The Nature of Marriage

Our 10 year anniversary getaway

The State of the Union

Marriages in Decline

Among those who do marry, there has been a drop since the 1970s in the percentage of couples who consider their marriages to be “very happy”. In the past 2 decades, this trend has flattened out.

Americans have become less likely to marry. From 1970-2010, the rate of marriage has declined by more than 50%.

Some of what accounts for this decline is the growth of unmarried cohabitation and a slight decrease in the tendency of divorced persons to remarry.

The decline also reflects an increase of lifelong singlehood.

American Families

Since the 1950s, the proportion of births to unwed mothers has risen steadily, so that now almost one-third of all American children are born out of wedlock.

A major factor driving these rates has been the decline in the birthrates for married couples - rather than an explosion of births outside of marriage. According to some research, the birth rate among certain segments of the married American population actually fell below the birthrate of the unmarried.

An estimated 55% of male and female teens have had sexual intercourse by age 18. While there has been a decline in the rate of teenage pregnancy since 1991, the rate of 2019 was 16.7%.

Words of Caution and Encouragement

Don’t let the ideal discourage you.

Don’t use this class as leverage in arguments with your spouse.

Use this class to examine your purposes for your marriage in light of God’s purpose for marriage.

Use this class as a mirror to your attitudes, instincts, assumptions and struggle in marriage.

To the Single People

Use this class as a means to learn how to better love your married friends.

Consider your potential future marriage.

Consider the beauty of what God has designed.

Marriage is a Covenant

Definition of covenant

A covenant is something that defines a mutual relationship of promise and trust.

In the beginning

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God and man in the beginning

God created man in His own image

People are created by God. This is why we exist. We do not exist first and foremost because God needed what we could do for Him. He didn’t need us to be fruitful and multiply; He was filling the earth just fine by Himself.

God made us as His representatives, to point back to Him. We were mades to reflect God… as mirrors of sorts.

People possess the capacity and duty to reflect God’s image. We can discover the wonder of God’s creativity through our own creativity.

We can perceive the image of God and portray the image of God.

And if you are not married, you’re just as completely made in the image of God as your married friends.

People are relational

People are with sexuality: male and female

As we live out this fundamental purpose, that is to reflect the image of God, it shows up in our love, our labor, through our relationships and our rule (v. 28ff)

And certainly the fact that we are made in the image of God impacts our marriages. If you are married, your marriage is meant to perceive and portray the image of God.

Marriage in the beginning

Genesis 2:15–25 ESV

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Adam and Eve were not to eat of the fruit

God institutes marriage as a creation ordinance

Marriage is shown to be a covenant God establishes with mankind

What we see in Gen. 2:18 is that Adam could not do all that God commanded him to do alone… to be fruitful and exercise dominion.

Gen. 2:18 makes clear that before Eve is created from Adam, God had not completed creation. No suitable companion existed in the creation for Adam and it was not good for Adam to be alone. Eve became the suitable helpmate that Adam needed.

In Gen 2:24, God calls Adam and Eve to come together in marriage which is the display of their covenant union. Just as God entered a covenant relationship with Adam, God ordained that marriage as a sacred covenant between one man and one woman.

Like all covenants, marriage is governed by God’s commands for the sake of His glory. God is glorified in marriage as husband and wife are faithful to the covenant of their union and fulfill their obligations to God and to one another.

The Covenant Continues

Ephesians 5:31–32 ESV

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

More than a union between a man and a woman

Paul quotes Gen 2:24 here to make clear that the covenant of marriage was always meant to display the blood-bought covenant relationship between Christ and His church.

Leaving parents, clinging to a wife, forming a one-flesh union is meant to display this new covenant.

Christ left His Father and took the church as His bride at the cost of His life, and continues to cling to her forever.

The bottom line here is that the covenant union between husband and wife is designed to reflect and display the spiritual union between Christ and His church.

Simply put, marriage was built to be an analogy. Marriage is meant to portray who God is… more specifically, Christ’s love for His church.

And people are watching

Ourselves: In our marriages, we learn what sacrificial love is and the joy that can be had as we express it to our spouse.

Our Spouse: If I lead my wife well, she will be helped to follow Christ. If I love her well, she will better understand the love of Christ.

Our kids: A marriage will profoundly shape children’s theology. Their understanding of Christ for better or for worse.

Those around us: Though people may not be able to articulate the labels Christ and the church, but our marriages should look distinctive to them because it is responding to, reflecting the supernatural love of God. It is a portrayal of Him.

Question: What are the short-falls of making marriage primarily about personal happiness, children, companionship?

The New Covenant in the covenant of marriage

Colossians 2:13–14 (ESV)

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

What should be feared above all is the wrath of God, and the penal substitutionary atonement that Jesus made for the sins of His people rescued them from God’s wrath.

This glorious truth is what provides husband and wife the hope that they can display the union of Christ to His church through their union. This truth is also what provides hope to husband and wife in the midst of their difficulty to get along. Because the forgiveness of our sins was secured through the atonement of Christ, husband and wife possess the hope that the anger (wrath) they may have toward one another is not insurmountable.

Understanding this truth as the foundation of their lives is crucial to husbands and wives fulfilling the design of marriage.

So when it comes to having peace, or contending with a lack of peace in marriage, or really any relationship, start with the peace the New Covenant secured for God’s people.

As an elder and pastor in this church, I want to tell you that there is hope. If your marriage is not turning out to be what you expected, if you are struggling in your marriage, there is hope and it is possible to have joy. But lasting joy will come as we perceive and portray the goodness of God. This is the key to a good marriage.