Yesterday I talking with a friend who asked me what binds two people in marriage before God? It can't possibily be a piece of a paper, as is the tradition here in the States. Could it be the Jewish tradition of just two witnesses? I understand that in Romans 13 Paul affirms the idea that the government authorities are put in power over the people not to be a terror of the good but of the bad. This being the case having some way of legitimizing social contracts so that one person can't just gather two witnesses and say, "Today, this woman and I are married." Then the following day, "I divorce you." So is that why we have these social lisences (a social contract is what I refered to earlier but the legal document in the United States of America it is a lisence) so that people don't be fickle and just call out two witnesses whenever they want to be married or single? And what then if a believer and a non-believer are married, and the believer wants to divorce the non-believer but the non-believer does not consent to the divorce, is the beleiver then free before God? I want to say not because Paul does tell wives of un-believing husbands to remain with there spouse that they might "win" them with there deeds. And even yet that a woman is saved through child-bearing (whatever he meant by that). But all this to say is God bound by a piece of paper that has words on it? If so, then, these lisences are above God, the authors and signers are above God and God is not omnipotnent, then God is not God. If not, then how do we define marriage, is there some way in which marriage is defined that upholds God's omnipotence?
On another note, I continue to wonder if the Bapitism I recieved is a Kingdom Bapitism. I ask this because I am reading through Romans and the Bapitism that Paul is speaking of states that there is a uniting of the death of Jesus through the Bapitism and hope of resurrection. But when I was bapitized, although I remember making a profession of faith, I do not fully remember knowing what I was saying. Thus, not realizing the claims that I was making but now I understand more fully and am in a quandry as to if I should be re-bapitized. Not that I believe in regenerate bapitism but that the Baptism I recieved was not of the gospel of the Kingdom of God.
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