Roots by the River

  This post was written by Matt Meyer, CCM board member and director emeritus. “Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law plead against them” (Proverbs 28:4). After a number of weeks of coming for counseling, a young Chinese woman recently* called on God to forgive her sins. For several weeks before that, she was sure that God was real and good and that she was a sinner, but she was having a hard time connecting her sin with the death of Christ on the cross. When she was asked to describe what she meant by “being a sinner,” it was clear that her focus was horizontal instead of vertical. She thought she was sinning against her husband, her family, and herself. When she finally understood that our sin (or lawlessness as John describes it) is first against God, the lights came on. “I’ve broken God’s laws,” she repeated numerous times as the realization finally hit home. Do we have the same sense that we are breaking God’s laws when we avoid Bible passag...

“‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female,” and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate’” (Matthew 19:4-6). The marriage service says that marriage is a “holy estate.” Christian marriage is more than physical, economic cohabitating and child-bearing and rearing. It is a spiritual fellowship; it is an earthly picture of Christ and His body, the Church.   “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with wa...