QUESTION: Everything after Adam and Eve and before Christ constitutes a way of life under the curse of sin. Jesus returns us back to what marriage is meant to be from the beginning. The OT also blessed war and genocide for the purpose of cleansing the land. Will you argue that’s a viable option for us, too?
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ANSWER: Marriage, as it was in the beginning, never changed “under the curse of sin.” I don’t know how you came to this conclusion. So, your question regarding war and genocide is inapplicable. A male and a female who are virgins or widowed can still marry, and it is, as it was designed in the beginning before the fall, although fleshly death wasn’t in the equation. If they remain faithful to each other until one of them dies, that marriage is exactly what God originally intended for a male and female. What Jesus was referring to when He declared to the Pharisees, “it was not so in the beginning,” was divorce with the Bill of Divorcement, where a wife could be sent away with a certificate to become another man’s wife. As Jesus alluded to in Matthew 5:32, this certificate “caused” her to commit adultery along with the man she married, which is against the original design of marriage. However, through Christ, a greater dimensional change in marriage exists between an eligible Christian male and female, similar to yet different from the design of the original creation. It is called a “Biblical marriage.” I allude to and explain the reason for that unique dimensional change in my chapters, “Biblical Marriage: A Christian Exclusive” and “Why Old Testament Men Had Multiple Wives.”
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QUESTION: There is A book titled “SACRED MARRIAGE: WHAT IF GOD DESIGNED MARRIAGE TO MAKE US HOLY MORE THAN TO MAKE US HAPPY, by Gary Thomas. Do you agree with this idea?
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ANSWER: Well, no! I haven’t read his book. I have only read some of the excerpts available online. My answer, however, is based on the logic of his concept. Everyone is always trying to figure out God’s purpose for marriage and to keep married couples from divorcing. I will offer my conclusion for its purpose after I state my reasons for not agreeing with the book’s premise. He states things that are good and proper, which hundreds of other books on marital coexistence already declare. Again, the concept.
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Firstly, did the marriage of Adam and Eve make either of them holy? It definitely turned out just the opposite. They were holy and became unholy within it. Along with this, did the marriages of the Old Testament make the couples holy? Is there any sign of it happening? Surely, if marriage were designed to do such a thing, there should be ample evidence of it. However, no such disposition is alluded to.
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Secondly, as I vividly and in many ways point out in my teaching on Biblical marriage in the book, if your marriage is defiled (fornicated) to begin with, how in the name of heaven could anything holy exist in it? Everything about the union is “worthy of judgment.” See my chapter “Biblical Instruction for the Married: Who Is Eligible to Receive It?” Of course, Mr. Thomas does not subscribe to my biblical teaching but subscribes to the false secular teachings prevalent in Christendom. So, he is ignorant of this truth.
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Thirdly, He is not stating a fact. He starts with a rhetorical question, “What if…,” conveying an uncertain supposition, yet many will view it as possible or probable. However, if anyone scrutinized the concept and its validity, the multitude of marital failures for various reasons would cast a huge cloud of doubt over his premise. Otherwise, if it were true, man, there would be a lot of holy people existing. He is doing what so many preachers, teachers, and writers in Christendom are striving to do: Desperately trying to convince people how marriage is sacred, discouraging divorce because “God hates divorce.” Yet, they are failing miserably because all their instruction and cajoling are built on a false, unbiblical secular foundation, where its tenets are not sacred at all, and without consequence.
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Now, my conclusion as to why marriage was created:
- As Scripture indicates, the female was made to provide companionship for the male and to be his helper in all he sets out to do in his earthly life and endeavors, not to help him become “holy.”
- God made them male and female, as He did with all of His other creations, for procreation. Instead of God constantly creating over and over on His own, He placed that power in creation itself to fulfill His will on earth. An example would be mice having been created to procreate to feed cats, birds, and other animals. The human female was created to procreate humans for God’s will in having “many sons.” And this occurs even in unholy defiled marriages, which have no bearing on the soul being created by them.
- When a marriage is “honorable,” and the joining is holy in Christ, it represents our pure joining with Christ as a member of His body, and the holy oneness that Christ and we will have with the new Jerusalem when He marries her, His wife.