Wurm, Cohabitation and the Conscience

Transcript (edited for readability).

The Lord be with you. Love that — that works so well. Well, the hour that everyone's been waiting for, the most riveting topic of this entire presentation this week: cohabitation, right?

So what I have before you today is a brief outline — truth be told, it's an outline of a paper that I wrote for a theological symposium in Iowa District East about a year ago, and I thought it would be really good for our next edition of the Zeitschrift. If you haven't heard, the Zeitschrift coming out this year is going to be on cohabitation. I think there are seven, maybe eight articles on that, all covering a different piece. I have to rework this presentation a little bit to fit its piece of the whole. But it came to our realization, really through Tim Koch — he's the editor of the Zeitschrift right now — that our church body, and a whole lot of other Christian church bodies, just haven't written much on this area of pastoral, practical care, and it's a big, gaping hole. It seems as though the last good and decent work was written by Walter Trobisch — it's a wonderful and enduring work, I Married You. If you haven't heard of or read this book before, I do encourage you to get a copy, wear it out, maybe get a thrivent action team grant, buy a whole bunch of them, and give them out to the couples that you do premarital counseling with, or marriage counseling of. It's fantastic. Walter Trobisch — it's in the bibliography.

And then, secondly, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. So I'm going to be coming up with, I think, nothing new in this presentation, so if you fall asleep, that's just fine. But I'll be gleaning from different works, and things that John Kleinig has said over the years — he, in his book, quotes Walter Trobisch, and it's just kind of fantastic. But I think about it a little bit in terms of the application for us, and for our consciences — the consciences of those who are cohabiting, how the devil works in their minds, how they receive the ministry of the church in this ongoing position of sin and disregard for his commandments. Also, the conscience of the community — so maybe their immediate family. Makes me wonder why, you know, a grandma or grandpa, the head of LWML, congregational chairman, an elder — it's terrible, no one should live together before marriage — and then their grandkid does, and then things change. I've heard that story numerous times. And then also the conscience of the pastor — this bears upon us, and for some pastors it is the most deflating thing in the ministry to have to deal with. It's hard to keep yourself motivated to do the rest of the work, the joy of the ministry, when there's this dark cloud that you just don't know how to handle. And if you don't know how to handle it, we take the way of Adam and say nothing, as we fall into greater mess.

So the verse to keep before us in all of this is from Hebrews 10 — I cited it last night — "Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." I think there's a lot in that verse for us who bear the office of the ministry, that delivers the holiness of God to sinful men and sinful women. This word from Hebrews reminds us to draw near with a true heart, full assurance of faith, that we have the gifts we have received through our Father, in the simple water and word of Holy Baptism, in the word which the Holy Spirit has implanted in us, and which we confess all the time — in the word that is given to us to preach and to teach, to use, with our ordination vows — that we might, with a heart sprinkled clean, we who are cleansed by the word objectively upon us, deliver the objective word, and be freed of an evil conscience, and have our bodies washed with pure water. I think it's a profound verse. Hopefully I can get to my conclusion within the time allotted.

So I think all of us have some sort of war story about this terrible ordeal of trying to deal with a cohabiting couple, because we try to say to them, to some degree or another, "Maybe that's not a good idea, let's think about a more excellent way, let's think about holiness — God desires this for you." And they've been living in the world, and all they've been thinking about is tied together with their bodies, which say, "I really like this." Or, especially for older women, their bodies are saying, "It's time for me to make babies." And there's great difficulty in just restraining that — everything about you says, "It's time to get married, and this is a good thing." Well, God does give us complementary natures and our sexuality for a good thing, but in good order, not in the disorder of the world.

So Kleinig — he talks, in another presentation he's given, which is up on the Doxology website from a number of years ago, and he also brings it out in his book — he says we're not moral policemen. I think it's in his book, at least. And so, if you will, we're not out on the beach, kind of trying to sniff people out, going around watching people, taking down notes about this, that, and the next thing on them, so that we can pull them aside and give them a finger-wagging, a tongue-lashing, or worse, a ticket, something like that. So we do exercise the keys of the office, of course, but there's a manner in which to go about that, so that the sinner does repent, and they don't just say, "I'm done with you, and I'm done with God."

So it's an issue we have to address, because it's an issue that spills over into all of our community — kind of similar to my topic last night, with LGBT issues. We don't know how to deal with it, so we don't talk about it. So maybe this is a good framework we can have for helping to talk about it.

Something I was meditating on, as I was doing this paper, is how this private sin of maybe an individual couple spills over onto — not just their own sin, but onto the congregation. Your elders — everybody's going to have an opinion on it, one way or the other. "Got to get with the times, pastor, you can't do this, and they're good kids anyway," or, "We've got to drop the hammer" — unless, you know, they only arrange marriages, and they live in different countries and haven't seen each other before, and they come before the altar.

So I was thinking about, back in the Book of Numbers, chapters 24 and 25 — you've got Balak, who hires Balaam to curse the Israelites, and Balaam can't do it, and he's mad about it. Chapter 25 comes along, and because Balaam didn't get his way, get his money, or whatever, he then incites, or invites, the people to sin. And so they begin idol worship at Baal of Peor, right? And in that, of course, it's a sexual worship of the idols — it's quite clearly stated, in very earthy but real language, that the people of Israel began to whore with these other gods. And this plague goes on, and the faithful are weeping before the tent of meeting with Moses, praying that this plague, this hand of judgment of God upon his people, will be lifted. And Phinehas, the priest, the son of Eleazar — what does he do? He comes upon them in the act of worship — the act of two bodies joining together — and he runs a spear through both of them. So you can understand what's happening there. And then God's hand is stayed, and the plague is lifted.

Quite significant about it is — Zimri and Cozbi. Zimri is a son of Salu, the chief of a father's house belonging to the tribe of Simeon. So he's not just some schmuck, some little kid running around doing something stupid — he's a leader, an influencer in the community. Similarly with Cozbi — she's the daughter of Zur, a tribal head of her father's house in Midian. So I think the parallels here are quite significant, to understand how this private sin has a public effect upon the community, upon the church, and I think that's good to think about.

So how are we to address this sin? We can't, like Phinehas — in Gangs of New York or whatever — come with a spear and do that, but we'll be tempted to, because it's so frustrating. So we use the word of God. We gird ourselves with the word of God around us, and the consolation of the brethren that we have here in the New Testament church. So if God permits the sin to spill onto you, and onto your church, the witness before the world, we have to address it with the word. Statistics, and sociological reports, articles from marriage and family therapists — I think they're only good to a point. You might be able to convince someone, to a degree, to say, "Well, maybe that's not good for me," but they still don't love God. We're not changing hearts yet. So I wouldn't necessarily advise waiting — sorry, Bev, that's definitely your area, and we love all those statistics — but in terms of spiritual progress, they're only good to a point.

As I said, Kleinig talks about us not being moral policemen, but shepherds of souls, because the root of cohabitation is not necessarily the public act against the Sixth Commandment that we Christians focus on. When you take a step back from it, really, it's the breaking of the Third and the First. I mean, what cohabiting couple that's hardened in their sin still loves to come to church and hear you preach against cohabitation, right? It just doesn't happen — because they have a bad conscience, they don't want to come and have that conscience hurt and pricked already, but they don't know how to fix it, and maybe we're not talking about it, or they're afraid, or what have you. And the First Commandment is already broken, of course, because they love themselves more than God in his word. So these hearts have been led astray from fearing and loving and trusting God above all things, in favor of fearing and trusting their intimacy, which feels really good. Remember, yesterday I talked about feelings, and how feelings direct and guide the constructionist mindset today. So God's word has already been despised and defiled by the admission that their actions are wrong, yet they don't aim to remedy them.

The culture all around us, just like Balaam, invites them to sin — "Oh, look at the wisdom, all their friends are doing it and it worked out just fine." So easily can this confrontation, by their pastor, elder, or fellow parishioner, be received by them as an act of moral police brutality — for they know, of all sins, "Hey, pastor, what about that other couple that's not living together, but you know they're sleeping together every weekend when they come home from college, right?" Who gives pastors, parents, and elders, and church members, authority to confront on this issue that the world advises against but holy Scripture condemns? "It's not that bad, come on."

So — but we must, we have to. And I think we do so by a posture of humility and repentance. I loved this, last night, at Compline, where Pastor Swirl confessed his sins before us, and we absolved him, and we confessed our sins before him, and he absolved us. And so we prepare ourselves for this spiritual battle by the confession of our own sin — removal of the log in our own eye. And then those accusations of comparison can quickly be dismissed, because we're talking about sin, and all sin separates us from God. So if we keep our heads about ourselves, to be curates of the soul and not moral policemen — that's just a good step in the right direction, and great advice that Kleinig gives. So, have a father confessor, talk to him about it, get ready for the battle.

So in order to address the public sin of another, we first begin, of course, by confessing our own, so that we can have a good conscience, a clean conscience, delivered to us. Every sin separates, and these sins of the body — it feels so natural and good for the body — seek to separate them, and us, from the goodness of our Creator, by hardening us to them, by driving us, as pastors and those who love them, to not have hearts of compassion that are ready to speak the truth — but hearts also that are hurt. And as they hurt us, we'd like to hurt them back. St. Paul says, of course, "Flee sexual immorality — every sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body." And so these sins against their own body have a double effect, in a sense, for they not only defile the body, but the mind, the conscience, as well. So there's a greater, more penetrating effect. This sexual immorality of theirs, in the community, that we have to address — I think it defiles us as well. And so we have to be clean and have a good conscience in order to deliver a good conscience to them, and, quite frankly, to the rest of our community, which this is a plague upon.

So part of the answer, I think, is that the devil's passion is to corrupt and destroy anything that God has called good, right? Of course we know this. So in the Garden of Eden, God's order of male and female — the devil likes to flip that upside down. God says it's good for Adam to work and to oversee, and then we have all of these guys who have been given over to the devil's temptation, and they don't work, and they don't oversee. God has given to Eve this gift and ability to nurture and multiply, and feminism has replaced that with its lies. No plant or animal can oversee, or tend itself, or multiply, or nurture itself — because it's not created in body and soul; only those created in God's image can do that. So the devil attacks us. We must be on our guard, because the devil wants to draw us in, through our emotions, through the weakness of our flesh, to join those who have already been delivered into sin.

So we have to, of course, be on our guard, not to do this, but to take care of the souls entrusted to our care — or we'll become these moral policemen, or we'll capitulate and compromise the word of God, as holy — the Ten Commandments — and then it will turn pastor and people against each other, and they'll rejoice. And so this road of faithfulness, while addressing the sins of another, is not an easy road — it's a very narrow road to walk down. Falling off on one side or the other can bruise the conscience and make it sore — either coming on too heavy-handed, too harsh, or not addressing it at all. And so, when this breach of hedonism, of immorality, breaches parents and grandparents and elders with this tide of hedonism, it comes into the church as well. So how do we retain this good conscience, so that we can serve?

Well, I think it's by realizing that we are a servant of the word first. We're not a servant going out there trying to make sure that everyone keeps the Ten Commandments just perfectly, like we would like to keep them, for some reason or another, but that we are here to deliver the goods of forgiveness. As long as we're in the flesh, we'll be assailed by the flesh — of course, we'll always have the devil around us, and this battle is exhausting. So confronting another couple like this deflates and sucks a lot of the joy out of the ministry, but we have to do it.

The folly of the world — Mary Eberstadt, in her book Adam and Eve After the Pill, outlines the supposed successes of women in society after contraception. She says it's true that women have achieved equal, if not superior, earning potential in the workplace, much of it thanks to the presumed benefit of delayed marriage and childbearing. Women now, like men, have free access to as much sex as they want, and a lucrative career as well. However, that's not without consequence. So she goes on to talk about how, if sex were a commodity — when a commodity is rare, it's valuable; what's commonplace, its value, of course, is diminished. And so historically, men had to pay a pretty high price for this commodity of sex — maybe not the best way to talk about this, but just as an analogy — and so, in order to attract a complementary spouse, they had to prove themselves in the plain game of the workplace out there. You had to establish good income, you had to show that you were of good moral character, that you were going to be tender and kind to the opposite sex, and not use them, as John was talking about last night in his conclusion. And so, because at some point in time, this woman is going to be wholly dependent upon her husband, as she is going to be compromised by this liability of birthing a child — and maybe not being able to walk afterward, or being in the hospital for some time — she and this child of her womb would be wholly dependent upon this man. So the price used to be high, but contraception has eroded that, to many, to such a degree.

Now, Eberstadt says that men have traded in their ties, and insurance cards, and provisions for their wives, and they sit in their basements playing video games with their hats on backward, in an everlasting adolescence. And so, since contraception has made common that which is holy, in some places it's been reduced to just idle activity, like going to a playground, or hanging out over lunch. I talked about this — I think it was nine years ago — I was visiting with one of my confirmands. She was in ninth grade, in school, and she was kind of losing her mind about where she was supposed to fit in, because she was in the band and in theater, and the percentage of LGBT-identified kids in band and theater is really high, even at that time. She was forthright and open with me, and we started to talk about sexual activity, and she said, "Yeah, the kids in band, in theater — different cliques, not everybody — but they have sex parties, i.e., orgies," in the teenage years. And I didn't dwell on it, didn't pry into it — I just said, "Okay, well, let me help you be pure and clean, right, and here's God's word for you."

But over the course of the years, I started to ask other fathers, and other guys, and other pastors in town, and they said, "Oh yeah, that's well known, and it's promoted by the upperclassmen on the lower classmen — it's just the culture of our high school." Now, that doesn't happen across the board for everybody in band, or everybody in high school. But it really unhinged her from the faith, as she'd just made her confirmation vows and went into the armpit of the world at school. She said, "Well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do — I'm pulled in this direction."

So my point here is that the devil has taken this holy gift of marriage, and he has defiled it. God has created us for good; the devil wants to defile all that is good. Kleinig, in his book, talks about how our bodies are baptized — the devil wants to take what is holy, which is our bodies, as baptized priests in his kingdom, the kingdom of the priesthood of all believers, and then defile them by that which is common. And this is what Kleinig says: "Many Christians have a bad conscience about sex, often more so than about anything else they do. They're not sure whether or not God approves of it. They're even less sure whether he approves of their sexual behavior, let alone their desire for sex, and their attitude to sex. That uncertainty is stoked by the devil, who often concentrates his condemnation in this regard. He switches from tempting them to sin, and excusing their cohabitation, their sexual sins, to damning them for their sexual activity, and their desire for sexual intercourse. His aim is to portray God as a sexual killjoy, and give them a bad conscience about their sexuality — to invert good for evil, and evil for good. The vocal teaching about sex is meant to rectify this. It does not set out a comprehensive code of sexual ethics; even where it does teach about sexual morality, it does so pastorally, like in John chapter 8, with the woman caught in adultery." Kleinig says its purpose is to deliver a good conscience to God's people who break the Sixth Commandment in sin, in thought, word, and deed — people whose conscience is burdened by lust and sexual transgression. "Most of all, it does so by its positive teaching on holy matrimony and holy singleness, chastity." He goes on: "Like sexual intercourse, marriage belongs to the order of creation. It was created by God as good, and blessed by him. He established marriage as a life-giving, life-sustaining order in his ordered world. So before the fall, both sexual intercourse and marriage were good and pure in his eyes. Even after the fall, marriage still retains much of its original power — despite its abuse, it has not lost its inherent beauty, so much so that some in same-sex relationships desire it for themselves, and vainly try to mimic it. What's more, sexual intercourse between men and women in marriage does not make them physically or spiritually unclean — it remains God's good gift for all people. And as such, like everything else God has created, it is good. Only its abuse pollutes the bodies and souls of those who engage in it."

The worldly rationale for cohabitation is broad, and it's very expansive. Therefore, the disordered wisdom of it creates disordered affections. I think a good insight that Augustine and Luther have is "incurvatus in se" — man curved in on himself. Augustine, in The City of God, and then Luther, in his Romans commentary, speaks about the curving in on oneself in sin. Augustine believed that pride is the beginning of sin, because in pride one turns oneself away from God and in upon himself. But sin is not only pride — it's also a misplaced love, right — choosing to love oneself above God. We were created by God to love God supremely, yet we sin when we turn inward, rejecting God, and giving our greatest adoration not to him but to ourselves. He further described self-love gone awry in terms of humanity's desire for happiness. He says this: "Man has undoubtedly the will to be happy, even when he pursues happiness by living in a way which makes it impossible of attainment. Hence the falsehood — it commits sin to promote our welfare, and the result is rather to increase our misfortune, because it's against God's order. What's the reason for this, except that well-being can only come to man from God, not from himself?" He forsakes God by sinning, and he sins by living to his own standard. Humanity, then, is bent inward on itself, seeking its own good apart from God, and trying to find justification in one another, in the society around us, and not in God.

Well, the good news is that God created us to be most happy and find fulfillment not in ourselves, but in him — and that's the very thing that we could not do, but he did for us. And so he comes to us — he comes incarnate. By coming to earth, Jesus draws us to the Father, and redeems us from our inward curve upon ourselves. And as we grow in the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus, we grow in this proper understanding of love toward our neighbor — it's like the post-communion collect. But inherent to the "incurvatus" is prideful self-love, which I like to call lust, because lust is this inversion of God's, of Christ's, sacrificial love for us, exemplified for us upon the cross. And so lust, then, is impatient and prideful, the opposite of love. Lust incessantly envies and boasts. Lust is intrinsically arrogant and rude. It always coerces its own way, always, and is constantly inflamed and never satisfied. It doesn't rejoice at the truth, but it seeks to silence it. Lust manipulates all things, it perverts all things, it defiles all things. It's the inversion of a more excellent way — 1 Corinthians 13.

Now, while speaking of another form of immorality, St. Paul says to the Romans that God gives them up to the lusts of their hearts to impurity, and for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. So it's incumbent upon us, as Christians and pastors, to warn and speak the law to all who have given in to pride and turned away from God and in upon themselves, and to give them a more excellent way.

Last year — I think I mentioned this last night too — I had a trainer at a gym. Maybe I didn't mention it: she was the best trainer I've ever had in my life, great. I saw her at a bowling alley — she'd had a number of drinks, and she was making out with her girlfriend. She's now moved to Colorado, she's engaged, and her parents are beside themselves. She wears a crucifix around her neck every day, she has religious tattoos up and down her arms. Her partner, Jess, is also Christian, and they go to church. I wondered how she could change, and what could be different about her life. And she thinks that she's looking to Jesus, but she's not — she's looking at a misplaced love of Christ that has come across in a heretical gospel that doesn't speak the full word and the full counsel of God. And so she's seeking fulfillment in life and not finding it. But I'm not here, in this part, to talk about lesbian issues — we're here to talk about cohabitation, and delivering a good conscience. This is very true.

So this more excellent way is to point to the love of Christ, and to find fulfillment in him. I think you can rightly assume that a person who is cohabiting — a soul who is caught in this, or in any other sin — is curved in upon themselves, and has turned their back away from God. And so, in a way, that person, that soul, if you think of it this way, is curled in upon his or her shame, that is objectively known by the word of God, or, for LGBT issues, just by nature itself. And so I think we have to give voice to the holy scriptures, to call them to repentance. There's an art to that, there's a skill to it, of letting the word excise that sin and cut deep. But the good thing, or the neat thing, I think, about deep cuts, is that they hurt far less than abrasions and misplaced guidance of a cut or a bruise. And so if we use the wisdom that God has given to us in this office of the ministry, to sanctify, to cut away, to make holy, then I think we can be more accurate, and more confident, quite frankly, in our application of God's word to the sin that is infecting our communities.

So I think there's a reason our forefathers retained this phrase in the rite of private confession and absolution, where we say, "I have not let your love have its way with me, and so my love for others has failed" — for the love of God in Christ Jesus, through the work of his Holy Spirit, cuts us deep to the heart, "by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault." And it's a good thing for us to let the perfect physician of body and soul excise us, so we can learn from him, and then deliver and pass that on to others. And in doing so, he gives to us a clean conscience, a good conscience, a healthy conscience, and a confident one, that can approach these couples who are living together, who have family dynamics in the congregation that might jeopardize your salary. What of it? The good Lord will take care of you.

At some point, this afflicted and trapped, cohabiting and sinning soul has purposely pushed away the Third Commandment, the preaching of God's word, and the First Commandment, by placing themselves first. Now, in the creation of his mind, he's inverted love, made it lust, and placed that before his Creator. So how will this soul be turned away from this curving-in, and back, until they return to the community of hearers around the preached word? I like to say there's always room for one more sinner at our church at Mount Calvary — I'd like to take our banner down and say "sinners only," but my leadership doesn't want to go for that one quite yet.

So, through the word that is proclaimed and placed upon them, they are made holy, but they don't come back through our doors. So Christ charges us to enact his love upon his sheep that he's entrusted to our care. So we likewise cannot forsake the Third, nor the First Commandment, and we have to let his word, and his headship over us, his care of us, direct us. So if lust exhibits itself as selfishness, then love must embody sacrifice. If lust, in its pride, lifts itself above all things, then love must become the lowest servant of all. Lust pushes for pleasure; love must pursue discipline. But if loving God and neighbor becomes one's aim, then, consequently, lust must die — and it does so by the Holy Spirit's might, and the unclean becomes clean, the unholy becomes — the defiled becomes sanctified. The huddled, little, shameful one is now covered by the righteousness of Christ, outside of itself, and this love is made known to that body, that soul. No longer, then, do you see this curved-in, huddled soul upon itself, in shame and in fear of what God or man might say to him or her, but a posture of a saint who is lifted up in worship, created to sing praises to his or her God once again.

Now, none of this turning away from sin and returning to the Lord happens because of some policy manual — like COP's policy manual that I think is 1,400 pages long, or something like that, and evidently secretive; nobody knows about it. It doesn't happen through us having a policy manual on what to do with an ex-cohabiting couple. No — there, that's the moral police approach — but it comes through the work of the office of the ministry, clothing them with that which we have been given, and that's the word of God. So let this love have its way with us, as pastors ministering it, so that we might be lifted up and cleansed in our conscience, so that we can deliver that as well.

Three sides of marriage here — Trobisch talks about this in his book. Side one: a man leaving his father and mother, cleaving to his wife, and the two becoming one flesh. These words from our Lord — of the man leaving, cleaving, and becoming one flesh — show up in Genesis, in Jesus, and twice in St. Paul. So that should give us, of course, a bit of pause to note. Both Kleinig and Trobisch have a great bit of wisdom that they share on this.

So, side one is a man leaving his father and mother. It's a timeless, cross-cultural, and countercultural demand. It'd certainly be countercultural in India, for instance — for a man to leave his mother. In India, when a man gets married, his wife comes and lives with his mother, and that's got to be a hot mess of conflict, all the way through. It's a public attestation that one man and one woman are now one family — with the gal that Kleinig featured at the end of his video, this gal from Malta, I think it was — that's countercultural too. And so this leaving and cleaving is exclusive and mandatory. It's a public act, across all times and virtually all cultures, in some degree or another, that a man leaves his father and mother's care to establish his ability to care for the woman he will make a mother, and she to him a father. He leaves so that he can serve others in love, outward focused, instead of being served in love, curved in upon himself — and that is what it is to become a man, to have some dependents, dependents that depend upon you. He's no longer a dependent, but one who is to be depended upon. He leaves, and she leaves, so that they can learn to sacrifice and love for each other, as God and Christ sacrifice and love for them, so they can learn and grow together, by practicing and exhibiting a love that serves, and sacrifices, and gives unconditionally — and, in so doing, keep lust far at bay. It's a public act and attestation of a man and woman leaving their families of origin to originate their own family. It's good and necessary in the sight of God — Moses, Jesus, and St. Paul agree. So the devil wants to flip it on its head.

The second side is cleaving to his wife. Kleinig says the ESV is a bit weak here — it's "to stick to," "to adhere to," like two pieces of paper glued together — when you rip them apart, you can't perfectly rip them apart. Divorce is never perfect — it just rips, always with terrible effect. Or "joining," he says, is like one becomes a Marine — it's for life. The primary sense there is a man's commitment to his wife, quite similar to our Lord's commitment to us, his coming to us, his commitment, his binding work and promise to us. The stress here is on the male initiative to make the voluntary, public, verbal, and legal commitment to his wife — that he has to be responsible for the headship of the house, and that he has totally, irrevocably, and publicly bound himself to his wife, in all things, for life. And in so doing, that sets up a very good environment for his wife to subordinate herself, or come underneath his headship. He's proven himself rightly and honorably before the world — not for his own sake, but for hers. So why wouldn't she gladly come underneath his care? This is a splendid basis for trust, which emanates this pattern of self-giving love that sacrifices for the other. This is letting Christ's love have its way with you. It's a foundation of trust that sets the bedroom in order, for sex to be enjoyed as the gift it was created to be. The public commitment of the man to his wife readies his wife, now, for the commitment of her body to his care in the bedroom. And as he cares for his body, and cares for hers, the product of their committed love in their bedroom is their children. So marriage, then, is made a safe space — to use the words of today — for both body and soul. It's a good thing; the world doesn't know about it today as it used to.

The third side is becoming one flesh — not a passing exchange, like Kleinig was talking about, but a permanent physical union that is ongoing — no longer two but one, as if a husband and wife operate as one body. In intercourse, the two bodies act complementarily, in concert with each other, doing for the other that which they cannot do for themselves. And so in the consummation of marriage, in the one-flesh union, two bodies become one, and act as a complementary team, with the goal of procreation. And the fruit of that union, of one flesh, is another flesh, comprised of both body and soul, that shares half the DNA of each parent. It's also a lifelong process of becoming one — they will become one flesh, even after the age of childbearing, especially for the childless — it's still a process of becoming one, a union of opposites, without the erasure of difference.

Now, to address cohabitation: the problem with cohabitation, in light of Genesis 2:24, is that it works backwards. It's only a one-sided triangle, or a one-legged stool, if you cleave first. And so we have to regain order, but kind of do it backwards. And Trobisch has a great little story that I think everybody can understand the wisdom of. Brian Wolfmueller likes to say this, when he learns that a couple is living together — he says, "Oh, I hear that you're living together, and you're having sex before marriage. I don't know if that's a good thing that you want to do — practicing having sex with someone who's not your spouse — because that's what you're doing. Let me show you a more excellent way." And then he goes into that, to say that God has a greater gift for us than what the wisdom of the world portrays to us. Similarly, Kleinig gives us a suggestion to use just the simple order of Holy Matrimony, in the Agenda, and go through that, to explain all of it — so that the devil might be put out of the bedroom. For marriage is in order — it's a good estate, of course, and the devil is an enemy of anything that is good in God's order. It's a divine institution that God has given to us for our good — a divine institution that has a blessing inherent within it.

So this blessing, inherent within the order of Holy Matrimony, is something I think we need to think about, and laud, and lift up. We're not moral policemen — cohabitation is not so much a moral problem as it is a spiritual problem, because it's an abuse of God's good gift of our bodies and marriage. But how do we get the devil out of the bedroom, and how do we deliver a good conscience — to ourselves, to our community, and to these couples?

I emailed Kleinig the other day, and he got back to me — like I said, I've come up with nothing new, this is half his. But one question — I understand pretty well how to deliver a good conscience to a repentant sinner, to those who repent. And when I have a couple that's cohabiting, if there's any glimmer of guilt, I talk about that — any whiff of it — then there's something I can speak to the conscience about, to excise whatever that sin is, and to show them a more excellent way. And especially if they have turned — and the longer they cohabit, it seems, the more they turn away from God and in upon themselves — if the Holy Spirit, by his word, in any means, gets them to glance back for a little bit, God be praised for that. And whatever it is, if they say, "I know it shouldn't be this way, I'm sorry, I'm weak, I know my grandma doesn't like it," or you — use that in discussion, and apply commendation for how good it is that they see the goodness of God's order in marriage, to turn them away from themselves and the ways of the world and the devil, and back toward God.

Along the way — and I'm not advocating, I don't want to get into a policy manual of "should you marry this couple or not marry this couple in this situation, or in that situation" — but I think a guiding principle for us is this: where are they? Are they turned in and headed only upon themselves and away from God, or have they turned, in some degree or regard, and will they work with you? I just have a simple rule: I'll work with you so long as you work with me. But we have to work with each other, and the word of God — it does work.

But specifically, I think, for restoring the consciences of pastors, it's this: how do pastors receive holiness? I, myself, and other pastors have told me, "I feel like I need to take a shower after I've done that wedding." Now, outwardly it follows all the policies that your board of elders have set up, or whatever you have, and everything else, and you think it's just fine, but you know they're going at it like rabbits on the weekends, or whatever it might be, or they're coming to church, but they're just doing that, and they have a hard heart. You see all of these things, because you're curates of souls, you look into their souls. So how do you deal with that? Similarly, on the other side of it, when your hand is pressed, and you have to give in and marry a couple that is living together, and it's just not good and not right, but for whatever reason you go ahead and do that — so how is a good conscience delivered to a pastor?

Kleinig gave me this advice, and I don't have it entirely worked out, but I'll try to flesh it out a little bit. He says that we, as ministers, minister to other sinners as we who are sexual sinners, who have been cleansed by the blood of Christ, who have been made holy by Jesus in our baptism — a continual holiness that is our holiness right now. And so we then are to preach and teach about God's powerful, cleansing, holy word to ourselves, right? You know, the sermons you write are the sermons to yourselves. And so, preach to yourself of the holiness that you have in Christ already, and in so doing, you pray for yourself, and you pray for the couple. It's kind of like when you prepare yourself to hear confession — you know, the Pastoral Care Companion has those questions of examination beforehand. And so, in preparation for dealing with a couple who's living together before marriage, you preach and teach sermons to yourself about the cleansing you've already received from Christ, in absolution and in your baptism.

And also to understand this — as we marry them, we — it's not a perfect and entirely scriptural parallel, but I think there's maybe some good in thinking about this — but in the absolution we say, "In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ," and we speak that word of forgiveness, which is also a blessing. And in matrimony we pray for them, it's surrounded in God's word and prayer, and we give a blessing to them. But it's a blessing that comes from the office, even though we also have to stand in the civil office, because we do it as a civil authority, which — whatever, on that. But we stand as Jesus before them, with his love that covers over a multitude of sins, right? And so we stand there as this example of Christ. And I think that helps us answer the question of "Would Jesus bless this marriage, pastor?" You know all of that dirty stuff about them, you know that they were confirmed in this church, that they spoke the confession of God's name, that at one point in time they said they would follow God's Holy Ten Commandments — they're not. Would Jesus give a blessing to them? And then Kleinig said — John chapter 8, with the woman caught in adultery, you know how that goes — they test Jesus, saying, "What should we do? Here's some stones, Jesus, how about you lead us here in keeping the law, be the chief of police, the moral policeman, in our district today?" And he just bends down and writes a couple of times, and then they go away, and then Jesus stands up and says, "Where are your accusers? Neither do I condemn you — go and leave your life of sin." So he doesn't give an explicit absolution there — it's not like a direct "I bless you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" — but her life is saved, so that's certainly a blessing there.

I got to thinking about vows and blessings — a couple of years ago I did a sermon series on vows and blessings. We started with baptismal blessings, and then the vows that the parents and godparents make, the confirmation vows, marriage vows, ordination vows, and then the blessings that are intrinsic to all of those. So within each of these, you have the blessing of God's name upon you — at baptism, at confirmation, at marriage, at ordination. And all of it is also enshrouded in the imagery of the white baptismal garment — at least at our church we have the white garment for confirmation, you have the bride's, ideally, wedding dress, you have ordination — yeah, there's a lot of red at ordination, but you're dressed in the righteousness of Christ — and then the final blessing that the body receives is at a funeral, with a pall over it, and the baptismal blessing. And I think, if I categorize it in my mind, these — the liturgy of the church, and the offices that have been entrusted to us, the work that's been entrusted to us in the office — for blessing with God's name, then marriage is right there along with the joy of baptism, of confirmation, of ordination, and of funerals. And I would do like twenty funerals before I'd do, you know, a wedding, because there's such joyful confidence there — and I think we have lost, in many ways, this joyful confidence of the One who joins them together. Like, I've forgotten about what Jesus says in Matthew 19: "What God has joined together, let no one put asunder." As Kleinig says, God is the officiant of marriage — he is the one who created them, he is the one who has brought them, to some desired degree, whatever, to stand before his altar to receive the blessing from his spokesman. So maybe I should see marriage as a little bit higher, a greater gift, because these sinners actually do want God's blessing, and his name, upon them.

Now, as for handling the ones who still despise his name in all of this — I don't have the wisdom on that one quite yet — but his name, his name can't be shamed, you can't mock him. Another point that Kleinig made is this: to think about how Christ feels about me, and my baptism — and, you know, maybe this goes along with the constructionist mindset, we live in this world and we try to keep ourselves out of the thinking and thought process of the world, but maybe it's good to think about how Christ thinks about us, how he feels about us, and how he feels about us similarly when his body and blood are put upon our tongue and upon our lips, and he knows all of our sin, and he still comes to us and cleanses us. So maybe he covers us with his grace and mercy, and he gives us all of this forgiveness — maybe we can, in humility, and in increased joy, bring that to the couples who have sinned as well.

The third point he makes is this: regard my distrust — my distrust in the situation, my distaste for it — as a temptation of the evil one upon me, in order to damn the couple with God's law, and fail to see their desire to be married in the church, with the word of God and prayer surrounding them, as a positive thing. He says we cannot sense a spirit of condemnation — they cannot sense a spirit of condemnation. And so we should err on the side of chastity. And, quite frankly, that's tough, because you have to trust the Lord and the Holy Spirit to do his work, even when you don't see it — even when they stay outwardly unrepentant, as it were. But we have to take them at their word — they want to do better. And if they come to us and say, "Pastor, I want to do better, help me, show me a more excellent way" — I think we can work with that.

And lastly, he says it's a lifelong journey of becoming one flesh with each other and with Jesus, and it's completed in the resurrection.

So, all of you should get the next Zeitschrift article — it has lots of good articles on how to handle and understand cohabitation. It'll be far more interesting than this presentation, probably — I'm looking forward to that as well. But it is quite a wrestling match with something that our church body hasn't — our circles haven't wrestled with formally — for quite a many years.