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Marriage is the principle metaphor of Christ's relationship to the Church. Wedlock is a mutual covenant made between one man and one woman. Made by God before the Fall, it is a Creation Ordinance, the fundamental building block for the family and a binding covenant in this life, but not the next.
A very brief picture of the creation of man and woman,
God created man in his own image. In God's image he created him; male and female he created them.
However,
The LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."
In God’s order of creation, God states that it was not good for man to be alone. No animal cold be found to be a suitable helper and companion (verse 20), so God created one out of Adam. From the very beginning of creation God instituted this idea of a helper/companion for man in woman. God created the human race male and female, different yet the same, both with the breath of life, made in the image of God.
Note that this gift of a bride in this verse emphasizes the goodness of marriage. The Lord states that Adam’s singleness is “not good.” Waltke states that this way is more emphatic than saying “lacking in goodness,” which he states is the normal Hebrew way of saying that the situation is less than ideal. Thus, but God’s choice of words, he is emphatically saying that Adam’s situation is bad.[1] Note that in Genesis 1:31, after the creation of man and woman, God pronounced his creation very good.
However, male and female does not imply that God intended marriage to consist of one man and one woman, for life, for the sake of procreation. Some will argue that male and female are the two basic genders, or sexes, that God made, and man and woman are free to fall in love and be together with whomever one is in love. The Biblical witness makes it specifically clear that this is not the case.
After God created man and woman, the Lord brought them together.
God said, "Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind;" and it was so.God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.
The Lord put them together, they were considered married. Marriage was instituted in the Garden of Eden upon creation of Adam and Eve, and they were brought together by the Lord.
Note the oneness and union between man and woman. Robertson explains the wonder of interpersonal fusion involved in the marriage bond. He states, “The oneness realized in marriage relates the intimate process by which the woman came into being. Because the original woman was formed from a part of her husband, each subsequent man must leave his parents and cleave to his wife, thus constituting these two people as one.”[2] Moses (via the Holy Spirit inspiration) notes that woman was taken out of Man, and because of this, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. Because man and woman were created by God in a particular fashion, as described in Genesis 2, and did not evolve by cosmic chance and a lot of time, marriage is a particular bond between a man and a woman. God created marriage in his particular act of creation.
Note the significance and the intensity of the union between a man and a woman in verse 24. The Scriptures state and they shall become one flesh. This “being one flesh” described in Scriptures, Robertson writes, does not simply refer to the various moments of sexual marital consummation. Instead, “this oneness describes the abiding condition of union achieved in marriage.” Waltke also explains that God completes the man by the gift of a bride, not by placing him in a community, which is no substitute for a wife. The man and the woman complement and complete one another. Man and woman leave their familial relationships of their parents and, upon marriage, create their own family, close, but distinct and separate from their parents. This union is so complete and produces such oneness that Scriptures use this analogy to explain the relationship between the church and Christ. Paul in Ephesians 5:22-33 explains the relationship between husbands and wives in comparison with the relationship between Christ and His Church. The union between Christ and His church cannot be broken, so therefore the relationship between husband and wife is a union that cannot be broken. Two become one flesh, as Genesis states, and Paul states, in Ephesians 5:31.
Implicit in this interpersonal union as ordered in creation and which Jesus our Lord affirms, is the fact that two and only two may enter such a relationship. Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:16, and even Ephesians 5:31 all specify one man and one woman, joining together, to make one flesh. Two people becoming one. John Murray states that “the prima facie sense of Genesis 2;24 is that one man is to be joined to one woman and that the two become one flesh.”[3] We cannot interject the thought of polygamy, homosexual unions, or any other aberrant sexual behavior without completely destroying the text. Therefore, the creation of marriage unites two people, a man and a woman, together as one union, permanently.
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References
- ↑ Bruce Waltke, An Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007, 237.
- ↑ O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants. Philippsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Press, 1980, 75.
- ↑ John Murray, Principles of Conduct. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957, 29.