CHAPTER FIVE: Perpetuity
 

“Perpetuity” refers to that which goes on and on to a predetermined end, and we use the word in the sense of marriage being “till death do us part,” as most marriage ceremonies, reflecting the teachings of Scripture, declare. Marriage was not initially intended to be just an answer to a temporary problem, but was intended to be the permanent answer to a perennial problem—the human creature’s need for a stable family environment and a loving mate to fill out what is lacking in him and her.

The family is a social unit that will be in a constant state of flux and change for all of its existence for the simple reason that its constituents are continually changing. This fact alone, without regard to the changing of society around them, will require that husbands and wives continually adjust to one another’s changes. Sometimes the excuse given for the break-up of a marriage is that “We’ve just grown apart.” That may be true to a degree, but it is no justification for ending a marriage. That indicates that one or both parties have tried to stop in their intellectual, psychological, moral and spiritual growth. Such a condition is always easier, for continual growth and develop­ment takes effort, and a lot of people don’t want to put out the necessary effort to do so. But failure to adjust to one another’s growth and development often indicates a selfishness that should never characterize either marital partner. Remember! When a person stops growing intellectually one of two things has happened; he or she has either died, or else has become an obstinate fool.

As we noted in the last chapter there are a lot of things that enter into a right marriage, and all of these will require perpetual effort, and there is no retirement age in a marriage when either partner can stop working at it. Sad to say, but often one or both parties decide that it will be easier to divorce and find a new partner that will accept (hopefully) one’s short-comings than to work to make the current marriage a good and efficient one. Such an attitude finds no acceptance with God for He declares that He hates such putting away, Mal. 2: 14-16, and He makes no exceptions to this.
 

It would be interesting to make a study of the different families whose histories are recorded at length in Scripture and notice both the successes of them as well as the failures of them. Some of these involved serious violations of the basic principles of the marital relation, as in Jacob’s and David’s families where there were multiple wives and concubines. And in Hosea’s family, where he was commanded to marry a harlot so that her unfaithfulness would symbolize National Israel’s spiritually adulterous relation to God and H sea’s faithfulness would symbolize God’s love. In others, such as Abraham’s and Isaac’s, there were problems that arose to challenge the two marriage partners as to how they would handle them. But in almost all of the marriages in the Bible the partners remained married for all their lives.

Under even the best of circumstances we are warned that we should expect that problems shall arise in every marriage, for so Scripture warns in I Cor. 7:28. “But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh but I spare you.” Marriage is both a perpetual blessing and a perpetual source of problems for we are all yet in the testing time while in this world and everything that happens to us tests us in some way. We have not yet attained to our glorified state where there are no problems, and we never will attain to it in this present life.

Paul was inspired to speak of this in the verses immediately following the one above, concluding with “For the fashion (Greek schaerna—scheme) of this world passeth away,” V3 1. And just as the fashion of the world is in a passing state, so are also all the people therein, and so the Divine institution of marriage is for the life of the two parties, but only for that length of time. For marriage is not needed beyond this life for those that pass from this life are immediately either in the presence of the Lord with all the angels and the saints, or else in perdition eternally separated from all other sinners. Yes! That is correct, for there are no Scriptures indicating that any two sinners are ever together in the life beyond. This will be one of the torments of perdition, that though lost people will be able to see the bliss of the saved, Luke 16:23, they will have no one to give them any fellowship, companionship, or any other form of human comfort or compassion. Many sinners comfort themselves that they will have the companionship of their sinful cronies in the life beyond. And sometimes obsessive people will murder the one that they are obsessed with, thinking to have them with them in the next life, but such is not the case at all. In rejecting the Creator one robs himself or herself of all the Creator’s blessings, including that of human companionship. Imagine the horror of it all! Spending eternity all alone!

Now, having said all this, it must be acknowledged that while earthly relationships are not carried over into the life hereafter for the saved—there will not be family relationships, such as parent-child, siblings, etc., any more than there will be marital relations—there will be infinitely higher relations there. In the life beyond, all that are privileged to enter into the presence of God and the holy angels, will be members of the family of God, and so, will all be brethren in a spiritual sense—an infinitely glorious relationship. But this brings up the oft-mentioned supposed problem of how anyone could be happy in heaven if some of their earthly relatives are not there. Only one text of Scripture is necessary to answer this seeming dilemma. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new,” Rev. 2 1:4-5. At that time God will take away even the remembrance of all former, earthly things, including human relations, and will make all things new. Hence, there will be no remembrance of earthly relationships and of those that were never saved, for all of the saved will constitute a heavenly family relationship that Is all complete, with not a single member missing, as our Lord promised would be the case, John 6:37-39.

Human relations are commonly fraught with failure simply because they are all made up of sinners, that, even after salvation, continue to have many frailties, foibles and faults, and will continue to be in that state until they leave the present life. Hence, it is true in human relations as it is in the safety of our nation that price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and dependence upon the grace of God. Perpetual work at marriage is required else it shall certainly fail from internal deterioration. A grandmother had a grandson that used to come over regularly and mow her yard with a riding mower, but he never checked the oil level in the engine. Now everyone knows that a working engine requires oil to keep the parts from wearing excessively and eventually this mower’s engine froze and had to have major repairs, and so it is with marriage. The oil of thoughtfulness is constantly needed, and any neglect of it will lead eventually to a freeze up of the relationship, and it may or may not be repairable.

As we have observed before, so we stress it again. In no human relationships is it so true as in the marital relationship that the so-called Golden Rule of Matt. 7:12 is the best possible way to keep the relationship viable, vivacious and victorious. This verse says, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” Here the Greek word for “man” is the generic term anthropos—a human being without regard to gender, so that this is applicable to both men and women, and is the Lord’s command—”do ye even so to them.” Not only so, but our Lord declared that this is the essence of the Law of God.

In answer to an attempt to ensnare Him with the question as to what is the great commandment in the Law, Jesus answered in Matt. 22:35-40 with a classic revelation of human duty, and it shows the very same thing as in the Golden Rule. The Lord said in essence that the greatest commandment in God’s Law is that man is obligated to love God supremely, and the second greatest commandment is that man is to love his fellow creatures equally to himself Of course, no one has ever even come close to doing this, which is why no one can possibly earn eternal life by his own doings. For each one continually fails to keep the Law of God, Rom. 8:3-4, which puts everyone under the curse of God by nature, Gal. 3:10. The same thing is true of practicing the Golden Rule in marriage, but it does not thereby cease to be a duty because no one can perpetually keep it. Failure to measure up to a standard does not thereby invalidate the standard. It only shows the need of Divine grace to do one’s duty.

The benefits of marriage are ongoing though they often must change to meet the changing circumstances of time, and so should the work put into the marriage change to correspond to the differing needs. The sailor that sets out in a boat from his home port on a beautiful sunny day knows that if a storm arises he will be required to radically adjust his sailing procedures. And there are many storms in life, and every marriage will have its share of them, and so, must be prepared to make the necessary adjustments to meet them. This life was never intended to be one long party or holiday, but is filled with trials that test every one of us. Every person is tested daily by every thing that happens to him or her, for this present life is the testing time, and every problem that arises is God’s means of showing us our continual need of His grace, wisdom and power. He not only allows trials to come upon us, He sends them in order to test our response, whether we will look to Him in faith for guidance and deliverance, or whether we will trust in the arm of flesh. Never forget the two solemn choices of Jer. 17:5, 7. “Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord... Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” Nor is there is there any third, neutral option, for Jesus ruled this out in Matt. 12:30. “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.”

And these principles are just as applicable in a marriage as they are in single individuals, and perhaps even more so, for with the joining together of two people in marriage they generally multiply their problems by two, and sometimes by more than two, for in-laws may further complicate things. But if the marital partners are saved and walking in the will of the Lord their marriage will be a multiplying of their strengths and resources. Remember the principle expressed in Eccl. 4:9-12? But this applies only if both parties are committed to the good of the family unit, and are not selfishly seeking only their own pleasure, program and promotion.

But having spoken of the fact that problems will be a constant throughout the present life, we need to come back to the original purpose of God creating the marriage relationship in the first place. Eve was created to be a helper who would correspond to Adam’s needs and supply them. But this had as full an application to him as to her, for he was likewise to be the supply of what was lacking in her, and both their lives were to add up together to a single unity. And this was to be for their mutual happiness as suggested in Eccl. 9:9. “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun.” That sounds very much like this was intended to be a perpetual thing throughout their lives, for life is characterized as “vanity,” the Hebrew word (hebel) referring to what is vaporous, temporary and soon to vanish away. The same thing is true of the inspired instructions to husbands and wives to not withhold themselves from one another in I Cor. 7:2-5. They are to continually cohabit, cohere and comfort one another, neither one selfishly seeking to dominate and misuse the other one, but both having the other’s best interests at heart.

At best life in this world can be hard, and will be perpetually challenging to the individual, but God’s gracious provision of a marital partner is the means of alleviating many of the frustrations of life. Any loving married couple knows that when all about them seems against them, and nothing seems to be working, being able to snuggle up in the privacy of their own room and know that they are fully accepted of the other is great comfort. A loving husband and wife are a formidable team. Years ago, in commemoration of a couple’s fiftieth wedding anniversary this writer penned the following.

FIFTY YEARS TOGETHER

You’ve traveled together through fifty long years,
And shared together life’s joys and tears.
Together you’ve conquered each problem of life;
A formidable team—a loving husband and wife.

Now you look forward to another tomorrow;
Ready together to face life’s joy or sorrow.
In the evening of life there are roses to gather,
And the fragrance is sweeter, if you do it together.

We now live many centuries since God created the first human pair, and there have been even more generations of husbands and wives that have lived out their appointed times and then passed off the scene. Most pairs have perpetuated themselves in the next generation, and this will continue until God brings human history to a close and time ceases and eternity dawns. There have sometimes been, in these last six millennia, wicked people that hated the restraints of righteousness that have predicted the abolition of marriage and other important social institutions. But those rebels against God and His good order are gone and now in eternal perdition, but marriage is still around, for its perpetuation is necessary to man’s good. This fact is recognized even by many individuals that refuse to acknowledge God and submit to His authority, for marriage has a practicality to it that is irrefutable. Six thousand years practice by the generality of mankind in every nation on earth with only relatively limited exceptions to it, and these often dictated by circumstances, have proven the importance of the institution of marriage.

Surely all this is significant, for while new ideas and new practices often come up and are popular for a time, sooner or later that which is impractical wifi be recognized as such and will fall by the wayside. But the marriage of one man and one woman has endured the test of time, and is still around, so that it has proven itself. Though people have tried the two extremes of living without any marriage and being married numerous times (polygamy), the standard that has survived is that which has the Divine imprimatur—the marriage of one man and one woman. And that person is a fool of the worst kind that rejects the lessons of history and tries to go back to what has been repeatedly proven to be both impractical and atheistic.

It is interesting to observe what is said of Isaac and Rebekah’s active sex life in Gen. 26:8. “And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.” It is uncertain exactly in what this “sporting” consisted, but whatever it was, it must have been of a sexual nature, for Abimelech immediately concluded from it that Isaac and Rebekah were husband and wife, and not brother and sister, as he had claimed. When we consider that Isaac was forty years of age when he and Rebekah married, Gen. 25:20, and he was sixty when Jacob and Esau were born, Gen. 2 5:26. And the two Sons were apparently about grown when the events of Gen. 25:27-34 took place, and they had been dwelling in Gerar “a long time,” Gen. 26:8 (which phrase covered twenty years in I Sam. 7:2). So he would have had to have been at least eighty years old, and perhaps much older. We do not know how much younger Rebekah was than him, but it is unlikely that she was more than fifteen or twenty years younger than him, and perhaps less, so that she would have had to have been at least sixty at this time. Yet, she was still so beautiful and desirable that Isaac feared that he would be killed so that men could take her, yet both of them were still sexually active and enjoying it. “Sport” is derived from a Hebrew word meaning to laugh, and this was a mutual thing, for “with Rebekah” shows that she was happily involved in it as well.

A yet greater evidence of sexual activity in people of advanced age is to be seen in the case of Abraham. Abraham was 99 and Sarah was ninety when Isaac was conceived. And Sarah died at 127 years of age, Gen. 23:1, and Abraham was ten years older than her, Gen. 17:17, so that he was 137 years old at this time. But sometime later he took Keturah to wile and she bore him six more sons, Gen. 25:1-2. Thus it is manifest that sex is not just for young people. It is a Divine gilt to be enjoyed by people as long as they desire it and are able to function. It is a totally unscriptural idea that many people have that sex is supposed to cease when a person reaches forty or fifty or some other age.

And statistics even suggest that married women that remain sexually active tend to have less cervical cancer than unmarried or celibate married women. At the same time, other statistics indicate that women that are not monogamous, but that engage in sexual activity with multiple partners, have a higher incidence of cervical cancer. All of which again proves that God’s blessing is upon sex in the marriage relation, but His curse is upon sex outside the marriage relation.