The Significance of Marriage
Marriage belongs to God’s created order. From the beginning, the Creator made them, male and female.
Our Lord Jesus tells us that marriage is exclusive. In the Greek text, it literally says, “God made one male for one female.” God engraved this exclusive union into the created order with His own finger. He put it together—one Adam, one Eve. God created this first family. God looked at this union between the man and the woman, and He said, “This is good.” As the apostle Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 7:4, “The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.”
Marriage is also uniting. The Lord Jesus Christ said that a husband and wife are no longer two, but one flesh (see Matthew 19:6). C.S. Lewis described marriage this way in his book Mere Christianity:
The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism—for that is what the words “one flesh” would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact—just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument. (58)
Marriage is designed to be a permanent union. The Lord said, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:9). God joins people together—not the minister—and we must reassert again and again that this is the will of God and anything less than that is not the will of God.
Prayer: God, thank You for creating marriage. Help me to guard my marriage and to remember that this union between a man and a woman is part of Your plan from the very beginning of time. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him’” (Genesis 2:18).
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