The topic of marriage is critical to the modern society that is sharply growing in its consideration of the ideals of marriage such as if it is a contractual commitment or a religious covenant. The topic is also valuable to Christian counselors since they see many clients that are considering divorce and need to be able to give them Biblical guidance about a covenant not secular advice about commitment. In describing the real meaning of marriage according to the chosen perspective, the essay, first describes the confusion on marriage arising from modern culture that has learned to treat it as a contractual commitment. This approach sets the background for explaining the importance of Christian guidance on the topic before describing marriage according to the modern perspective. The essay further describes and argues that marriage is a sacred institution shared between the married couples and God, which is why it should be considered a covenant and not a casual agreement between people. Additionally, the writing urges that no human or activity should interfere with the existence of a marriage between a wife and a husband from the perspective that it is an exclusive institution apart from being permanent, mutual, sacred, and intimate. The challenge of the church, therefore, is to teach itself and the society in the importance of preserving it according to the ideal of the Bible. The essays objective is to analyze and report the concept of the institution of marriage according to the biblical perspective.
The Current Crisis of Modern Culture
The modern society does not understand the real meaning of marriage and family. The emergent paradigms within the culture of the West have resulted in a new ethic. Not only the general social ethics but also the marriage ethics and the value of family life are transforming at a rapid rate. Such a new ethic has a fundamental bearing on family life and marriage relationships that are explained by the conventional Christian ethics. Novel civil relationship forms such as those between gay people, temporary relationships, and cohabitation are fiercely challenging the conventional ideas of a marriage between heterosexual couples (Vorster, 2016). Scholars have also been contemplating the notion of postmodern marriages, which according to them, varies from the conventional Christian concept of marriage.
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The biggest cause of the confusion in marriage issues is the fact that society is growing in its consideration of the institution of marriage as a contractual commitment and not a covenant as the biblical teachings direct. For such reasons, most marriages have been destined to crumble just from the very exchange of vows since the couples fail to comprehend what they commit to in the first place (Vorster, 2016). The couples enter marriages while considering that divorce is one of the options if they do not find their unions fulfilling. The idea on the minds of such individuals has always been that marrying someone is an alternative approach to expressing how much they love their partner. While love is one of the essentials of marriage, the perspective of marriage as a commitment to the vows exchanged in public dilutes the very concept of it as a covenant with God. Love as a feeling commits people to their marriages only for some time since the feeling has seasons when it blossoms and those during which it fades and even stops. Therefore, a marriage founded on the concept of ‘rewarding’ someone for loving another does not have the real definition of marriage as a covenant.
The current trends in marriage and family life are worrying since they indicate that the rates of occurrence of new marriages are lesser than that of divorces. Specifically, according to (Hunter, 2007), some nine hundred and forty-three thousand divorces and 2.1 million marriages occurred in the European Union in 2015. Such figures could be represented as 4.1 new marriages in a group of every 1000 individuals as well as 1.9 divorces for the same number of people. While the US is not ranked the highest in the rates of divorces worldwide, its current divorce rate of fifty-three percent is a worrying one. The reason given by scholars such as Balswick & Balswick (2014) in the explanation of this issue is the fact that modern couples have a lesser level of commitment to their marriages than did those in the older generations. Balswick & Balswick note that the divorce rates in the US started rising after 1970. Therefore, it is apparent that the commitment that couples have to live together in the bond of marriage has been fading with time. The reason could still be the fact that the couple’s definition of marriage could not be in line with the biblical teachings on the same.
The most challenging issue for Christians is the fact that divorce does not occur only outside the church. In fact, according to (Lambert & Dollahite, 2007), Christians have just the same rate of divorce as do the non-Christians (Hunter, 2007). For a reason, the public has been quick to mention that modern Christians are hypocrites since they always want to blame non-Christians for social evils such as divorce, gay marriages, abortion, and others. While this writing does not purpose to elaborate this point, it is useful noting that the idea is a challenge to the modern Christians since it suggests the fact that the church has failed, or at least, the Christians do not understand the real meaning of marriage. The confusion, therefore, lies in the approach to marriage that the contemporary society has adopted.
Marriage as a Contractual Commitment
The feeling that people should be allowed to do what they feel has occasioned the change in the modern culture towards the adoption of a new ethic of marriage and family life. For example, the feeling that marriages between people of the same sex should be allowed to live together as married couples is enshrined in this notion as well as the fundamentals of the constitutional Bill of Rights (Hugenberger, 2003). Marriages these days are mostly contracts or agreements due to evolution in the secular society. Such agreements may include no-fault clauses and so on. Fundamentally, marriage is a divine institution initiated with a sacred covenant honored by God. Marriage is a unity of spouses reflects the image of God through the love and unity present in the family while raising children according to certain principles and so on. The covenant of marriage in Christianity usually has God as the pre-eminent member. Referring to marriage as a commitment would require the presence of God to be part of the agreement. According to these perspectives, people have no legal permission to interfere with the lives of others as long as what they do does not infringe on their rights. The Bill of Rights has a fundamental inclination to ethics, some of which are religious. For such a reason, society has been quick to argue that Christians should not have any issue with people who choose to live as married couples as long as they do so at the consent of each other. However, the current problem stems from the contractual element of marriage and family life.
The contemporary society has grown in its desire for freedom and rights, which is fine anyway. However, when the issue of taking into the perspective of marriage, it results in a scenario in which people can test the waters in their union. Some couples have gone into marriages that they did not want only because they were motivated by other issues that are not within the biblical definition of marriage. For instance, people get frustrations in marriages since they realize that they were married to people they did not know or when they do not get what they wanted. For such reasons, divorce has always been the option. Such couples have not had the humility that the Bible teaches concerning the code of conduct between husband and wife. In a contractual marriage, people are free to do get out of a marriage that they feel does not go as they planned. In the extreme cases, some couples have found motivation in the fact that the law allows them to opt out to force divorces (Baker et al., 2009). Therefore, in a contractual setting of marriage people are free to choose the type of person they would like to marry as well as to leave their marriages if they deem necessary. It does not matter whether the people that stay in a marriage are bisexual or heterosexual; what matters is if the people get the satisfaction from their marriage.
The very element that a contract has a legal presence means that people do not fear the laws of many nations around the globe back divorcing since it. This scenario explains the growth in the divorce rates in the world as explained previously. According to the biblical teachings on marriage, this notion should never be allowed into the institution as described in the succeeding section of this essay. Marriage is deeper than commitment. Despite commitment being a profound part of marriage, it essentially is a covenant. The word covenant roots from God and is normally associated with the agreement the Israelites made with God for them to follow his law and be faithful and that God will always protect them. In that very sense, it makes God a covenant God.
Marriage was never man’s idea but God’s. It was not constructed socially despite cultures having different traditions concerning weddings, marriage or the ceremony. It was Gods idea that man and woman unite for life as partners pledge commitment on all aspects of life until death do them part. God designed marriage as a powerful reflection of an actual covenant. God designed the union into existence saying that a man will leave his mother and father to be united with his wife as one flesh. Just like the covenant with Israelites God initiates the covenant of marriage. The Bible continually quotes that marriage is indeed a covenant. Some biblical references repeatedly showing that marriage is a covenant include Genesis 2.24, Mathew 19:5, and Mark 10:7 among others. Thus marriage is indeed created as a covenant with husband and wife partnered for life and mutually accept and handover each other. The union is sacred to God and should be faithful, permanent and fruitful and always remain a symbol of how God loves his people.
The Biblical Perspective of Marriage and Family
In a narrow sense, the biblical perspective of a family is a union between a man and women in marriage that is normally blessed with children either natural or adopted. Within a broad sense, a family also entails any other individuals that are related by blood. The Bible, in Genesis, Christians learn that God first created a man to exercise dominion over the rest of the creation before He created a woman to be his only helper (Genesis 2:18-20). God then commanded that both a man and a woman leave their homes and unite with each other to one flesh as described in Genesis 2:24. Therefore, this verse from the bible lays the foundation for the biblical pattern that God himself instituted in the very beginning of the world. The pattern is the fact that one man should unite with one woman in marriage and the two should form a family. In this perspective, becoming one family refers to both the development of one family as well as to the wife and husband’s sexual union that would result in the procreation of offspring. This approach, therefore, is following a track of the original commandment of God that he gave to the first couple, Adam and Eve to be productive and multiply and fill the whole earth and bring it under their control and establish their dominion over the rest of the creation (Genesis 1:28).
The Bible uses the Old Testament to depict a reliable picture of the covenant between God and his people. People of God are shown believing in other things, like for instance, different nations would practice paganism. Often the picture of people going astray would be pictured as cheating on God. The sexual union between a woman and a man is the most intimate and most powerful picture of what a covenant-based relationship should be like. The relationship between the spouses is what holds the two so tightly. Hence when one of the spouses decides to have a union with someone whom not married too, will be rebelling the covenant as powerfully as possible. God through the Bible tries to show us through imageries of sexual promiscuity how serious it is to break a covenant. If a spouse goes after a prostitute in marriage, the union cannot be compared to the dedication a spouse has to the other. That relationship is far from commitment as one can imagine. God shows that such sin against him is way far from fulfilling the spouse’s covenant. This show how the sexual act between two partners as covenantal thus marriage is fundamentally a covenant.
The Bible directs that at the foundational levels the family and marriage should not be taken as human conventions founded on temporary consensuses and a time-honored tradition. The biblical teaching on the family is that it was the idea of God and that it is a divine institution as opposed to the feeling that it a human one (Baker et al., 2009). The effect of this truth is of significance since it suggests that people are not at will to renegotiate and redefine the institutions of marriage and family in any approach of their choosing. Instead, this truth suggests that humans have an obligation to respect and preserve, that which has been instituted divinely. This argument is keeping in the teachings of Jesus Christ concerning the permissibility of divorce. According to Jesus Christ, no man has permission to separate what God has united in marriage (Mathew 19:16). Therefore, marriage is more than the social contract of humans for the fact that it is a covenant that is instituted divinely.
One might ponder what a covenant means in the real sense. Therefore, it is true understanding that an agreement is a consensus reached with God as a witness between two parties and whose permanence He alone protects (Stinson, 2011). Therefore, marriage is a covenant since it is entered between a wife and a husband with God as the witness. The fact that only God that joins the couples in a marriage, the wife, and the husband vow to each other that they will abide by fidelity and loyalty to death. In this line of thought, therefore, marriage involves three persons: God, a wife, and a husband, which means individual interest, unfettered commitment to individual freedom, or self-interest does not direct the relationship of marriage. However, Christians should understand that but the commitment of both the wife and the husband to be in a marriage in the approach that God directs is the fundamental element of a marriage.
The plan of God on marriage has the five elementary and fundamental principles. The first is that marriage is a permanent institution. According to Mark 10:9 and Mathew 19:6, marriage should be a permanent institution since God established. In this case, marriage is a representation of a serious commitment, which needs to be entered only following advice and profound considerations. This process entails as a sacred pledge, not a marriage partner but to God, which means that divorce is not allowed, except for a limited number of circumstances that prescribe this approach. The second is that marriage is sacred, and it is not a mere human agreement entered between two individuals that consent to each other such as the case of civil unions. Instead, marriage is a relationship before God as described in Genesis 2:22. This argument implies that the same-sex marriages should be termed an oxymoron, which is a contradiction of the terms of marriage. It means that God will never sanction marriages between people of the same sex.
The third element is that marriage is intimate, and it should be understood that it is the closest relationship of humans that bonds a woman and a man in one flesh. This argument is affirmed by the fact that God commands a woman and a man to leave their families of origin and be united to each other as a wife and husband, which signifies the development of a new family that is separate from their original ones (Lambert & Dollahite, 2007). The one flesh idea indicates sexual intercourse meant for procreation, and it is the idea of the establishment of a kinship association between individuals that were previously unrelated to each other.
Marriage is also a mutual establishment between free and self-giving of a human being to another one (Ephesians 5:25-30). The couples need to be concerned with the wellbeing of each other and to show a commitment to each other through devotion and steadfast love. This approach entails the requirement for restoration and forgiveness of the relationship in the event of sin. In mutuality, however, the roles of each of the marriage partners should be defined. The scripture directs that wives submit to their husbands while heeding to their service as helpers and the other partners to take the responsibilities of the marriage (Colossians 3:18; Ephesians 5: 22-24; Genesis 2:18-20).
The last characteristic of marriage is that it should be exclusive, which suggests that in addition to being mutual, intimate, sacred, and permanent, it is exclusive as directed in 1 Corinthians 7:2-5 and Genesis 2:22-25. This idea suggests that no other relationships should interfere with the commitment of marriage between a wife and a husband. For such a reason, Jesus dealt with sexual immorality of married people, which included the lustful thoughts of a husband that much seriousness as He did in Mathew 5:28 and 19:9. For such a reason, premarital sex is not legitimate since it is a violation of the exclusiveness of the future spouse of another individual. The Song of Songs substantiates this claim by asserting that an exclusive matrimonial bond can give only itself completely and freely if a marriage occurs in within a secure context.
Conclusion
The elements of marriage, which are the union of a man and a woman, and the role that cannot be replaced of a female-male relation in the production of the human race, are a component of God’s original order of creation. The instructions from God are evident to each human being from nature’s enduring nature. Such common marital elements are within the central point of the civil laws that regulate and define marriages in most nations. For such reasons, individuals from all religions and cultures, including those that do not believe in the Christian Faith can engage in the marriage institution. However, Christians believe that the most in-depth comprehension of the will of God for the system could be obtained from a comprehensive understanding of the scriptural teachings in the bible. The church, therefore, has the role of educating itself as well as the society concerning the full intentions of God for the existence of marriage.
References
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