LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1983, Page 332

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332

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

would be hazardous to the health of the mother, or for those who
for reasons of age, physical disability, or illness are not able to
care for additional children. Indeed. there may be special
circumstances which would persuade a Christian husband and
wife that it would be more responsible and helpful to all
concerned, under God. not to have children. Whatever the
particular circumstances, Christians dare not take lightly
decisions in this area of their life together. They should examine
their motives thoroughly and honestly and take care lest their
decisions be informed by a desire merely to satisfy selfish
interests.

With respect to voluntary childlessness in general, we
should say that while there may be special reasons which would
persuade a Christian husband and wife to limit the size of their
family. they should remember at all times how easy it is for
them simply to permit their union to turn inward and refuse to
take up the task of sharing in God's creative activity. Certainly
Christians will not give as a reason for childlessness the sorry
state of the world and the fear of bringing a child into sucha
world. Weare not to forget the natural promise embedded in the
fruitfulness of marriage. To bear and rear children can be done.
finally. as an act of faith and hope in the God who has promised
tosupply us with all that we “need to support this bedy and life.”

3, Restraint of Sin: The Healing Purpose of Marriage

Marriage as we experience it is not an idyllic order set inan
unfallen world. There is nothing sinful about our sexuality per
se, but our sexuality. like all aspects of our lives, has been
disordered as a result of sin. Appetite uncontrolled by mutual
love constantly threatens to break out in disruptive ways in our
lives. Love itself can become a god to be pursued at all costs.
even at the cost of broken promises and unfaithfulness to those
to whom we have committed ourselves. Because sin permeates
the whole of our lives, it threatens to distort our sexual
experience.

Christian teaching has therefore stressed that the Creator
graciously uses marriage as an order by which He preserves
human life and disciplines human beings as He works out His
plan to make them a part of that redeemed community which
He is preparing in His Son. This point has erystallized itself in

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in the sense that it permits each person to satisfy his instinets in
a socially approved context. It is a restraint of sin—a place of
remedy —in that it provides the possibility for husband and wife
to serve the needs of each other. In their sinful condition the
husband and wife are able to serve each other's passionate needs
and to offer their loving support to one another. By so comple-
menting one another. husband and wife join in the task of
bringing their tives into accord with the divine intention for
human desire.**

Within marriage passion is also ordered toward the pro-
creation and rearing of children. We should not overlook the
sense in which not only the marital union itself but also the
family is a place designed to help us in our weakness. Gabriel
Marcel! has written that "a family is not created or maintained
as an entity without the exercise of a fundamental generosity.
--." To give birth. jointly to nourish and sustain that life to
which they have given birth—all this is the common work of
husband and wife. And it is an act of self-spending which can
only be compared to a gift. It implies a certain fundamental
generosity. a willingness to spend one’s time and energy. one’s
person. in nourishing and sustaininga new life. Thus the family
is not only an institution in which parents raise their children to
maturity. Itis aisoa place in which God is at work shaping and
molding the parents themselves. The family as an institution
will not flourish unless the self-interested impulses of the
parents are controlled and. sometimes, broken. In this way. too.
marriage isa place of healing, shaping its participants fora life
in common and providing them with a place where they can
delight in the acts of self-giving which all genuine community
requires.

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many people’s minds in the words of St. Paul's injunction that
“itis better to marry than to be aflame with passion”(1 Cor. 7:9).
Or, as Paul writes a few verses earlier in that same chapter,
“because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have
his own wife and each woman her own husband” (v. 2).

Sexual appetites need to be controlled and disciplined.
Marriage functions under God's ordinance to domesticate our
passion and channel it in ways which. to some extent, bring it
back into accord with the Creator's order. Within marriage
sexual passion is committed to fidelity even if conditions should
change for the worse and fidelity seem less attractive than it
once did. Marriage becomes then, under God’s goodness, a place
of remedy. Our untameable appetites and romantic impulses
are here brought down from their lofty pretensions to earth and
bound to the good of one other person. Lovers are quick to
promise faithfulness. and, as we have said, they are right todo
so. To keep those promises is more difficult. Marriage as an
institution is used by God to foster and enrich our commitment
to the needs of others, to teach us the extent to which love must
be committed if it is truly to be love. There may be, it is true,
marriages in which such contented commitment never fully
develops. Even then, however, a kind of healing can take place
when there is steadfast determination to honor the Creator and
the partner He has given.

Precisely because marriage is intended to help us control
our sexual desires, there can be no such thing as a trial
marriage. Continued commitment to a marital union is not to
depend on what our desires and wishes may be at any given
time. Instead. the institution of marriage and the commitment
to which it binds us should serve to discipline and shape our
desires. These desires, permeated by sin, need to be controlled.
Marriage is not simply to be evaluated by our wishes. These
wishes must also be shaped by marriage.

It is all too easy to misunderstand the teaching that “it is
better to marry than to be aflame with passion.” This can come
to sound like a recommendation to do with one man or woman
what we would really like todo with many—and to think that in
so doing we act correctly. With such a view marriage becomes
an essentially self-serving device. But those who can find no
more than this in Paul's advice have not yet begun to penetrate
to this deeper concern. Marriage is nota restraint of sin merely

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Real healing takes place in marriage not merely when sin is
restrained, but when husband and wife love each other as Christ
loved them and “gave himself up for us, a fragrantoffering and
sacrifice to God”(Eph, 5:2), That is tosay. sin is not only curbed,
but it is forgiven in the name of Christ and so is daily removed as
the destructive force which separates people from each other.
Christian couples need to remember that the controlling prin-
ciple of the new life in God's redeemed community works
genuine healing also in the marital union and in the family
circle: “...and be kind to one another, tenderhearted. forgiving
one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Eph. 4:32).

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