THE ANTITHESIS: GODLY LIVING IN UNGODLY TIMES
Speech #3
Living Antithetically in an Age of Immorality
Prof. Herman Hanko
Introduction
The antithesis, as the
previous speakers made clear, is that work of God, sovereignly executed, by
means of which God reaches down into this world of sin and darkness, seemingly
under the control and power of Satan, and, through the salvation of His people,
causes the light of His truth and holiness to shine. Satan has made his attempt
to seize control of this creation and of the human race, but God does not
relinquish His world to Satan. God stakes His claim to the world by the
testimony and lives of His people. The world says, “We serve Satan. We will
take God’s world from Him and make it ours to do with it as we please.” Over
against that loud boast, God says, through His people, “This creation is mine.
I made it. I will redeem it. I will glorify it and accomplish my own eternal
purpose in making it. I will punish with everlasting destruction those who
claim it for their own.”
The antithesis, therefore,
has its deepest cause in the eternal counsel of God, specifically in the decree
of election and reprobation. The antithesis has its power in the suffering and
death of Jesus Christ, by which sacrifice Christ paid for the sins of His
people and earned the right for them to represent God’s cause in the world. The
antithesis has its reality in the work of grace in the hearts of those for whom
Christ died. The ascended Christ sends His Spirit into the hearts of His people
to regenerate, convert and sanctify them. By this work of grace, Christ’s
people are enabled to live the life of the antithesis here in this sorry world.
Christ’s rule is universal,
for He is Lord of lords and King of kings. In the Father’s name, Christ rules
over the entire creation of God – over heaven and the angels and over earth and
all men in it. Christ’s rule is, however, sharply antithetical. He rules over
the wicked sovereignly so that the wicked in all their rebellion serve the
cause of God. The kings of the earth may take counsel against Christ to cast
His yoke from them, but He that sits in the heavens laughs, for God has set His King on the holy hill of Zion (
Psalm 2).
But Christ rules His people by His
Spirit, by whose work He sets up the throne of His kingdom in their hearts and
sways the sovereign scepter of His rule over their lives. By that rule, Christ’s
people become willing, joyful and obedient servants of Christ, bowing before
Him as their Lord and Master to whom they belong. When Christ’s rule is sovereignly exercised in the hearts of His
people, that rule of Christ is of such a kind that it cuts through their entire
lives. Nothing in their life is untouched; nothing remains unchanged. These
people are now His subjects in the whole of their life. They are obedient and
willing subjects who love their Lord. While the lives of Christ’s servants are
still sinful in many respects, and while the battle which God’s people wage
begins in their own sinful flesh, yet they are different, strangely changed,
marvelously renewed, so that Christ’s work touches everything they do.
Both wicked and righteous laugh;
but in entirely different ways and for entirely different reasons. Both the
wicked and the righteous weep, but no similarity exists between the righteous
who weep, but not without hope, and the wicked who weep with despair. Both
marry, but the wicked marry to satisfy their own personal urges, while the
righteous marry to enjoy the intimacy of an institution which points to Christ
and His church, and in that intimacy, to bring forth the seed of the covenant.
You will find wicked and righteous in the shop, both operating a drill press,
both changing tires on a truck. But the antithesis is present in the shop. The
wicked work to use the fruit of their labor for pleasure; the righteous use the
fruit of their labor for the support of the causes of God’s kingdom. And so it
is in the whole of their life.
The Antithesis and the
Covenant
The subject we discuss is
living antithetically in an age of immorality. Immorality is sexual perversion
of all kinds. Sex has to do with marriage. It is a part of it and limited to
it. The subject with which we deal, therefore, has to do with marriage and its
important sexual aspect. Because marriage is an institution of God which,
purified and sanctified by grace, pictures the heavenly relation of Christ and
His church, marriage has to do with God’s covenant. Perhaps the antithesis
shines more brightly at this point, and the lines of the antithesis appear more
sharply in this part of life than anywhere else in all man’s activities. At
this point especially the relation between the antithesis and God’s covenant
comes sharply into focus.
The relation between God’s covenant and the antithesis is taught clearly in
II Corinthians 6:14
through
II Corinthians 7:1.
In that passage Scripture exhorts us to live antithetically,
but does so on the basis of God’s covenant with His people.
Be
ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath
righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with
darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that
believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the
Then comes the covenantal
description of God’s relation of fellowship with His people.
For
ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them,
and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Then the admonition to
covenant people to live antithetically.
Wherefore
come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the
unclean thing.
Again, the promise of the
covenant.
And
I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and
daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
Again the admonition.
Having
therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all
filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
The antithesis means that God’s
people are a covenant people. As a covenant people they walk in this world as
members of the family of God. They walk as sons and daughters of their Father
in heaven – in a world in which most walk as children of their father, the devil
(John 8:44).
Having fellowship with God and confessing that God is their
God and they are His people, they represent God’s covenant in the world. When
the world hates God and the cause of Christ, they proclaim in their words and
life that Christ is their King and that God’s cause in their cause. Nothing in
all life expresses this as clearly as marriage. God’s covenant with His people
in Christ is a spiritual marriage consummated in Christ with whose body the
people of God become one flesh. Our marriages are pictures of that heavenly marriage
(Eph. 5:22-33).
An important part of marriage
is sexual activity. This activity is touched, sanctified and made holy by God’s
grace. This activity is a covenantal activity. This activity has been brutally
corrupted by the world in which we live.
The World’s Immorality
It is better not to sing the
exceedingly sad song of the terrible sins of immorality in our world today. It is better to heed the warning of Paul in
Ephesians 5:12:
“It is a shame even to
speak of those things which are done of them in secret.” We ought to take that
warning seriously. Nevertheless, some aspects of the present immorality of are
age must be noticed.
One hundred years ago or so
divorce was a shame and was discouraged by the laws of the land and the courts.
Even in a wicked world where marital problems abounded, wicked people rarely sought
escape from marriage in divorce. Today divorce is common. Over half the married
population in our country has been divorced and remarried at least once and
many have been divorced and remarried frequently. Divorce and remarriage is
immorality, for our Lord makes clear that one who is separated from his/her
spouse and marries again commits adultery. Adultery is immorality.
One can see how closely this
sin relates to God’s covenant. Scripture teaches that the covenant which God
establishes with His people in Christ is an unbroken covenant which endures
into eternity. Marriage is also an unbreakable covenant which only death can
dissolve. Covenant conscious people, out of gratitude to God for His covenant
mercies, maintain the earthly picture of that covenant in their married life.
Yet, not only has the world
so loosened the laws concerning marriage that any book, newspaper column or
marriage counselor quickly advises divorce and remarriage as the solution to
any problems which people think they face in the marriage state, but the
evangelical church joins with the world. The church approves divorce; the
church approves remarriage. It is a rarity in any church circles to find anyone
who still holds sacred the God-instituted bond of marriage. The Protestant
Reformed Churches have become the objects of ridicule and scorn because of
their stand opposing divorce (except for fornication) and remarriage. Our
churches have been accused of lack of sympathy for people in bad marriages,
lack of love to those who are unhappy, lack of willingness to help those who
encounter serious and difficult marital problems. This almost universal
approval of immorality is new.
It is also new that marriage
is no longer considered necessary for two people who live together in the
intimacies of marriage. Fifty years ago such a practice was called “shacking
up.” Today it is approved and encouraged. The argument is even made that it is
good for people to experiment with marriage and with living together before
finally entering the marriage state. Even to have children is not considered
wrong. The Grand Rapids Press recently carried an article in which, to
my astonishment, current figures showed that slightly over half of couples
living together were not married. This practice is gross fornication and
dreadful immorality. How can such a practice reflect God’s covenant?
The law of this “Christian”
nation promotes divorce and remarriage not only, but increasingly, under the
pressures of feminism and the homosexual lobby, supports open homosexuality.
Laws are being passed sanctioning homosexual marriages and the raising of
children by homosexual people. Not only does the law promote these terrible
sins, but builds a wall of protection around them to prevent anyone from
condemning this heinous crime. In other countries, and increasingly in our own,
criticism of homosexual practices is labeled a hate crime and makes the one who
witnesses to the truth liable to punishment. One can be put in jail for saying
what the Scriptures say. And, if that all were not bad enough, churches
throughout the country approve homosexual practices not only but ordain into
Christ’s sacred offices in the church those who commit such dreadful sins.
While once sexual perversion
was kept secret, today every form of sexuality is openly discussed and
frequently taught children from early years in the schools. All this is done
under the guise of teaching children to use the gift of sex properly and
wisely; but sex education is only an excuse for sex-crazed teachers and sexual
perverts burning with lust to drag young children into the net of fornication.
We are bombarded with sex on
every side. If one turns off his TV because it makes him gag at the foul
debauchery found even in advertisements, one must be on guard when turning on
the computer. If one’s spam detectors and filters screen out pornography, one
must cautiously go through almost every secular and news magazine that comes
into the home to see whether it is fit for the children to page through. The
news tells us that over eight million pornographic sites can be accessed on the
web, and that pornography is readily available in public libraries to anyone
who wants such material.
That which is most holy, most
sacred, almost of sacramental importance within the God-ordained bonds of
marriage is made vile, filthy, corrupt to an extent unimaginable in past
centuries. The picture of Christ and His church has become a toy, a plaything,
an instrument for self-seeking pleasure, a recreation used freely. The
perversion of sexual practices is beyond belief. No judgments of God upon man
of sexually transmitted diseases has the least impact on man’s degradation, and
one who dares to say that AIDS is God’s judgment upon the sinner runs the risk of public condemnation. Paul, in
Romans 1,
calls homosexuality the punishment
of God upon man for the sin of idolatry. Man calls homosexuality his right and
punishes the one who dares speak of God’s judgment upon the sin. The Dutch have
an expression (zo’n groot geest, zo’n groot beest.), which translated
means, “The greater the spirit, the greater the beast.” Even animals are not
guilty of the perversions common among men.
It has become literally
impossible for a godly person to escape the perversion of sex. The whole world
has become a sewer, filled with filth and excrement, in which today’s
generation delight to swim. The world has found its pleasure in drinking the
water in a septic tank. How does this sad state of affairs call upon the people
of God to live antithetically in such a world! Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy!
(I Peter 1:16).
The theory of common grace
has done more to destroy the antithesis than any other single doctrine in the
history of the church. Common grace insists that the wicked world is capable,
by the grace of God, to produce good people who do good deeds. Common grace
finds “redeeming elements” in everything man does. Common grace tells us that
there are broad areas of life in which, because of the good found in all men,
there is much room for cooperation between Christ and Belial, between
righteousness and unrighteousness. And, with regard to the subject of marriage
and sex, common grace would have us believe that a cup of water taken from the
wrong side of a filtration plant is good to drink. Or, if I may change the
figure, common grace says that although there is a certain bad smell to the
river of life which flows through the world, one finds also a delightful
perfume.
The Antithesis in Marriage
To live an antithetical life
requires that we live in two dimensions as it were. The one dimension is life
in this present evil world; the other dimension is the life of heaven, firmly
planted in our hearts, which is a principle of our calling and life as citizens
of the
The servant of Jesus Christ
says his loud No to all the corruption in marriage and sex. But he must say Yes
to God. Marriage is wonderful institution of God. It is a relationship
of life where man and woman become one flesh in a very real, but also
profoundly spiritual sense. Becoming one flesh is so sublime, so pure, so
beautiful that God has said it is a picture of the transcendent relation of
Christ and His church. In the heavenly marriage, as well as in our earthly
marriages, Christ and his people become one flesh; we are the body of Christ,
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, very really, more fully than the
earthly can imagine. God made woman from the flesh of man; in marriage they
once again become one flesh. Such great blessedness belongs to those who marry
in the Lord and live holily in the marriage state.
Marriage is the fundamental
institution of society. God married Adam and Eve and thus created the
institution of marriage. It is the only institution of life God created with
the original creation. The rest of life’s institutions develop organically from
marriage: the home with children, the church, the school, the shop, government,
and the public square. Marriage, after the pattern laid down by God in society,
produces a well-regulated, crime-free, holy society with holy institutions.
When marriage is corrupted, the home is corrupted, schools are failures,
government becomes itself a decayed institution from which little good can
come, disorder reigns in society at large. Governments appoint blue-ribboned
committees who spend millions studying how crime in society, deterioration of
education, and sexually-transmitted disease can be overcome. Usually the answer
from committee after committee is: More money needs to be spent. No one
mentions that the home is to blame for all society’s ills and no improvement
anywhere will be made until marriages are reformed.
One has some trouble
understanding Satan’s strategies. He is not stupid. He knows, perhaps better
than we do, that the home is fundamental to society and that if the home is
wrecked, society will be destroyed. Yet he and his fellow demons have launched
an unprecedented attack against the home and have enlisted the aid of sinful
men in their determination to destroy the home. These demons, under Satanic
leadership, are committing suicide. They are destroying the very world they
want to steal from God. They want to drive the owner from his premises (so they
can live there); but in doing so, they burn down the house to attain their
goals.
Is this stupidity on Satan’s
part? Does he not know what he is doing? Do not the wicked with him sense the
futility of their plots? Yes, they really do. The trouble is not ignorance; the
trouble is hatred of God and His creation. The wicked are bent on destroying
marriage (though through success they destroy society) because marriage is an
institution of God and their hatred against God is so intense that they will
destroy themselves in order to destroy God.
To live the antithesis means
that the believer says in word and deed: “No. We understand you, Satan. We know
what you are up to. We want no part of your plots.” It also means that we say, “Yes,
Lord. We will be faithful to Thy covenant in the world no matter what the cost
to us, and no matter what suffering may be our lot. We will maintain our
marriages and build our homes upon the foundation of Thy Word. We will fight to
maintain the sanctity of Thy glorious institution, made heavenly in Christ. We
will live in holiness and purity.”
To live the antithesis means
that we continue to condemn divorce and remarriage. We continue to warn against
its evils and its evil consequences. We continue to strive to maintain our
marriages as pictures of Christ and His church.
To live the antithesis means
that we understand that marriage is a union of love, of life and of joy.
Husband and wife love each other not only when a handsome and strong man stands
with his beautiful wife before the minister in marriage, but also when each of
them has become old and decrepit, wrinkled and disabled, worn and dying. Love
for each other within marriage reflects the love of God that pervades all of
married life. Husbands and wives are gifts of God to each other, for they are
not only husband and wife, but brother and sister in Christ. They are given the
blessedness of spending their earthly years in the joys of marriage, and they
will spend eternity in the joys of a greater, higher, more blessed marriage
when they are with Christ.
To live the antithesis means
to thank God for the privilege of having children. It is to use the sanctity of
that mysterious wonder of sex, that marvelous gift of God, to bring forth the
seed of the covenant. It is to believe that God will be our God and the God of
our children through all the generations of time. It is to lay hold on God’s
promises that God in mercy uses us to bring forth those whom He has elected
from eternity and redeemed with the great price of His own Son.
When children come in a home,
to live the antithesis is to protect, as much as possible, the home from the
attacks of Satan. It is to make the home a harbor of safety, of peace, of love,
a place of tranquility and serenity, a place to flee from the terrors and
horrors of the world. No longer can the home be protected from the perversity
of fornication and moral degradation. To live the antithesis is to show children
their calling before God to live lives of purity. This can only be taught
children when husband and wife are joined in a common effort to live lives of
purity themselves. Then homes, too, will be reflections in this life of the
family of God’s everlasting covenant of grace.
Our Bodies,
We are told that marriage is
a picture of the heavenly and covenantal relation between Christ and His
church. The question is: How does the earthly picture become a reality in the
profoundly spiritual sense of the word? How do we and Christ become one flesh?
Christ Himself works this by
His Spirit when He sends His Spirit into the hearts of His people. By the
in-dwelling of the Spirit, we are united to the body of Christ. In its
discussion of the Lord’s Supper and the mysterious spirituality of eating and
drinking Christ, the Heidelberg Catechism (question and answer 76) tells us
that to eat the body of Christ and to drink His blood means “not only to
embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, . .
. but also . . . to become more and more
united to his sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in
us; so that we, though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, are notwithstanding
‘flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone’; and that we live and are governed
forever by one Spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul.”
It is because we are united to Christ that our bodies are, as Paul expresses it in
I Corinthians 6:16,
where he warns against fornication, the temples of the Holy Spirit. It is
terribly wrong to become one flesh with a harlot when the Holy Spirit dwells in
our bodies.
The meaning is this. First,
although the apostle speaks only of our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit,
he does not mean to exclude our souls. Our souls (our minds, wills, emotions)
are also part of the
Second, when our bodies are
the temples of the Spirit, Christ dwells in us, for the Spirit unites us to
Christ and makes us one with Him. When Christ dwells in us, we have fellowship
with Christ and through Christ, with God. We are, in other words, brought into
fellowship with God through the indwelling of the Spirit. The apostle uses the
word “temple” to describe our bodies. The temple was the place where God dwelt
with
Third, to use our bodies for
perverse sexual behavior is to make the temples of the Holy Spirit whorehouses.
When we use our tongues for dirty jokes and sexual innuendo, we use part of the
Spirit’s temple as a house of prostitution. When we engage in sex outside of
marriage, we use our bodies to commit whoredom. And activity with perverse
sexual implications is tantamount to turning the Spirit’s temple into a place
for all the sexual sins associated with heathen idolatry to be practiced.
But our bodies will be used
as temples of the Holy Spirit when our minds and hearts are filled with
thoughts of God.
Jesus taught a parable once.
It is not usually considered to be a parable, and perhaps is not according to
the precise definition of parable. But in it Jesus illustrates what I have in
mind. He speaks of a man who owned a house which was filled with an unclean
spirit. He expelled the unclean sprit and cleaned up the house. He remodeled,
refurbished, scrubbed and polished until the house looked like new. But he made
a mistake. He left it empty. And the result was that the evil spirit which had
been expelled could find no rest. And so he returned to the house from which he
had been expelled, found it empty and moved in. But he took seven other unclean
spirits with him, and so the house was in worse shape than it had ever been.
The meaning is clear. If you
are weary of fornication, you may expel the devil of lust and try to be done
with it. You may say, “I am not going to have anything to do any more with
pornography. I am not going to let my
body be used for such evil.” But what if you leave your mind and body empty?
When our whole being is filled with the things of God and of His Word, then
there is no room for the devil of immorality. That is the antithesis. That is
saying No to Satan and Yes to God. A No, no matter how emphatic, is not enough.
A Yes to God is essential.
The battle against immorality
starts therefore, in our own sinful natures. It starts in that fierce battle to
make our bodies temples of the Holy Spirit. It starts with the fight against the
power of sin within us. And from our own struggle with sin and the conquest of
sin within us, the battle spreads to our marriages, then to our homes; and, by
God’s grace, to our churches, our schools, our whole lives in the world. The
festering wound of immorality will prove fatal in us, in our marriages, in our
homes, schools and churches unless we fight against the swelling tide of
immorality around us.
Antithesis Means Warfare
and a Pilgrimage
Scripture uses different ways
to describe the life of the antithesis. Sometimes Scripture defines this life
in terms of warfare. The people of God are an army. We have spiritual armor and
spiritual weapons. Jesus Christ is the Captain of our salvation. We are
therefore in this world to fight. Most of us, it seems, think that this world
is a playground, with sex as one of our toys. But it is a battle, a fierce
battle, a battle to the death. It is a battle that from every earthly point of
view is hopeless, for the powers of evil are strong. But it is a battle in
which the victory is certain. Faith is the victory that overcomes the world,
for faith puts us in union with Christ and Christ has overcome the world for
us. Our strength is in His cross and our victory in His rule at God’s right
hand. Let us then fight; fight for our marriages, for our homes, for sanctity
in our own lives. Let us not lack courage, for we shall be victorious.
Sometimes Scripture speaks of
the antithesis in terms of a pilgrimage. Peter does this in his first epistle.
It is a marvelous epistle and no minister could do better in this evil day than
preach a series on this book. There are two ways, two roads on which one may
walk. There is a wide, double-laned, divided highway that is smooth and broad,
easy to travel, crowded with people who are laughing and joking. They are
enamored with pleasure, earthly pleasure, pleasure that satisfies the yearning
of sinful hearts. But the way leads to hell. The child of God, because of his
sinful nature, is never out of sight of that easy way. On it there is no
suffering to speak of, no difficulty on the journey, no loneliness, for many
people travel it.
But the other way is quite
different. It is a dirt, rocky, narrow trail. It is rugged and steep and requires
constant exertion. It is a trail on which are a few people, and for the most
part, they are weeping. It sometimes leads through dark and swampy ways, but
sometimes over cold snowy peaks where icy winds blow. On each side lurk ogres
and strange creatures bent on devouring the few travelers that pass. It is a
way that Jesus characterizes as one of self-denial and cross-bearing, a way of
suffering and pain, a way of persecution and affliction, a way in which the
joys are not earthly pleasures but simply obedience – obedience to God.
This road goes to heaven. The
difficulties of that way are enormous, but the end of it is what John Bunyan
called “The Celestial City.” It is the way of the fulfillment of all God’s
covenant promises. It is the way to that heavenly city where we shall see Jesus
face to face. It is the way to the home of that host of elect who are now in
the company of just men made perfect, and to the home of the angels.
What road are you on? What
road do you want to be on? I know everything in our flesh says, “Not the hard
way. I want to enjoy life. I want the treasures and pleasures of this present
time. I fear self-denial and cross-bearing.” But by the grace of God we do not
want that way at all, though our flesh craves it. We want the way to glory, no
matter how difficult.
I am on that way. Come with
me. We will travel together. We will face the cruel jeering of the world and
the hatred of the ungodly. There is pleasure on this way, though it be
difficult to walk. It is the pleasure of God’s favor and love. We will stumble
on that way and sometimes fall. We will grow desperately weary on that way and
think sometimes that we cannot go on. But, though we bear a cross, it will
remind us of the cross of our Savior on which He earned for us everlasting
salvation. And to His cross we will run with haste to find forgiveness for our
sins and strength to go on. By the power of His cross we will stagger forward
and onward as we wend our way home. There will be blessedness forever, rest
from our labors, joy unspeakable. There the battle is over and the journey
completed. There we will be with Christ. It is the