Honoring Marriage

Marriage should be honored by all (Hebrews 13:4).

Holy matrimony is a creation of God. Marriage had its beginning on the sixth day of creation in the Garden of Eden, in a world where everything was still perfect. It makes sense then, that if we want our marriages to be as close to perfection as possible, we must align our marital relationships with the goals God has for marriage.

God states His first goal for marriage in Genesis chapter two: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. The primary reason for marriage is to provide the blessing of close companionship between a man and a woman. God intends that husbands and wives love each other; that love is demonstrated by mutual life-long commitment.

God’s second goal for marriage is addressed to Adam and Eve as soon as they have been introduced to each other: God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:22). God instituted the marriage of man and woman as the place in which children are to be conceived and raised.

The third goal of marriage does not come up until after sin has corrupted men and women. Even in ancient times, people were obsessed with sex and treated it as something that could somehow be separated from God's design for marriage; so in 1st Corinthians Paul shares the following words: since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband…if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. God’s third purpose for marriage is to provide the only appropriate place to express sexual desire. Think about it—if no one engaged in sex except with the one person whom they married, could AIDS have become the epidemic that it is today?

Marriage—a commitment to be helper and friend to one person for life, the nursery for children, and the place reserved for the intimacy of lovers—this is God’s design. To depart from this plan, to try and re-write the rules of family, is to come up with something that can only be a pale shadow of God’s original, perfect design. If you want a marriage that is aimed for the very best, aim at the goals that God first established in paradise.