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Marriage

I am married. That is good news. It is a part of God’s plan for me. I have been able to receive God’s grace in creating a family. It is part of God’s plan for us. It is a sacred responsibility.

The Bible records the creation of marriage in Genesis 2:23–24:

“The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”

God created man and then made woman to compliment him. In the Bible marriage is God’s “fix” for the fact that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

As the Bible describes the first marriage, it uses the word helper to identify Eve (Genesis 2:20). To “help” in this context means “to surround, to protect or aid.” God created Eve to come alongside Adam as his “other half,” to be his aid and his helper.

The Bible says that marriage causes a man and woman to become “one flesh.” This oneness is manifested most fully in the physical union of sexual intimacy. The New Testament adds a warning regarding this oneness:

“So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matthew 19:6).

Several of Paul’s epistles refer to marriage and how believers are to operate within the marriage relationship. One such passage is Ephesians 5:22–33. Studying this passage provides some key truths concerning what the Bible says marriage should be.

The Bible, in Ephesians 5, says a successful biblical marriage involves both the husband and the wife fulfilling certain roles. These must be taken together as a whole and not isolated as individual statements.

  • “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Master. For the husband is the head of the wife as the Messiah is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior” (Ephesians 5:22–23).
  • “Husbands, love your wives, just as the Messiah loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
  • “In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as the Messiah does the church” (Ephesians 5:28–29).
  • “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31).

When a believing husband and wife institute God’s principles of marriage in the Bible, a solid, healthy marriage results. A biblically based marriage keeps the Messiah as the head of the man and the wife together. The biblical concept of marriage involves a oneness between a husband and wife that pictures the oneness of the Messiah with His church.

  • Matthew 19:4 (NASB) — “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that he who created them in the beginning made them male and female”.
  • Genesis 1:27 —So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.
  • 1 Corinthians 11:11–12 —In the Master, however, woman is not independent of man, and man is not independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman, and all things come from God.

God’s order is based on the fact that man was created first, and that the woman was created for the man. Again, priority does not imply inferiority; for Paul made it clear in 1 Corinthians 11:11–12 that there is partnership as well as headship in God’s creation.

The man and the woman are spiritually one in the Master Jesus and one cannot do without the other. Furthermore, the woman may have come from the man at the beginning, but today, it is the man who is born of the woman. Man and woman belong to each other and need each other.

This all speaks to interdependency. Now that is a very cool thing since that is God’s plan for us. That is some very good news for sure.

Sources:

Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 604). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.