Ministry to Cohabiting Couples

Transcript (edited for readability).

I want to speak about ministry to cohabiting couples — heterosexual cohabiting couples. But right from the start, I want to remind you, very, very firmly, that you're not moral policemen. You are shepherds of souls. Not moral policemen, please. Shepherds. I want to speak a little bit about the mystery of heterosexual cohabitation. Mystery, because when a couple lives together, they begin an unexpected journey — a journey which they think they've got mapped out, but a journey which takes them where they are to unexpected places. There's something a very deep mystery here. And in our dealing with it, we need to respect the mystery of God and God's ordinance, the way God works in his created world. It has to do with the mystery of sexuality. How is it that God has made us, men and women, and how that works — not ideally, but in a fallen world.

One of the most interesting reflections on sexuality comes at the end of one of my favorite books, the book of Proverbs. I never get to do a commentary on this — you'll be pleased to know, because it'll be huge — Proverbs 30, 18 and 19. Which is a reflection on the way that a couple thinks they're going, when they get sexually involved and live together under the same roof — not the way they think they go, but the way they are taken. Just listen to the way it goes. There's a riddle here. It's not a simple statement. And I must say that I agree with whoever penned this little proverb.

"Three things are too wonderful for me. Four things I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the heart of the seas, and the way of a young man with a young woman."

There are four things that are compared and contrasted with each other here, and they all have in common that they go on a journey. Now, this touches on the mystery of a sexual relationship between a young man and a young woman. They travel on the way, but it's a way with no visible road, with no legs, and no goal. So it's an invisible way. Usually you travel along the way on legs — at least you did in the ancient world — but there are no legs here, and there is no visible goal.

This proverb contrasts three kinds of movement on this journey. There's the soaring of an eagle in the sky. Now, the ancients were fascinated by eagles, because the eagle was the bird that could rise highest in the sky without moving its wings. It soared in the sky. It caught a thermal and came closest to the sun of all the birds — hence it's the king of the birds. And it did that without any visible effort. It seemed to be attracted to the sun. It soared without flapping its wings. It launched from the cliff, caught the thermal, and then just went up and up. You used to have those kinds of eagles here. We have lots of them in Australia, very different kinds. So you have the soaring of an eagle — no visible effort, but going on a journey up to the sun. Now, what's remarkable about an eagle? It's not only that it climbs the highest, but it can see the furthest of any bird. An eagle up in the sky has such sharp eyesight that it can see a rat or a mole on the ground from way up in the sky.

The second picture of movement is the way of a snake on the rock. A snake moves, but it has no legs. And it's very mysterious, because it slithers along the hardest of all ground, a rock. It doesn't go straight along, it goes slithering along. You've all seen a snake moving, I think. So there's the slithering of a snake. And then there's the sailing of a ship on the ocean. It doesn't have legs. In the ancient world it didn't have an engine with a propeller — it caught the wind, and the wind carried it along.

You have those three pictures. Now, what do all those have in common with the way of a young man with a young woman? They're three things, three kinds of movement, but they all are on a journey. They are, the place of travel — there are three different places. Can you see what's being referred to? First there is the sky, then there's the rock, and then there is the sea. The three parts of the cosmos: the overworld, the world, the underworld. Now, what do each of those have in common with the way of a young man with a young woman? Each of them is being taken on a journey to an unseen port, rather than going on a journey they've planned. You see, when a couple gets involved with each other — not just sexually, that can be promiscuous — but once they cohabit sexually, a journey begins. They think they're in control, they know where they're going, and they wouldn't do it if they didn't know where they're going. But then something funny happens. They are taken somewhere they never planned to go. And we, dear brothers, are there as shepherds to help them on their journey — to help them on their journey.

Last year, on radio, as I was traveling somewhere in my car, I overheard a conversation on the radio with Putnam, a very famous social commentator here in the USA, who has done a number of very, very influential studies — Rick, you probably know much more about this than I do. One of the — not the latest, there's another one, I won't go into that — but one of the ones that was completed from the early part of this millennium was summarized in a collection called American Grace, which is a survey of the state of religion in the US from 2000 to 2010, roughly that period. Now, I haven't read it, I've seen reviews of it, but I was most, most intrigued by this interview, because in the course of it he commented on a strange phenomenon — something that's occurred differently. You'd all know that in the '80s and '90s there was an influx of young people into conservative evangelical churches, big numbers of young people. But that ended round about the turn of the millennium. And in fact the movement is in the opposite direction at the moment — at least according to him, I don't know how accurate it is — the appeal of conservative evangelical churches has been lost to young people since roughly 1995, but accelerating in the first part of this millennium.

And the interviewer said, "Why do you think this has happened? Why this great change, this sudden shift?" Well, he said, back in the '80s and '90s, one of the reasons the evangelicals had a great appeal to young people was that they were pro-life. They were in favor of life, in particular unborn life — the whole stance on abortion. And that coincided with an interest in ecology generally among young people, and hence they were drawn to this pro-life emphasis with an ecological, moral kind of way of thinking. But the next generation was turned off by the evangelical churches, because they were involved publicly in what they saw as an anti-sex political crusade against homosexuality and same-sex marriage. So there was an image of the church being against these things, but more generally, again, against sexuality.

So the interviewer then said, "Well, look, if the church wants to change the direction of things, what should they do? How could they turn the tide around?" And he said, "Look, I can only argue sociologically, I'm not a theologian" — although he makes theological judgments all the same, I always worry when people say "I'm not this, but…" He said, "Well, look, one of the most obvious things is to change your image. Instead of giving the impression that you are against sex, give people a positive view of sexuality, and above all, a positive vision of marriage." A positive vision of marriage.

Now, that really registered with me, and I could spend a lot of time on why it resonated so deeply with me. And I've run it past a lot of people, particularly young people, and they say, "Yeah, that's it, he's hit pay dirt there." You see, there's an increasing misconception — yeah, that's right, okay, you'll run me out of town — there's an increasing misconception of Christianity, and particularly of orthodox Christians, as hostile to sex and sexual fulfillment. In Australian terms, the dominant picture of the church among young people is that we are sexual killjoys. Again, sexuality. It's not something we've deliberately promoted, but it's the impression that they get. We need to bear that in mind, because that's affected lots of things in our society.

Now, as you know, there have been enormous and rapid changes socially in a society like the U.S. and Australia and all the Western world, and one of the things that has changed rapidly is the whole way that we do sex and marriage in our societies. That's no secret, everybody knows it. As Doug said, it's very, very common now for young people to live together before they get married. In effect, that's become the new norm. It's exceptional now in Australia for young people — say, between the ages of 20 to 30 — not to be cohabiting. That's the exception rather than the rule.

Now, that creates — and this applies not only to non-Christians or nominal Christians, it applies to some young people from our best families. In Australia, many pastors' children are cohabiting. Two of our children were in that situation, not because of any lack of instruction on our part, but for all sorts of complex reasons. It's become common. Now, before we get our knickers too much in a knot, we need to realize that this is not a new problem. It's an old problem that's re-emerged. I don't want to analyze that, but it's not new. It was common — well, it was uncommon for people not to cohabit before they got married. In many cases, many people lived in de facto relationships in England, Germany, France — all their lives, in the past. It's just the last maybe 100, 120 years that that has changed.

So we have a new problem that faces us as pastors: how to minister pastorally to cohabiting couples in our changing society. And I want to emphasize that I'm not interested in dealing politically or socially with this issue. I'm interested in how we deal with this new reality pastorally. Now, we need to realize that most of the factors that contribute to this happening are out of our control. They have little or nothing to do with us. But there's one place where we have a window of opportunity, and that window of opportunity is when a couple comes to us for marriage preparation, to get married. They come to us, and we then have a captive audience. We have an opportunity that we can either use or blow.

Now, my goal in this paper — which could be much longer, but I just want to sketch out what I think, what my approach to this issue is — my goal in this paper is to present a positive vision of the mystery and beauty of marriage. And that's my goal too in ministering to these young people, the couples that come to me who are cohabiting and want me to marry them.

There are three parts to my approach in this discussion. First of all, I want us to reflect a little, so that we understand the social reasons for increased sexual cohabitation apart from marriage. Secondly, I want to map a biblical vision of sex and marriage as God's invention — not a human invention, it's God's institution, it's God's creation. And that's enormously helpful, by the way. And lastly, I want to speak about how we deal with cohabiting couples pastorally, and above all, spiritually. The problem is not basically social, it's not basically moral, it is spiritual. We are not moral policemen. We are Seelsorger, shepherds of souls. We're interested not in saving society, or saving marriage, but in saving souls.

First, a major part of this paper: some reasons for the increasing sexual cohabitation of young people apart from marriage. Now, I'm talking not about same-sex cohabitation, but heterosexual cohabitation. One of the reasons is obvious, but the church very often has not really taken note of it. The main reason is what sociologists would call the prolonged adolescence of young people in our society. You see, until about 50 years ago, there was no such thing as teenagers. People were mature, and they got a job around about the age of 14, 15, 16. So there was barely any adolescence. You went straight from childhood to adulthood, assuming adult responsibilities.

Now, what we've done is elongated what was a very narrow window of adolescence — that movement from childhood to adulthood — now over something like 10 to 15 years. And that's not very healthy. That means we delay the onset of adulthood with its responsibilities. But at the same time, doctors will tell you that as a result of diet and other factors, young people are maturing sexually much earlier than ever before. So we have girls who are sexually mature already at the age of 11 and 12. Now, girls are doing this, and I don't know the reasons for it — the onset of menstruation and sexual maturity is much more rapid with girls than with boys. And that creates a whole problem too.

Now, there's a very simple reason why this has come about, and the simple reason is education. You don't only go to primary school, grade school, but you go to high school, and that's not the end of it — you go to college, and these days even college doesn't get you anywhere, you've got to do some postgraduate studies. That's one obvious reason. That changes everything.

Secondly, it's not just the elongation of study, but also the pressures of establishing yourself in a career, for both men and women. It's different if only the man has to establish himself in his job, but now women have to do that too. And a woman might not want to get married until she has basically done her studies and found her feet in her career. That's very, very common — you establish yourself vocationally.

And then add to that the third factor — and I don't know if it's quite so much the case here in the USA as in Australia — but most young people will travel, and/or work overseas. They will travel, work interstate, and go overseas. For example, if I can just take my own children — they had to deliberately decide, once they did their basic training, to stay in Adelaide. Vocationally, for them to advance themselves, they should have gone interstate or overseas. If they'd done that, they would be on the gravy train economically. But they decided to stay in Adelaide, whereas most of their peers went the other way. Do you have the same phenomenon here locally, that people go interstate or get overseas experience? — [It's starting to pick up, this kind of transition is starting to happen.] — Yes, because that's going to happen as we have increased globalization. The US used to rule the roost economically, and big corporations were stationed here in the US, but now, if you're working in a big corporation, it means you've got to go global, you can't stay local.

That's the first and probably the main reason, generally speaking. The second one is equally profound, and that's the availability of contraception — reliable contraception, the pill — and then, particularly in the USA, the legalization of abortion. And that means you can have safe sexual intercourse — safe sexual intercourse meaning you can have sexual intercourse without the risk of becoming pregnant. Now the pill has changed things rapidly in our society, and we're still living the aftermath of that, and abortion comes on top of that. And what that does is separate sexual intercourse — and also the prime years for sexual reproduction — from sexual reproduction. There's a whole new raft of issues that's coming in because women delay pregnancy, and then there are problems with becoming pregnant. What's the best time to become pregnant — not for you guys, I hope — but it's the late teens, early 20s. That's the peak of fertility, and it drops very quickly. By the time most young women, at least professional young women, are ready to have children, they're already on the downward slippery slope. And with that, then, the delay in having the first child.

The third factor, which I think is also very profound, is the disillusionment of many young people with the institution of marriage — not the ideal of marriage, they hold that very strongly, marriage is more attractive now in one way than it ever was, the ideal marriage — but what has disillusioned them is the experienced reality of it. The negative experience of the unhappy marriages of their parents. So they don't want that, so they play it safe, and they want to be absolutely sure. In many cases, their parents may have married too young — they never worked that through. I don't know whether you can actually marry too young, but in any case, that's the perception. But worse than that is the divorce of parents. And I've noticed too with young people, what's even more traumatic is the divorce of their siblings. So divorce of parents is very, very common, and any children that come from broken families like that are very, very wary of getting married. But what's even more traumatic is having an older brother or sister who got married, and six months later the marriage is broken up, and the sibling, male or female, is traumatized by the breakdown of the marriage. And in some cases it happens just like that, very, very quickly. They have no inkling — the couple is lovey-dovey, and the next thing you hear is that one of them wants a divorce.

Then there are a few other factors. There's the sheer cost of the way we do marriage. I don't know how many thousands of dollars people on average here in North America spend on a marriage. There's the dress, that's thousands of dollars. The suit, the car, but above all, the reception — big, big expense. I heard of one marriage where the parents spent as much money on the marriage as the cost of a house for their children. This is stupid — why not give them a house instead of a marriage? And then once you get married, there's the cost of buying a house and all the furnishings. Young people won't make do with anything, you've got to have all the gear in your house. We made do with a few scraps of furniture, and we lived off the smell of an oily rag when we started our marriage — no, we didn't quite live off it.

Next, equally profound but also perplexing, is the paradoxical impact of feminine independence. I don't want to bag the feminist movement, this is sort of a sideline to that. There's an emphasis on individualism, and not just male independence, but female independence. That means young women occupy a very awkward position in our society. They have a very indefinite status, and they are very vulnerable. And I found, at least from talking around and talking to my children and some of their friends, that particularly for many young women, they will hook up with a male partner not so much for the sex, but for the status of having a male partner, and the protection from having a male partner. Because if you're not attached to somebody, you are sexually very vulnerable. But if people know, "Okay, she's hooked up," that means she's off limits, or at least relatively off limits, unless she wants to come on too. And there's protection then in living together with a guy. So it's not so much, I don't think, for many women, for sexual reasons, as for these deeper reasons — status. A young woman from the age of 18 to 20 who's living by herself and has no boyfriend is a little bit of a sexual outcast amongst the sisterhood — they have a very, very low status, they're not good enough to win a male partner. And then attached to that, if you're living by yourself, after having grown up in a family, there's the sheer loneliness of living by yourself.

So what happens now — and it's an unexpected thing, I'd be interested if it's the same here — it's far more common for women to take the initiative to move in with a guy than the other way around. Is that also here? — [The women took the initiative.] — So there's a change here. They move together, and I think partly just to ease the loneliness that they experience.

Lastly, behind all that lies the growing biblical and spiritual illiteracy of people in the church — not just outside the church, but people in the church. There's an enormous ignorance about the biblical teaching on sex and marriage, particularly the teaching on sex as God's good gift for our enjoyment, and the teaching of God's institution of marriage for the reception and transmission of his blessings. God doesn't just institute marriage for sex and procreation, but he institutes marriage as a means by which he delivers many other blessings to people in and through the order of creation.

Which leads me now to the second part of my topic, which is the biblical understanding of marriage as God's institution for humanity. By the way, this is all too brief — it's a very complex topic — but I'm giving you a framework, the framework in which I operate. Now, one of the most important insights we need to discover is that marriage is not just a personal relationship, but a divinely instituted order. Your marriage rite puts it very well — it retains the old word, it is a divine estate. It is an order created by God. God himself has instituted it by his word, it's provided with a divine mandate — be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. God making male and female in his image — it has a divine mandate. It's based on God's word, in the order of creation. It's part of the way God orders his creation.

Now, the fact that it is an order doesn't mean that it's fixed in cement, with stereotyped roles — that's a misconception. It gives an order for relationship between the two sexes without a set pattern. It comes in many forms across many societies. It's part of the ecology — the divine ecology — for human life under God's law. Now, here's a very helpful term, at least I've found, when I teach about these things: I speak in ecological terms. There is not just a natural ecology, but a social ecology and a spiritual ecology — an order, you know what ecology is, that God establishes in his creation. So it's part of the divine ecology for human life under God's law in this world.

And since it is an order rather than a fixed pattern, it takes different shapes in different societies. The way people do marriage is different — in the Aboriginal community, in Africa, in New Guinea, in India, which I know very well — it's different to Australia, and even Australia is a little bit different to North America. It's done in different ways across different societies. But all those ways of doing marriage have one key ingredient, and that is the recognition that it involves the exclusive, lifelong, comprehensive, conjugal relationship with a person of the opposite sex. Now that's a mouthful — it's lifelong, it's exclusive, it's comprehensive, it embraces the whole of life, and it has to do with the relationship of husband and wife sexually with each other. It's a complementary partnership, a union of opposites in sexual intercourse. So you don't get two like-minded souls coming together, mirroring each other — that's homosexuality — it is a union of opposites.

Remember what God said? "It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper fit for him." There are three purposes of marriage there — not good for man to be alone, companionship; helper, working together, common work. But the most interesting one is "fit for him." The Hebrew word for that is ezer kenegdo, which means "his opposite," his counterpart, his complement. If you think in terms of a circle, marriage is like two halves of a circle that together make the circle — complement. But it comes from the Hebrew word for opposite. So, I am opposite you, Frank — that's neged — and you are my opposite. That's the obvious thing: two people facing each other, but in this case it is two people who are not just opposite, facing each other, but who are opposites.

This order brings with it the relationship of headship and subordination. So it's an order in which God establishes the husband, the male, as the head of the wife — not the boss of the wife, but the head of the wife — and the wife in subordination under him. Now subordination means fitting into an order. So it's an order, divinely instituted. It has headship, it has subordination, it's a complementary relationship, it's for companionship, it's for common work, it has to do with sexual reproduction.

Now, can I emphasize — and this is where we've sometimes gone amiss — it doesn't mean that there are certain prescribed roles. There's no female role or male role as such. What you have is headship and subordination. Now, how that works out in any given relationship depends on the character of the man and the woman. But for marriage to work, the husband has to be the head, and the wife needs to practice subordination.

Now, what I'm most interested in is what I'd call the operative order of marriage, which is described at the end of Genesis 2. That's the operative order — I mean the way it actually works in reality, in human experience, the way it's experienced. The way it works is that it hinges around and revolves around sexual intercourse and sexual reproduction. That's the dynamic at the core of it — sexual intercourse and sexual reproduction. Now, it's not a single event. The way you come into marriage is a process. I find this a very helpful and useful insight. It's not a once-for-all thing, where you go from not being married to being married just like that — the day before you're here, the night after you're there. It's a process that began, at least traditionally, with dating, and the gradual detachment of teenagers from mom and dad toward people of the opposite sex. Then dating led to courting, and courting led to engagement, and engagement led to marriage, and marriage led to the setting up of a house together — a very important part, a common house. And then the issue of that was having children. That's the process of getting married. It's a journey, not a one-step movement from singleness to marriage.

Now, this process, and the basic dynamic in this process, is described beautifully at the end of Genesis 2, where we have the comment — after God gave Eve to Adam, and Adam says, "Oh, wonderful, this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" — here I come. It says there, and this is very profound, most puzzling, most unexpected — if you're too familiar with it you don't see how countercultural and odd this statement is — since, you know, God created Eve from the rib, or the rib cage, of Adam, and since she is his helper and all that kind of thing, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave" — literally, stick to — "his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Now, that's the way it's usually translated as a prescription, but I think we must first and foremost read it as a statement of fact. The Hebrew there — therefore, what? A man will leave his father and mother, and will cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is fact. It's also prescriptive, because for a marriage to work, this is what has to happen. This is the operative order, the dynamic.

Now, I owe what follows, and the understanding of that passage, to Walter Trobisch, in his wonderful little book, I Married You. Just a little word on that — he was a Lutheran missionary in Nigeria, and he had great difficulty there teaching the Christians about Christian marriage, because he had a Western picture of marriage — he's German — his wife eventually moved after he died to the USA, and his son is here somewhere. But he came from Germany, and his mind had a typical Western way of doing marriage, thinking this was the only way of doing it. He had to completely unlearn those cultural trappings, go back to the Scripture, and minister in a way that was relevant to the people he was serving in Nigeria.

And he has a picture of marriage as being a stool with three legs, or a triangle with three sides, or a tent with three parts — but the basic one is a stool with three legs. Now, if you think of it, a stool with two legs is still a stool, but it doesn't work — eventually it's going to topple you over. A triangle with two sides is not a triangle, it doesn't work. You need all three sides. Three legs for the stool, three sides for the triangle. So what are the three sides of marriage? Quite simply: leaving father and mother, number one. Number two — therefore a man leaves father and mother, a man cleaves to his wife — and then, the man and the woman become one flesh.

Now, this is rather odd and countercultural across all societies. Number one, first of all, you have the emphasis here — the divine emphasis is not on a woman leaving her father and mother, which is the case in almost all societies, and is the case in our society too, at least traditionally. When Claire married me, she left her father and mother, joined me, and became a Kleinig — she lost her maiden name, she's now Claire Kleinig — symbolizing that she leaves father and mother. Now, that's what women do, and that's expected of women, and for marriage to work and sex to work, that has to happen. That happens automatically. But here you have the countercultural demand that I, the man, must leave father and mother and cleave to my wife. The husband needs to break with both parents — notice, the father and mother. Which do you think is more difficult for a man? You know it, don't you — leaving the mother. Most marriages founder because Mum is brought into the bed and lies there between husband and wife, metaphorically. The man leaving both father and mother, joined to the wife. The husband needs to break with both parents, for different reasons. Mum — that's the emotional side, particularly. But Dad — that means assuming responsibility, having material maturity, material responsibility, and social initiative.

In all such societies, not just in modern-day North America, you have the problem of male immaturity. In many ways, we men are sexually and socially and emotionally much less mature than women of our same age group. And there are certain factors in our society which promote male immaturity. So there's the problem of male immaturity — men not wanting to grow up and become adults, remaining boys all their life. And attached to that, there's parental interference — the dominance of a dad who still wants to boss his son, the manipulation of a mum who doesn't want to let her dear darling son go.

Now, what's important for a marriage to work, and the foundation for making it work, is that the man is released from dependence on father and mother, at all levels, for new responsibilities — because unless he's released, he'll find it difficult to assume headship, to assume responsibility for the new relationship. He needs to leave father and mother to start a new family unit, with common life with his wife, common work, common property, and common goals. Now that usually means establishing a separate household. Across all societies — say, in New Guinea, when a guy gets married, he has to build a new hut for himself and his wife. Now, we usually can't build our own, but we might rent one. You need to leave the house you grew up in, physically and metaphorically.

Now, that leaving — the husband's leaving of father and mother — is the social basis and the psychological basis for a good marriage. There's one traditional part of the marriage rite that symbolizes that, and I didn't realize how profound it was until I actually experienced it myself, when my father-in-law gave Claire away to me. Now, in many ways that's probably the hardest thing he ever did — to give her to me. And yet that was important, because by giving her to me it meant he was freeing her to be my wife. He was letting me take his place, first place in her life.

Now, in your LCMS rite for marriage, you have a lovely little feature which I would always insist on doing if I were doing marriages over here — both parents come and give their consent to the marriage before the exchange of vows. Just think that through — the people who constructed your rite had a great deal of sense here, and great wisdom. Why just before? They've stated their intent to get married, they're about to exchange vows, and both parents come forward and give their consent to the marriage. They don't just give up their daughter, but they give up the son and the daughter. Why just before the marriage? Because that frees both of the couple to make their vows. If that doesn't happen, if you don't get that release, the couple aren't really free to exchange vows freely and confidently.

So what's the first part? Notice here the initiative is on the male side — therefore a man leaves his father and mother. The second part also — the emphasis is on the man's side of the relationship. Notice this emphasis, because in all societies, marriage in its perversion is always seen to be not man's business but women's business. Women are interested in marriage, not men. If possible, men would like to have all the benefits of marriage without marriage itself — that's the usual male ploy. What does a man need to do? He needs to cleave to his wife. The Hebrew word here is davak, which means literally to stick or adhere, like Velcro, or sticky tape. A man needs to cleave, stick — not just temporarily, but stick forever, be glued to his wife, to cling to her, to hold on to her, to join with her, to give allegiance to her. And here comes the most profound use of this term — to commit himself permanently, like the Israelites did to the Lord their God, in God's covenant with them. So you covenant with your wife, you stick with your wife. Now, that means a deliberate decision needs to be made — I commit myself to my wife. Notice that comes first, not her commitment to me, but my commitment to her is primary.

This knocks on the head the transcultural problem of the phobia that men have toward commitment in marriage — commitment phobia. Is that also evident here in North America? It used to be mainly just guys who didn't want to commit, but increasingly now women are also wary of committing themselves. But this is a common male problem. Now, why are men so wary about committing themselves? Well, we all know from experience, intuitively, that women can use sex to get their claws on us and manipulate us and exploit us. Now, that's not very politically or socially correct, is it? But women can use — and do, let's face it, they do use — sex to trap a guy into a relationship, into marriage, and into fatherhood. In my day, it was that they would get pregnant. One of my greatest fears, and what kept me on the straight and narrow, was that I didn't want to be forced into a shotgun marriage, because so many young guys that I knew were forced into shotgun marriages. And, strangely, it used to happen that girls were ostensibly pregnant, but then miraculously the baby disappeared once the marriage was enacted.

So here the stress is on the initiative of the man — male initiative — that he voluntarily, publicly, verbally, and legally commits himself to his wife. Now, that's the foundation for a very important and much misunderstood teaching of marriage, which is the teaching on male headship. This is the foundation for the exercise of male headship, but also the foundation for the right kind of subordination of a wife to a husband. She is subordinate to what kind of a husband? A husband who commits himself totally, irrevocably, exclusively to her. That's the foundation for the exercise of male headship, it's the foundation for subordination. That's the personal basis for a good marriage, which depends, as you all know, on trust.

All relationships are based on trust, but if there's one relationship that's particularly vulnerable and needs trust more than any other, it is marriage. If trust is broken — if one of the two parties betrays the trust of the other — you know that marriage is in trouble. On the other hand, no matter how many problems are in a marriage, if both parties still trust each other — they might not even like each other, but they still trust each other — there's hope. Now, that commitment is the basis of trust, and trust is the basis of self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Self-sacrificing love without reservation and without fear of rejection. You see, if I commit myself to my wife publicly, legally, in a binding way, I give her something to trust me with. So she can know that she's safe with me. I won't dump her the first week of marriage because she doesn't deliver sexually or in any other way. I won't dump her when we run into trouble for any reason. I'm committed to her, I'm going to see this through. So there's trust. But then also, it creates the condition for sex to work properly. Because sex can't work properly, particularly for females it seems to me, unless the woman can trust the man, unless the marriage is a safe place for her. She doesn't have to be in control, she doesn't have to play it safe, she can let go. And as you all know, a very important part of the female sexual response is orgasm, which has to do with letting go — letting go. It's not an active thing, if you like, it's a receptive, passive thing. Mistrust is the enemy, then, of both sex and marriage. What the cleaving of the husband to his wife does is create a safe place for his wife, and then for himself as well, in their marriage.

Thirdly, becoming one flesh. Now — when does this finish, 4:15? Yes, I think I can get through this. Becoming one flesh — now that's an odd expression, it's unique, it's only found in the Bible, you won't find it anywhere else. Now, usually in the ancient world, people were one flesh with the members of their own family — their genetic kinsfolk. So I am one flesh with my father, mother, brothers, sisters, and all my kinsfolk. They are one flesh. So one flesh means that you're part of a genetic family, and it was always regarded, and traditionally still is regarded, as the strongest natural tie. You won't understand tribalism, which is still hanging around everywhere, unless you see that that's the cement that holds tribes and families together in traditional society.

Now, what happens in marriage is that people who are not one flesh, who come from two different fleshes if you like, become one flesh. And that one-flesh union is stronger than the relationship of kinsfolk with each other — brother to brother, or son to father or mother. It's stronger than that. Because remember what Adam says — "this at last is flesh of my flesh," but then also "bone of my bone." Now, bone is the most essential part of a person, it's the one part of me that survives when everything else decays, so it's part of my essence. So Eve was not just one flesh with Adam, but that one-flesh union meant she was one bone with him — remember, taken from the rib cage, making Eve from Adam.

Now, becoming one flesh is a term — you could say on the one hand it's a euphemistic term, but it's not just euphemistic — about what happens when you have sexual intercourse in marriage, that creates a permanent sexual, physical union, rather than just a passing exchange, a temporary encounter. It describes the unique character of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. It involves, if you like, a man and a woman operating as one body. Now, a number of people who've written more recently on sex, particularly from a medical or anatomical point of view, have said that it's the only action we as bodies perform in which we depend on the body of another person — it can't be done apart from the body of another person. So in sexual intercourse, two bodies operate as if they were one body. The male penis needs to penetrate the female vagina, and they do something together as if they were one person. Usually what I do is that one part of me works together with another part of me — I've got a glass of water, I take it, I drink it. But here, for this to happen, you need two bodies coordinating interaction with each other. They become one body.

Now, the term "becoming one flesh" is a very unusual term for sexual intercourse, and it's not just restricted to sexual intercourse — it also includes conception and birth. So how does a man and woman become one flesh? They become one flesh in sexual intercourse — not just one occasion of sexual intercourse, but ongoing sexual intercourse — and they become one flesh, then, in the child that they bear, because the child that they bear has the genetics of both parents. The characteristics of both parents combine to create a new human being, and the genetic structure of that human being is unlike any that's ever occurred before and will ever occur again. That way of sexual reproduction creates diversity, scientists will tell us, rather than uniformity.

And notice, too, the passage in Genesis doesn't say "they are one flesh" but "they will become one flesh," which indicates that this is not a single event but an ongoing process. So my wife and I are still becoming one flesh, and we will continue to become one flesh as long as we live. It doesn't stop once you have your first child, or once you engage in the first act of sexual intercourse. It's a lifelong process of becoming. And it is a very strange union — as I said, it's a union of opposites, without the erasure of difference. And in fact, there's a mystery here — in this arrangement that God has given us, on the one hand, two separate, different people become one, and by becoming one, they become two. Their differences, instead of being wiped out, are emphasized, they are accentuated. They become more and more distinctive persons by interaction with each other. Just have a look at the way — pick some of your older guys, you can look at the way marriages have worked that you know — how in a good marriage each of the two parties becomes more and more themselves. And very often they start out, particularly the women, with a very indistinct, unformed sort of marshmallow personality, but the longer they are in marriage, the more distinct and firm and sharply accentuated they become. And likewise, a guy becomes more and more himself. The differences become accentuated, but not in such a way that it no longer works — the differences are complementary differences.

What marriage does is create a new state of being. It's not just a relationship, but an estate, a new state of being. A student of mine received very, very good advice from his pastor when he was married — it was a wedding that I attended. The pastor, in his sermon, said — he preached on becoming one flesh — he said to this guy (this is not his real name, just in case he happens to listen to this), "Bill, never think of yourself as separate from your wife. As soon as you do that, your marriage will be in trouble." Now, you can see what that means — don't think of your wife as somebody separate from you, but as part of you, so that you can't talk about her without talking about yourself. Don't put her out there and think of her apart from you.

Now, what's the problem with sexual cohabitation? Okay, you have those three parts in the process of marriage — the man leaving father and mother, cleaving to his wife, and then, most profoundly, the two becoming one flesh. Now, what happens in sexual cohabitation is that people enter the relationship from the wrong end — they start off at the end rather than the beginning. Because the God-given sequence is this: first you leave, then you cleave, and then the two become one flesh. What cohabitation does is start off at the other end — you have the becoming one flesh, at least the sexual part of it, first, and then maybe, eventually, there's a commitment — not just a private commitment but a public commitment, and that's important — and that then results in leaving father and mother, being recognized as a separate family unit by both sides of the family.

So what's wrong with sexual cohabitation? It's a stool with one leg, or a one-sided triangle. It might be interesting, but it can't work properly without the other two parts being added. It's an unhelpful point of entry, an unreliable basis for a permanent relationship. And above all, it delivers both parties as prey to the fluctuation of emotions. As you know, sexual attraction varies and can flip over into sexual repulsion — libido varies. It might be that you have a very strong relationship with a very strong sexual desire, but both male, and particularly female, libido varies enormously. And this is one of the puzzling features of human beings — on the one hand, unlike any other animals, we're capable of sexual intercourse at any time. Animals have their periods in which they engage in sexual intercourse, but we're theoretically capable of it at any time. Yet on the other hand, we don't have the desire to do so all the time, and nobody can work out why. This night she's in the mood, but tomorrow night she's not in the mood. If I had a formula for that, I could make a million.

If you just live together, the relationship is based on subjectivity. There's no objective, legal basis for the relationship. It's based on implicit understandings, not explicit commitments. But above all — and here comes the spiritual side — by doing that, you open yourself to attack by the evil one. Guilt sets in. Guilt from disobedience to God. Now, I don't know whether you've noticed how common it is these days that you get Christian men and women who are very regular in attending church, but then they go off to college, they shack up with somebody, and then they stop going to church. If you talk to them, it's not that they've stopped believing, but they don't go to church. They're uncomfortable. They stay away from church, even when they come home they'll stay away from church. Now, what's happening here is that Satan is getting on their back and saying, "You've done wrong." He accuses, he condemns, and he drives them away from the solution to their problem, which is the divine service, the church. That's the biggest problem in practical terms. Practically speaking too, they miss out on the best and longest-lasting blessings of marriage.

So my basic tactic in dealing with couples who are cohabiting is not to condemn them, but to recognize that something good is maybe going on here. It's not the full good, but what I need to do is add the other two legs to the stool, the other two sides to the triangle. So this is my strategy — it's very simple. A couple comes to me because they want me to marry them. Now, that doesn't happen very much now because I'm retired. What I do when they come to me — and it's quite obvious, because they've got to give their address to me as a legal requirement — is that they're living together. Now, I don't confront that issue head-on, because I know it's taken a lot of courage for them to decide to get married. It's a loss of face amongst their peers — I mean, they're getting married, they've lost face with their peers, they are uncomfortable, they're unsure about the reception they're going to receive from me. They're afraid that I'm going to throw the book at them.

So my stance is very much similar to the way Jesus dealt with the woman caught in adultery — to deal with the matter pastorally. I commend them on their decision to get married. It's a good thing. So I focus on their decision to get married rather than on their living together. And what I do is assume their integrity and their personal commitment to each other. I don't go digging for dirt, and I don't impugn their integrity. I'm aware of their fearful embarrassment and guilt, and I take great care that I don't join the devil in accusing and, particularly, condemning them for what they've done. I know that the devil is working on their conscience. I know that the devil is accusing them of doing what's wrong. They know it's wrong, they're Christians after all, and the devil is already condemning them, and they are afraid that I'm going to do the same — condemn them too. And in connection with that, I try to be absolutely frank with them, not to be shocked about anything, and frank and open about the whole business of their relationship, particularly sexual intercourse in marriage. A prudish, embarrassed approach doesn't get anywhere, I've found.

Now, more concretely, after they come to me and I get the lay of the land, I basically take them through the marriage rite. Brothers, we have a great treasure, a pastoral treasure, here. You can touch all the bases just by going through the marriage rite. You can say, "Okay, you want to get married, you need to know what you're letting yourself in for, before I commit myself to marry you, and before you commit yourself to going through the ceremony. So I want to have three, four, five, whatever number of sessions with you, and I want to take you through the rite of marriage, and show you what the rite of marriage does. And at the end of it, I'll give you the opportunity to opt out." I say, "Please don't fix the date of the marriage at this stage, because I want to leave it open. You might decide at the end of our time together that you don't want to get married, that you can't commit yourself to this. That's all right by me, no skin off my nose — I'm not here to make sure that you get married in the church. You can get married in the registry office, that's still a valid marriage."

So I teach them about God's order in Genesis 2:24 as a gift — God's gift to them. God gives them the gift of leaving, cleaving, becoming one flesh. So I de-emphasize the demand side of that and emphasize the gift side of it, and I apply this passage to them and their situation. I say, "Okay, this is God's order. Forget about what you've done, forget about where you are. This is God's order — husband leaving father and mother, cleaving to wife, becoming one flesh. Okay, where are you in this process?" I've yet to discover a couple who can't see quite clearly where they are. They say, "Oh yeah, we're here." "What about the others? Have you cleaved to your wife?" I ask the guy. And he says, "Of course I have." "Publicly, legally, in a binding, exclusive way?" He says, "No, no, but I…" I say, "Well, that's what we're on about now — public cleaving. What about leaving father and mother? Have you had your family's blessing on this? Have they handed you over?" So I touch on that, and I say, "Now, okay, for marriage to work the way God designed it, these three things need to occur. This is the church's teaching on marriage, this is God's teaching on marriage. Are you happy to go along with it or not? If you don't want to go along with it, then go and get married in the registry office, that's quite valid."

So the tack that I take is to see marriage not so much as the beginning of the journey, but as the culmination of their journey with each other — the mystery of the journey of a man and woman with each other. The marriage, instead of being the basis of a journey together, becomes the culmination of this first, most important stage of the journey. I close the gaps, I secure the partnership. I make explicit, and get them to make explicit and public, what is implicit and private. I provide a safe place for the growth of their marriage. If you like the picture — they are living in a room without walls and a roof. I mean, not literally, but they are going to bed and there are no walls, there's no roof. I say, "Okay, what God wants you to do is put walls around your bed and a roof over your bed, so that it can work properly." And basically my tack then is to lead them from what is good. The fact that they are living together faithfully with each other is not bad — it's part of the deal, it's not the full deal, but it's part of the deal, and it's not for me to moralize about that. It's part of the deal. I lead them from what is good to what is best for them.

And above all, more than anything else, if the couple is Christian, or if one of the partners is Christian, then I offer them the option of private confession and absolution. Now, the tack I usually take — say, if they're both Christian, it's very easy — I say, "Now, look, you know that what you've been doing is not according to God's order. You can see that now from the teaching you've received. Now, even if you haven't felt it yet, there's going to be some stage in the future when the devil is going to get on your back and accuse you — that you're having trouble in your marriage, or that the children are having trouble, because you had sex before you were married. Now, what I want to offer you, what Jesus wants to offer you, is to start marriage with a clean slate — to kick the devil out of the relationship, and to give you the gift of a good conscience, starting off the marriage with a good conscience." And then I challenge them to come back to church, saying, "Okay, being in the church doesn't mean that we are all morally perfect or sexually perfect, it means that we have all sinned, but we've all been forgiven." That's what being a Christian is. So I use this opportunity to teach law and gospel, judgment and grace, but above all, to minister to Christians with the absolution, the forgiveness of sins.

Let me conclude. Marriage is an order. Luther, in his tractate on the heavenly prophets, speaks rather graphically about the devil as the enemy of God's order. Why are we having such trouble with marriage? Because marriage is a divine institution. It's one of God's best gifts to human beings in the order of creation. And because it's one of God's good gifts and brings so many blessings to human beings, the devil wants to destroy it — or, he can't destroy it, it's God's creation, he can't uncreate. What can he do? Not destroy marriage, but he wants to pervert it. He wants to disrupt it, prevent it from working the way it should.

So I see cohabitation not so much as a moral problem, but as a spiritual problem — the abuse of God's good gifts. And my pastoral purpose, then, in ministering to a cohabiting couple, is to get the devil out of the bedroom and to deliver the good conscience.

Thank you.