Marriage

I know the subject of marriage may seem off topic. Most of the people in the homeless community are single. Many were once married and are divorced or widowed. Others, a majority single moms, have never been married. So why talk about marriage? The short answer, God drew my attention to it through conversation, a recent news report, and while reading the Bible.


I am friends with a great couple I will name Aquila and Priscilla. During a conversation this week with Priscilla about marriage I nagged more than I offered wisdom. Aquila and Priscilla are very different from one another, yet compliment each other. They have stood beside each other through several trials and demonstrated deep love in good times and bad. I met Aquila and Priscilla five years ago while they were in their mid-twenties. I knew them before they were together and have witnessed them grow and mature as individuals and as a couple. For the past few years they have lived together; first out of necessity, then out of love. It appears they are in no hurry to be married.  


Aquila and Priscilla are not alone. According to the results of a Pew Report released this week marriage is in decline. In 1960, 68% of all twenty-somethings were married compared to only 26% in 2008. Today, twenty-somethings prefer cohabitation over marriage. 39% of all polled believe marriage is obsolete.


So, what's the deal? Why is the concept of marriage fading? Deniz and I were married our senior year of college. Just like Aquila and Priscilla we loved each other deeply. A chapter in our lives was closing and a new one about to begin. A choice had to be made, travel together or go our separate ways. Marriage was the natural expression of our commitment and willingness to sacrifice for each other. Deniz gave up higher paying more prestigious job opportunities to move to Florida near my parents. I gave up dreams of working for an ad agency in Chicago. We never considered continuing into the next chapter without being married; it was the natural next step. Has the definition of marriage changed over the passed twenty years?  What did God intend marriage to be? Why is it important? Read the scripture below and see how corrupted our culture's current definition of marriage has become.

Ephesians 5:21-33 (New International Version)

Instructions for Christian Households

 ²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. ²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
 ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.


When I read this scripture this week I gained a new appreciation and understanding of its meaning. I admit while reading this passage in the past with my own cultural bias, I stumbled over the word "submission". Deniz has always been my equal; stronger in areas where I am weak and weaker in areas I am strong. Is God suggesting wives are less than their husbands? No, our understanding of submission and His meaning are much different.


God desires a deep intimate relationship with us. So much so he sacrificed more than we can imagine to close the gap. Jesus submitted to God's will and laid down His life for us, the church. Marriage requires similar acts, calling us to submit to one another and sacrifice our selfish desires. It is an invitation to experience oneness with each other and with God. To lead, a man must be willing to sacrifice his own will for a greater purpose. To submit a woman must sacrifice her will and follow. The deepest human relationship pales in comparison to God's gift of marriage.


What about the singles? Are they less than those who marry? No, Paul says the best choice is to remain single and focus on developing a deeper relationship with God. However, he acknowledges how difficult it is to remain celibate. When our pursuit of love endangers our relationship with God, marriage is the solution. Celibate singles without the desire to marry develop an intimacy with God in a equal but different way.


Words and ideas God gave to us as a pathway to greater understanding of Him and His love have been corrupted by our culture. Marriage, commitment, submission, and sacrifice have become synonymous with enslavement, oppression, weakness and death. We must fight to restore their true meanings. If we fail, marriage will become obsolete, a way to know God will be lost, and many will suffer. 


For Aquila and Priscilla I pray, may they develop a deeper relationship with each other and with God through marriage; through their oneness God would reveal himself to future generations; that love, commitment, submission, and sacrifice would be given new meaning by their example.

While I was writing this morning my bride came to me. She was singing this song. It expresses how powerful the gifts of marriage and family can be and how through these gifts our intimacy with God grows, enjoy.

   ______________

²⁰ “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; ²¹ that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. ²² And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: ²³ I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
²⁴ “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵ O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. (John 17:20-25, New King James Version)

¹ Now, getting down to the questions you asked in your letter to me. First, Is it a good thing to have sexual relations? ^2-6Certainly—but only within a certain context. It's good for a man to have a wife, and for a woman to have a husband. Sexual drives are strong, but marriage is strong enough to contain them and provide for a balanced and fulfilling sexual life in a world of sexual disorder. The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality—the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to "stand up for your rights." Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out. Abstaining from sex is permissible for a period of time if you both agree to it, and if it's for the purposes of prayer and fasting—but only for such times. Then come back together again. Satan has an ingenious way of tempting us when we least expect it. I'm not, understand, commanding these periods of abstinence—only providing my best counsel if you should choose them. ⁷Sometimes I wish everyone were single like me—a simpler life in many ways! But celibacy is not for everyone any more than marriage is. God gives the gift of the single life to some, the gift of the married life to others.
 ^8-9I do, though, tell the unmarried and widows that singleness might well be the best thing for them, as it has been for me. But if they can't manage their desires and emotions, they should by all means go ahead and get married. The difficulties of marriage are preferable by far to a sexually tortured life as a single. (1 Corinthians 7:1-9, The Message)

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1802/decline-marriage-rise-new-families