What is Marriage : Mafundisho katika Imani yangu.

[Masikini_Jeuri]

Contrary to much contemporary thought and teaching, marriage is not a human expedience. It wasn’t devised by man, somewhere along the way in the course of human history, as a convenient way of sorting out responsibilities for children, etc. Instead, God tells us that He Himself established, instituted, and ordained marriage at the beginning of human history (Gen. 2:3).


God designed marriage as the foundational element of all human society. Before there was (formally speaking) a church, a school, a business instituted, God formally instituted marriage, declaring, “A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” It is important to teach this fact to young people.


If marriage were of human origin, then human beings would have a right to set it aside. But since God instituted marriage, only He has the right to do so. He has told us that marriage will not be dispensed with until the life to come. Nor can marriage be regulated according to human whims. Marriage as in institution (which includes individual marriages, of course) is subject to the rules and regulations set down by God. If He had said nothing more about marriage after establishing it, we might have proceeded to draw up such rules on our own. But He did not leave us in the dark; God has revealed His will about marriage in the pages of the Bible.

Individuals may marry, be divorced and be remarried only if, when and how He says they may without sinning. We must, therefore, study and abide by the biblical principles for marriage. Neither a private individual nor the state has any competence to decide who may be married (or divorced) and on what basis. The state has been given the task of keeping orderly records, etc., but it has no right (or competence) to determine the rules for marriage and for divorce; that prerogative is God’s. He has revealed His will on these matters in the Scriptures which are expounded and applied by the church.


Secondly, marriage is a foundational institution. We have seen that it was the first to institute formally as a sphere of human society. Society itself in all its forms depends on marriage. The attack on marriage, experienced today, is actually an attack on society itself (and on God, who built society on marriage). Marriage is also the foundation upon which the church as God’s special society rests. This covenantal community is weakened as the “house” or “household” is weakened. (The “house” in Scripture is the smallest unit of society. It is a group of persons, living under the same roof, under one human head, and is a separate decision-making unit.) This “house” (equivalent to our “family,” but a richer concept) is a unit with which God deals as a unit.

Source: Facebook_ What is Marriage

 

[Masikini_Jeuri]

It is important to understand that marriage must not be equated with sexual relations. A sexual union is not (as some who study the Bible carelessly think) to be equated with the marriage union. Marriage is a union that implies sexual union as a central obligation and pleasure (1 Cor. 7: 3-5), it is true, but sexual union does not necessarily imply marriage. Marriage is different from, bigger than, and inclusive of sexual union (just as it is inclusive of the obligation to propagate the race), but the two are not the same.


If marriage and sexual union were one and the same, the Bible could not speak about illicit sexual intercourse; instead (in referring to fornication) it would talk about informal marriage. Adultery would no longer be adultery, but informal bigamy (or polygamy). But the Bible does speak of sexual sin outside of marriage and doesn't give the slightest credence to the notion that adultery is bigamy. Throughout, the Scriptures refer to marriage, in itself, as something other than and distinct from sexual union (licit or illicit). The words marriage and fornication (porneia, which means any, and all sexual sin) cannot be equated.