost control of your life through
negative volition to doctrine, there are no instant solutions except
rebound and keep moving. It will take time to mend and heal the wounds of
Christian degeneracy.
(5) Desperate people want simple solutions. Desperate
people are emotional people, and emotional people are irrational.
Irrational people cannot understand anything except simple things.
(6) Desperate people want short-term solutions--nothing
that cuts into their time.
(7) Desperate people want convenient solutions.
(8) Desperate people never get anything solved.
(9) Desperate people want instant relief from their
accumulated problems.
(10) You cannot recover in a day what you lost over a long
period of apostasy.
e. Marital problems are symptoms of the disease. You cannot
remove the symptoms permanently unless you cure the disease. The disease
is fragmentation, reversionism, and Christian degeneracy. You may
temporarily separate yourself from the symptoms, but you still have the
disease. To cure the disease you must expose yourself consistently to
doctrine and learn to think and solve your problems through the use of the
problem-solving devices.
f. What causes desperation?
(1) Living in the three categories of Christian degeneracy.

(2) Failure to understand and use the basic problem-solving
devices.
(3) Emotional arrogance and emotional revolt of the soul.
Emotional arrogance converts reality into illusion and hallucination.
(a) Emotional arrogance includes: the concept that you
cannot be saved unless you feel saved, and you are not spiritual unless you
feel spiritual.
(b) Emotional revolt of the soul includes: alleged
speaking in tongues, fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, anger, guilt, self-pity,
and violence.
g. The desperate person is the product of his own bad decisions.
However, he refuses to take the responsibility for his decisions and
remains in a state of arrogant subjectivity. This means loss of humility,
objectivity, authority orientation, and teachability.
h. The desperate person usually wants to justify his decisions
and actions. He wants marriage counseling that is quick and easy. He
never provides all the facts to the counselor.
i. To recover, the desperate person must start with the fact
that he is still alive, and therefore, God has a plan for his life. He
must rebound, and then decide on a plan of consistent exposure to Bible
doctrine. Since desperation is not the status of application of doctrine,
the believer must learn and use the problem-solving devices as quickly as
possible.
j. The desperate person always wants sublimation, stimulation,
attention, the right to divorce and remarry, and has "restarted" his life
many times. There is no such thing as a new start in life. Rebound just
gives you the opportunity to recover and learn the rules.
k. Desperate people are not designed to deduce from doctrine the
solutions to problems caused by accumulated bad decisions from a position
of weakness. The deeper you dig the hole, the longer it takes you to climb
out of it. This is why divorced people should wait at least a year before
remarrying.
l. Instant solutions are not permanent solutions. You may have
separated yourself from the symptoms, but not the disease.

G. The Divine Rules of Marriage.
1. The Responsibility of the Husband.
a. God is perfect; therefore, His works are perfect. Since God
invented marriage for imperfect people, He had to make rules for its
success.
b. God set forth rules both before and after man sinned. God's
mandate for the first marriage in the Garden: do not eat of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, i.e., do not sin. That rule still applies
to all marriages. The more you sin after marriage, the more difficulty you
have in marriage.
c. When we ignore these rules, marriage is a failure. There is
no such thing as a neutral marriage; it either succeeds or fails.
d. There are divine rules today for each spouse in marriage: 1
Cor 7:3, "Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also
the wife to her husband." Each has a duty to the other.
(1) Marriage is more than finding the right person; it is
being the right person.
(2) To be the right person a believer must be cognizant of
the divine rules for marriage.
e. The motivation of impersonal love as the integrity envelope
for personal love is found in Eph 5:25, "Husbands, love [impersonal love]
your wives just as Christ also loved the Church [personal love] and gave
Himself on behalf of her [impersonal love]."
(1) The present active imperative of the Greek verb AGAPAO
means to love from your virtue, virtue-love. The progressive present is
used for an action in progress, present linear aktionsart. This principle
is true as long as marriage exists on the earth. Husbands produce the
action by impersonal love as the integrity envelope for personal love in
marriage.
(a) It is impersonal love that gives strength, honor,
integrity, capacity to personal love. Many relationships do not work out
right because you have naked personal love with no impersonal love
protecting it.
(b) This is the first divine rule of marriage. This
rule demands impersonal love for all mankind as a problem-solving device
and as the basis for giving virtue to personal love.
(c) No one succeeds in marriage without impersonal
love.
(d) This mandate requires active virtue in marriage
rather than active arrogance. Arrogance is the great destroyer of the
integrity envelope.
(e) God designed marriage. God is perfect.
Therefore, anything He designs is perfect. The design is perfect for
imperfect persons. God has provided in His grace and wisdom for our
imperfections and failures in marriage. God also warns about the things
that cause marriage not to succeed.
(2) Principles of personal and impersonal love.
(a) Impersonal love emphasizes the virtue of the
subject; personal love emphasizes the merit or attractiveness of the
object.
(b) Impersonal love is unconditional; personal love is
very conditional.
(c) Personal love has no built-in or inherent virtue.
Personal love is a system of human attraction which is related to the
object of that attraction. Personal love is not virtuous in itself, for
any person without virtue can fall in love or have a friend. Personal love
emphasizes the object. Personal love is virtue dependent.
(d) Because personal love has no inherent virtue, it
often results in vulnerability to the tragic flaws of life related to
degeneracy. Personal love produces such things as jealousy, bitterness,
vindictiveness, self-pity, anger, slander, self-justification, revenge,
etc. Personal love complicates life by combining the problems of two
people, which intensifies the stresses of life.
(e) The weakness of personal love is generally related
to the attraction stage. But the object must remain attractive for
personal love to be perpetuated. Personal love based on attraction always
fades. Lack of reciprocation in personal love frustrates, causing
bitterness, disillusion, reaction, and self-justification.
(f) Personal love is conditional; impersonal love is
unconditional. Any time you have a conditional situation, you knock out
virtue. Personal love depends on the attractiveness of the object;
impersonal love depends on the virtue of the subject.
(g) The object of impersonal love can be known or
unknown, a friend or enemy, beautiful or ugly, attractive or repulsive,
honorable or dishonorable, good or evil. Impersonal love is an integrity
envelope which perpetuates its own virtue and honor without reaction,
retaliation, prejudice, or discrimination. Impersonal love cannot be
destroyed by hatred, antagonism, animosity, or hostility. Impersonal love
takes its virtue from life inside the divine dynasphere.
(h) Impersonal love functions on the basis of who and
what the subject is, not who and what the object is. Impersonal love
disregards malice, hostility and substitutes the virtues of tolerance,
courtesy, humility, objectivity. It never depends on flattery,
approbation, patronage, or attention.
(i) Impersonal love solves the problems of
relationship with self, before solving the problems of relationship with
others. Impersonal love begins to function best when the person is in
spiritual self-esteem.
(j) Being unconditional, impersonal love is the virtue
of the subject overcoming the problems related to the object. Impersonal
love is that virtue whereby the integrity of the subject exceeds the
unattractiveness and repulsiveness of the object.
(k) Impersonal love is the only category of human love
for others which possesses virtue and problem-solving capabilities in human
relationships.
(l) The contrast between personal and impersonal love.
i. Impersonal love is manufactured from that
wisdom known as metabolized doctrine. Personal love is manufactured from
human viewpoint in the mentality of the soul: emotion, lust, vanity, or
the pattern of Christian degeneracy (such as jealousy).
ii. Impersonal love is a virtue from God; personal
love is the arrogance of mankind or the expression of self-consciousness.
iii. Impersonal love is directed toward the entire
human race; personal love is directed toward a few.
iv. Impersonal love is sustained by metabolized
doctrine in the soul; personal love is sustained by the attractiveness of
the object, or entering into a mutual admiration society with the object.
v. Impersonal love is a relaxed mental attitude
toward mankind; personal love is often a very intense and possessive
attitude toward a few.
vi. Impersonal love is free from arrogance and
functions on genuine humility; personal love is hamstrung by arrogance.
vii. Relationship with self is stabilized and
poised through impersonal love, while relationship with self is
disconcerted and upset by the traumatic experience of personal love.
viii. Impersonal love is the mandate of the protocol
plan of God; personal love is optional toward people. Impersonal love is
the imperative of the Christian way of life; personal love is the option of
life.
ix. Impersonal love is motivated by love for God;
therefore, it is nondiscriminating. Personal love is motivated by
attraction; therefore, it is very discriminating and prejudiced.
x. Impersonal love is a problem-solving device;
personal love manufactures problems, except where impersonal love exists.
xi. Impersonal love is one of the imperatives of
the Word of God; personal love carries warnings from the Word of God.
xii. Impersonal love is consistent when faced with
animosity and antagonism on the one hand, and love and admiration on the
other. Personal love is vulnerable to Christian degeneracy through
arrogance and emotionalism. Therefore, personal love must depend on the
integrity envelope of impersonal love to overcome vulnerability and
individual tragic flaws.
xiii. Spiritual self-esteem is the beginning of
effectiveness in the function of impersonal love as a problem-solving
device.
f. One of the great problems in marriage is the believer's
failure to distinguish between divine policy for marriage and the
individual's personal standards.
(1) The divine policy for marriage is threefold:
(a) The husband must love the wife.
(b) The wife must obey the husband.
(c) Each are to forgive as Christ forgave.
(2) The difference between leadership and management is the
distinction between the concept of policy for an organization and your own
personal standards. Marriage demands the function of policy by the
husband, but he does not superimpose his personal standards on his wife.
You apply your personal standards only to yourself, and enforce policy on
those under your control. Leadership enforces principle and policy;
management superimposes personal standards on others.
(3) Husbands fail because they are bureaucrats, bullies,
arrogant managers. They seek to impose their personal standards on their
wives. This is not the policy of marriage. Leadership motivates authority
orientation. Bureaucracy motivates revolt.
(4) As the spiritual leader, the husband executes the
divine commands given in Eph 5:25 and Col 3:19. By fulfilling these
mandates the husband becomes the leader in marriage.
(5) You cannot change others, you can only change yourself.
The policy of marriage is impersonal love, not your personal standards.
The husband has no right to superimpose his personal standards on his wife,
only the divine policies of the Word of God.
(6) In spiritual growth the believer changes his personal
standards to comply to protocol from the privacy of his own priesthood. In
apostasy the believer abandons his standards.
(a) The standards of spiritual childhood are not the
same as the standards of spiritual adulthood. You do not bully others to
live up to your standards. As you grow spiritually your standards will
change.
(b) Variation in standards reflects your spiritual
status quo or lack of it. But you don't give up things to grow up
spiritually. You use the divine problem-solving devices to change your own
standards.
(c) Problem solving demands that the believer
understand and use grace mechanics to change his own life and standards.
And he cannot superimpose those standards on another person. Your personal
standards reflect your upbringing, your background, and you don't
superimpose your background on others.
(7) The policy of the protocol plan of God belongs to all
believers, but your personal standards belong to you. Only the teaching of
doctrine can change someone's standards. This is why counseling is not
valid. To superimpose your personal standards on others is polarized
legalism. Only Bible doctrine has the power to change the standards that
have come from our upbringing and background.
(8) In the local church, the pastor is the leader who is
responsible for communicating divine policy. He does this by teaching the
Word of God on a consistent basis.
(9) In marriage it is essential that each partner maintain
the privacy of the other partner by not broadcasting your problems to
others.
(10) You cannot change your spouse, you can only change
yourself. The only changes that count are the changes made from within
your own soul through the influence of Bible doctrine. This is why changes
from outside pressure are not valid, e.g., counseling, pressure from your
spouse, or support of friends. You cannot execute the Christian way of
life from the thinking of someone else. You cannot solve your problems
from your own soul as long as you are getting outside help.
(11) Your standards reflect your relationship to the Lord.
Your standards do not belong to the other Christians in your periphery.
They are under the authority of divine standards, not your personal
standards. You are responsible to comply with the standards of Christian
organizations when you enter those organizations. This includes such
things as observing taboos, the dress code, etc.
(12) In the same way the wife enters into the organization
of marriage and must comply with its standards. Both the husband and wife
must have impersonal love which they use as an integrity envelope. The
husband uses his impersonal love to fulfill the command to love his wife.
The wife uses her impersonal love to fulfill the command to obey her
husband. Without impersonal love the husband takes advantage of the wife.
And if the wife has no impersonal love, she has no way of responding to the
man.
(13) The reason for these two divine rules that form the
policy for marriage is that:
(a) The husband is the leader, therefore he initiates
love for the enforcement of divine policy. Impersonal love keeps him from
bullying the woman by superimposing his own personal standards rather than
the divine policy for marriage.
(b) The wife is a follower, and therefore obeys her
husbands enforcement of divine policy without surrendering her privacy or
personal standards. Impersonal love provides the wife with humility and
authority orientation, so that she can comply with divine rules while
maintaining her own personal standards.
(14) Policy belongs to a group; personal standards belong to
the individual. Believers with many different standards assemble for Bible
teaching under the policy of the local church. Your personal standards are
subordinate as long as you are under the policy of the group.
(15) God designed rules for marriage to make it possible for
marriage to be a source of virtue. Marriage is designed for virtue, and
virtue is designed for happiness. God's rules provide the virtue.
(16) Personal standards that might become an issue in
marriage should be resolved, if possible, before marriage. And after
marriage without going outside the home.
g. There are three principles which introduce the analogy of Eph
5:25. "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the Church."
(1) Out of the husband's impersonal love for all mankind
comes his personal love for his wife.
(2) Out of our Lord's impersonal love for all mankind comes
His personal love for the Church.
(3) Unlimited atonement is a demonstration of God's
impersonal love for all mankind.
(a) Scripture.
(i) 2 Cor 5:14: "For the love for Christ keeps on
motivating us. In fact, we have reached the conclusion that One died for
all mankind." 2 Cor 5:19: "God, by means of Christ, was reconciling the
world to Himself by not imputing their sins to them."
(ii) 1 Tim 2:6: "Who gave Himself a ransom, as a
substitute for all mankind." 1 Tim 4:10: "Because we have confidence in
the living God, who is the savior of all men, and especially to believers."
(iii) Tit 2:11: "For the grace of God, which brings
salvation to all mankind, has appeared." Heb 2:9: "We see Jesus, that by
means of the grace of God He should taste death for everyone."
(iv) 1 Jn 2:2: "And He is a propitiation for our
sins, but not for ours only, but also for the entire world."
(b) In order to be judged for the sins of the world
and yet stay on the cross, Jesus had to have some kind of love. It could
not be personal love because we did not yet have God's righteousness. And
God cannot love us personally unless we have His righteousness. So in
order to go the cross our Lord had to have impersonal love.
h. The precedent for impersonal love as the integrity envelope
for personal love is found in Christ's attitude toward the Church. All
precedent for the Church Age is taken from the dispensation of the
Hypostatic Union. "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the
Church."
(1) The aorist active indicative of the Greek verb AGAPAO
is a reference to our Lord's personal love for the Church. The dramatic
aorist tense states our Lord's personal love for the Church, the present
reality, with the certitude of a past event, our Lord's impersonal love for
all mankind. God the Father demonstrated His impersonal love for us in
eternity past by not imputing our sins to us, but waiting and imputing them
to Christ. This is also a culminative aorist, which views our Lord's
impersonal love for all mankind in its entirety, but regards it from the
viewpoint of existing results, our Lord's personal love for the Church.
THis is also a gnomic aorist for a doctrine generally accepted as a fact,
which may be regarded as so fixed in certainty that it is described by the
aorist as though it were an actual occurrence.
(2) In the dispensation of the Hypostatic Union God the Son
demonstrated His impersonal love by bearing our sins and being judged for
them as our substitute. In the dispensation of the Church our Lord
demonstrates His personal love for the entire royal family under three
conditions.
(a) Our Lord's personal love for the Church is
encapsulated in the integrity envelope of impersonal love. Our Lord can
now personally love the Church because He first had impersonal love on the
cross for all mankind.
(b) The imputation of divine righteousness at
salvation means that divine personal love now has a legitimate object: the
imputed righteousness of God.
(c) The baptism of the Spirit at salvation means that
every believer is in union with Christ. We are graced out in the Beloved.
God loves us because we possess the righteousness of Christ which we share
through union with Christ.
(3) Impersonal love as the integrity envelope for personal
love must exist in the man before marriage.
i. To understand this precedent we must understand God's love.
(1) Divine love is the pattern for all virtue-love as a
problem-solving device.
(2) Divine love is part of the essence of God, a divine
attribute. It belongs equally to each person of the Trinity. They have
coequal and coeternal love.
(3) Divine love is compatible with all the other attributes
of God. God is eternal, His love exists eternally. It is not sustained by
anything else. God is sovereign; therefore, His love is self-motivating.
God has never made a decision that is not compatible with His love. God is
holy; therefore, God's love is compatible with His righteousness and
justice.
(4) We are not perfect because we have an old sin nature.
That means that God cannot love us personally. But God has perfect self-
esteem, therefore, He comes up with another kind of love: virtue-love,
impersonal love, unconditional love. And like God's impersonal love for
us, husbands are to have the same impersonal love for their wives.
(5) God is immutable; therefore, His divine love is
unchangeable. His love cannot be corrupted; it does not increase or
decrease. God's love cannot be bribed by human works. Since God is love,
always has been love, and always will be love, God never falls in love.
Since God's love does not increase or decrease, it is not affected by our
sins. God loves us because we have His perfect righteousness, not because
we do not sin.
(6) God is omniscient, therefore, always acts rationally in
the function of His love. Even though God knows everything about you, it
does not change His love for you.
(7) God is veracity and truth; therefore, divine love is
rooted in every doctrine and every form of knowledge that resides in His
absolute being.
(8) God is infinite, which means He is without boundary or
limitation. He unites in Himself those perfections which belong to His
character. This means that the love of God cannot tempt or solicit to sin;
God cannot sponsor evil or human good; God cannot be complicated by
ignorance and absurdities. God's love is infinite.
(9) Principles of God's love.
(a) God's love is never frustrated or disappointed.
(b) God's love exists with or without an object.
(c) God's love is not sustained by attraction,
rapport, or any category of human merit or worthiness.
(d) Neither self-righteousness, human good, nor
morality are the basis for God's extending His love to mankind. God does
not love us because of our Christian service.
(e) Since God's love is both perfect virtue and a
problem-solving device, it cannot be divorced from either His holiness
(integrity) or any divine attribute.
(f) Since God is holy, He is perfect in both His
righteousness and justice, and therefore, cannot be anything less than
perfect or fair. When we have impersonal love, we are fair and deal with
everything from objectivity.
(g) Because God is virtuous His love is totally devoid
of sin, human good, evil or altruism. Furthermore, God's love is free from
hypocrisy, flattery, or any patronizing influence of mankind.
(h) There are three categories of God's love:
(i) God's impersonal love for all mankind.
Divine impersonal love is mentioned in 1 Jn 4:9-10, "By this, the love of
God was manifest in our case, because God has sent his unique Son into the
world, in order that through Him we might live. By this, divine love
exists, not because we have loved God, but because He loved us and sent His
Son to be a propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we
ought to love one another."
(ii) God's personal love for perfect righteousness
in others, mentioned in Eph 1:5, 2:4; 1 Jn 4:19: "We love because He loved
us first."
(iii) God's love for His own integrity (divine
self-esteem).
(i) Fellowship with the Holy Spirit is the means of
loving God the Father. Rom 5:5, "And hope does not disappoint us because
love for God has been poured out in our right lobes by means of the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us." We could not love God the Father were it
not for the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Since God is
invisible, He can only be loved through learning Bible doctrine and
subsequent spiritual growth.
(j) As we develop personal love for God, impersonal
love is developed in our lives. And impersonal love is the key to solving
problems in marriage.
j. The precedent for impersonal love is found in the last phrase
of Eph 5:25, "and gave Himself for her." This refers to Christ's
impersonal love when He went to the cross. It is impersonal love that is
the problem-solving device for marriage, along with personal love for God
the Father and occupation with Christ.
(1) The aorist active indicative of PARADIDOMI means to
give in the sense of delivering yourself over in a sacrificial way. The
culminative aorist contemplates the substitutionary spiritual death of
Jesus Christ on the cross in its entirety, but regards it from the
viewpoint of existing results, i.e., redemption, reconciliation,
propitiation, unlimited atonement, imputation, justification, etc. The
substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross was motivated by
impersonal love and resulted in personal love for the Church. As a
dramatic aorist the verb describes what happened on the cross, a past
event, the effect of which is felt in the present, a present reality of our
Lord's personal love for the Church. As a gnomic aorist the verb refers to
a universal doctrine stated in the aorist tense dogmatically.
(2) This is a reference to our Lord's impersonal love for
all. Husbands should have impersonal love for all mankind in order to make
it in marriage because personal love will not carry the marriage. Personal
love has no staying power in marriage, friendship, or romance. It must
have impersonal love to give it backbone, strength, and endurance.
(3) When our Lord was on the cross receiving the judgment
for our sins, He operated strictly from impersonal love. On the cross He
had the motivation of impersonal love.
(4) The accusative singular direct object from the
reflexive pronoun HEAUTOU, translated "Himself," emphasizes the sovereignty
of Jesus Christ as God and the free will of Jesus Christ as true humanity.
Both the sovereignty of Christ and volition of our Lord's humanity
represent the integrity envelope of impersonal love. When the action
expressed by the verb is referred back to its own subject, the construction
is called reflexive. This reflexive is very important because it indicates
what the responsibility of the husband is. Just as Christ's integrity kept
Him on the cross, so impersonal love toward all mankind undergirds
marriage.
(5) The Greek preposition HUPER plus the genitive singular
of advantage from the intensive pronoun AUTOS is translated "for her."
HUPER plus the genitive of advantage is always substitutionary. The
genitive of advantage indicates the persons on behalf of whom something is
done. So it should be translated "instead of her, on behalf of her, as a
substitute for her."
k. Personal love in marriage has no staying power, no
consistency, and no permanence without impersonal love for all mankind.
Eph 5:25 is a mandate for impersonal love.
l. So in the analogy, our Lord Jesus Christ, during His
substitutionary spiritual death on the cross, had two categories of love.
He had personal love for the Church, not yet in existence. He had
impersonal love for all mankind born in the status of real spiritual death.
m. Our Lord's impersonal love on the cross became the function
of our Lord's personal love for the Church. Our Lord's personal love for
the Church emphasizes the object as having God's perfect righteousness
imputed at salvation. Our Lord's impersonal love for the Church emphasizes
the presalvation status of the royal family in real spiritual death,
totally unattractive and unacceptable to God. In impersonal love, all
virtue always lies in the subject; the object has no attractiveness at all.
n. Therefore, the emphasis of our Lord's impersonal love is on
Himself as the subject. He was judged for our sins; He took our place; He
received the imputation of our sins. We were totally and completely
undeserving then as we are now.
o. The analogy between husbands loving their wives in marriage
and our Lord's salvation work on the cross emphasizes the fact that two
categories of love must exist in marriage, and you can't have one without
the other. That is the integrity envelope.
p. Our Lord changed from impersonal love to personal love
because we responded to His impersonal love by faith in Him. Personal love
must be linked to impersonal love not only in marriage, but even with God.
q. Without impersonal love for all mankind, there would be no
salvation. Without impersonal love for all mankind, there would be no
success in marriage or any human relationship that demands virtue.
r. Our Lord's personal love for the Church emphasizes how
impersonal love found a way to make personal love operational. This is
exactly what happens in the marital relationship.
s. No believer can have a successful marriage unless he has the
right priorities in life. Right priorities demand that God be given first
place in your life. God cannot have first place in your life unless you
make Bible doctrine your number one priority. No man can have a successful
marriage without impersonal love for his wife.
t. No believer can have a successful marriage unless he has a
successful relationship with God. If your relationship with God is a
failure, your marriage will be a failure.
u. Knowledge of doctrine must precede the application of
doctrine. And this above all includes marriage. Relationship with people
depends on the attainment of impersonal love through doctrinal
conceptualism: learning, thinking, and solving problems using doctrine.
v. Summary.
(1) Out of impersonal love for all mankind comes our Lord's
personal love for the Church as the Body of Christ.
(2) The Church did not even exist when Christ went to the
cross and died for the sins of the world.
(3) Out of impersonal love for all mankind comes the
husband's personal love for his wife.
(4) The man must have impersonal love before he even knows
that his right woman exists.
(5) To enter marriage without impersonal love as a problem-
solving device means malfunction, failure of personal love and everything
else in marriage.
(6) Without impersonal love in marriage, personal love has
no staying power, no problem-solving capabilities.
(7) Our Lord's impersonal love for all mankind emphasizes
the presalvation status of the Church as spiritual death.
(8) Our Lord's personal love for the Church emphasizes the
postsalvation status of the Church as possessing divine righteousness. Rom
3:22.
w. Husbands should avoid bitterness. Col 3:19, "Husbands, love
your wives, and stop being bitter against them."
(1) The Greek word ANER, meaning "nobleman," is used here
for the husband because, the husband must represent the concept of honor,
integrity and nobility.
(2) The verb AGAPAO is used for virtue-love, integrity-
love, honor-love, that is, impersonal love in contrast to personal love.
(a) The durative present tense is for a state of being
which began in the past and continues into the present. This is present
linear aktionsart. The integrity envelope of impersonal love should always
exist. This could also be classified as a tendential present, indicating
an action purposed, or mandated, but not occurring.
(b) Husbands produce the action by impersonal love for
all mankind and personal love for the wife inside the integrity envelope of
impersonal love. If you do not develop impersonal love, you will become
abusive as a husband.
(c) This is a command for all male married believers.
(d) God invented marriage; God makes the rules for
marriage. All of the rules come from His justice, and in the case of
Christians from His personal love. God is fair; therefore, the rules are
fair. God is love; therefore, He is interested in your welfare, and the
rules are for your welfare.
(e) No man can enter into marriage without integrity
and a sense of responsibility. The motivation that the husband must have
to execute this command is His relationship with God. Therefore, the
husband should enter marriage with two problem-solving devices: personal
love for God the Father and occupation with Christ.
x. The Greek verb PIKRAINO plus the negative adverb means to
stop being bitter. Bitterness is a sign of arrogance. See the Doctrine of
Bitterness.
(1) Bitter people cannot succeed in the plan of God.
(a) Bitterness that continues is a tragic flaw in the
character. There are all kinds of bitterness. God has never given us the
right to be bitter about anything.
(b) You cannot be bitter without malfunction in your
spiritual life. No self-fragmented believer can have a successful
marriage. Bitterness is locked-in arrogance.
(c) To the extent that you are bitter about anything
in life, to that extent you will fail in life. When people are bitter they
often slander, malign, and criticize.
(d) The answer to bitterness is forgiveness.
(2) No one who is bitter should ever get married while in a
state of bitterness. Bitterness is an enemy to marriage. If you are
bitter, do not get married until it is gone. No matter how great the
romance, bitterness will destroy it.
(3) Relationship with God precedes relationship with
people. No one can have a successful relationship in marriage unless they
have a successful relationship with God.
(4) Problems in marriage are not caused by money, sex, or
unfaithfulness. The problem in marriage is lack of virtue: lack of
personal love for God the Father, occupation with Christ, and impersonal
love toward others.
(5) Bitterness is arrogant self-centeredness combined with
arrogant self-justification. Bitterness becomes an arrogant habit that
keeps you out of fellowship the rest of your life.
y. Personal love outside of the integrity envelop is bitter,
arrogant, and self-centered. This is why men become abusive and marriages
fail.
z. Eph 4:31 says, "All bitterness, both anger and wrath, both
quarreling and slander, must be removed from you, along with all malice."
aa. Personal love inside the integrity envelop avoids bitterness
and fulfills Eph 4:32, which is the third divine rule in marriage. "Rather
become kind one toward another, compassionate, forgiving each other just as
God by means of Christ has forgiven you." Virtue-love is also described in
1 Cor 13:4-8. Love can overlook faults, is full of trust, hope, and
endurance.
(1) The problem is that personal love is not a virtue in
itself. It only has virtue while inside the integrity envelop of
impersonal love.
(2) Any idiot minus virtue can fall in love. Therefore,
human personal love is no solution of any kind.
(3) Personal love is dependent on virtue for its success
and perpetuation, whether in friendship, romance, or marriage.
(4) All biblical mandates related to human interaction are
divine commands for the function of impersonal love toward all mankind.
(5) Impersonal love inserts virtue and stability into all
categories of human love and human interaction.
(6) Personal love minus virtue will not hold a marriage
together.
(7) Personal love in romance includes many things which are
transient and temporary and have no stability, e.g., physical attraction,
lust, desire, security, temporary rapport, temporary admiration, the desire
for self-improvement, boredom and a change of scenery, social acceptance,
social advance, legitimate sex, or a desire for companionship.
(8) But whatever the motives that lead to marriage,
personal love can neither sustain nor perpetuate that marriage unless
accompanied by consistent function of impersonal love toward all mankind.
This problem-solving device can belong to an unbeliever through his
recognition of the authority of the laws of divine establishment. It can
belong to a believer through his understanding of the mystery doctrine of
the Church Age.
(9) God has found a way to provide the ability to fulfill
His mandates. Virtue-love is the ability, and is provided by understanding
of Bible doctrine.
(a) Divine power and human power are mutually
exclusive.
(b) Only the function of divine power and enablement
can cause the execution of both the protocol plan of God and the divine
mandates in marriage. We are helpless, and God has provided for our
helplessness.
(c) Human ability and human power cannot fulfill the
principle of Christ's loving the Church and giving Himself for her. That
is too high a standard to be fulfilled by energy of the flesh.
(d) Human ability and human power cannot fulfill the
principle of obedience to husbands in the protocol plan.
(e) Because of the genetic transmission of the old sin
nature and resultant personal sins in the human race, personal love does
not have the power or ability to fulfill the divine mandates regarding love
in friendship, romance, or marriage.
(f) While permanence is not required in friendship or
romance, God has designed the divine institution of marriage to be
permanent.
(g) Therefore, virtue-love as a problem-solving device
is focused on marriage as the only solution to marital problems. Personal
love for God the Father is the motivation. Impersonal love for all mankind
provides the staying power in marriage. If you have impersonal love for
all mankind, you can manage to put up with your spouse when obnoxious.
Occupation with Christ provides the priority solution to the problems of
marriage.
(10) In marriage, impersonal love for all mankind actually
provides both the capacity and the power for a husband to love his wife as
Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, and visa versa.
(11) Impersonal love for all mankind inserts virtue into
personal love in marriage, and provides the consistency, staying power, and
permanence in the relationship.
(12) Therefore, marriages don't need the band-aides of
marital counseling; they need the radical surgery of the daily perception
and metabolization of Bible doctrine.
(a) Arrogance and lack of doctrine are causing
marriages to break up everywhere today. If you are a loser as a Christian,
you are a loser in marriage. The problem is not marriage; the problem is
that you're a loser because you have rejected divine principles.
(b) Christian couples who fail to expose themselves to
the teaching of Bible doctrine cannot resolve their marital problems. The
secret to success in marriage is the life beyond gnosis, i.e., making
doctrine epignosis.
(c) Just as people have to grow up and mature in life,
so people have to grow up and mature in marriage. When you marry, you're a
baby again. You must grow up in marriage, just as you grew up in life.
(d) For the Christian, this is impossible apart from
metabolized doctrine in the right lobe of the soul, and the proper
application of the problem-solving devices which inevitably results.
(e) Some people never mature as human beings; many
believers never mature as Christians. This explains why marriages fail,
why believers are losers. They fail to execute the protocol plan of God
through perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine.
(13) Therefore, personal love in human relationships is a
major issue, for it determines what kind of a person you are.
(14) Personal love minus virtue will not hold a marriage
together. Personal love minus virtue inserts false motivation, hypocrisy
and all the human gimmicks into marriage.
bb. The destroyer of marriage: arrogance.
(1) While most people cite unfaithfulness, arguments over
money, or general personality incompatibility for their failure in
marriage, they are merely describing symptoms and have not diagnosed the
real disease, which is arrogance.
(2) Arrogance is actually the greatest destroyer of
marriage, not the "other man" or "other woman." Arrogance includes
jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, anger, impatience,
hatred, revenge motivation, revenge modus operandi, self-pity, guilt
syndrome, and hypersensitivity. These are just a few of the arrogant
symptoms that destroy a marriage.
(3) So if you come to hate your mate, then you have lost a
far greater battle than your marriage; you have become a loser in the
protocol plan of God.
(4) Again, the principle is that people are no better in
marriage than they are as people. It's true that people can improve and
change, but that requires that they make Bible doctrine the #1 priority in
their life and advance spiritually.
(5) This means that the solution to marital problems is
found in the life beyond gnosis, in the execution of the protocol plan of
God.
(6) Divorce is never a solution; divorce is always an
escape.
(7) An arrogant person in marriage is an arrogant person
out of marriage; nothing has changed. This demonstrates that arrogance is
a far greater factor than anything else in the life, and that self-
centeredness is the major problem.
(8) Only cognition and utilization of the problem-solving
devices can change the person and solve problems in marriage.
cc. Other reasons why Christian marriages fail.
(1) Marriages fail because Christians marry the wrong
person, usually in the attraction stage.
(2) Marriages fail because Christians enter marriage with
false illusions and become disillusioned and frustrated.
(3) Marriages fail because Christians become involved in
the three stages of degeneracy: implode, explode, revert.
dd. Why marriages in general fail.
(1) Premarital sex destroys marriages. Eccl 7:25-29, "I
turned around my right lobe to understand, to investigate, and to search
out wisdom, including the scheme of things [man's relationship with woman],
and to understand the stupidity of evil and the madness of foolishness.
And I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose right lobe is a
snare and full of nets, and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases
God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her. `Behold, I
have discovered this,' says the man with the message, `adding one thing to
another and discovering the scheme of things, while I was still searching
and not finding. I have found one virtuous man among a thousand, but I did
not find one virtuous woman among them all. Behold, I have found only
this, that God made people virtuous, but they sought out many sexual
diversions.'"
(a) Man was designed to have sex with one woman. God
made man virtuous in this respect, but man departs from this.
(b) Premarital sex destroys marriage, and the virtue
needed for marriage and romance. Premarital sex erodes virtue, which
solves the problems of romance and marriage.
(c) Instead of looking for your right woman in
premarital sex, be sure you are the right man. Premarital sex guarantees
that you are not the right man.
(d) Solomon never found any virtuous men or women
because he never got out of the attraction stage. A strong libido has no
conscience.
(2) Marriages fail because of many misconceptions in life.
(a) The misconception that marriage means happiness.
Happiness in marriage depends on virtue-love.
(b) That marriage is a solution to the problems of
life.
(c) That marriage is a panacea to life.
(d) That children will save a marriage.
(3) Marriages fail because people are no better in marriage
than they are in single status. Marriages fail because believers are
failures as human beings. The believer who fragments his life has no
chance in marriage. Self-fragmentation is the first enemy of marriage.
Both moral and immoral degeneracy destroy marriage. Self-righteous
arrogance destroys marriage as quickly as immorality.
(4) Marriages fail because the husband or wife try to
change the other person.
(a) Only the problem-solving devices can convert the
loser into a winner in the divine institution of marriage. The principles
of marriage are the same in every dispensation because marriage is a divine
institution.
(b) In problems affecting marriage you can only change
yourself, you cannot change your spouse. You can only change yourself by
mastering and using the problem-solving devices. You cannot bully your
spouse into a course of action you want them to follow.
(c) Marriages are destroyed by people who don't know
how to solve problems. Losers do not know how to solve problems.
(5) Marriages are not destroyed by unfaithfulness, money,
relatives, incompatibility, disillusion, or children. These are effects.
The underlying cause is anger, hatred, revenge, implacability, gossip,
slander, self-righteousness, licentiousness, and other areas of self-
fragmentation. The most difficult person in the world to live with is a
person in moral degeneracy.
(6) Marriages fail because believers get married for the
wrong reasons.
(a) For a meal ticket.
(b) Escape from an unpleasant home environment.
(c) For legalized sex.
(d) For unrealistic expectation or role model
arrogance.
(e) For an overdeveloped sex drive.
(f) For peer pressure.
(7) Marriages fail because believers make bad decisions
from a position of weakness.
(8) Marriages fail because believers do not obey the
command of 1 Cor 7:3, "Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and
likewise also the wife to her husband."
(a) "Duty" means virtue, and virtue is the road to
happiness.
(b) There are a lot of duties connected with marriage.
God invented marriage and the duties that go with marriage. It is easier
to get married than to learn the rules of marriage.
(9) Marriages fail because of the arrogance of unhappiness.
(a) The arrogance of unhappiness seeks to control
others in one's environment. It does so in two ways.
(i) Making them feel guilty for alleged neglect.
Hence, it motivates attention through guilt.
(ii) It motivates attention through the arousal of
pity. Self-pity tries to get others to feel sorry for you as well. This
is the evangelism of self-pity.
(b) The arrogance of unhappiness seeks to dominate, to
control, to enslave in marriage.
(c) The illusions of the arrogance of unhappiness are:
(i) You cannot build your happiness on pleasant
environment or the details of life, such as money, success, power,
pleasure, sex, approbation, social life, friends, health, or marriage.
(ii) You cannot build your happiness on crusader
arrogance, Christian activism, civil disobedience, violence, revolution.
(iii) You cannot build your happiness on someone
else's unhappiness, i.e., by hurting others.
(iv) You cannot build your happiness on a moment
of time, a moment of pleasure, a moment of power, a moment of success, a
moment of stimulation.
(v) You cannot build your happiness on self-
gratification, drug abuse, beauty, sex, attractiveness.
(10) Summary principles.
(a) Marriage cannot make you happy, only Bible
doctrine can.
(b) Sex cannot make you happy, only Bible doctrine can
do that.
(c) Prosperity and power cannot make you happy, only
Bible doctrine can do that.
(d) Money cannot make you happy, only Bible doctrine
can.
(e) Health cannot make you happy, only Bible doctrine
can.
(f) People cannot make you happy, only Bible doctrine
can.
(g) A friendly church cannot make you happy, only
Bible doctrine can.
ee. The true nature of marriage.
(1) One of the greatest misconceptions is that marriage is
a panacea. Actually, marriage is a problem-manufacturing device.
(2) People are no better in marriage than they are as
people.
(3) People who are losers in life are losers in marriage.
(4) People who are winners in the protocol plan of God have
all the potential for being winners in marriage. The potential is related
to the use of the problem-solving devices.
(5) Losers are not people who fail, but people who do
nothing about their failures, such as using problem-solving device #1,
rebound and keep moving. To keep moving means the consistent perception,
metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine resulting in the
attainment of spiritual adulthood, and the maximum use of the problem-
solving devices of the protocol plan of God. You can't do anything about
your failures unless you understand the problem-solving devices of the
Christian way of life.
(6) Only the plan of God can change a loser into a winner.
Only God can do this, not a nagging wife or a griping frustrated husband.
God does not do this through miracles, but through your daily intake of
doctrine.
(7) Furthermore, in marriage, you can only change yourself;
you cannot change your spouse.
ff. The solution to marital problems.
(1) There is no solution to the problems of marriage apart
from the use of impersonal love for all mankind combined with personal love
for your spouse.
(2) So the solution to marital problems and the secret to a
successful marriage is life beyond gnosis (Eph 3:19).
(3) Just as people have to grow up and mature in life, so
marriage is almost like a birth. You have to start over and learn a lot of
things. You have to be able to grow up with a minimal amount of
antagonisms developing.
(4) People have to grow up and mature in marriage, just as
they have to grow up and mature in life, and just as believers have to grow
up and mature in the spiritual life.
(5) So there are three times in life when you must grow up.
(a) When you are born.
(b) When you are born again.
(c) When you are married.
(6) Each of these requires its own system of growing up.
People often fail as Christians because they did not grow up as a human
being, or they did not grow up in marriage, and the marriage became a
hindrance to their Christian life.
(7) Each category of growing up has its own rules of
progress which must be followed.
(8) The greatest people in life are those who grow up in
all three categories (if all three are pertinent).
(9) If you grow up spiritually, you will make it in the
other two areas. If you fail to grow up spiritually, you will flunk in the
other two areas.
(10) The married couple who does not metabolize doctrine has
no basis for resolving the problems of marriage.
gg. Marriage counseling.
(1) Counseling is a waste of time. All it does is provide
individual attention, stimulate arrogance, and give an excuse to drop
someone you cannot stand.
(a) Marital counseling is rarely a solution to marital
problems.
(b) Instead of solving the problem from doctrine, you
are depending on the wisdom and judgment of someone else who may be tricky
or clever, but doesn't necessarily have good judgment and definitely
doesn't have divine viewpoint.
(2) You cannot build your marriage walking on crutches,
depending on the counseling of someone else. Since counseling is
dependence on someone else to solve your problems, it becomes tantamount to
walking on crutches.
(3) It never occurs to people that counseling solutions
cannot be permanent, because those involved are failures as people, not as
spouses. Yet the counselor is dealing with you as a failure as a spouse
when the real issue is that you are a failure as a person.
(4) Being a failure as a spouse is a symptom. The real
problem is the fact that the person is a loser. So counseling is only
band-aid therapy given to a person who is badly wounded.
(5) Most people approach marital problems from the
viewpoint of subjectivity. They are only interested in justifying self.
(6) Solutions to all the problems in life, including
marital problems, must come from inside the individual rather than from
outside persons, like counselors. It must come from epignosis doctrine you
possess in your right lobe. It must come from learning and using the
problem-solving devices of the protocol plan of God.
(7) The universal priesthood of the believer demands that
each believer solve his own problems from his own inventory of Bible
doctrine. The believer must learn and use the mystery doctrine of the
Church Age.
(8) If you are married and problems develop, do not make
hasty or impulsive decisions to get a divorce until you've learned to
utilize the problem-solving devices. And if you want to divorce because
you've fallen in love with someone else, you need the problem-solving
devices twice as much!
(9) Two wrongs do not make a right. This is how losers are
manufactured; they try to correct one wrong with another wrong.
(a) But in the protocol plan of God, a wrong thing
done in a wrong way is wrong. A right thing done in a wrong way is wrong.
A wrong thing done in a right way is wrong. A right thing must be done in
a right way to be right; this is the preciseness of the protocol plan of
God.
(b) In other words, you don't solve your marital
problems by divorce.
(10) An extremely misleading epigram says "the trouble with
problems is solutions." This is true only when the believer is trying to
apply human and useless solutions to the problems of life.
(a) The epigram might be amended to say that the
trouble with problems is wrong solutions, which are really no solutions at
all. Furthermore, a wrong solution violates the principle of the protocol
plan of God, which says that a wrong thing done in a wrong way is wrong.
(b) Actually, the trouble with problems is no
solutions. No solutions include desperate, frantic dependence on others
for answers instead of on epignosis doctrine in your own soul.
(11) The basic solution to marital problems is impersonal
love for all mankind inserted into the inevitable conflicts which are
created by marriage.
2. Divine Rule Number Two for Marriage: The Responsibility of the
Wife.
a. Col 3:18, "Wives, render obedience to your husbands, as it is
protocol [fitting] in the Lord."
(1) The present middle imperative of the verb HUPOTASSO
means to submit or to render obedience. The progressive present is for
action in a state of persistance. This could also be a tendential present
for an action proposed but not occurring. The dynamic middle voice
describes the wife acting in relationship to herself. She acts for herself
and with reference to herself. This is the imperative of command.
(2) Whether it is a good or bad marriage, there must be the
principle of authority. The husband has the duty to take responsibility
for policy. The wife has the responsibility of recognizing the husband's
authority.
(a) The Bible teaches that the husband is the
authority in marriage. 1 Cor 11:9, "For indeed, man was not created for
the woman's sake, but the woman was created for the man's sake." It is a
man's world, and this is a great benefit to the woman.
(b) For the wife to render obedience or subordinate
herself to the man, she has to be motivated by both impersonal love and
personal love.
(c) God is fair and just in providing this mandate for
women. Because of the uniqueness of the woman, she is honored, respected,
and loved.
(d) Before a woman marries a man, she must be able to
answer one critical question, "Will I submit to the authority of this man
for the rest of my life?" The woman cannot answer this question in the
attraction stage of romance. Other important questions include:
i. Does he demonstrate impersonal love toward
all?
ii. Is he manly, and yet still gentle?
iii. Is he thoughtful, courteous?
iv. What is his attitude in general and toward
people in general?
(e) If you say "yes" to the wrong man who is an
emotional child, who is arrogant, or jealous, your life and marriage will
be intolerable slavery.
(3) The perfect active indicative of the verb ANEKO means
to refer, to relate. This is the impersonal use which means as it is
proper, as it is fitting, or as it is protocol. The intensive perfect
emphasizes the present state of being, the continuing results, the fact
that a thing is in the protocol plan of God. The virtuous woman producing
the action of the verb recognizing and submitting to the authority of her
husband.
(4) God has a plan for your life. The name of that plan is
called protocol. The policy for the plan is called grace. The precedence
for the plan is what happened in the dispensation of the Hypostatic Union.
Jn 1:14, 16-17. "Because from His fullness all of us have received grace
in exchange for grace." When we were saved by grace we exchanged salvation
grace for "more grace" (James 4:6).
(a) The dispensation of the Hypostatic Union was a
grace dispensation.
(b) Believers have exchanged salvation grace for
postsalvation grace.
i. Eph 3:2 calls the Church Age "the dispensation
of grace, which was given to you for your very own benefit."
ii. Jn 1:17, "...grace and truth came through the
Lord Jesus Christ."
iii. Acts 4:33, "...and the abundant grace was on
all of them."
iv. Acts 20:32, "And now I commend you to God and
to the doctrine of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you
the inheritance among all of those who are sanctified."
v. Rom 12:3, "I say through the grace which has
been given to me to everyone who is among you, stop thinking of self in
terms of arrogance, beyond what you ought to think, but think in terms of
sanity for the purpose of being rational without illusion as God has
assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from doctrine."
vi. Rom 12:6, "...according to the grace given to
us..."
vii. 1 Cor 16:23, "The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with all of you."
viii. 2 Cor 9:8, "And God is able to make all grace
abound toward you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you
may have an abundance for every good deed."
ix. Phil 1:7, "You are partakers of grace with
me."
(5) God's plan for our life is perfect. But since we are
imperfect, we do not have the power or ability to execute a perfect plan
from God. A perfect plan can only be executed by a perfect power.
Therefore, we must have the omnipotence of God combined with the grace
policy of God to fulfill God's plan, will, and purpose.
(a) The omnipotence of God the Father provided in
eternity past our very own portfolio of invisible assets and our very own
palace, the divine dynasphere, so that we can execute His plan.
(b) The omnipotence of God the Son guarantees the
preservation of the universe and the continuation of human history on
planet earth so that the divine plan will be completed.
(c) The omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit is
available inside the divine dynasphere for the purpose of executing the
plan.
(6) Protocol is a rigid, long established code and
procedure, proscribing complete deference to superior rank and authority,
followed by strict adherence to due order and precedence, coupled with
precisely correct procedure.
(a) The protocol plan of God is a system of precisely
correct procedure, which takes time to learn. It is designed for every
Church Age believer.
(b) Romance, marriage, and divorce each have precisely
correct procedure.
(c) God has only one way of doing a thing: the right
way. A right thing done in a right way is the execution of the protocol
plan of God. Wives obeying their husbands is a right thing done in a right
way.
(d) Rank and authority is always delegated by God in
His plan. In marriage He delegates the authority to the husband. Freedom
without authority is anarchy. Authority without freedom is tyranny. Both
states occur in marriage. Anarchy exists when the wife rejects the
authority of her husband.
(7) To fulfill this command the wife must have a strong
impersonal love. This mandate requires enforced and genuine humility,
objectivity and teachability for execution. The wife's active virtue is
humility and authority orientation in marriage.
(a) The active arrogance of both husband and wife
destroys the precisely correct procedure of the protocol plan.
(b) The wife's active virtue is her humility; her
passive virtue is obedience to her husband.
(8) The wife obeys the husband "as to the Lord" -
occupation with Christ, but also because it is part of the protocol plan of
God - "as is protocol in the Lord."
b. Eph 5:22, "Wives, render obedience to your very own husbands,
as unto the Lord."
(1) Ellipsis demands the insertion of the present middle
imperative participle from the verb HUPOTASSO from verse twenty-one,
meaning to render obedience, to obey, or to submit. The progressive
present tense is for an action in a state of persistance. It is also a
tendential present for an action which is contemplated but not actually
taking place. The dynamic middle voice is used to describe the wife as
participating in the results of the action of the verb or acting in
relation to herself. The participle is used as an imperative.
(2) The feminine motivation in marriage is given in the
last phrase of the verse "as unto to Lord." Occupation with Christ is the
most important problem-solving device used by the woman to fulfill this
command. The wife rendering obedience to her husband for the sake of the
Lord Jesus Christ. No marriage can succeed without the use of all of the
problem-solving devices. The wife obeys her husband because Bible doctrine
is her number one priority.
(3) The execution of this mandate requires enforced and
genuine humility, objectivity, and teachability. This also requires a love
response by the woman toward God the Father and toward her husband. The
wife can have no personal love toward her husband unless he has impersonal
love toward others and personal love toward her.
(4) If the wife never has impersonal love toward others,
she will never be able to obey this command.
(5) Warnings for both spouses.
(a) Marriage cannot make you happy. Virtue and the
attainment of +H bring happiness to marriage.
(b) Sex cannot make you happy; only the attainment of
+H.
(c) Prosperity, power, money, health, people, a
friendly church cannot make you happy--only the attainment of +H through
tenacity in learning the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
(6) Marriage is a source of unhappiness because marriage
has been distorted into a series of myths which do not come true, thereby
causing resentment by those who believed the myths. The myths are that:
(a) Marriage is a panacea for life.
(b) Marriage is the ultimate in happiness.
(c) Marriage is a problem-solving device.
c. 1 Pet 3:1-6, "In a similar manner, you wives, keep on
subordinating yourselves [rendering obedience] to your own husbands, so
that if any of them are disobedient to the Word, they may be won over
without a word [nagging] through the behavior of their wives, when they
observe your blameless manner of life associated with their respect. And
your beauty should not come from external appearance only - hair styling,
jewelry, and clothing; but the hidden person of the right lobe [must be
emphasized] with the imperishable [incorruptible] quality of a humble and
quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. For this is the way
the holy women of the past, who put their confidence in God, used to make
themselves beautiful, because they were submissive to their own husbands.
Like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham, and called him her lord, and you have
become her daughters, if you do the good of intrinsic value and do not fear
any intimidation."
(1) Beauty is found first in the woman in her overt
behavior and appearance. Beauty is found secondly in the soul.
(2) A man's respect for a woman is extremely important. A
woman's influence is far greater through respect than through personal
love, because personal love can be outside of the integrity envelop of
impersonal love.
(3) Nagging never advances the wife's cause, but her manner
of life does. It is much easier for her to nag and feel she is succeeding.
Every time she nags, it is self-justification, bitterness, and arrogance on
her part. If the woman does succeed, she has made the man weak and a wimp.
(a) You cannot make an issue out of your husband's
sins, flaws, or failures. This issue must be what God has done for you.
That is the behavior factor.
(b) No woman can be a nag and have inner beauty.
After a while she gives up on trying to change her husband but continues
nagging because she is locked into bitterness and self-justification.
(c) There are two kinds of nags: loud-mouthed, and
soft-spoken (like the incessant dripping of a faucet).
(d) Nagging should be a warning to a woman that she is
in the arrogance complex. The accuracy of the nagging makes no difference;
it is still wrong.
(4) The spiritual issue is inner beauty, not outward
appearance, but you are not to neglect how you look nor assume a slovenly
appearance makes you spiritual. Good grooming plus inner beauty is
irresistible to the husband.
(5) Characteristics of the woman's inner beauty.
(a) Self-consciousness becomes spiritual self-esteem
and occupation with the person of Christ rather than whining and
complaining.
(b) Metabolized doctrine in the right lobe becomes
obedience to the husband from the function of impersonal love as the
integrity envelop for personal love response to her husband.
(c) The woman makes decisions regarding her husband on
the basis of the divine rule for marriage rather than from human viewpoint.
Therefore she obeys him, even though he may be a jerk.
(d) The woman with inner beauty dresses with taste,
but always gives number one priority to application of doctrine and
consistent use of the problem-solving devices.
(6) The woman's inner beauty is designed by God to execute
not only the protocol plan of God but the marriage plan, and fulfill her
responsibility to her husband.
(7) The humble and quiet spirit. The quiet spirit is the
woman whose failures have nothing to do with arrogance. The quiet spirit
is freedom from jealousy, bitterness, implacability, hatred, revenge
function, gossip, slander, nagging, etc.
(8) It takes tremendous virtue-love, impersonal love, and
more grace orientation to fulfill the role of the woman in marriage.
(9) The virtue of inner beauty keeps the woman from holding
back her soul while giving her body to her husband. This is part of the
obedience factor. A woman can have sex and be very antagonistic at the
same time. The man who possesses the woman's body without her soul has a
total of nothing. Rather, he has a serious problem on his hands. Sarah
gave Abraham both her body and her soul in marriage.
(10) The things that form inner beauty are the same things
whereby you handle the problem of loneliness and you learn how to entertain
yourself. A woman who can entertain herself and handle being alone has
inner beauty.
(11) Personal love for God the Father is the wife's
motivation for obedience to her husband. Impersonal love is her function
of obedience to her husband. Occupation with Christ must be the victory of
her obedience to her husband.
d. Respect is more important than love and is also mandated of
the woman.
(1) No woman should ever marry a man she cannot respect.
Respect is far more important than love in marriage. Most women have very
poor judgment about men because they do not have principle on which to base
decisions. No woman should ever marry because of libido, personality,
etc., but because of spiritual self-esteem in the man.
(2) For the wife to obey her husband or to subordinate
himself to her spouse, she must be motivated by three categories of virtue
extrapolated from doctrinal inculcation.
(a) Personal love for God the Father, which is
motivational virtue.
(b) Impersonal love for all mankind, which the
integrity envelope. Personal love or self-esteem outside of the integrity
envelope of impersonal love is a monster as well as arrogance.
(c) Respect for what she sees in spiritual self-esteem
in the man.
(3) When the woman respects what she sees in spiritual
self-esteem and what comes from personal love inside the integrity
envelope, she responds. This is the only way the marriage will be a
success.
(4) The wife's attitude toward her husband is described in
Eph 5:33 as respect. It is only from respect that the woman is motivated
to respond. Respect is the basis for the wife's obedience of her husband.
(5) Where there is respect in the wife, there is leadership
in the husband. The most basic thing in a husband is spiritual self-
esteem. Spiritual self-esteem is the husband's foundation for leadership.
Leadership is ineffective unless there is respect.
(6) If the man does not gain the respect of the woman
through Bible doctrine, virtue, and spiritual self-esteem, the marriage
will never work. Before a woman marries a man, she should determine
whether or not she respects him and answer the question, "Can I accept the
authority of this man?" A woman cannot answer this question and
objectively know whether or not she respects a man until she moves out of
the attraction stage and into the compatibility stage.
(7) The key to the marriage is more often than not the
respect of the woman for the man. The average husband does not have
spiritual self-esteem, therefore, the woman has no respect.
(8) Authority orientation is based on respect; love is
secondary. If the woman says yes to a noble or virtuous man, she will be
able to render obedience from respect parlayed into love. Personal love is
volatile and unstable. But if the woman marries the wrong man, the
marriage will be intolerable slavery.
(9) There is no way an arrogant woman will ever respond to
the authority of her husband, nor respect his virtue. She must have
respect from virtue.
(10) There are three motivations for the wife's submission
to her husband: respect for her husband; occupation with Christ; and
because it is a part of the protocol plan of God.
3. The Third Divine Rule for Marriage: Forgive as Christ Forgave.
a. Introduction.
(1) God designed marriage for the human race. Therefore
God designed the rules to make marriage successful. It is the will of God
that marriage as a divine institution be very successful; especially
between two believers.
(2) Marriages fail because human beings have sin natures,
and human volition succumbs to the pressures and temptations of that old
sin nature. Hence, as we have seen, God has designed three rules for
marriage to make it successful.
(a) Rule number one is the responsibility of the
husband in marriage to love his wife.
(b) Rule number two is the responsibility of the wife
to obey her husband.
(c) Rule number three is the responsibility of both.
(3) Marriage is not a panacea. It is not designed for
happiness. Marriage is designed for virtue, and virtue is designed for
happiness.
(4) People are no better in marriage than they are as
people. A loser in life is a loser in marriage; and a winner in life is a
winner in marriage.
b. Eph 4:31-32, "All bitterness, both anger [emotional sin] and
wrath [mental attitude sin], both clamor [verbal quarreling] and slander
must be removed from you along with all malice. But become kind toward one
another, compassionate, and forgive each other, just as God also by means
of Christ has forgiven us."
(1) Bitterness as a part of the arrogance complex is a
cause of malfunction in marriage. See the Doctrine of Bitterness.
(2) This is an appeal to the volition of a fragmented
believer to use problem-solving devices and grace assets to recover from
the fragmented life of cosmic involvement.
(3) All malice must also be removed from you. In this
verse the expression of malice is evil. Malice is both the desire and the
motivation of the fragmented believer in inflicting misery, suffering, and
injury on someone else.
(4) The beneficiaries of grace should become the greatest
in the exercise of grace. The application of grace to others is
intensified by being a major beneficiary of grace. To benefit from grace
is to practice God's plan of grace.
(5) Capacity for impersonal love for all mankind is
compassion.
(6) Forgiveness of others is a sign of the nobility of the
Christian way of life.
4. Divine Rules on Divorce and Remarriage. See the Doctrine of
Divorce.

H. Successful versus Unsuccessful Marriage.
1. You can have either -H (temporal happiness) or +H (God's perfect
happiness) whether in a single or marital status. Minus H makes you
discontent with your lot. If you are single, you wish you were married;
when you are married, you wish you were single. But if you have +H, it
doesn't make any difference whether you are single or married. With +H and
impersonal love in marriage, you can resolve all marital problems.
2. The four divine institutions are for believer and unbeliever
alike. They are the structure of society, the basis for the perpetuation
of human life, and the basis for order in society by which each person can
fulfill his own destiny while others fulfill theirs. Neither divine
institution #1, volition, nor divine institution #2, marriage, sustained
and carried Adam and the woman in perfect environment.
3. Marriage is one of the two divine institutions which existed
before the fall when mankind was in a state of perfection on the earth.
But the marriage of Adam and the woman was a failure, as noted by their
original sin. As the first couple left the garden, God gave each one a
mandate: "Husband, work! Wife, bear children!" But God didn't tell them,
"Go forth and be happy." Throughout the Scripture, there are no mandates
to be happy in marriage, because marriage is not a state of happiness per
se.
4. A happy marriage is when two happy people enter into a state of
matrimony and in that state retain their happiness. The only happy people
who can do this are those who have perfect happiness or neutral happiness.
5. An unhappy marriage is when two unhappy people get married and
retain their unhappiness. Or it is when a happy person and an unhappy
person get married, and the unhappy person dominates and controls the
marriage so that the happy person loses his happiness.
6. A marriage can be successful when two unhappy people, believers or
unbelievers, get married and through the protocol plan of God or the laws
of divine establishment, attain happiness and live together in a state of
contentment.
7. But with regard to believers, it is impossible for them to have a
happy marriage apart from spiritual growth and execution of the protocol
plan of God. In other words, happiness in marriage is execution of the
protocol plan of God. The actual marriage has nothing to do with it; it is
a spiritual factor.
8. The best potential for a great marriage belongs to believers who
are positive toward doctrine! If the carnal believer tries to have a good
marriage through establishment, his carnality and arrogance cancel out the
establishment principles. Therefore, the believer's only hope is to grow
in grace through the perception of Bible doctrine. So a successful
marriage is possible for any two believers who are both positive toward
Bible doctrine.
9. An unsuccessful Christian marriage is when a happy person and an
unhappy person get married, and the unhappy person causes the happy person
to revert to the cosmic system.
10. A failing Christian marriage is when the happy person married to
an unhappy person changes his priorities in life so that he loses his
premarital happiness.
11. Marriage will not make you happy. If you are involved in the
arrogance of the cosmic system, marriage will intensify and increase your
misery. If you run away from that marriage, you will lose the chance to
resolve that problem. Once you run away from marriage, you run away from
life and are never the same again.

I. The Principle of Celibacy, 1 Cor 7:6-40.
1. 1 Cor 7:6-8, "But this I keep teaching by way of concession, not
by command. Yet I wish that all persons were even as I myself. However,
each person has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in
that. But I say to the unmarried, to the widows, that it is good for them
to remain even as I [celibacy]."
a. Paul does not contend that celibacy or single status is
holier than marriage. This is why Paul uses the phrase "by way of
concession."
b. The phrase "by way of concession" indicates that there are
certain principles for those in single status. This also indicates that
celibacy is definitely not for all believers. "By way of concession"
indicates that there is no mandate in the Word of God that says that all
believers should be single.
c. Neither celibacy or single status is spirituality. But both
circumstances demand spirituality and momentum under the protocol plan of
God.
d. Phil 4:11-12 mandates the principle of being content in
whatever your circumstances.
e. Verse 8 is the status quo principle. There are four
circumstances in which the law of status quo applies to a single person.
(1) The possession of the spiritual gift of celibacy, 1 Cor
7:7.
(2) The operation of the law of supreme sacrifice, 1 Cor
9:5.
(3) The older widows, 1 Tim 5: 9-10.
(4) The eunuch category, Mt 19:10-12. Not everyone can
accept celibacy. But certain people can, such as the examples given in
verse 12.
f. It is God's will that some people remain single. The divine
mandate to remain single carries with it certain blessings that are
exclusive to that status quo. God is fair, and those mandated to remain in
single status have certain blessings and happiness which are not available
to married persons.
(1) Paul is not seeking a wife; and he is not bitter toward
other believers who are married. He does not succumb to peer pressure.
(2) Therefore, Paul was able to devote all his time to
studying and teaching. The single believer has more time, energy, and
opportunity to grow in grace and serve the Lord.
(3) 1 Cor 7:32-35 teaches that marriage is a distraction to
spiritual life; therefore, certain things in life have to be done in a
state of celibacy.
(a) 1 Cor 7:33 teaches that Bible doctrine is
automatically reduced to a secondary status in most marriages.
(b) 1 Cor 7:34 says that the wife and Bible doctrine
inevitably come into conflict.
(c) 1 Cor 7:35 says that no pastor can put a restraint
on anyone in this area of life.
2. It is God's will that some believers execute the protocol plan of
God and both serve and honor the Lord in single status. It is also God's
will that some believers do this in marital status. One is not better than
the other. Marital status is just more complicated in concentrating on the
teaching of the Word of God.
3. To change from single to marital status is a solemn decision, and
should never occur apart from careful deliberation in the status of
spiritual adulthood.
4. Time is limited in marital status for the fulfillment of the
protocol plan of God. Time is consumed by the time it takes to make a
success of marriage, to train and educate children, to provide for the
family. The single person has more time for the perception and application
of doctrine. Therefore, it takes great organization, wisdom, and planning
to manage your time.
5. Summary.
(1) If you are a believer in single status, remain single until
a change is definitely and clearly the will of God for your life.
(2) Do not go out and seek a wife. God always brings the woman
to the man.
(3) Do not panic because of peer pressure. It is much better to
be single than to be married to the wrong person.
(4) Marriage is a state of terrible suffering if you are married
to the wrong person.
(5) It is easier to remain single than to get out of a bad
marriage.
(6) To get out of a bad marriage requires one of three things.
(a) Your spouse dies, and that terminates the marriage.
(b) Your spouse is guilty of desertion or adultery.
(c) Legitimate reasons for divorce where the Bible is
silent, but a life-threatening situation or bodily-injury situation exists.
(7) Take your time about changing your status from single to
married or from married to single.

J. The Problem of Single "Virgins," 1 Cor 7:25-40.
1. Verse 27 teaches the importance of objectivity coupled with virtue
in dealing with the subject of marriage. "Are you shackled to a wife?"
means things are not quite right; there is some form of slavery in
marriage. "Do not seek to be divorced." Don't try to get out of the
marriage. Don't be a child and whine that all your friends are divorcing.
"Are you divorced from a wife? Do not seek a wife."
2. One of the greatest problems people have after they are
legitimately divorced and can remarry is worrying about remarriage. If you
get divorced, one of the worst things you can do is seek remarriage. (It
will probably fall in your lap anyway.) If you can't stand to be alone,
you are a loser.
3. People are no better in marriage than they are as people.
a. Unhappy people have an unhappy marriage. Marriage is not
designed for happiness, but for winners.
b. Because winners have virtue, and marriage is designed for
virtue, winners can have happy marriages. Losers never find happiness
anywhere, especially not in marriage.
c. Remember, losers are not people who fail (everyone fails),
but people who never do anything about their failures.
d. You can do something about being a loser. The solution is
virtue first; i.e., residence, function, and momentum inside the divine
dynasphere.
4. While asceticism is wrong in forbidding marriage, the state of
matrimony is a disaster without virtue from the divine dynasphere, as verse
28 teaches.
a. Marriage is not a state of sin. Marriage is a divine
institution, and is therefore one of the most important factors in the
stability of a society. It is the index as to whether the client nation is
going up or down.
b. "Virgin" at the time of writing meant an unmarried woman.
Verse 28b says "But such ones [who get married] will have trouble in this
life."
c. No matter how wonderful your spouse is, married people have
troubles that single people never have.
d. Loneliness is the easiest problem in the world to solve. The
problems in marriage do not lend themselves to a simple solution.
e. The amalgamation of two people under one roof in marriage is
a divine institution, but it does have its trouble.
f. "And I am trying to spare you" refers to those who think
marriage is a sin, i.e., to the ascetics. Paul is trying to spare you from
the shock of your marital problems in case you enter marriage thinking it
is a panacea.
5. Without the system of God's plan, and without virtue-love in the
divine dynasphere, marriage is nothing but trouble, misery, and
unhappiness.
6. 1 Cor 7:39-40 says that if the husband dies, the wife is free to
remarry, but she will be happier if she remains single.