Someone wrote recently “The Christ-Plus Snare,” especially emphasizing Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. He goes on to say that the same contamination of the Gospel had happened two or three times before in the church at Antioch. Paul had to rebuke Peter to his face because he was to be blamed. And he did it openly before all the people. Peter, it seems, was not completely emancipated, as he feared those of the circumcision, so others quite naturally dissembled likewise with him: insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. Someone had to take over and call a halt to that which would have carried away many more.
This then is a background to the Epistle to the Galatians. Because within two years, Paul, having founded those churches which he dearly loved, had some who came from Jerusalem and preached the same thing, that unless you become Jews, you cannot become Christians. The writer goes on to say that this made Paul literally livid. He was really angry when he wrote this epistle to the Galatians. It is a letter, he says, that was dashed off in white heat. Later on, Paul did organize his thinking on this subject when he wrote out the whole doctrine of Christian Freedom in his letter to the Romans. Romans is systematized Galatians. Paul wrote this letter to his beloved Galatians in order to save his children for whom he was agonizing in prayer before the Lord. He plunges right into his theme saying, “I marvel….” He says there are some who would pervert the gospel. It was not denying the Divinity or deity of Christ, that they were teaching, nor denying the inspiration of the Scriptures. It was not denying the validity of the atonement, or any of the fundamentals of the faith, it was simply this. Christ plus anything is another gospel. Christ plus anything is a perversion of the gospel.
The above is somewhat how I felt when I received an article that is entitled, “Engagement, Marriage, Divorce” that came from R. G. Williams, The Laurels, Churchill, Bristol, England, Publisher of the Way. A good part of this article is true, but like the “friends” who went down from Jerusalem, including Peter, the error is there.
Engagement – The writer says, “that it is the man’s business to court and the woman’s to be passive.” This could be greatly misunderstood. Why, for instance, should a woman be passive about a man she knows she is to marry? Is passivity a virtue? If the writer means that a woman should not be striving to get the man, he is right, but being passive has nothing to do with the question. Also, he says, “if one of the partners in the time of the engagement, it is absolutely meaningless, rash, and thoughtless to get engaged and to break it off later. In many countries, it is a punishable offense to commit a breach of promise. It is reckoned as a crime.” This certainly could be true if either of the parties are irresponsible and think of an engagement as a light thing. However, this would not be true in every case. The right thing, of course, is to seek and know the will of the of the Lord in the matter, and then there would never be the need of breaking the engagement. There have been times, and I am a witness of what I write, that it was absolutely the will of the Lord to break the engagement, thus saving ruination of the worst kind to those concerned.
Marriage – The subtle part on this subject is that the writer would have it believed that marriage is the highest form of spirituality, quoting 1 Corinthians chapter 7 often. Paul starts off by saying in the first verse, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife.” So victory over fornication would be to have a wife. Then Paul goes into what is right if a man has a wife. But in the sixth verse, he says, this is by concession, not out of commandment, for he would that all men be as he, but he says that every man has his gift from God. To those who could contain he tells them it is good for them to abide even as he. For those who couldn’t, it is better to marry than to burn. Paul plainly says that to marry is not a sin. He says that those who are not married should not seek a wife or a husband and be spared trouble in the flesh. He also says that the unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord, and while the married careth for the things of the world and how to please the husband or wife. Summing this up, he says in verse 35, “And this I speak for your own profit,” etc.
Paul, writing to Timothy (I Timothy 5:11), regarding widows who should be taken into the church to be succored, says in verse 11 to refuse the younger widows, “for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will marry; Having damnation, because they have cast off their first faith. And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.” Then he says for this reason, “that the younger women marry, bear children, etc. … For some are already turned aside after Satan.” This is why he gave this commandment, not because it was the highest and best thing to do, or the most spiritual, but to save them from worse disaster.
