“Who needs marriage? It’s just a slip of paper,” “We don’t need a ceremony to say we love each other.” “Why get married when most of our married friends are unhappy and stuck.” Perhaps you’ve heard comments like these exhibiting the widespread loss of confidence in the institution of marriage that has led from 72% of American adults being married in 1960 to just 50% or lower in 2021. This episode shows how the various strands of thinking in today’s culture that devalue marriage are tragically mistaken, and why the culture needs Christians to speak up about the greatness of this foundational institution of society.
As we continue our series,Guiding Our Loved Ones Into a Biblical Worldview, this article examines six biblical truths about God's marriage design that are rooted in Genesis 2:24-25. There, we read, 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.
A. Marriage is the First and Most Basic Human Institution
When God brought the first woman to the first man, he did not merely provide Adam with a suitable helper and companion. He also established marriage as the first and most basic of all human institutions. Long before there were governments, schools, churches, clubs, or any other social structures, God established the home, based upon the mutual respect and love of husband and wife for one another. The Bible presents its view of marriage as true not only for Jews and Christians but for all of humanity. We see this truth simply by looking at world history. Why has the institution of marriage been recognized this way?
- Marriage unites people in a PUBLIC and therefore powerful way. In many legal and social settings, marriage partners will start to be considered as a single unit, unlike all other close partnerships. College students share their Xbox, apartment, and meals. An elderly widow and sister may share everything from their most precious memories to giving each other their Power of Attorney. There is also the romantically involved couple who live together and are having sex. Nevertheless, historically, neither culture, nor the law has considered these relationships to be marriage because there has been no public commitment, no contract made between them.
- The second reason marriage has been recognized as a basic human institution is that Marriage marks two people as sexual partners and responsible to society for their sexual behavior. This is important, because sex, though experienced in private has very public consequences. McDowell and Stonestreet, in their book, Same-Sex Marriage observe that despite the popular mantra, what happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom, history proves otherwise. Forced sex brings fear to an entire community. Procreative sex creates a new life that must be cared for and integrated into the community. Promiscuous sex risks the physical and mental health of many in the community. Underaged sex harms children who need protection from the community. In contrast marital sex secures the future of the community. Every caring society must be concerned about the nature of the sexual relationships within it. Marriage has been protected, historically, not because heterosexuals have more rights than homosexuals, but because married sex is best for children, providing both a mom and dad for them.
- A third reason that the union of man and wife in marriage has always been a foundational institution is that Marriage ASSUMES PERMANENCE. The vow to love each other unconditionally “as long as we both shall live" matters. Despite high divorce statistics, the expectation that marriage is permanent has a tremendous benefit to society. Marriage commits adults to their families, and their family’s futures. Sociologists universally point out that marriage has a civilizing effect on men. The common grace of marriage causes married adults to become practiced at thinking about others, curbing their appetite for immediate, self-centered gratification, relationally, sexually, and financially. In short, it benefits society to have marital partners learning to think of their mate's needs and devoting themselves unconditionally to their mate.
B. The Purpose of Marriage is The Ultimate Companionship of Loving Intimacy
In the text we’re looking at we see two parts to marriage: 1) the joining of lives, “a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife,” and 2) the joining of bodies, “they shall become one flesh.” As husband and wife join their lives, they share their ideas (mind), their decisions (will) and feelings (emotions). This union of hearts, minds, and wills is then celebrated by the joining of bodies in sex. (By the way, if our wives are not feeling emotionally close and connected to us, why would they want to celebrate?) The biblical design for marriage lifts up BOTH oneness of soul (mind, will, and emotions) and oneness of body. Biblically, the body is not considered inferior to the soul. Joining bodies in sex apart from joining lives in marriage is wrong (I Thes. 4:3). Joining lives in marriage, without joining bodies in sex is also wrong (1 Cor. 7:15). Biblically body and soul belong together.
God has a purpose for this regular, naked, joining of souls and bodies. It is for Adam and Eve to regularly experience loving intimacy. Not only does God, specifically, tell us that he created Eve to erase the aloneness of Adam, Genesis 2:25 gives us the purpose of marriage in God’s design, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Eve is created with a soul and body which correspond perfectly to Adam’s. Marriage is given as the one safe arena where husband and wife can come together conversationally and sexually—naked soul and body—laid bare and vulnerable to each other. Such vulnerability exposes each other to the possibility of deep wounds through rejection. But within the covenant of marriage, God’s design is for spouses to make such nakedness safe by publicly vowing and devoting themselves to unconditional love for one another.
God created sex to be enormously pleasurable for both husband and wife. But it is a tragedy to allow the rising generation to be corrupted by the idea the sex is just a way of having fun, and making our bodies feel really good. We must help them understand that the uniform uneasiness in the doctor’s office that all humans feel, when we have to take off our underwear, tells humans something. Being naked with someone (other than their doctor) is not safe. That feeling of discomfort when our private parts are exposed is there for a reason. God placed it there in a fallen world to protect us. We are supposed to be inhibited about others touching our private parts before marriage. The only safe place for complete nakedness is the life-long covenant of marriage, where partners who see our nakedness of soul and body have vowed to love us unconditionally for life.
Loneliness cannot be overcome without letting another know what we really are like, body, heart, and soul. So, God designed marriage to be the safe place for humans to be naked—known body and soul, and still be unconditionally loved.
C. Marriage is the Greenhouse Where the Best Sex is Cultivated
It is ironic that one of the biggest myths about sex is that marriage causes it to get boring. Mark Twain, said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you not for sure, that just ain’t so.” It just aint so that marriage makes sex boring. Study after study proves otherwise. For example:
- Researchers at Arizona State and Illinois State Universities reviewed a dozen studies from the 1990s that compared relationship status and sexual satisfaction. They concluded that compared with singles, on average, married couples enjoy significantly more erotic fulfillment.
- Investigators at NYU and the University of Western Ontario surveyed people aged 21 to 75. They found that compared with singles and those who cohabited, the ones who were married felt happier and reported greater sexual satisfaction. (Examples cited from Psychology Today, by Michael Castleman, “Sexual Satisfaction: Does Marriage Help or Hurt It?”)
Sexual boredom does happen, making men and women vulnerable to the temptation to go outside their marriage with their romantic and sexual hunger. So, husbands and wives do need to work at keeping their sex-life fresh and vital. A help for most wives is to get away from the everyday routine. Another help for couples is having the courage to talk about their sex-life. (Here is a link to a tool that helps couples do that.) As Christ followers, we need to understand that God wants married couples sexually drunk with each other. God commands husbands, “Let her breasts fill you AT ALL TIMES with delight; be intoxicated ALWAYS in her love.” Moreover, we must counter the allure of illicit sexual temptation with the truth that marriage is always going to be the pathway to the most fulfilling romance and sex-life. Here is just one of many reasons. The most satisfying love-making experiences for most men happen when their wife gets most turned on. But a woman is wired so that normally, her sexual engine is linked to the depth of relationship and closeness she feels with her love-making partner. Barbara Rosberg explains: Men your sex-drive is connected to your eyes. You become aroused visually. Your wife’s sex drive is connected to her heart; she is aroused only after she feels emotional closeness and harmony….You feel less manly if your wife resists your sexual advances. Your wife feels like a machine if she doesn’t experience sexual intimacy flowing from emotional intimacy (The Five Love Needs of Men and Women).
The fastest way to shut her down sexually is to treat her like an impersonal machine. For her sexual engine to fire on all cylinders, she needs to feel connected at the level of the soul. That is why sex in the context of marriage—sharing our whole lives with each other—makes sex so much more fulfilling for a married than single woman. She can’t escape the creation design that sharing bodies belongs with sharing lives. Mike Mason says it well, To be naked with another is a sort of picture or symbolic demonstration of perfect honesty, perfect trust, perfect giving and commitment, and if the heart is not naked along with the body, then the whole action becomes a lie and a mockery” (The Mystery of Marriage). A woman can be drawn into an illicit sexual encounter. But her sexual engine is much more likely to fire up and keep running fast in marriage. It is the greenhouse for growing strong sexual passion because sharing BODIES belongs with sharing LIVES.
D. Marriage Success Depends NOT On Compatibility or the Continued Attractiveness of Your Mate But upon THE COMMITMENT TO LOVE Your Partner
One of the most common but destructive views of marriage today is that its purpose is to find a mate who will fulfill ME. This Me-Marriage concept rests beneath many objections to marriage—marriage was originally about property, marriage crushes individual identity, marriage has been oppressive for women, marriage stifles passion, marriage doesn’t fit the psychological reality that feelings change. Many young adults today are looking for a mate who will fulfill their emotional, sexual, and spiritual desires. As Tim Keller points out, that creates an idealism that then can turn into pessimism that they will ever find the right mate.
This is the reason so many put off marriage and look right past prospective spouses that are “not good enough.” This is ironic. Older views of marriage are considered to be traditional and oppressive, while the newer view of the Me-Marriage seems to be liberating. And yet it is the newer view that has led to a steep decline in marriage and to an oppressive sense of hopelessness with regard to it. The conduct of a Me-Marriage requires two completely well-adjusted, happy individuals, with very little in the way of emotional neediness of their own or character flaws that need a lot of work. The problem is—there is almost no one like that out there to marry! (Keller, The Meaning of Marriage)
The Me-Marriage worldview and “me-first” attitude is the opposite of the “my spouse first” attitude that is at the core of successful marriage. If marriage is a commitment to develop a deep level of companionship by creating the atmosphere where both can be naked and unashamed because of the promise made to love each other no matter what, this commitment makes spouses willing to give up their freedom and put their mate’s wishes and needs first. This, in fact, is the key to successful marriages. And many couples who have struggled mightily to put their spouse first and love him or her unconditionally even though unhappy in their marriage have discovered an amazing truth: Longitudinal studies demonstrate that two thirds of those unhappy marriages will become happy in five years if people stay married and do not divorce (Ibid). Marriage success, then, depends upon the commitment to love your spouse no matter what even when her flaws and imperfections are exposed.
E. Marriage Provides the Best Environment For the Welfare of Children
This biblical truth is obvious. Even honest secular people must admit that nature itself, by making conception the result of sexual intercourse, tells us that the best place for the development of a child is the context of the love relationship of husband and wife. Why would anyone disbelieve this obvious fact—unless human sinful nature leads us to suppress the truth. There are three immutable facts, to which McDowell and Stonestreet point, when arguing in the public square that marriage between one man and one woman is an institution that all human societies have supported. 1) Sex makes babies. 2) Society needs babies. 3) Babies deserve mothers and fathers. These three facts are obviously and universally true of every time period and every culture. That is why every society cares about marriage. God’s creation design reveals that it takes both father and mother to conceive children pointing to the creation truth that a child needs both, what his father contributes to his life through his masculinity and what mothers bring through their nurture. Reality proves what God’s design teaches.
1. Children who grow up in married, two parent families have two to three times more positive life outcomes than those who do not (Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage.)
2. “Children who grow up without fathers are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.” Barack Obama
3. According to the US Census Bureau data for 2019 the percent of children who live with their mother only is about 45% for black children, 24% for hispanic children, and 18% for white children.
4. According to the US Dept of Justice report, "What Can the Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities?" children from fatherless homes account for:
- 63 percent of youth suicides
- 90 percent of all homeless and runaway youths
- 71 percent of all high school dropouts
- 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions
- 75 percent of adolescent patients in substance abuse centers
- 75 percent of rapists motivated by displaced anger
A generation ago, John Wooden of UCLA basketball fame, arguably the greatest coach of any sport of all time said, “I agree with Abraham Lincoln. He once said the best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.” God’s creation design of marriage, as the institution through which children are created and nurtured because both parents are needed, is indisputably what is best for them.
F. God Does NOT Intend Marriage and Having Children to Be Optional
God’s creation command to humanity is, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen 1:28). After the flood, we read in Genesis 9:1, And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Today’s Christian adults need to teach the rising generation of young men that getting married and having kids is not an option, it is a command. A female friend who helped me edit my book on gender confusion, told me, “When my son turns sixteen, he is going to date whether he wants to or not.” We need our boys to know that it is God’s will for them, when they reach adulthood, to take the initiative to find a young Christian woman to marry, with whom to begin a family. This command of God in Genesis 1 and restated in chapter 9 is not arbitrary. For reasons beyond his control a man may end up single and childless, but to remain passive instead of pursuing a woman to marry is disobedience to God.
Understanding this command "to be fruitful and multiply" given to all women ought to also fill us with compassion for single women who want to be married. Yes, Paul said that singleness is a gift, and sometimes being married becomes an idol that we think we must have to be happy. But the struggle of single women is far deeper than that. God’s creation design and longing to be a partner to a man and a mother is strong in every healthy, godly woman. The pain, therefore, of singleness is amplified in a culture like ours, which can influence even Christian men with its negative view of marriage. In my own life, I have been convicted that I need to support the single women in my life better, praying more often for them with the words of Eph 3:18-19, that she firmly fixed in love, may be able to grasp how wide and deep and long and high is the love of Christ—and to know for herself that love so far beyond our comprehension. May she be filled through all her being with Christ, himself!
Christians know the glory of God’s perfect design of marriage. Tragically, many in today’s culture are listening to loud voices that devalue marriage, when they would be very receptive to what we say about marriage if we would speak. Tim Keller, writing about his experiences in secular Manhattan observes, Over the years both Kathy and I have taught at length on marriage at innumerable weddings. There we’ve learned that most people who do not share our view of the Bible or even our Christian faith are often shocked by how penetrating the biblical perspective on marriage is and how relevant it is to their own situations.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- Why is marriage different from all other relationships, making it the foundational institution of society?
- What does Genesis 2:24-25, the text we looked at, say about why God’s design of sex is profoundly tied to the institution of marriage?
- How does the biblical view of marriage suggest that the biggest problem in our cities is probably neither racism or nor poverty, but fatherlessness?
