Married to each other…

Are believers ‘married one to another’? Does this mean that believers, all being ‘one wife’ are free to enjoy sex with each other, without sin, as they are all part of one big happy marriage? In the Family, it is reasonably common to see references to other members as our ‘mates’. Has the Family discovered a loophole in the Scriptures, allowing them to have as much sex as they want, without the slightest hint of adultery or fornication?

The first point that must be made is that the Bible does not say we are married ‘one to another’, but that we are married ‘to another, to Him who was raised from the dead’.

Rom 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another-- to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.

We are married, or rather, betrothed to Jesus.

2 Cor 11:2 For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

This concept of us betrothed to God appears several times through Scripture and is a vivid illustration of the extreme love of God for us.

Isa 54:5 For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; he is called the God of the whole earth.

He is jealous over our affection and wants us to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind. He loves each of us individually, separately, alone. Jesus died for each individual person, not for the mass of humanity, or the human race as a whole.

Human marriage is given as an illustration of our betrothal to Him.

Eph 5:28-32

28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.

29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.

30 For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

31 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

The concept is not of Christ betrothed to a group of brides, but rather to each one as separate individuals. Nowhere is a hint of sexual freedom or some kind of intermarriage between those individual brides. We are not betrothed to each other, we are not betrothed to the Family, we are not in a group marriage, but it is an individual engagement to Jesus who has gone to prepare a place for us. What is our commission? To present ourselves as ‘a chaste virgin to Christ’.

Polygamy and sexual freedom

In the Old Testament, there are numerous examples of men marrying more than one wife. Polygamy was legal in those days. Abraham, Jacob, David etc. But in each case there was a distinct pattern: the man gave his name to his wives, he fathered all the children, he was the husband, and each of the women were individually married to him. He took care of them and their children on an individual, not collective basis. If he had concubines, they also legally belonged to him individually and their children were his children. Their children were his heirs. His men-servants had no right to the concubines. There was no sexual freedom between his wives and concubines and the rest of his entourage.

Similarly, we are each betrothed to Christ, to Jesus alone and have no rights to look at the others who are in a similar relationship with God.

The ten virgins

Occasionally, the Family uses the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25 to justify this doctrine.

Matt 25:1-2

1 “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.

2 “Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

Family reasoning says that as there were ten girls marrying the bridegroom, this indicates the plural marriage of Christ and the church, and therefore is license for freedom between the brides of Christ.

However there are a couple of important points that must be made regarding this interpretation. Firstly, the virgins here were not waiting to get married to the bridegroom. Actually, the bride is not mentioned at all in this parable, which is not unusual as she is not mentioned in any of the other parables Jesus told. The other parable describing a wedding is in Matthew 22 in which believers are represented as either servants of the King, or the invited guests, not the bride.

The ten virgins in Matthew 25 are the bridesmaids, not plural brides. They are specifically termed ‘virgins’ meaning unmarried maiden. It is the same word used when talking about the miraculous conception of Jesus. Mary was a virgin, unmarried, she’d never had sex. Mary was also betrothed, engaged, which these ten virgins were not.

Luke 1:26-27

26 Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,

27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.

Virgin means unmarried, never with a man. It has no meaning of ‘bride’. That is a different word, used by John the Baptist in John 3:29, and in Revelations 21 and 22 to describe New Jerusalem. In the parable of the ten virgins, Jesus likens believers to bridesmaids waiting to join the wedding party, not to the bride waiting for her husband-to-be. There is a very similar picture in Luke 12 where we as believers are depicted as servants with lamps waiting for the Master to return from the wedding.

Luke 12:35-37

35 “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning,

36 like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him.

37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them.

(NIV)

While it may seem like a bit of a demotion to picture ourself as a bridesmaid or servant instead of the bride, remember that this is consistent with many other passages throughout the Bible calling us His servants.

Matt 24:45 “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?

Luke 17:10 “So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’”

In any wedding, in those days as well as today, the bridesmaids are the unmarried girls attending the bride. There is another picture of a wedding in Psalm 45, where the princess bride has a number of bridesmaids attending her.

Ps 45:13-16

13 The bride, a princess, waits within her chamber, robed in beautiful clothing woven with gold.

14 Lovely she is, led beside her maids of honor to the king!

15 What a joyful, glad procession as they enter in the palace gates!

16 “Your sons will some day be kings like their father. They shall sit on thrones around the world!

(TLB)

The NKJ uses ‘virgins’ instead of ‘maids of honor’, the same word it uses in the parable we are discussing in Matthew 25.

Ps 45:14 She shall be brought to the King in robes of many colors; the virgins, her companions who follow her, shall be brought to You.

So that is the first point. In this parable we are bridesmaids not brides. The next point to be made is simply that even in Bible days where a man was allowed to marry more than one wife, he never ever married more than one girl at the same ceremony. The marriage ceremony was always a celebration of the union before God, man and government of one man and one woman. As described above, this reflects God’s relationship with us, where He does not forgive collectively, but personally. He loves us individually.

There is no Biblical precedent for Family members to consider themselves as sexually free plural brides. Instead there are strong admonitions for us to wait as servants, faithful and true, without allowing ourselves to get distracted by the affairs of this life, without getting sidetracked by the other bridesmaids or servants.

We all joined the Family because we wanted to serve the Lord, not to find a husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, not merely to live together with other people. Neither do new disciples have the idea that they are entering some kind of plural marriage where they are no more than an addition to the Lord’s spiritual harem. They do not expect to have sex (spiritually) with Jesus their Lord, or even (physically) with the other ‘wives’. The one and only motivation for joining the Family can be nothing else but service to God. The body of believers, the church, the Family, any church is not a plural marriage. Believers are not pictured as brides, nor as the Lord’s sexually free girlfriends, but as servants waiting for their Lord. As such, let’s keep our lamps burning. Don’t let them go out through neglect, or become smothered by feeding them misinterpretations. Let’s keep our eyes on the Lord, not on the other servants also waiting for Him!

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