A Good Question

To Have And To Hold

Yesterday a granddaughter was married. It was a very meaningful, spiritually rich ceremony in which this dear couple clearly demonstrated their priority for building a home devoted first to the Lord and then to each other. Our hearts were blessed with the beautiful, yet powerful message that Emily and Jeffery shared with all of us.

Last night another granddaughter, Amber, asked her mother if God recognizes a wedding as a marriage if it is not done as a covenant before Him. The challenge that came to us was, "what do you and Dad think?"

That question tells me that Amber must have been very moved by her cousin's ceremony. I wish more of our Christian young people would be concerned about God's view of marriage and sexuality. My response to that question was brief last night, but a bit uncertain: "I don't know what to say about that for sure. . . But the Bible speaks of God's people taking wives from among the pagans and it being against His will. Surely believers are to marry believers in order to be within the will of God. But it seems you can wrongfully marry an unbeliever."

Since the question was asked last night, I have been thinking about it and have come up with some thoughts and have chosen some selections from the Bible for consideration.

First, we know that God established marriage in the Garden of Eden: "God said, 'It’s not good for the Man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.'. . . God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man. The Man said, '. . . Name her Woman for she was made from Man.' Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh. . . " (From Genesis 2 - The Message) God was actively involved in that first marriage ceremony. It was done totally God's way.

In the New Testament there are clear requirements for a Christian marriage. He has instructions for the man and for the woman and their relationship is to be a picture of the kind of love and unity that exists between Christ and His Church. That teaching is seen here in a paraphrase from the fifth chapter of Ephesians:

"Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another. . . The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to his church, not by domineering but by cherishing. So just as the church submits to Christ as he exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands. Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already 'one' in marriage. No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That’s how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become 'one flesh.' This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband."

As I was thinking of that passage, my conclusion was that it is simply not possible for a man who does not know the Lord and His word to even understand what it means to love his wife as Christ loves the Church. And the idea of a woman submitting to her husband and honoring him in the way the Church relates to Christ is a totally foreign idea to women who do not know Jesus. In fact it is often repulsive to them.

So Amber, honey, I am thinking that people who are not believers in Christ can be married in a civil ceremony and be recognized as husband and wife in the eyes of our culture. But is their marriage recognized by God? The Bible says of marriage that what God has joined together, "let no man put asunder".  But it seems to me that GOD has not joined unbelieving spouses together. I believe that people who are not joined to Christ do not have the capacity to live in the kind of union that God designed for marriage in the beginning. It is taught in the Bible that it is impossible to do anything of value except with God's help to live in obedience to Him. This is possible only through His work of grace in our lives and by His mercy toward us.

The Bible does speak of the marriages of unbelieving people (Potiphar's wife, for example). Would you agree that God sees unbelieving spouses as husband and wife but that their marriage cannot be "Holy Matrimony" unless it is between a believing man and woman in covenant relationship with God and each other?