What Is Marriage?
by Steve Bastin
With all the excitement being
generated by “gay” marriages, I thought it might be useful to consider the
subject of marriage from the standpoint of God and the Bible.
Often people ask the question,
“What is marriage?” It would be
pretty easy to answer if the Bible were written like a dictionary.
One could simply look up the word marriage and notice the definition.
The Bible is not written in that way so we will have to come to a
conclusion by a different route.
The word “marry” or one of its
forms is found 100 times in the New American Standard Bible.
The first occurrence is found in Genesis 19:14 concerning the
daughter’s of Lot.
After God made Adam and Eve, the
Bible says, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and
be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
Jesus attributes this statement to God in Matthew 19:4-6 and adds the
comment, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
While the word marriage does not
occur in Genesis, chapter 2, the relationship of a man to his wife is described.
The two are joined in such a way that the couple become “one flesh.”
The joining of a man and a woman
is the foundation upon which the family is built.
Notice Genesis 1:28: “God
blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the
earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of
the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
God places the birth of children
in the relationship of the man and his wife.
Thus it is God’s plan that children have two parents, a man and a
woman.
God could have created multiple
women for one man. He did not.
God could have created multiple men for one woman.
He did not. God’s plan was
one man for one woman.
God’s plan also was that the
family formed by the joining of a man and a woman was to be a separate unit from
their previous, or birth, families. While
only Adam and Eve are in view in Genesis 2, God’s statement looks to the
future when a man and woman would separate from their families to create a new
family unit.
Throughout the entire Bible there
is never a mention of two men forming a family, or two women.
In a book that covers thousands of years of human history there is never
a positive mention of a same sex union.
Same sex unions are mentioned.
In Genesis 19 the Bible chronicles the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The men of Sodom had pressed upon the door of Lot’s house demanding,
“Where are the men who came to you tonight?
Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.”
The two men in turn told Lot, “We are about to destroy this place
because their outcry has become so great before the Lord that the Lord has sent
us to destroy it.”
A further comment on such relationships is
found in the teachings of Moses recorded in Leviticus 18:22:
“You shall not lie with
a male as one lies with a female;
it is an abomination.”
In the New Testament there are two
comments found concerning same sex relationships.
The first is in Romans 1:26-27: “For
this reason (because people had abandoned the worship of God, SGB) God gave them
over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for
that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural
function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with
men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty
of their error.”
The second is found in 1
Corinthians 6:9-11: “Or do you not
know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers,
nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards,
nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but
you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our
God.” God is willing to forgive
these sins, as He is willing to forgive all sins for which there is genuine
repentance.
In the Bible marriage is a
commitment in which a husband is to love his wife just as Christ also loved the
church and gave himself up for her and the wife is to be subject to her own
husband as to the Lord. (Ephesians
5:22-25)
It is becoming increasingly
obvious that marriage in the secular state differs in radical ways from marriage
in the Bible. With pre-nuptial
agreements and provisions for breaking and annulling the marriage, the marriage
license granted by states is hardly worth the paper on which it is printed.
Further distancing itself from the
Biblical view, the authorization of same-sex “marriages” will simply
increase and make more evident that when the state speaks of marriage it is
using a completely different definition than the one used in the Bible.
For some time it has been evident
that America and Christians are headed down two different roads on the
definition of morality. The American
road has been increasingly defined by atheists, humanists, pagans and other
elitist groups. The Christian road
has the Bible for its definition and Jesus for its king.
A state-issued marriage license no
more guarantees a marriage than a fishing license guarantees a fisherman.
With license in hand a couple may waltz on down to the local justice of
the peace, pay a few dollars, listen to a few mumbled words and walk out as
husband and wife. If you believe
that is a Biblical marriage then you probably believe that pigs can fly.
Some years ago, I began a policy
of “no pre-marital counseling, no wedding.”
I have stuck to the policy for more years than I can remember.
I am more convinced today than ever of its correctness.
A Biblical (as opposed to a state)
marriage is a covenant. It is a
covenant in which two people agree to become one.
It is to enter into a relationship defined by Biblical standards.
And it is a relationship whose intended duration is life.
Without an agreement to those principles one may be “married” by the
state, but God does not have to agree.
When the state decided that
marriages need not have a spiritual dimension, the state moved away from any
Biblical standard for marriage. In
America today, we are reaping what was sown long ago.
I take my stand on the Word of God. If
that offends, I can do no other.