One Thing Led to Another...

It is impossible to describe the chain of thoughts that led to this post, because I have no clear remembrance of the path they took, but here we are. And just a warning, this gets a smidgen PG-13 at the end. Not that I expect Sammy is reading this or anything, but you never know. He's awfully smart.

Back when I did a study of Hebrews with some ladies last winter, I was tremendously helped along by a post by Ben Witherington on covenants. You can find it at http://benwitherington.blogspot.com, and the post is called Cutting a Covenant When The People Can't Cut It, from 10/27/2007. The extremely simplified version is that God's OT covenant with His people was typical of other covenants of the time between a suzerain and his subjects, which involved a blood sacrifice to open the covenant and both blessings if the terms are kept and curses if the terms are not. If you look at the last few chapters of Deuteronomy, this is exactly what it looks like. Well, needless to say, Israel spent many centuries of history not keeping the terms and therefore reaping the curses.

The bit that sends cold chills of "WOW!" up and down my spine is the part about Jesus exhausting that covenant by taking all the curses upon Himself, so is it no longer in force, and simultaneously, by being the blood sacrifice, inaugurating the new covenant in which we live today. Let me just say again--wow. It certainly shed new light on the book of Hebrews, let me tell you.

So where's that PG-13 part?!?!? Okay, here it is. Somehow, my thoughts wandered over to marriage. Maybe because I have one, maybe because my daughter is 15 and she may have one in the next decade also; who knows? But the fact is that Christian marriage is indeed a covenant relationship. All you have to do is to read the vows to see that this is true. And Dan Phillips makes the valid point that many marriages could be rehabilitated by people simply reading through those vows they made in front of God and their spouse and repenting of where they have failed and beginning to keep them. A wise man, Dan.

It occurred to me that one reason (among hundreds) that you marry as a virgin is that breaking the hymen is the blood that inaugurates that covenant. See? How often are you going to read THAT in a blog?! But it makes a lot of sense. And then you have sex with only that one person for the rest of your biological lives because that's in the covenant, and the curse sanctions are coming your way if you don't. If you have pre-marital sex, as most young adults do in our current hook-up culture, then you have already made that blood sacrifice with somebody else--not your spouse. I think the ancients knew this, and the knowledge was passed down through the centuries without the reasoning behind it. There are still come cultures today which require display of the wedding-night sheets to prove virginity, and if there is no blood then the marriage is invalid--the covenant is not in effect. It may still even be true here in America that non-consummation is a reason for annulment of a marriage. Can't say I've needed to look into that one!

Marriage is designed to be a reflection of our relationship with God, and to that effect we Christians are corporately called the bride of Christ. God is ever faithful, and we are called to imitate Him in this. There are probably lots of ways to continue this thinking, not only being faithful to our earthly spouses but faithful to God in opposition to all the things that try to pull us away from Him like full schedules, technology, cool new "spiritual" paths, whatever. But that's for another day, and for all His people to contemplate.

Love, Spud.