Understanding What Marriage is Not

"He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man seperate." - Matthew 19:4-6 - ESV

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I remember growing up as a young boy in the 1980s and how I got my image of life from three sources: my parents, my church, and television. All three sources gave me completely different viewpoints of life. My father and my mother taught me the importance of the family unit, hard work, and doing your best in life. The small town Baptist church of my youth shaped my Christian faith into what I am today. The world around me became a strong competive force in my life, but none more stronger than the fantasy world of television, music, and magazines. As much as I hate to admit it, the make-believe world has had as much of an influence, maybe even more, than my parents and my church. One of the most damaging misconceptions that we get from the fantasy world of entertainment is the image of marriage.

The world around us portrays an image of marriage that is contrary to what we learn of in God's Word. The world around us gives us the image that marriage should make us happy, and cure our loneliness. Marriage should give us that person to take care of all of our wants and needs, and it gives us that higher social, political, economic status that we think we need. The world tells us that marriage will give us a fantasy life of which we can only dream. We all want that American Dream marraige.

Modern society has turned the covenant of marriage, as thus defined in the Bible, into a civil contract, which can be undone if the terms of that contract are not met. Divorce rates in modern society continue to rise because we fail to uphold marriage as a sacred covenant between a husband, a wife, and God. Too many in our society have abandoned the "to death do we part" mindset and adopted the "until I am no longer happer" mindest of marraige, and when we no longer feel our spouse is fulfilling their contractual obligation in marriage, we find a legal way out. This wasn't much different in the time of Jesus.

As we see in Matthew 19, verses 1-9, Jesus was confronting the religious leaders of Judea on the question of marriage and divorce. The Pharisees asked Jesus if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause. They were not asking if they could divorce their wives because of adultery, because the Law of Moses clearly covered that issue. Instead, they were asking Jesus to take a side between two competing views of divorce among the religious leaders. One view held to a strict view that a man could only divorce his wife in cases of adultery. The other view held that a man could divorce his wife for any reason (kind of like our divorce laws today). Just as Jesus stated in verse 7, Moses did indeed issue decrees of divorce, but it was due to the hardness of the hearts of the men (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). The men were wanting to send their wives away for reasons other than adultery (Deut. 24:1 states "he finds some indecency in her") and be able to marry another woman. These men did not want to honor the covenent of marriage and were seeking to satisfy their own selfish desires.

Many today, even those in Christian churches, do not want to honor the covenant of marriage and when they find some fault in their spouse (apart from adultery or abuse), they want out. Not much has changed since Jesus confronted the Pharisees. If anything, the concept of marriage has gotten worse in our society. We no longer hold to the covenant of marriage as God ordained between one man and one woman. We have turned a blind eye to frivolous divorce, and we have made marriage into a mockery of God's design. We allow same sex marriage, pologamy, and other forms of sexual degeneracy.

I believe that if Jesus were to come to earth today, He might encounter a whole different type of question on marriage. Jesus might get asked by Christian leaders, "Is it lawful for a man to marry another man, or a transgender to marry as if he was a woman, or if two married couples should live together as if they were in one union." I think the answer Jesus would give would be the same as He gave to the Pharisees, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man seperate."

May we always seek to honor Jesus Christ in marriage. May our lives be an example to the world around us of the one flesh union ordained by God. Instead of the world getting their example of marriage from the sinful society around them, let them get the true example of marriage from the called-out believers of Jesus Christ.

Grace be to you from Jesus Christ

Joey

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