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The Kingdom of God and adultery by Jean-Louis Coraboeuf "No servant can serve [douleuo] two masters [kurios]; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him. And He said to them, You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets lasted until John came. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing [biazo] into it. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one particle of the law to fail. Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery" (Luke16:13-18). In the context concerning the world and mammon, divorce is an allegory that Jesus used to illustrate a facet of the Kingdom of God. Although divorce is authorised in the Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 24:1-4), Jesus added some modifications to it on the occasion of His Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:31-32). The apostle Paul reminded the Romans of what Jesus had said to the Pharisees (Matthew 19:1-9), "Do you not know that the Law has authority over a man as long as he lives? For the wife who is submitted to a husband, is bound to her husband by the Law, as long as he lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband. So therefore, if the husband is alive, she will be called adulterous if she joins herself to another man; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, with the result that she is not adulterous by being joined to another man" (Romans 7:1-3 Darby). Only two kingdoms exist, the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. Mammon is money made into a god, but it also represents everything in which we put our trust. The kingdom of Satan, which is a world of injustice, is dominated by Mammon. The lord [kurios] is the owner of his servants [doulos] who are subject to him, and he has the right of life or death over them. By virtue of our birth in the flesh we therefore belong to Satan (Romans 3:23) and we are therefore submitted to the god Mammon, as a wife is submitted to her husband. Only death can separate us from this situation. Jesus Christ is the Lord Kurios who by His blood on the cross has bought us back. If we accept His work of redemption, we shall die to the kingdom of Satan, we shall be reborn into the Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ then becomes our Lord, we become His servants doulos and we belong to Him. All those who try to enter the Kingdom of God without passing through repentance, that is, through death to their old nature, are considered by Jesus as being adulterous for they remain linked to Mammon. So they use strength to try to enter the Kingdom of God, the Greek verb biazo meaning 'to rape', 'to treat with violence', 'wish to obtain by force'. But they will be judged on the Last Day by every Word pronounced by Jesus, which they did not carry out (John 12:48). |