Wait For My Boyfriend to Get Saved Again? - Ask Pastor Tim

This comes from Alvarina.

And she asks this question:

"If I broke up with my boyfriend

because he stopped being a Christian,

is it ok to wait for him

till he comes back to Christ,

or do I have to move on?"

It sounds kind of high school, right?

"If I broke up with my boyfriend

because he stopped being a Christian

is it ok to wait for him

till he comes back to Christ,

or do I have to move on?"

When I hear a question like that,

my first thing is not yes or no.

My first thought is,

where is this girl going to church?

What kind of pastor is she sitting under?

Is she going to church?

If she is, what is she getting taught?

Who are her parents?

What are her parents allowing her to do?

What are they teaching her?

Those are the first questions
that come into my mind.

"If I broke up with my boyfriend

because he stopped being a Christian,

is it ok to wait for him

till he comes back to Christ,

or do I have to move on?"

I mean, in that question,

she kind of sees Christianity as something

you pop in and pop out of.

Well, he's a Christian, and then...

he stopped being a Christian.

And maybe he'll just pop back in

and he'll become a Christian again.

And so, should I wait for him?

You get the picture of what's going on.

But what is it to be a Christian?

I think if this was a young lady

in the church,

and she sat down with me,

she'd just come

or her family had moved here

or however - she came with a friend.

And she asked this question.

You know, the first thing

I would want to ask Alvarina is

do you have a good idea

about what it is to be a Christian?

Because the thing that came to my mind

is being a Christian is miraculous.

It's supernatural.

It's a mighty work of God.

And it's permanent.

I mean, truly being a Christian
is permanent.

This "you're in, you're out"

and we know people can make

false professions,

and we know people can
come face to face with truth.

And we know people can claim
to be a Christian today

and make shipwreck tomorrow.

But one of the things that you see

in Scripture is to once have been

in that light and depart from it

is extremely dangerous.

It's like the seed that comes up

and the persecution comes

and away it goes.

Making shipwreck of the faith.

They were there and they're not there.

Demas never comes back again.

Judas never comes back again.

There's a point of no return

as we see in Hebrews 6.

All these things about this flippant view

of Christian - you're in, you're out,
you're exposed to the truth,

you're back and forth,

you claim to be a Christian,

you're not a Christian.

It's kind of missing the supernatural

flavor of what Christianity's all about.

I mean as I'm thinking about it,

a series of texts start coming

through my mind

just about Christianity.

The first thing I think of is that text

right out of Jonah;

salvation is of the Lord,

it's not something men do,

it's not just this decision.

Yes, men make decisions,

but it's not basically, ultimately

at the level of decisions of mankind.

It's at the decision of God.

Salvation is of the Lord.

And you've got, of course, John 1:12-13,

that says that we were born of God,

not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,

nor of the will of man, but of God.

This is something that God does.

A text very much like it in Romans 9.

He says to Moses,

I will have mercy upon whom
I will have mercy;

I will have compassion upon whom
I will have compassion.

So that it depends not on human will

or exertion, but on God who has mercy.

I thought of Hebrews 7.

Christ saving to the uttermost.

This picture of Christianity:

Well, we're kind of in, we're kind of out,

we're in, we're out, we're in...

back and forth.

Being saved to the uttermost,

that's complete; that's permanent.

He says eternal life.

I give them eternal life.

He says all that the Father gives Me,

where is that, John 6:39?

All that the Father gives Me,

He says He's not going
to lose any of them.

And He says He's going
to raise them up

in the last day.

He says He gives them eternal life.

Where is that? John 3:36.

If you believe in the Son,

you have eternal life.

Eternal life is eternal.

It doesn't go away.

Now we know men make shipwreck

of the faith.

We know people take Christianity

in a flippant way,

we know they do that.

But that's what's going on here.

True Christianity is permanent.

True Christianity doesn't go away.

I thought of the text in 2 Corinthians

about being a new creation.

When you're a new creation,
you're a new creation,

and you don't get uncreated.

When God creates something,

it's created.

It doesn't stop being created.

It doesn't go into oblivion.

It's not like He created today,

and then you're not created tomorrow,

and then you can come back

and be created again,

and you're just going back and forth

in and out of being this new creation.

None of that.

And so, I was thinking,

if I actually sat down
with this young lady,

I'd be saying,

have you even been taught

what true Christianity is?

The radical nature;

the miraculous, the mighty nature,

the permanent nature of what it is

to be a true Christian,

and have you experienced this yourself?

Are you viewing Christianity

the way you are

because perhaps you're not even aware

yourself of what this looks like.

But then I thought, too,

she uses this term,

"broke up with my boyfriend."

"Broke up with my boyfriend."

What do you guys think
about that terminology?

What do you think about a girl
breaking up with her boyfriend?

You got any thoughts, Abraham?

You start thinking,

think about the relationships

between a man and a woman

in Scripture.

I find three God-condoned,

appropriate relationships

between men and women.

Can you tell me what they are?

Marriage.

You won't find courtship in there.

What do you find?

Betrothal.

Betrothal's in the Bible.

And then what else?

What's the third relationship?

(from the room) Father and daughter?

Tim: I'm just talking about
a man and a woman.

Obviously, there's brother/sister,

father/daughter,

there's all those relationships,

but I mean, father/daughter

would fall into this category,

but young men and young women here,

it's appropriate for you to be married,

it's appropriate, perhaps, for
you to be in a betrothal

where you're headed to marriage,

and what would be
the third that's appropriate?

Yeah, you live together in the same world,

or in the same church
or in the same society

and you're pure.

Those are the three
God-condoned relationships

between a man and a woman.

And you think about marriage.

Marriage.

When we're talking about intimacy,

there is no other place

where intimacy is condoned in Scripture,

other than marriage.

Proverbs 5:18

Let your fountain be blessed;

rejoice in the wife of your youth;

a lovely deer, a graceful doe,

let her breasts fill you at all times

with delight,

be intoxicated always in her love.

You've got 1 Corinthians 7:2,

because of temptation
to sexual immorality,

each man should have his own wife

and each woman her own husband.

You've got Hebrews 13:4,

let marriage be held in honor among all

and let the marriage bed be undefiled,

for God will judge the sexually
immoral and adulterous.

Clearly, the author of Hebrews
is saying this:

The marriage bed is the only place

of intimacy condoned by God.

Everything else falls into that category

of being that which is sexually immoral

and adulterous and those that
God is going to judge.

Now, we see betrothal in Scripture

which might be akin to engagement

in our time.

Why?

Both of them involve a commitment

and both of them are headed to marriage.

And both of them are to be

radically pure,

because only the marriage bed

is the place where God
allows that intimacy.

And God is very serious about that.

We can look at Joseph in the New Testament

acting as a righteous man

and he's ready to put Mary away

because of some perceived infidelity

on his part when they were in

this betrothal period.

But under Moses,

it was very pronounced.

Deuteronomy 22:23

If there is a betrothed virgin

and a man meets her in the city

and lies with her,
then you shall bring

them both out to the gate of that city,

and you shall stone them to death

with stones.

The young woman because she did not

cry for help,
though she was in the city;

and the man, because he violated

his neighbor's wife.

So you shall purge
the evil from your midst.

If in the open country, a man meets

a young woman who is betrothed

and the man seizes her
and lies with her

then only the man who lay with her

shall die.

This betrothal period - it even inter-uses

betrothal and marriage,

because it was something that you

actually had to have a divorce to break.

It was that permanent.

Our engagments, although they involve

a token of that pledge

in a ring typically,

and there's a commitment,

and usually when there's an engagement

there's a marriage date set.

But we don't count it as binding

in our society.

But nevertheless, it's a
period of commitment.

Marriage is the goal.

And absolute purity is to be maintained.

The other one is where you're just

existing side-by-side.

You're friends.

Or maybe you're not friends.

Maybe it's a father/daughter;

maybe it's a brother/sister; whatever.

Every other relationship is single

and pursuing purity.

I guess one of the parties

or both of the parties could be married,

but we're talking about the specific

relationship between any man

and any woman.

What we're doing is we're answering

the question that
this young lady has posed.

And look, she's talking about

"if I broke up with my boyfriend..."

what does breaking up with a boyfriend

even look like?

Well, it's a very worldly terminology.

It's the idea of dating, boyfriends,

going out, casual dating, going steady,

whatever.

There's lots of different
ways that it's said today.

But it's this idea that I specifically

have a relationship with
this person over here

with no commitment.

It's not headed towards marriage.

We're not married.

We're not getting married.

Why do they do that?

What do they want?

Well, they want something from the other

person without commitment.

That's basically what is wanted.

Typically, in our society today,

it runs into enjoying the fullness

of all the intimacy that
is had in marriage

and it's just done without any commitment.

It's done in high school,

it's done in middle school.

And what Scripture says

is you have this spoken to Timothy,

"do not rebuke an older man,"

in 1 Timothy 5:1-2.

"Do not rebuke an older man,

but encourage him as you would a father;

younger men as brothers;

older women as mothers."

And Timothy, this is how you're

supposed to deal -

Timothy is a young man;

this is how you deal with young women.

How?

In all purity.

You want a blanket statement

from the apostle as to how

young men and young women

who are not engaged

and headed towards marriage;

who are not in marriage.

Well, even if you are engaged,

but this is the kind of summary statement.

Purity, purity, purity.

All purity.

1 Timothy 2:22

"So flee youthful passions;

pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace

along with those who call on the Lord

from a pure heart."

Of course, you have 1 Corinthians 6:18

that says, "Flee from sexual immorality."

And so, my point to Alvarina,

listen, it's like she's saying this:

"Well, I thought this guy was a Christian,

and I had to break up with him

because he stopped being a Christian.

Is it ok for me to wait for him

to come back to Christ?"

To do what?

Well, so that she can
go out with him again.

Or do I have to move on?

Move on to what?

Some other guy

that professes to be a Christian.

She really needs a pastor,

she needs a father or mother

in her life that's telling her,

look, this isn't even an acceptable

kind of relationship before the Lord.

The Lord wants purity.

What in the world kind of
relationship are you getting into

and why are you getting into it?
What does it mean?

You go out on dates?

It's totally inappropriate.

It's not specified in Scripture.

There's no such recognized

relationships like this
that God gives to us.

The only one where any kind of intimacy

is accepted in Scripture
is the marriage bed

and everything else is to be kept

absolutely pure.

Everything else.

And so, there needs to be a fleeing

from youthful passions,

a fleeing from sexual immorality,

and certainly, we know it,

you can be blind and you understand,

that all this casual dating
that's going on

in our world,

all this going out and going steady,

and having this girlfriend/boyfriend stuff.

Even down into probably
elementary schools now

it's leading to all manner
of sexual immorality,

and all sorts of wickedness.

It's done for a reason.

And most of us here were lost

and are first generation Christians.

We were lost when we
were in elementary school

and middle school and high school,

and we know exactly what it's all about.

We know.

And I hope we don't have any parents

in this church that would ever condone

that kind of relationship between

young people.

So anyway, that's basically how I would

answer Alvarina if I
was able to sit with her

face to face.

God wants a commitment in relationships.

Why?

Because ultimately what
this leads to is marriage,

which is what?

It's a foreshadowing of

the relationship between Jesus Christ
and the church.

And our Lord has relationship with people

by way of covenant.

He's committed.

He's all out committed to that relationship.

And that's the only kind that is

honoring to God.

Everything else is dishonoring.