Copyright ©
2025 Michael A. Brown
‘So God created mankind in his own image, in the
image of God he created them; male and female he created them… For this
reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and
they will become one flesh. The man and
his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.’ (Gen. 1:27; 2:24-25)
‘“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the
beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a
man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two
will become one flesh.’ So they are no
longer two, but one flesh. Therefore
what God has joined together, let no one separate.”‘ (Matt.
19:4-6)
‘“For this reason a man will leave his father and
mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery – but I am talking
about Christ and the church.’ (Eph. 5:31-32)
When a group
of Pharisees came to Jesus and raised the subject of divorce, their query
highlighted the underlying tension between two schools of rabbinical thought
(Matt. 19:3-9). The stricter Shammai
school believed that divorce should only take place on the grounds of
infidelity and adultery, whereas the more liberal Hillel school believed that a
man could divorce his wife for any and every reason (cf. Deut. 24:1-4). In his answer, Jesus pointed them back to God’s
original intention for marriage ‘in the beginning,’ and he quoted to them the
well-known words above from Genesis 2:24.
Similarly,
when the apostle Paul was giving the believers in Ephesus some basic teaching
regarding marriage relationships between Christians, he again pointed them to
the same foundational principles in Genesis 2:24 (see Eph. 5:31-32).
This
verse in Genesis 2:24 is therefore quoted word for word twice elsewhere in
Scripture. When a verse, passage or
principle is stated on three separate occasions in the word of God – and there
are many examples of these – this repeated emphasis means that this principle is very
important and significant for us, and we therefore need to sit up and take
notice of what it says.[1] Such first and original statements are quoted
elsewhere later on as principles whose truth is grounded in experience, and
they also therefore become principles that need to be re-visited, perhaps
several times, over the course of a lifetime.
So, when it comes to marriage relationships in general, we need to make
sure that we go back to and understand the foundational principles that God has
given to us in his word. Summarised
in Genesis 2:24 is an explicit statement of the basic foundational principles inherent
to a marriage relationship, and they therefore give us an implicit
understanding of God’s ideal intention for this relationship.
The
all-round failure of westernised societies over the last several decades to
understand and respect these concepts, or to even be aware of them, has led to
disastrous consequences for couples and families, and therefore also for the
underlying fabric of our societies. Far
too many young people rush into experiencing pre-marital sexual relationships,
marriage, civil partnerships, or cohabitation relationships (of almost any
kind!) without seeking mature counsel beforehand, often even wilfully ignoring
their need for this in their headlong pursuit of pleasure or seeking fulfilment
and happiness.
This
western cultural expectation of the right to individualism has had the
consequence that there are now at least three areas in which many western young
adults (and teenagers) often do not seek mature counsel before they act. These are the interrelated areas of getting
married (or simply getting ‘hooked up’ in whatever way), having children (at
whatever age or stage of relationship), and separation/divorce.
Many if not most westerners are now completely unaware of the biblical
concepts which underpin the foundations of marriage and family, and the
lamentable and destructive consequences of this ignorance are present for all
to see. Widespread premarital
fornication with multiple partners (of whatever ‘gender’), unwanted teenage
pregnancies, infidelity and adultery, broken marriages, multiple divorces and
generational divorce patterns, ‘easy come, easy go’ cohabitation, serial
polygamy, the blight of fatherlessness for far too many children, and so
on. It has become very much ‘a wicked
and adulterous generation,’ to use Jesus’ words. There are few lies more potently destructive
than deceiving young people in particular into thinking and believing that they
can live without moral or sexual boundaries with impunity and without serious
consequences. What we sow, we reap, and
if we sow to please our sinful nature, then from that nature we ultimately reap
destruction (Gal. 6:8).
Such
widespread brokenness has made many adult people, both men and women, afraid of
committing themselves in marriage. As
pastors, we have known divorced women who have told us they hate men, because
of what they experienced in their marriage.
Conversely, we know of men who are deeply hurt and afraid of committing
themselves into a new marriage relationship, because almost everything they
had, and had worked for over many years, was taken from them when their
previous marriage broke up.
So
when it comes to the question of finding principles which give us a solid
foundation for relationships in general, we cannot base ourselves on the kind
of values which are inherent to a hedonistic, self-centred and utilitarian
western model of relationships. These
values have had as their fruit widespread brokenness and fragmentation both for
individuals and for families over the last several decades (as described
above), and, apart from lessons which are learned from hindsight, any ‘principles’
which arise from within the practice of such a broken model will themselves be
awry, erroneous and destructive. This
failed western model cannot furnish us with anything of weight which might
meaningfully help to lead us in the direction of building healthy and lasting
relationships in marriage and family.
That would simply be allowing the blind to lead the blind: they both end
up falling into the proverbial ditch. For
marriage and family to be successful and to reflect the kind of blessing that
God intends for it, then it must be built on the right foundation.
In
our present church, we have believers within whose culture arranged marriage is
practised. Others come from a cultural
background in which both sets of parents expect to play a significant role in
the joining together of two young people in engagement, whether this is a
romantic relationship or an arranged marriage.
We have had one non-western believing couple who are endogamous
cross-cousins, happily married and with a healthy child. Furthermore, while some of our westernised
believers have and still are experiencing happy and lifelong marriages, yet
several others have experienced the trauma of separation and divorce, with some
even having gone through this trauma twice over. Several of these believers have since been
re-married. So there is a mix of
sibling, half-sibling and step-sibling children having been born as a fruit of
these various relationships. Yet others
have been a partner in one or more cohabitation relationships, or in a failed
marriage followed by a cohabitation relationship. And needless to say, we also have believers
who have experienced bereavement with the loss of a marriage partner.
This
complexity of what is presented to us as pastors in regular church life makes
addressing this whole area of marriage and family a veritable minefield,
traversing which demands much sensitivity and wisdom. Although having been a cross-cultural
missionary for many years myself, and having studied cultural anthropology from
a Christian perspective, has helped me enormously to grapple with the
complexity of what we regularly minister into, yet this complexity demands that
we go back to square one and acquaint ourselves thoroughly with the basic
foundational principles of marriage as given in God’s word. Because these principles are God-given, they
are of universal value and can be applied to every believer regardless of
cultural background or practice. We can
then apply these principles into whatever situation presents itself to us in
church life when it comes to counselling and helping believers. As believers, we all owe it to
ourselves to go ‘back to the beginning’ to understand what are the foundational
concepts of marriage as given to us in Genesis 2:24, and therefore to know what
are the loving intentions and ideals of God for us in marriage. Much of what follows in the following blogs
is based on the principles contained in Genesis 2:24 and related passages.
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