Biblical Sexuality, Pt.3 - What is Marriage?

This is the third post in my discussion of biblical sexuality taken from a chapel workshop I did at the school where I currently teach. The previous posts were entitled "What is a Human?" and "What is Gender?" In brief, humans are made in the image of God and therefore infinitely valuable, and gender is part of that image of God and necessary for humanity's function on Earth as God's mediatorial rulers.

The Problem

We live in a world that is attempting to redefine marriage; that statement has different meaning depending upon your worldview.

From the world's perspective, marriage is a human institution, and therefore humans have the right to mold, shape, change, or dispense with it at will. It is not special, necessary, or mandated. This explains the take-it-or-leave-it attitude we see toward marriage in our society today.

From the perspective of the Christian worldview, however, marriage is an institution set up by God himself. It is not made by man, and so man has no right to change, modify, or do away with it. These worldviews are diametrically opposed to each other, and yet many fail to understand this fundamental distinction between the views of marriage.

Here lies the heart of the problem: adherents to Christianity in America are seeking to restore marriage to its traditional status as an institution created by God in the context of a world that has decided that God either does not exist or does not care about what humans do. Our arguments fall on ears that are intentionally deaf.

A Very Brief History of Marriage

Ancient (Greek & Roman) culture viewed a child-producing family as the highest good and the family as indebted to society to produce these children. That is not to say that romance, partnership, and love had no place in marriage - indeed, they were desired and expected - but they were not viewed as the ultimate goal. Essentially, marriage was more or less a civil arrangement to produce offspring, and for this reason, marriages were often arranged in Greek and Roman society [1].

Middle-Ages Catholicism and Protestantism taught based upon Scripture that marriage existed to provide the structure within which life-long love and devotion would take place. Catholicism established marriage as one of the sacraments (means of obtaining grace from the church) where it served as a picture of God's love. Protestantism viewed marriage as a way to serve the common good, as a gift to benefit not only Christians but the entire human race [2].

The Enlightenment effectively brought about the end of the Middle Ages, and with them the monopoly of the church over all areas of life. Its philosophies brought about a shift from duty and service to society to individual freedom and self-improvement. Within this milieu, marriage found a new meaning: the means to "emotional and sexual self-fulfillment and self-actualization;" it became little more than a contractual agreement for "mutual growth and satisfaction" [2].

The effect of this history is that marriage in the modern world is more similar to that in the ancient world than it is to marriage in the near Christian past. It is not recognized as a divine institution, but as a civil union designed for the benefit of people. The difference is that in ancient society it was viewed as a benefit to society as a whole, while in Post-Enlightenment thinking marriage is for the benefit of the individual alone.

What is marriage?

Now we come to the real question: "What is marriage?"

Marriage has been defined in so many different ways at various times that the word seems almost to have no meaning. Christians today look at homosexual marriage and mourn the death of true marriage, while the world looks on and cheers that marriage has finally been made available to all. What is the truth?

In order to find what marriage is, we must examine its purpose; if we are to know what it is, we must first know what it does. So, what is the purpose for marriage as presented in Scripture? Many will immediately leap forward with answers like "having children" or "stabilizing society" or "spiritual completion," but are these biblical answers?

Companionship

It should not come as a surprise to us that God tells us the purpose for marriage in the passage where He first creates it: Genesis 2:18.

"It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."

Now, we have already determined in previous posts that the problem God addresses here is not that Adam was lonely, uncivilized, or too masculine on his own; rather, it is that both male and female are necessary to image God fully. That being said, it does seem that part of the image of God involves relationships with other human beings, just as God Himself is three-in-one [2].

In his book The Meaning of Marriage (to which I make reference throughout this post since it is the best book on marriage I have read), Tim Keller defines marriage as the highest form of spiritual friendship. The image below is my compilation of pages 121-127 of his book:

Essentially, Keller argues that there are three levels of friendship: the natural, which exists between two people with shared interests; the supernatural, which is shared by any two bound through oneness in Christ; and marriage, which ideally adds romantic love to the previous two levels. Marriage, then, is the ultimate spiritual friendship.

Now, God does not leave this companionship open for humans to define as they will; as He is is designer, He sets the parameters:

• This marriage companionship must involve love, which is defined in Scripture as self-sacrifice for another's benefit (1 Cor. 13)
• Marriage ideally involves life-long commitment, in which each party leaves behind what they are on their own and together become something new (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31). If divorce is permissible (which is debated), it is only so in certain extreme circumstances and not for convenience, out of boredom, or for a mere change of pace (Mat. 5:32; 19:9;1 Cor. 7:12-15).
• Marriage is to be exclusive, with each marriage containing only two partners, and those partners must be a male and a female who are mutually faithful (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:25-33)

This is not to say that one cannot have meaningful companionship with a member of the same gender, or multiple members of the same or opposite gender. It does, however, mean that marriage is a special form of companionship which God has designed, and so He has the right to dictate its parameters. But companionship is not the only purpose for marriage.

Sanctification

This one may come to us a a bit of a shock, for some will say "Surely after companionship the next great purpose of marriage is having children." I will comment more on this later, but I personally don't find that Scripture teaches marriage exists for the purpose of producing children. Rather, I find a high emphasis in Scripture on the idea that marriage exists for the purpose of sanctification: spiritual growth in the believer's life.

Actually, this is not much of a stretch, if you think about it. We already know that all believers have a duty to encourage each other (Col. 3:16), provoke each other toward love and goodness (Heb. 10:24), and to rebuke sin and help each other to grow from it (Gal. 6:1-5).

We often separate these "one-another" duties from spousal duties, but the progression of the book of Ephesians shows that the specifics regarding subordinate roles in 5:22-6:9 are additional to and not separate from those commanded in 5:1-21. In fact, this section is grammatically subordinate to the main command to "be filled with the spirit" in 5:18 and illustrates only one of the many ways that Spirit-filling transforms how we live our daily lives.

In his famous discourse on marriage roles, Paul explicitly tells us that husbands need to emulate Christ by having the same purpose for their wives as Christ did for the church: sanctification. Just as Christ gave Himself for the sanctification of the church, husbands must sacrifice in love so that their wives will grow more holy [3].

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

Does it not simply make sense, if it is true that marriage is the highest form of spiritual friendship, that these same duties be present within it, and in a heightened form? 

In fact, the reason marriage is so different from other relationships is that it brings us into such constant and complete proximity to another sinner. When two fully-depraved and entirely self-serving sinners attempt to become a selfless unity, there will always be more work to be done.

Temporary Picture

But there is still something missing here; logically, it doesn't follow that marriage is necessary if it serves only to provide companionship and sanctification, for those can be (and indeed should be) part of every relationship we have with fellow believers.

I want to point out here that marriage is not indispensable for there to be children, either. God could have designed the world so that humans, like animals, merely mate and do not marry. It would not be wrong for God to decide that humans should not marry; there is nothing intrinsic in the image of God as far as I can tell which requires marriage.

More properly, I think that we can safely say that part of the purpose for creating male and female is the procreation of more humans, especially since the command to "fill the earth" immediately follows the creation of humans (Gen. 1:26-30). So, why did God create marriage?

There is one more purpose which makes marriage necessary: it is a picture of spiritual truth. At the end of his famous passage on marriage, Paul makes the following statement in Eph. 5:32:

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 

That is to say, the primary purpose of marriage and its institution by God is to picture the reality of believers and their union with Christ, which is the subject of chapters 1-3 of Ephesians [4]. 

Now, I say that marriage is a temporary picture for two reasons. First, marriages end when spouses die, and unless both are taken in the rapture or together in an accident, one or the other will outlive their spouse. Second, Christ tells us that marriage does not exist after this life (Mt. 22:30), presumably because the truth which it portrays this side of eternity is visibly present in the eternal state: the oneness of believers with Christ (Rev. 19:6-10).

This, then, is the ultimate purpose of marriage, and the most important one: marriage is a theology textbook; that is, how we live our marriages teaches people about God, whether truth or lies.

Conclusion

Marriage is the God-designed union of one man and one woman for life for the purpose of companionship, which leads to sanctification and serves as a temporary picture of the present and future reality of the believer’s union with Christ.

For the Unmarried

What does that mean for those of us who are unmarried? This post contains much theology about marriage, but what bearing does that have upon the life of a person who is not in that situation? Two points come to mind:

• First, you may be contemplating marriage or anticipating marriage, whether or not you have a potential spouse picked out. If that is the case, you must come to terms with the profundity of meaning that is found within the marriage relationship before you choose to enter it. As Christ said to those seeking to follow Him, count the cost first (Lk. 14:25-33). 
• Second, you must recognize that marriage is temporary and that it is purely this-life focused. That being the case, you are not a second-class Christian because you aren't currently involved in picturing the spiritual reality of oneness with Christ; you already have the real thing! So, look to those married couples around you as the dim reflection of what you have with Christ.

For the Married

What does this mean practically for those of us who are married? It means that how we wage the "battle of the sexes" begun in Genesis 3:16 within our marriages speaks about Christ. Does the way we interact with our spouse reflect the self-sacrificial love of Christ in dying for the church? This has impact on both unbelievers and believers around us:

• In essence, when we act hatefully or unfaithfully toward our spouse, we are proclaiming for all the world that Christ is hateful and unfaithful toward His church. Why would anyone seek to come to Christ if Christians demonstrate in their married lives that our Lord and Savior is fickle and selfish?
• Those of us who are married have the duty of demonstrating what Christ's love looks like to those believers who are unmarried. Through our public interactions with our spouses, we show either that their savior is loving and kind or fickle and cruel, a sacrificial servant or a self-important egotist. What picture of Jesus does your marriage paint?

Sources:

1. James Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era

2. Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage
3. Harold Hoehner, Ephesians
4. Wayne Grudem, in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood
All Scripture references come from the ESV.