Deeper: S3, E4 - Human

In this episode of Deeper Season 3 (Abundant) we look at the commandment "Do not commit adultery".  The episode focuses almost exclusively on a biblical understanding of what it means to be a human being, and then looks at how we so often de-humanise people for our own gratification.  But what could an intimate relationship actually look like, and how would all our relationships change if we remembered that God has made us to represent him?

Transcript

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Hi, welcome to season three of our deeper podcasts. We're using this time to give you 10 episodes looking at how we can take hold of the abundant life promised by Jesus to all believers. And to do that, we're moving backwards through the Ten Commandments. In this episode called Human, we're going to explore what we think about the commandment do not commit adultery. We're going to explore what that means, what it means to be human, made in the image of God, what the Bible suggests a healthy, committed relationship could be at its best, and how it can degrade down and down into a very unabundant life for some of us. We'll end with how faithfulness and a grasp of the worth of every human could be the key to an abundant life of goodness and love. So brace for action, this is human. Help us to weigh up what is said, to take what's coming from you, and to leave behind anything that's not from you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Okay, so let's let's kick off by exploring what the Bible actually has to say about what it means to be a human. So, first off, the whole of Scripture begins with two different creation stories back to back and quite unapologetically quite different from each other. In the first one, Genesis chapter 1 uh talks about God's spirit hovering over chaos and his words, ordering and structuring and creating life as we know it. It's all seen as good, all the way through, right up to the final moment where God makes humanity, and at this point, God upgrades upgrades good to very good. And we get the first poem in the whole of the Bible, which says this, Genesis 1 27. So God created humanity in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. So both together, male and female, represent God, the creator, in God's creation. We are not just animals or objects, we are walking representatives of God. Then there's a second creation story, and in that one, humans are made first, but we get an extra detail. After we have been handmade, God breathes his spirit into us and we truly come alive. Humanity contains the breath of God. Our spirit and God's spirit can engage with each other. We carry God's dignity and his worth. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The Bible has a whole load of other incredible things to say about what God thinks about who you are as a person. For instance, Psalm 139 tells us that God is the one who weaves us together when we're cooking inside our mums. He knows every day that he's given for us to be alive. Before creation was even a thing, he was planning each person, where they would fit, the things we would say, and his precious thoughts about each person outnumber the sand in a desert per person. The Bible also says that he has placed each person carefully in the right place at the right time, and there are good things that he's planned for us to be able to do. We have dignity and worth and purpose, and we carry God's authority and goodness with us. Not just some humans, every human. Hold that concept in your head as we think about how we treat and see each other. When two people live together in a stable, loving, committed sexual relationship, the Bible calls this marriage and carries on the theme of male and female coming together with Adam and Eve. Now, Adam and it actually just means human, and Eve actually just means the living one. So she's created out of Adam's ribs, and when they see each other, they feel as if they have been designed from each other and for each other. One is the missing part of the other. So together these two humans represent the image of God, and both are designed by him, brought to life by him, and they cling to each other. Humanity in the Bible is this mysterious, dignified, loved represent representation of God on earth. The Bible also says when two people come together emotionally with each other, they represent how God wants to be with all of humanity. The relationship between two people is like the relationship between God and people. The physical act of sex in all this is a is just a physical reminder that these two people joined to become one flesh again. They began being ripped apart and they end up coming back together again. But what's more important is how they treat each other. There's a strong connectivity all the way through the Bible between the way two humans treat each other and the way God Himself interacts and wants to live with humanity. It's meant to be a life-giving, beautiful, faithful experience. So we do know that though every human is made in this tender, beautiful way, created beings who represent the Creator, at the same time, we are all broken, seemingly magnetized towards selfishness and destruction and greed and anti-god attitudes and actions. And this is where adultery comes in. The word literally means to corrupt or to defile, and is made up of two ancient Latin words meaning toward another, implying a broken promise of bringing a third person into an exclusively two-people relationship. And Jesus is really, really clear that adultery is not bound by physical action, it's all about what's going on in your mind and your heart and your imagination. Looking at a person and wanting to perform intimate acts with them and then dwelling on those, that is adultery, according to Jesus. I think the reason is that when two people commit to a marriage relationship with each other, what they're hoping for, what I'm hoping for, is that the other person completes them. They're looking for integrity and honesty and security. If I'm kissing my wife, I'm not wanting to be worried about who she's thinking about. I'm hoping that she's thinking about me. And this pattern of being and thinking actually returns to what it means to be human. You see, there are whole industries which revolve around taking the body of a person and reducing their humanity to just our animal instincts or our sex drives. Film, TV, streaming platforms, advertising, it's just the thin end of the wedge. But even these so-called clean industries knowingly use sexual attraction, sometimes sexual acts, to sell films and shows and products because sex sells. And the deeper we go into that dehumanization of people, so they end up as a sexual commodity or to be sold or exploited, the further away from representing God and holiness we get. The pornography industry is currently estimated as taking over 30% of all online usage. That means for everybody who is online at any moment across the world, 30% of that usage is people online looking at graphic images of other people. It's been a dramatic change over the last 20 years, and the growth of online pornography has simply grown beyond anyone's expectations. What was once hidden away in grimy shops is now not only readily available, but more and more socially accepted as a thing that just the thing that people do. People use phrases like, well, it doesn't harm anyone, or half of them want to do it anyway. But the cold facts are that 90% of people appearing in porn do it because of addiction issues, or they come in through illegal human trafficking. And the money made from this industry, even from so-called free sites, is phenomenal. What these sites are broadcasting is viewed prostitution. So many people would never think about hiring in the service of a prostitute, but that's exactly what online pornography is. The tragedy is that research is showing a disturbing link between watching online porn and addiction. Links between behaviour which is described as inhuman, such as violence to women, rape, physical attacks, abusive domestic situations, are all too frequently long-term addiction to porn is somewhere in the background. We're simply not meant to look at each other in this way. It warps all the rest of our relationships, it wrecks marriages, it funds crime, and it in no way represents the beauty and the holiness and the goodness of what a loving, stable relationship should look like. Then go and do that. Jesus did not come to people harshly or to abuse them or control them. He didn't come lording his power over people. He didn't come with punishments and beatings. No, no, no. Jesus came as a servant. He rebuilt people who were broken. He fed those who were hungry. He forgave again and again and again. He worked with every breath he had to lift the ordinary human back, to restore in us the image of God and the holiness that we had lost. He was full of grace and tenderness. He treated humanity with dignity and worth. Listen, if you're in a relationship with someone and your world is shrinking instead of growing, if you are being coerced into things you do not want to do, or you haven't got control of your phone or your money or your friends, if you're being beaten physically or attacked, you need to hear that leaving this relationship is not the same as committing adultery. Jesus never forces people to do things, he expands their world, he heals, he returns their majesty and their hope. So if you're in an abusive relationship, find somebody you trust and ask them to help you leave. This is not acting unfaithfully. This is not them treating you as Christ loved the church. This is not them treating you as a creature which carries the image of God. So the abundant life that God wants for us is one where our relationships, particularly our intimate relationships, such as marriage, reflect how we feel about humanity. Can you imagine a world where the way we do friendships, the way we do work relationships, the way we did our family life, and particularly the way partners treated each other was based on restoring and regrowing in the other person the image of God. A world where we all worked on building the other people up, on releasing them into the best of all that God has for them. Where the words we used respected the divine makeup of the other person, where the time we gave them honored them, where we created spaces which were so incredibly wholesome and good and freeing and full of grace and mercy and love that everybody involved feels like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Faithfulness is this beautiful word made up of two words, faith and fullness. It means literally being full of faith for the other person. The beauty of marriage or a long-term stable relationship is that you're saying to your partner, I don't know what the future holds, but whatever it is, I am not going anywhere. I will restore you and love you no matter what. Let's walk together through life, and I will be your champion on the best and the worst days, and my heart's attention will be with you, not someone else. The abundant life God has in store then, so far, is one where humanity is contented with what we have, free from the lies of materialism. It's one where we speak positively and truthfully about each other, standing up for those who have no voice. It's one where instead of taking what is not ours, we give and give and give, creating safety and peace. And it's one where we remember the dignity and worth of humanity. We stop dehumanizing each other and we build into a few key relationships as if we were God restoring and loving through us. Oh, may this come to pass, faithful God. May we see the ways that we dismantle the God image inside other people, and may our relationships be good, godly, and life giving. Amen.