The Best About Marriage

The defining issue of the 19th century was slavery. It took 250 years to change the hearts of the American nation and get it right--at the cost of 600,000 lives.

Abortion was the paramount moral issue of the 20th century. In the United States, we have killed over 56 million children since 1973. We have yet to stop this profound evil against our own progeny, but the tide is turning and victory may be in sight.

The great challenge of the 21st century will be preserving marriage. To our great shame, Washington is poised this month to become the seventh US state to redefine it. Many have prayed, made calls to our legislators, and spoke out passionately for God's truth about the importance of the marriage union.

This issue will not go away because many people--especially children--will be broken by the destruction of marriage. We must not quit, but be faithful.

Truth always wins out in the end.

I offer today some of the best words I've read recently on marriage. May you use them to strengthen yours--and share the truth to all of those around you.

Gary Randall of the Faith & Freedom Network

"Our understanding of Scripture is at the heart of understanding marriage. Marriage pre-dates civil governments. Civil governments have sought to encourage natural marriage because of its inherent value to society. Marriage is not an institution created by government. Nor is it an institution that government has the right to re-define or use for social experimentation."

"There are four main biblical references which refer to homosexuality. All are negative.

1. The story of Sodom-Genesis 19: 1-13 and a related reference to Gibeah in Judges 19.
2. The Levitical texts-Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13.
3. Paul's definition of a depraved pagan culture in Romans 1: 18-32.
4. Paul's two lists of sinners in I Corinthians 6: 9-10 and I Timothy 1: 8-11."

"Homosexual activists, including some pastors within the church, have redefined and attempted to marginalize these passages of Scripture as relating to something other than homosexual behavior, while working to advance an agenda based of "loving long term relationships" and "fairness and equality."

"Activists and some church leaders are teaching that Sodom and Gibeah was related to violations of hospitality, Leviticus is about cultural taboos, Romans is about shameless sexual orgies and I Corinthians and I Timothy is about male prostitution or the corruption of the young. This is false teaching."

"Their conclusion is that the Bible does not condemn loving long term, committed relations between homosexuals, therefore, marriage must be redefined in the name of social justice, civil rights, equality and fairness. And this is essentially the message that [political leaders], some pastors and other heterosexuals are putting forward on behalf of homosexual activists."

"However, the Christian rejection of homosexual behavior and so-called homosexual "marriage" does not rest on these Scriptures alone, but on a much broader understanding and the positive teaching in Genesis 1 and 2 about human sexuality and heterosexual marriage."

"The Bible clearly teaches that homosexual behavior is sin and that same-sex relations can never equal "marriage." Indeed, Jesus befriended the down trodden and marginalized, offering restoration and redemption. His path to completeness, however, was not to affirm the sin, but to identify the sin and then empower people to "go and sin no more."

"Vertigo is a Latin term- "vertere"- which means "to turn."Eliminating God from one's thinking, His Truth from one's belief, causes a person to turn to other sources for guidance. When there is no fixed point of reference---absolute moral truth--- life becomes confusing and conflicted. Depressing. Moral vertigo."

"With the elimination of God and His eternal truth, we can only turn to a belief system that is sited on the sinking sand of secular, humanistic moral relativism. This results in a state of moral vertigo. Dizziness. Stumbling. Staggering out of control. Confusion of the mind, conflict of the heart, and a crumbling culture. And broken people."

"Hearing loss is most always associated with vertigo. Who will the citizens hear? Who will the Legislators hear? Who will have an ear to hear?"

John Stott on Marriage (an excerpt from his book "Issues Facing Christians Today).

Heterosexual Gender: A Divine Creation

"Firstly, the human need for companionship. 'It is not good for the man to be alone' (Genesis 2:18). True, this assertion was later qualified when the apostle Paul (surely echoing Genesis) wrote: 'It is good for a man not to marry' (1 Corinthians 7:1). That is to say, although marriage is the good institution of God, the call of God, the call to singleness is also the good vocation of some. Nevertheless, as a general rule, 'It is not good for the man to be alone.' God has created us social beings. Since he is love, and has made us in his own likeness, he has given us a capacity to love and be loved. He intends us to live in community, not in solitude. In particular, God continued, 'I will make a helper suitable for him.' Moreover, this 'helper,' or companion, whom God pronounced 'suitable for him,' was also to be his sexual partner, with whom he has to become 'one flesh,' so that they might thereby both consummate their love and procreate their children."

Heterosexual Marriage: A Divine Institution

"Having affirmed Adam’s need for a partner, the search for a suitable one began. The animals not being suitable as equal partners, a special work of divine creation took place. The sexes became differentiated. Out of the undifferentiated humanity of Adam, male and female emerged. Adam found a reflection of himself, a complement to himself, a very part of himself. Having created the woman out of the man, God brought her to him, much as today the bride’s father gives her away. And Adam broke spontaneously into history’s first love poem, saying that now at last there stood before him a creature of such beauty in herself and similarity to him that she appeared to be (as indeed she was) 'made for him':
This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman', for she was taken out of man (Genesis 2:23)."

"There can be no doubting the emphasis of this story. According to Genesis 1, Eve, like Adam, was created in the image of God. But as to the manner of her creation, according to Genesis 2, she was made neither out of nothing (like the universe), nor out of 'the dust of the ground' (like Adam, v. 7) but out of Adam."

Heterosexual Fidelity: The Divine Intention

The third great truth of Genesis 2 concerns the resulting institution of marriage. Adams’ love poem is recorded in verse 23. … Even the inattentive reader will be struck by the three references to 'flesh': 'This is… flesh of my flesh… they will become one flesh'. We may be certain that this is deliberate, not accidental. It teaches that heterosexual intercourse in marriage is more than a union; it is a kind of reunion…. It is the union of two persons who originally were one, were then separated from each other, and now in the sexual encounter of marriage come together again…

It is of the utmost importance to note that Jesus himself later endorsed this Old Testament definition of marriage. In doing so, he both introduced it with words from Genesis 1:27 (that the Creator ‘made them male and female') and concluded it with his own comment ('so they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate' , Matthew 19:6) Here, then, are three truths which Jesus affirmed: (1) heterosexual gender is a divine creation; (2) heterosexual marriage is a divine institution; and (3) heterosexual fidelity is the divine intention. A homosexual liaison is a breach of all three of these divine purposes.

The Case for Marriage - National Review, September 20, 2010

"One prominent supporter of same sex marriage says that the purpose of marriage is to express and safeguard an emotional union of adults. But this is not the fundamental reason for marriage. The reason marriage exists is that the sexual intercourse between men and women regularly produces children. If it did not produce children, neither society nor the government would have much reason, let alone a valid reason, to regulate people's emotional unions. (The government does not regulate non-marital friendships, no matter how intense they are.)

"If mutual care-giving were the purpose of marriage, there would be no reason to exclude adult incestuous relationships from marriage. What the institution and policy of marriage aims to regulate is sex, not love or commitment. These days, marriage regulates sex in a wholly non-coercive manner, sex outside of marriage no longer being a crime."

"Marriage exists, in other words, to solve a problem that arises from sex between men and women but not from sex between partners of the same gender: what to do about its generativity. It takes one of each type of our species to perform the act that produces children. That does not mean that marriage is worthwhile only insofar as it yields children. (The law has never taken this view.) But the institution is oriented toward child-rearing. (The law has taken exactly that view.)" 

"What a healthy marriage culture does is encourage adults to arrange their lives so that as many children as possible are raised and nurtured by their biological parents in a common household. If this understanding of marriage changes, so much the worse for our future."

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We must make the case in this generation that we love people enough to not want them to hurt themselves by altering God's invaluable creation of marriage. All forms of sex outside of marriage (fornication, adultery, homosexuality, pedophilia, and bestiality) are personally and socially destructive.

Why? Because God  is the Designer of marriage and knows what's best for us.

Let's cherish marriage, strengthen our own marriages, and draw our friends in neighbors into the blessing of God-given marriage.

No matter how long it takes, let's keep fighting for the truth.

"Love never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:8).