The Foundation, Meaning, and Purpose of Marriage According to Jesus

SUMMARY

Marriage is the basic human social unit and the first human institution. It is the first fundamental reality that establishes a person’s identity due to the fact that every person has parents. To reach its fullest potential, marriage requires three elements
1. Sexual activity restricted to the marriage relationship
2. An irrevocable commitment
3. The involvement of one man and one woman
These three are needed so that every human person born can understand his or her existence to have originated in love and to be sustained by love. Genesis chapters 1 & 2 make marriage to be the social foundation of every thing that is or can be human. The DNA of every human potential is resident in the relationship of a man and woman committed to love each other, and this love and commitment provides the secure identity for future generations. Jesus affirmed this
to be the case, but made space for those whose life experiencmakes the acceptance of such a restricted understanding of marriage impossible. Nonetheless, the fullness of our potential as a race of humans can never be reached unless we maintain the Biblical norm taught by Genesis and affirmed by Jesus. The foundations of all that is or can be human is capsulated in marriage as defined in Genesis.

CONTENTS

             Where to Begin? Start with Jesus
The Foundation in Genesis
The Purpose and Meaning
To Be (God’s Image)
To Do (Govern)
To Know and Reveal (Love)
Conclusion and Application

WHERE TO BEGIN? START WITH JESUS

The first principle of interpretation I follow, as an Anabaptist, is that we interpret the Old Testament from the perspective of the New, and that everything finds it meaning in Jesus. Anything Jesus says about marriage will be definitive and binding when taken properly in context.

When asked about marriage, Jesus referred to “The Beginning.” [1] The beginning is before the infection of sin entered human experience, distorting and defacing marriage along with everything else in the world. For Jesus, and hopefully for us, the beginning is where the purpose of marriage and its meaning for life is revealed. The disciples’ question concerned divorce. In answer, Jesus referenced ‘the beginning’ to denounce divorce. Divorce was never part of the blueprint. But Jesus did not stop there. He said God made male and female for marriage. The question about divorce had no need for a comment on gender, and Jesus statement appears completely superfluous. But for Jesus it was impossible to talk about
the foundations of marriage without mentioning gender.

Then Jesus made one additional point that only Matthew records. Jesus bound marriage to sex and sex to marriage in the exception clause. This clause permits divorce, the very thing Jesus had just denounced. Jesus recognized divorce under one circumstance, the act of sex with another partner. There is a reason. Marriage begins with the act of sex, and sex with an outside person is the only thing capable of ending a marriage. No matter how hurting the relationship might be, two sexually bonded people are still married until death by virtue of the sexual relationship.

Jesus recommended celibacy for anyone whose spouse had left, even though he knew this teaching would be unacceptable to most people.[2] And then, surprisingly Jesus made room for those who cannot accept it. He said, “Let anyone accept this who can.” This fact may provide the very best argument for allowing same sex marriage. Not everyone can accept the strictures around marriage that disallow divorce. In the same way, not everyone can accept heterosexual marriage. Just as the church has divorced and remarried persons among its clergy; so also, it can be claimed, it should have same sex leaders. We will look at this again later after exploring what marriage is and is not.

One example of bad hermeneutics is the following popular argument for same sex marriage. Throughout history and in the Bible, marriage has taken a variety of forms, the most important example being polygamy. Therefore, many experimental forms of marriage should be acceptable. This logic is fallacious due to the false premise upon
which it is based. People who read Biblical stories superficially tend to assume that God’s blessing on a Biblical hero necessarily implies approval of everything the hero did unless specifically stated otherwise. Therefore, based upon the patriarchal stories, they contend the Bible approves polygamy. What is not recognized is that the commentary is implicit  in the story. Genesis does not moralize ortheologize. A message is implicit in the story itself, and the story
presents a mostly negative picture of the patriarchal system within which polygamy flourished.

When we compare the ideal of Genesis 1-2 with the realities of Genesis 12 the discrepancies become obvious. Genesis 12-50 highlights the problem and reveals a God who knows how to deal with it.[3] Jesus ignored the patriarchal stories and based his comments about marriage squarely on the creation account. If we want God’s greatest blessing, then we will seek the highest ideal without compromise. This is how Anabaptists handle the peace issue, and we should apply both the same rigor and the same charity when it comes to sexual issues.

In Genesis 1-2 there was the knowledge of good. In Genesis 3 there is the knowledge of evil. The knowledge (Yada) of good and evil is not mere intellectual knowledge, but the knowledge of experience. Both polygamy and divorce involve the experience or Yada of evil. Jesus came to restore what was lost and remove the infection of sin
so there can be the Yada of good alone.

The story of Jacob in Genesis displays the Yada of evil graphically in a polygamous family story, but the story ends with forgiveness and reconciliation. Only the Providence of Jacob’s God could midwife such a new birth of social reality as we see at the end of Genesis. The social foundations that separated the Hebrew people from their neighbors were laid securely in the forgiveness and reconciliation that occurred at the end of the patriarchal stories. The yada of good
conquered the yada of evil, and this created a different kind of family resulting in a different order of society that would eventually change everything in the world. By the time of Jesus, Israel was completely monogamous in its understanding of marriage. Was Israel consistent in application? No! But she came to be completely monogamous in
her understanding of the institution.

In conclusion then, the foundations of marriage are laid in Genesis 1-2, and Jesus affirms that to be the case. He gives the two chapters preceding the “fall” the equivalent of a charter document that defines the parameters of marriage as God envisioned it to be. “In the beginning” God revealed the purpose of being human, and it is a social purpose, not an individualistic one, and it is not built upon a theory of individual rights. It is a purpose for which God is the
cornerstone and the relationship of marriage the essential foundation, as I will show.

THE FOUNDATION IN GENESIS

Jesus said the bond between man and woman in marriage is something God joins. This is not a human social achievement. God gave this original human charter for the proper functioning of the human race. It is written in the human heart. Deviation from the charter puts the institution off track, and from Genesis 3 onward we
see the tracks going everywhere but home.

Marriage is founded on the nature and character of God as a means of God’s self-revelation. The foundation of marriage in Genesis by God as interpreted by Jesus is that marriage (1) is life long, (2) is sexual and exclusive to one partner, and (3) involves both genders. These three pillars are essential for knowing (yada) fully the
meaning of marriage and its purpose.

Any sexual arrangements that deviate from the creation charter in Genesis do violence to one or more of the above pillars, and when institutionalized in society these truncated marriages are still often called marriage. A truncated marriage system is still better than no system at all. It still provides security and order. But in order for us to
receive all that God built into marriage, marriage needs all three pillars to bear the weight of social demand that the complexity of God’s world requires for its management. To live in marriage fully as God intended would demonstrate that we are capable of governing ourselves, and until we can govern ourselves at home according to God’s command, we will never govern God’s world peacefully and in good order. This is ultimately an issue of “peace on earth” at the
foundation of our humanity.

THE PURPOSE AND MEANING OF MARRIAGE: TO BE, TO DO, AND TO KNOW

Genesis reveals three things about the purpose of being human. The first is to be the image of God. The second is to do the task of governing God’s world, and the third is to know God’s love. While not mentioned, the third is implied, and can be fully understood only in the light of the New Testament revelation that God is love. Love lit the fire that blasted the universe into existence as a place for life to live.

Human existence derives from love as an overflow of Love’s excess. No other human institution comes close to reflecting (imaging) God’s love, as does the mutuality of lover to beloved and the sacrifice of parent for child. This institution supremely demonstrates what it means to be truly human as a relational being in God’s image. It does
so at a level no other social relationship or human institution can even aspire to achieve.

Purpose #1. To Be God’s Image

Genesis 1 declared humans to be the image of God. An image is a reflection or a copy that is not the real thing, but which reveals something significant about the object it reflects. The purpose of being human is to reveal the living, loving sovereignty of God over everything on earth.

God did not create 6 billion images of himself. God created only one, and that is the totality of the human race. One humanity, consisting of many persons, is by design the reflection of the one Trinitarian God. The sinful shattering of the mirror that reflects God results in polytheism; so that you have your god and I have mine. In order to be the indivisible image of God, humanity must be one. It is true that in Christ we are made one, but the work of Christ is remedial. At the
beginning humanity, in its entirety, was designed to be one, and the smallest social unit that contains all of humanity is a man and a woman committed to each other in love. This is what Genesis 2 reveals and Jesus affirms.

The FIRST PILLAR of marriage is the male/female relationship. Male and female is the only thing mentioned in Genesis 1 about what makes humans the image of God.  The DNA of all that is or can be human is resident in the relationship of a man and a woman who have become one, and this union is the essential building block of social order. This is where western individualism falls down and personal rights reach their appropriate limit. Two persons of the same gender do reflect the relationality of God, but cannot fully be the image of God because half of humanity is absent.
In this case the first and primary of the three pillars is missing. This is what Genesis 1:26-28 tells us.

The SECOND PILLAR of marriage, the sexual relationship, makes the invisible visible. The oneness of God who contains both male and female in his being is reflected and made visible in physical union by the couple. A spiritual bond is sealed in the hearts of two persons who know each other physically without shame because they have complete peace with God about their sexuality. “Naked and unashamed” in Genesis 2 should be seen (among other things) as a sexual act. Seen in this way marriage is truly holy.

The THIRD PILLAR of marriage is the irrevocable commitment. This reflects the eternal faithfulness of God. When one person is sexually bonded to one other person and then moves to a new sexual relationship with another person, the bond is adulterated, creating a confusion of priorities in one’s identity.[4] A community of 100% faithful
spouses life long will have little trouble knowing and believing the faithfulness of God.

Some critics will suggest my explanation leaves no room for single people, but that is false. Every person shares in being the image of God because every person has parents, and thereby shares a human identity. No one can be the image of God alone. Only an institution that represents both sides of humanity, male and female, life long, can fully and faithfully be God’s image.

Purpose # 2: To Reveal God’s Authority by Governing God’s World in God’s Name

Genesis 1 declares humans were made to govern. In Genesis 2 the Adam initiates the human enterprise of governing. Science and industry begin in Genesis 2. The Adam cultivates the ground (industry) and classifies the animals (science). Both male and female are present in this action, as there has been no differentiation as yet. But unity is only uniformity without differentiation, and gender separation is needed for real difference. When the woman appears, the man recognizes their shared identity and confers his name upon her, and the woman participates equally in the work of humanity, which is to continue the industry and science the Adam began.

In the time of Moses throughout the ancient world, and continuing even until the 20th century in some places (like Japan), the king was thought to be a god, the son of a god, or the image of god. The king ruled by the power of his mighty Word. When the king said, “Let there be a city,” the slaves leaped into action and a city was built. When the king said, “Let there not be a city,” the soldiers leaped into action and the city disappeared. Genesis 1 is a politically revolutionary chapter in that it subtly challenges the king, suggesting he is not the image of God. The king may reflect the power of God, but in no way does he reveal the character of God.

By contrast in Genesis 2 we learn the true image of God is the love of a man and woman who discover themselves in each
other, become one to create life and populate the earth, building gardens together that fill the earth. This is what God  created to be his self-portrait, his image. When the devils of hell enter the true “City of God,” they will see God’s portrait on every gate, in every window, and on every street corner, and they will flee screaming with all the devils described in Luke 4:41, “YOU are the Son of God!”

Purpose # 3. To Know and Reveal God’s love

The image of God must reflect clearly what God is, and God is love. Genesis 2 introduces love. Love is creative and life giving. To be born of parents in love with each other is God’s design for children. It is not the love of parents for children, but rather the mutual, self-giving love of parents for each other that reveals most clearly the character of God and the love God is. It tells children their existence derives from the overflow of love, and thereby points to the eternal foundations of life in the excess of God’s love.1

Marriage provides the model for understanding God’s eternal purpose in Christ. Just as the man left his father and mother in Genesis to become one with his wife; so also Jesus left the Father in heaven to become one with his church. While there are no weddings in heaven, there will always be marriage—the marriage of the Lamb with his
bride, the church, forever.

Corollary to Purpose #3: To Give Life

God blessed the original man and woman so they would multiply and fill the earth. This is essential for properly governing God’s world. Human reproduction in marriage reflects the very creative power that brought life into existence at the beginning. Today most educated people are fearful of population growth, and in China  draconian measures have been taken to restrict this growth. It is true that in the past human greed and exploitation of the earth for selfish purposes has resulted in overpopulation and social decline, but no one on earth knows how large a population the earth might comfortably support in a world dedicated in love to God’s glory rather than to mere human pride of accomplishment and domination. Also, no one knows what kinds of self restraint might voluntarily and
naturally be practiced by couples in union with God.

One may raise the objection that according to this model, a child born of a loveless union can never know
God’s love. My answer is that God also provides a community of families so that wherever marriage falls
down in one particular case, there will be by design other examples of love in the environment through
which God may still be revealed. Woe to the child born in a community where all such opportunity has
been obliterated.

CONCLUSION AND APPLICATION

So what do we do with Jesus’ statement in Matthew 19 where he said, “It is not everyone who can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is granted?” Apparently Jesus has made room for deviation from the healthy marriage model Genesis prescribes. Those who have not this grace are still accepted and should not be despised, but leadership is an entirely different thing. The complexities of qualifications for leadership are beyond the scope of this writing, but in principle, anyone living outside the Genesis pattern Jesus endorsed should certainly not be ordained or formally placed
into significant roles of leadership, no matter what their “gifting” otherwise. God will provide other ways to use their gifts, and we should help them find these ways. But the persons who are in charge of governing God’s church need to model the ideal.[5]

Elizabeth Moberly (Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic?, Cambridge: James Clarke, 2001) has defined homosexual desire as the eroticisation of unmet childhood need. I would suggest that heterosexual deviance from the Genesis charter also comes from the eroticisation of unmet needs. If marriage is the essential foundation of God’s relational social order for revealing himself, that this is where Satan would launch his fiercest attack on the human
race. History does provide plenty of evidence that this is the case. Satan has been highly successful.

Only repentance before the cross can reverse what Satan has done to us, and this repentance is required of us all. When God is allowed to meet all our needs, God sublimates and redirects our natural drives into channels of creative productivity and delight unimaginable by the person driven only by natural desire. When we let go of God’s
best we limit what God can do with our lives and we limit the blessing God can give us. Unless we uphold all three pillars of marriage in both teaching and practice, society will lack its premier social model for imagining what God is really like. God reveals himself through us, his holy image.

In my lifetime in my country I’ve seen the foundations of marriage destroyed and the purpose of marriage rejected in one generation. Two of the three essential pillars of marriage are essentially gone, and the third is under threat. These pillars are again
1. Sexual activity exclusive to marriage
2. The commitment of marriage irrevocable until death, and
3. The partnership consisting of one man and one woman.
The dismantling of these pillars has been chronological as follows:
1. In the 60’s the exclusivity pillar fell, making relations between any consenting adults the acceptable social norm.  Adultery between married partners has been frowned upon, but is mostly treated as a joke, whether one watches the media or listens to office gossip.
2. By the 90’s the commitment had become easily revocable for any reason. One foreign student whom I took to visit a Mennonite community in rural Minnesota exclaimed in great surprise, “You mean Americans live in (two parent) families?!” At a Minneapolis high school recently one student expressed surprise upon hearing that someone’s marriage had passed 35 years. This student said, “How could you stand to live with one person that long?” This is the place
we have arrived.
3. With pillars # 1 & 2 gone, we now progressively advance towards the destruction of pillar #3 as well. Today we hear the rumblings on the street of the demand for polygamy, polyandry, and “committed” poly-amorous relationships of multiple partners to be legally permitted on the basis of personal preference and free choice as a human right. This threat is not fantasy. It is real, as the August 3, 2012 broadcast of Twenty Twenty on CBS television news demonstrated with their presentation on a polygamist family going public. This amounts to the eventual deconstruction of both gender and number from pillar #3.

Marriage today, then, would appear to be nothing more than a legal arrangement that provides certain financial benefits for those who wish to choose these benefits. The essential question for Christians is not homosexuality, but marriage. Any theory of human rights that fails to respect the Biblical framework of marriage destroys the very foundations of what it means to be human in God’s image. But please read on…

MY OWN PERSONAL APPLICATION WHICH OTHERS MAY OR MAY NOT WANT TO CONSIDER

Jesus said that God joins the marriage. Therefore, government has no power to either define or create marriage. So long as government issues a license only to recognize and bless what God has done, government honors God, but to give government the authority that belongs to God in this matter is idolatry. The state will face divine judgment whenever it tries to be God. I, for one, as a minister have decided I will not be an agent of the state in this matter. The marriage
of one man and one woman witnessed by the community in the presence of God is the real wedding, and in our time and place that is all that should be necessary in the church.

A civil ceremony is not wrong for Christians who want to be recognized in that way, but let the agents of the state do the state’s business, and let the servants of the church do God’s business God’s way.

POST SCRIPT ON EGALITARIAN RELATIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE AND SAME SEX RELATIONSHIPS

A number of years ago I was amazed to read a Chinese anthropologist’s study of the Lahu people in southwest China where seemingly there were no specific male or female roles in how work got done. In this group all tasks, whether child rearing, house keeping, or field work, were shared equally. Negatively, there was no place in this society for single people, but the notion of homosexual attraction was completely unknown and incomprehensible to this group. They had no vocabulary for it, and in their view it was an impossibility. (Shan Shan Du, Chopsticks only Work in Pairs, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). This study in part contributed to my view that homosexual orientation is a curse society places upon a percentage of its children through it own sexual distortions and expectations, just as a drinking mother may induce fetal alcohol syndrome into her child’s life. Homosexuals are not to be condemned any more than other victims of society, but it does not help to make the unhelpful patterns normative.

ENDNOTES
[1] Matthew 19 and Mark 10.
[2] Jesus also went on to say that he understood how difficult this
teaching would be for most people, and intimated that most would not
be able to accept it.
[3] The principal lesson God taught Abraham and Sarah was that the
promise of God for an heir was for the couple, and not for the man
only. Apart from the long wait for a son and the affair with Hagar, this
lesson could not have been learned. Neither Jacob nor Laban
understood this reality about marriage, but the horrors of life in
Jacob’s bigamist family make the point anew. God does know how to
break the hard shells of unbelief for those willing to accept the pain of
God’s discipline.
[4] Identity here is defined as a prioritized network of relationships in
which a person knows oneself and is known by others. The spouse is
the first priority. An excellent resource on this topic is Bonding,
Relationships in the Image of God, by Donald Joy.
[5] This is the way African churches today in general are handling the
men in polygamous relationships who come to faith in Christ.