From: mueller@owlnet.rice.edu (Ernest Conrad Mueller)
Subject: Re: Divorce and Remarriage
Organization: Rice University
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 15:07:18 GMT

>We aren't saved by obeying the laws.  If we need to break them, due to
>circumstances, we are not lost because of them.  We have a savior.  He
>is our salvation. He knows if we really know him and are seeking him in
>our hearts. If a marriage is in misery and causing sin and grief, do you
>think that Christ does not see this?  When God sees our sin, he will know
>if we have Christ and if we have Christ, he will forget our sins.  This
>is not to say that we should not try to save our marriages.  But if it
>cannot be saved and it is causing sin and grief and hurting our relation-
>ship with God, then it would be better to divorce.

I am responding to this because I believe that this attitude is one of the
most dangerous threats to Christianity extant today.  The underlying 
assumption is that the reason Christ came is to provide us with 
a free ticket - forgiveness, pure and simple, removing us from the
responsibility for our sin described by the Law.

Salvation is not a simple matter of where we go when we die.  Did not Christ
die to bring us salvation NOW?  Salvation from our sin is not just forgiveness,
it is liberation!  Do "circumstances" concern God?  Can anything "not be 
saved?"  No!  Are we not more than conquerors through him who loved us?

"But it's always easier to get forgiveness than permission."  Have you
not heard the words of the apostle Paul?  "What then?  Shall we sin because we
are not under law but under grace?  By no means!  Don't you know that when you
offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one 
obey - whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, 
which leads to righteousness?  ... But now that you have been set free from
sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness,
and the result is eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift
of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Are we no longer able to be righteous?  Are we to cave in to the strident
demands of this world?  Is Christ's work so weak as that?  Does the
Holy Spirit, who dwells in our heart, as a full part of God, not have
the power or ability or understanding of this world?  But it nonetheless
calls us to righteousness!  

The early saints refused to sin in such a small way as to swear by the Luck
of Caesar, and were slain horribly for it.  That is the power of God.
The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but a matter of power!   We are
to live as children of the light, no matter what the cost.  But today we are so
weak as to walk into the greatest of sins, because we "know it can be
forgiven."  How can we call ourselves Christians?  Christ is not just our
Savior, he is our Lord and Master!  Our disobedience does not go unnoticed by
him.

I realize that I condemn myself as well with these words, but I feel this is 
where the Spirit has led me.  We are weak today, so weak!  We do not
even claim that we can be totally faithful servants of Christ any
more!  We excuse our own sin, and in doing so mock the forgiveness
God has given us!

Let us put off these worldy things, and instead strive towards righteousness.
Let us cease discussing loopholes by which we might thwart God's desire,
for such an enterprise is doomed from the start; God will not be mocked.
And we do mock him.  Nonchristians do so openly, and say "Where is your God?"
We mock him too, by saying "He is with us" while our lives cry out,
"Where is He?"  We say "Our God is great," without believing a word of it!
We deny Christ the power of his death on the cross, and we deny the Spirit
its power in our lives.  We piously mouthe words while the members of our
bodies go their own ways.  We are living mockeries.

God help us all.

Ernest Mueller

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