MARRIAGE

MARRIAGE

(See Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 24 paras 1-4)[xxxi]

Introduction

It’s claimed that chimpanzees are genetically 98% the same as human beings. In our day when men are marrying men, and women women, what’s to stop a man marrying a chimp?

Marriage seems to be on the rocks at the moment. As the Theory of Evolution is more and more rammed down the throats of each successive generation at school, is it any wonder that the marriage manual is being rewritten? If the universe got here, not by God but by accident, as children at State schools are now being taught, then there is no rhyme or reason to it. Take this belief system to its logical conclusion and why shouldn’t a man take a monkey in marriage? A monkey can be great little helper about the house!

If you believe that the universe is simply the result of random processes, if you believe in the evolutionary marriage of time and chance, then marriage is whatever you want it to be. Therefore, for you, same sex marriages are okay – not to mention man and monkey marriages.

But, the universe does have a purpose. And every aspect of man – spirit/soul/body, including our adenoids and our appendix etc. – has a purpose. The purpose, the chief end of man, i.e., the whole and complete man, is to wholly and completely glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

At the very beginning, when God, in six days, formed the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that is in them, He gave man a purpose and a duty to fulfil. In Genesis 1:26-28 we read: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” This is the Cultural Mandate.

The aspect of the Cultural Mandate we’re looking at in the following is called Marriage.

Marital Restrictions

Part of the clear instructions God gave to man in the beginning was the command to “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.” Multiplying and filling the earth has to do with replicating the image of God. God made man in His own image. Man is to spread the image of God throughout all the earth.

How does man do this? Well, regardless of how amazing it is what they can do nowadays in a petri dish in the science lab, it takes a man and a woman to come together sexually before replication can occur. This is the way God designed it from the beginning. A man and a man cannot produce an offspring the way God designed it. And neither can a woman and a woman, nor a man and a monkey for that matter. It takes one man and one woman to reproduce. Therefore, a marriage will not progress into a family unless the marriage consists of one man and one woman.

Now, let’s not confuse a marriage with a family. A family is an outworking of a marriage. But a marriage is still a marriage even when there are no children. Take Adam and Eve as the prime example. Adam was created first, and then Eve. In Genesis 2:7 we read: “And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

So, there was a time when there was only one single human being on the earth. And the LORD God had that one single human being observe and name all the living creatures that He had also formed out of the ground. Genesis 2:20, “So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.”

When Adam viewed all the animals he knew exactly what they were, which is to say that for Adam, naming the animals meant that he had studied, classified and catalogued them. He could see that God had formed each species according to its kind. In other words, Adam could see and understand the very essence of the living creatures.

The words “But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him” mean primarily that there was no other creature with which Adam could reproduce his own kind. Apes might be good at aping, but apes cannot ape man when it comes to reproduction. Only man (male with female) can replicate man, because only man is made in the image of God.

Adam could see how special he was when he considered all the living creatures God had made. “And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him’” Genesis 2:18. What was the helper, that God was going to make, to help Adam with? The helper was to help fulfil the Cultural Mandate, part of which was being fruitful, multiplying, and filling the earth. That restricts things a great deal, doesn’t it? It shows us that the man needs a woman.

Genesis 2:21-24: “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed the flesh up in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: ‘This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Now, just as Adam knew what all the living creatures were, so he knew exactly what woman was. None of the living creatures were ‘bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh’ – only Eve. Literally this woman was part of Adam. She had been taken out of his side. Therefore the two literally were one flesh.

Adam was to love his own wife as if she were part of his own body. And Eve was to love her own husband as if he were part of her own body. The Apostle Paul puts it like this in Ephesians 5:28-33: “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

So we see then, that marriage is restricted to being between one man and one woman. God did not take ten of Adam’s ribs and make ten women – He made only one wife for Adam. Therefore it is not lawful for the man to have more wives than one at the same time, or for the woman to have more than one husband at a time. And neither did God take ten ribs and make one woman and nine children. Therefore marriage is still marriage even when there are yet no children.

Now, speaking of children produced by marriage, a common question asked by unbelievers is, where did Cain get his wife? Cain, of course, was Adam and Eve’s second son – right after Abel their first. Calvin, in his commentary on Genesis suggests the Cain and Abel were twins. But that is neither here nor there for what we’re considering.

Now, the reason people ask about Cain’s wife is because of the way we view things nowadays. First off it’s often thought that Adam and Eve only ever had two sons, viz., Cain and Abel. Then, when it is pointed out that Genesis 5:2 tells us that Adam had sons and daughters, therefore Cain married one of his sisters, the accusation of incest is put forth. However, it’s not until you get to the time of Leviticus 18-20 that marital restrictions are spelled out. We see that marrying your own sister is indeed forbidden in Leviticus – which was roughly 2,500 years after Cain married his own sister.

Now, all sorts of sexual immorality is forbidden in Leviticus 18-20, including bestiality. Apes and monkeys are beasts. However, we’re mainly concerned with the restrictions placed upon the marriage between blood relatives and those of affinity in law. (By affinity in law we mean that marriage is forbidden not only between brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters, and mothers and sons, etc., but also between brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law etc.). Even after the death of his wife, the man may not marry any of his wife’s relatives nearer in blood than he may of his own relatives, nor the woman of her husband’s relatives nearer in blood than her own.

Now, you might have felt shock and horror well up within you when you thought about Cain marrying his own sister. But if you keep in mind that Adam married his own rib, so to speak, you won’t go too far wrong. Adam said of Eve, “This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…” This is even closer than marrying your own sister! And yet we were not shocked when we thought about this. Why? Well, it’s because we have become accustomed to the restrictions God, 3,500 years ago, placed upon marrying blood relatives. Up until that point God permitted certain marriages He forbids in Leviticus 18. Abraham was permitted by God to marry Sarah, his half sister – with God’s blessing! However, part of the instructions in the Cultural Mandate was to multiply. When mankind had sufficiently multiplied, God placed restrictions on eligible marriage partners.

Now, we’ll mention in passing an apparent exception to the affinity in law restriction. We read in Deuteronomy 25:5 that if a wife’s husband dies, then the dead man’s unmarried brother had the duty to marry the widow. This was to give her a child that her dead husband’s name “may not be blotted out of Israel.” We see this very thing acted out in Genesis 38:8. Therefore it must have been in place long before the Law was given to Moses. But in Genesis 38:8 we read: “And Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your [dead] brother’s wife and marry her, and raise up an heir for your brother.” Of course Onan didn’t exactly comply with the whole thing, but that’s another story. The point being made at this point is that it would appear that it may be permissible for a man to marry his dead brother’s wife.

Now, it makes for great common sense for Christians to marry only in the Lord. Not to mention that there are all those verses of Scripture about not being unequally yoked, etc. But we need to be careful not to enter into marriage with anyone who holds to destructive heresies. Therefore, for example, a Reformed Christian, such us we are, is asking for trouble should he enter into marriage with a Roman Catholic. Roman Catholicism believes the Reformed understanding of the Gospel to be anathema!

We must put the Lord first in all things, including marriage. He would have believers marry only believers. Now, this is not to say that marriages between believers and unbelievers, or even marriages between unbelievers are not true or legitimate marriages. However, it is to say that the Lord would have His people be obedient to Him, even in marriage.

Marital Roles

When we talk about marital roles we are simply talking about men being men and women being women, and not so much about who should do the dishes and who should take out the garbage. Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife. And it was ordained to increase the human population with a legitimate issue and furnish the church with a holy offspring. And it was ordained for the prevention of moral impurity.

Now, to talk about things such as a “legitimate issue” and the “prevention of moral impurity” is to suggest that the world we live in is not the same as when God first formed Adam and Eve. Indeed this has been the case ever since Adam, through the ready help of his wife, ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Eve was to be Adam’s helper. She was to help Adam stay obedient to God’s commandments. Instead, she helped him disobey God. And now we live in a fallen world. Therefore, because of the moral impurity of men and women, children have been conceived and born into this world outside of marriage.

Now, even though marriage was ordained by God before the Fall of man, it still remains a major part of the Cultural Mandate – which mandate still remains in full force. However, if you’ve ever walked through “The House of Mirrors” and seen your own reflection bend and twist out of shape, so we should expect to see distortions in humanity (the image of God) this side of the Fall of Man.

Man no longer perfectly images God his creator. We’ve noted already that the institution of marriage is under attack in our own age. And therefore it necessarily follows that so are marital roles. It stands to reason that if people think a marriage may comprise of a same-sex couple, then marital roles must be up for grabs too. It means that people haven’t understood the very essence of marriage. Nor have they understood and believed the very essence of a man and the very essence of a woman.

We’ve already noted the very essence of marriage. When discussing the love of a husband for his wife the Apostle Paul, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says in Ephesians 5:32, “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

Marriage is a picture of Christ and His Bride, the Church. To revise and rewrite the marriage manual (as some today are trying to do) is to tamper with a creation ordinance. Put another way, to redefine marriage so that anything other than one man and one woman may be married at any one time is to break the Law of Nature. Clearly it’s to break the Law of God – for sin is the breaking of God’s Moral Law.

However, God instituted marriage. Therefore He wrote the manual for it. And God is the One who put the sexual desire in men and women that marriage is designed to satisfy. So, when sinful men rewrite the book of marriage to accommodate sinful aberrations, (i.e., sexual deviations) they are disobeying the Cultural Mandate to provide a legitimate issue for God. (Not to mention the fact that they are tampering with the very essence of humanity)

Homosexual marriage is a culture of death, not life. It takes a man and a woman to bring forth offspring. If Adam had been given another man for a companion instead of Eve, where would we be today? The human race would have died out!

Now, we know that amazing things can be done in test-tubes and petri dishes in science labs. But marriage is about the two becoming one flesh, which includes sexual intimacy. To be sure, a marriage is still a marriage even when not (Roman Catholically) consummated by the sex act. For Adam was really married to Eve before he “knew” her on their honeymoon.

However, it is through the husband and wife sharing their bodies with each other that produces the legitimate offspring that God wants us to produce. Therefore nature itself rules out same-sex marriage, regardless of the wonders of modern science.

The husband has the role of husband to his own wife, and the wife has the role of wife to her own husband. As Paul says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11:8&9, “For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.” Feminists hate the fact that God made Eve so that she could be Adam’s helper. But this is simply to confuse the roles of husbands and wives in marriage. For marriage is for mutual help for husband and wife. In other words, the “helper” aspect of marriage is two-way.

We’ve mentioned already that one of the reasons God instituted marriage was for the prevention immorality, or moral impurity – including sexual immorality. God did not create Adam and Eve as infants or children (i.e., without sexual desire), but as mature adults. Mankind was created with God’s Law written on their hearts (Romans 2:14&15), including the 7^th Commandment. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” was written of course in positive terms, such as “Be pure and loyal.” Only adults are able to commit adult-ery. Children are not adults.Therefore children cannot commit adultery.

Not committing adultery or being pure and loyal means also being sexually pure and sexually loyal. Therefore every husband is to be sexually pure and sexually loyal to his own wife. And every wife is to be sexually pure and sexually loyal to her own husband. Therefore this rules out sex outside of marriage and even sex before marriage. How so? Well, it’s because God has ordained marriage for the mutual help of a husband and wife.

Part of that mutual help includes satisfying the sexual desires God has given us. And to try to satisfy those sexual desires outside of the marriage as God has instituted it, is to engage in morally impure thoughts and behaviour. In short, it is to sin; which is to break God’s Moral Law. So, for marriage to work the way God designed it, there needs to be one man and one woman in the marriage at any one time. The male is the husband and the female is the wife.

Now, we hear lots of Christians nowadays brag about having gifts of healing, speaking in tongues, and that kind of thing. Be that as it may, but have you ever heard of any Christian brag that he has the gift of celibacy? We believe that the Apostle Paul, who was probably a widower, had the gift of celibacy. For he says in 1 Corinthians 7:7-9: “For I wish that all men were even as myself. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them if they remain even as I am; but if they cannot exercise self control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” (Albert Barnes comments: “The word unmarried… may refer to those who had never been married, or to widowers.” Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament).

So, there are some adults whom God has given the gift of celibacy, which is to say that they are like little children again, in that they are free from sexual desire, i.e., burning with passion. The gift of celibacy is a good gift for a husband and wife to have for those times when they are apart for a spell, such as when one of them is on an overseas trip, and that kind of thing.

But regarding one of the main reasons for marriage the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 7:2: “Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.”

Neither the husband nor the wife wants the gift of celibacy when they are together, unless perhaps there is some physical problem where sexual intimacy has become impossible. And there might of course be times such as that mentioned in 1 Corinthians 7:5. There are times when couples will forgo sexual intimacy, such as for fasting and prayer.

Now, if you keep in mind what marriage is a picture of, you won’t go too far wrong when you try to understand the role of the husband and the role of the wife in marriage. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5 spells out the roles in terms of Christ and His Bride, the Church. Wives are to submit to their own husbands, as to the Lord, he says in Ephesians 5:22. Then he explains why: “For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and He is the Saviour of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything” Ephesians 5:23&24. So you see then, that in order to understand marriage, and even the roles of husband and wife in marriage, you must understand the role of the church in the world. Christ and the church is what marriage is all about.

Therefore the godly wife is a picture of the church. And the godly husband is a picture of Christ. For Paul goes on to say in Ephesians 5:25f. “Husbands ought to love their wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.”

Have you got that? It is the role of the husband to give himself for his wife, which is to say that he is to be about the business of presenting her to the Lord without any spot or wrinkle, i.e., without any moral impurities. In simple terms, the role of the husband is to sanctify and cleanse his own wife with the washing of the Word. The role of the wife is to encourage and let her husband do this. In other words, she’s to treat her husband as if it were the Lord Himself who is teaching her. For is that not the way it is in the Lord’s church? Are we not to be submit ourselves to the Word of Christ as we hear it taught and proclaimed?

Some people think that ecclesiology and church polity are of little significance – “Not a Gospel essential!” is what they say. Well, I put it to you that marriage is a “Gospel essential”. And I say that because the Bible says it! We’ve just briefly noted that one of the reasons God ordained marriage was to furnish the church with a holy offspring. Speaking of a husband and his wife it says in Malachi 2:14b & 15a, “Yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring.”

Christ and His Church are one. A husband and his wife are one. Christ seeks a holy and godly offspring (also 1 Corinthians 7:14). Therefore marriage is a “Gospel essential.” For godly marriages producing holy and godly offspring is every bit as important as the conversion of non-Christians to Christianity. Are not both about the extension of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth? Both are about the Church submitting to Jesus Christ, her Husband, in the Cultural Mandate of which the Great Commission is the latter day fulfilment

Conclusion

Marriage is a wonderful thing that has been ordained by God. Therefore it needs to be entered into with both eyes wide open. It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry – even non-Christian people! But only those who are able to give their reasoned consent should marry. This rules out chimpanzees!

When is a child able to give its reasoned consent? In other words at what age should people be allowed to marry? Well, that will vary, won’t it? Are there any Biblical reasons why those who have reached child producing and child bearing age should not marry? – i.e., those having reached adult-hood?

Culturally we think fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t marry because they’re too young. Surely the Lord would wish only that a couple be able to give their mature reasoned (i.e., adult) consent. Sixteen is young, but perhaps old enough? Eighteen and over sounds about right? Is there a Biblical basis for this, a precedent? Adam and Eve weren’t even a day old when God married them! But they both were mature adults. Even so, that was a special instance, wasn’t it? But the institution of marriage began with God marrying Adam and Eve. Therefore that’s where we need to begin our study in order to fully understand the essence of marriage.