Marriage
“Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each
man have his own wife, and let each woman have
her own husband.”
1 Corinthians 7:2
How do we break this cycle of fornication and sexual sinfulness? According to the Apostle Paul, we must marry. The answer to fornication is marriage. What a novel concept. As it was in the beginning, the way that God originally designed it in His perfect plan for us. Among its many benefits, marriage raises the earnings of men and motivates them to work more hours. It also reduces by two-thirds the likelihood that a family will live in poverty, researchers have learned. Could this be why so many single mothers and children live in poverty? Thousands of years later, how God designed it is still the right way. Man has continually tried to improve on God’s concept of marriage by instituting this “try it before you by it” idea. In other words let’s go out, sleep with a bunch of different people, and then decide whom we want to marry. There is only one small problem; it assumes that marriage is all about sexual gratification. We think that a good sex partner will make a good marriage or lifetime partner. And of course, this is foolishness, marriage is more than sex. In fact, sex plays such a small part of the overall relationship. Any marriage based on sex will not last very long.
Some may say that marriage cannot be the answer. Look at all the marriages that are ending today in divorce. However, the problem is not marriage, it is divorce. Divorce is causing so much pain in our society today. If we were to follow the teachings of our Lord, the only reason for divorce permitted by God is adultery.[1] We are not to divorce for any and every reason that we grant divorces for today. I can recall one celebrity who divorced his wife for irreconcilable differences; it appears she was taller than he was. I checked and she had not grown an inch in the marriage so she was that height when he married her. The teachings of Christ on marriage and divorce are pretty simple and straightforward. Marriage is until death do you part. We should take marriage very seriously; it appears that God does. Christ said that, “What God has joined together let no man pull apart.”[2]
What we have forgotten is that marriage is not an earthly or man-made institution it was created by God for man. Marriage was created and ordained by God to avoid the problems we are currently facing as a people and to a greater extent as a nation. We have become a community of fornicators. Man has so perverted the institution of marriage it should come as no surprise to anyone that it is no longer working. Marriage today is treated like some sort of business deal, a contract that can be broken or breached at anytime. This is not how God intended marriage to be practiced. God said that when a man and a woman are joined together they are no longer two, but become one flesh.[3] Marriage is not an external bond, it was designed to be an internal bond until death. Marriage has no power today due in large part to the fornication that is taking place prior to the marriage. As soon as the marriage becomes a little difficult, it’s over and on to the next one.
The world continues to display through the media the farce that marriage has become. All those role models and idols are shown with those huge weddings with all the trappings, the envy of all who see them. Yet, within less than a year for most of them they are separated or divorced. Again, the following year they show up “in love” with some new heartthrob or actress/model and the process begins all over again. I wish I could say that this only occurs in “sinful
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