Marriage is an institution of God and is an exclusive lifetime union between one man and one woman for the purpose of perpetuating humanity and enriching human experience. Reflecting the bond between Christ and His church, marriage may be broken only by sexual immorality. Like the Sabbath, marriage dates to Creation week, is intrinsic to the moral law, is reformed in Christ’s teachings, and finds its ultimate meaning at His return.
Marriage was created by God during creation week. Both the institution of marriage and the Sabbath Day were created before the fall of man and are the only two Godly institutional creations from the very first week of humanity. God created man and woman and in Gen. 1:28 and the very first command He gave to them was “And God blessed them (God puts His blessing on marriage, this is why we have a Christian ceremony and the Minister asks God to bless the union), and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth…” God blessed the union of His creation, one man to one woman and told them to procreate. God is no prude, His very first life lesson to the newly created Adam and Eve was to have sex. In furthering the marriage covenant we see in Gen. 2:21-25 that they should cleave one another and not be ashamed of their nakedness.
Marriage is God’s way of creating more humans who potentially will be a part of God’s wonderful Kingdom of God as adopted children and heirs of His love (Rom. 8:14-18). The Bible is full of comments on marriage and marital advice. “Cheer up thy wife” (Deut. 24:5), “Let her breasts satisfy thee” (Pro. 5:19), keeping warm (Ecc. 4:11), live joyfully with the wife of thy youth and do this with “all your might” (Ecc. 9:7-10), do not treat your wife treacherously (Mal. 2:14-15), honor each other (Eph. 5:21-33), love and submit to each other (Col. 3:17-19), newlyweds not to go to war (Deut. 20:5-7), finding a wife is a good thing and brings favor with God (Pro. 18:22), do not deny each other sex (I Cor. 7:3-5), those who forbid marriage are espousing doctrines of demons (I Tim. 4:1-3), Paul tells younger woman to marry (I Tim. 5:14), marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled (Heb. 13:4), elders in the Church are to have one wife (I Tim. 3:1-2), marriage is symbolic of the relationship between Jesus and His Church (Eph. 5:32). The wife is subject to the husband and the husband must honor the wife, together all with one mind (1 Pet. 3:1-8).
God designed marriage to be exclusively between one man and one woman. God did not create Adam and Steve, He created a women for the man. He designed marriage to “be heterosexual, not homosexual.”…”All marriages recorded in Scripture were heterosexual. Marriage between a man and a woman reflects the biblical picture of union between the God-man Christ Jesus and His bride, the church. Homosexuality is seen as immoral behavior throughout the Bible (Lev. 18:22; Ro. 1:24ff; I Cor. 6:9-10). …”marriage is an institution of God intended as an exclusive lifetime union between one man and one woman for the purposes of perpetuating humankind and enriching human experience.” Quoted from This We Believe pgs. 117-8 and 119.
God loves the institution of marriage that He created! We should not defile what God has made so holy and blessed from the very first week of His creation.
For further info on the subject of “Love” see CSCOG7 Staff Love.
