Is incest always immoral?

[Apex]

Matthew 5:17-18 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

To "fulfill" does not mean to erase. Instead, it means "to fill up" or "complete."
When Christ fulfilled the law, he only completed it.
He BECAME every sacrifice the law required. Which is why we no longer have to offer sacrifices.
He BECAME our High Priest who intercedes. Which is why we confess our sins only through Him.
He BECAME our Sabbath Rest, spiritually. And the fulfillment of every feast day.

But in fulfilling the Moral Code, He BECAME our source of righteousness.
Does that mean we can now do whatever we jolly well please? God forbid. Romans 6:1-2
We do not destroy the Law. Yea, rather, we establish the Law! Romans 3:31
The moral code still stands.

Read Galatians 5:14-25 as all one unit.
Only if we walk in the Spirit, are we lifted up above the baseline of the moral law given by God.
Because when we really learn to love from the heart, we will not need the moral code to correct us.

First off, I just want to note that Jesus is speaking to Jews (who were presently under the Mosaic Law) here. This is before his resurrection. No one was a Christian at this point. This must be taken into consideration.

Here is my analogy though:

Let's say you lived in Florida and then moved to Colorado. You were once under Florida state law, but now you are under Colorado state law. Florida's laws still exist and, if you wanted, you could get on a plane and enter back under them, but while you are in Colorado you must answer to Colorado's authority - and vice versa. However, there is another "law" layer to all this. You are equally under the federal law of the United States of America while in either state. This is why many of the state laws between Florida and Colorado are the same. Just because you left Florida, where it is illegal to commit murder, and entered into another state, this does not mean murder is now legal in this new state. This is because murder is against federal law. On the other side, the laws surrounding individual property rights are vastly different. But since these laws don't contradict federal law, each state is allowed this autonomy.

So, in this analogy...
Law of Moses = Florida law
Law of Christ = Colorado law
Universal Morality = Federal law

When it comes to the question about the relationship a Christian has with the Law of Moses, it is actually a question about jurisdiction. We are now under the Law of Christ.

 

[Si_monfaith]

Good point!
The pattern of parents not having sexual relations with their children is not one seen in the line of righteous families.
There seem to be some commandments given before the Law, which are not recorded in Scripture. (Such as how to offer sacrifices--which Cain obviously did not abide by.) The New Testament refers to the book of Enoch, which we do not have today, except in a corrupted form. It may be that there were commandments given forbidding sex between parents and children. At least we know this was not something godly people did.

In the story of Lot, his daughters had a very distorted moral compass, because of growing up under the influence of Sodom culture. Lot himself would not have willingly participated in their scheme, which is why they had to make him drunk, to get him to do his part.

It's amazing to me that the NT calls Lot a righteous man. But it does. 2 Peter 2:8

"In the story of Lot, his daughters had a very distorted moral compass".

Distortion comes from the knowledge of good and evil.

 

[Si_monfaith]

I've been thinking about this lately. When we examine the motivations for endogamy and incestuous marriages, one that sticks out most prominently is the preservation of family wealth and power. In a sense, I feel like this type of motivation can lead to a Tower of Babel situation. Ancient people might not have been intimately aware of the heightened genetic risks, but they would have been intimately aware of these political and rapacious motivations. The issues this type of power/wealth hoarding has would have been exacerbated by an agrarian inheritance-based society. Perhaps this might have been one of the reasons for the incestuous prohibitions in Leviticus.

Abraham's wealth was passed only to some not all. This was inheritance based!

 

[Si_monfaith]

God can never be seen as the author of sin or evil regardless of the truth that all human choices originate in Him. Why?

If man hadn't chosen the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of eden, man could not know that whatever God did was evil or sin.

It was not God's will for man to possess the knowledge of good and evil. Only God can help you to not think in terms of the knowledge of good and evil.