Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Hebrew
13:4)
Let marriage
be held in honour by all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled.
Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our
hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
In the book of Genesis, we read: Therefore a man shall leave his father and
his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Our whole Christian understanding of marriage comes from these words.
Even when Jesus was asked about marriage he pointed back to this verse in
Genesis. He said that God who created
them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘Therefore a man
shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two
shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What
therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
Christ builds his teaching on marriage
on the book of Genesis. There are three things that happen here: leaving
father and mother, holding fast (or cleaving) to each other, and
becoming one flesh. Each marriage involves these three parts, and
without each of these three parts there’s something missing. It’s like having a
three-legged stool with only one or two legs, or a three-sided tent with only
one or two stakes. Leaving
father and mother happens when people
have a wedding. A wedding is where the community acknowledge the fact that
these two people leave their parents and join together into a new
family. It is God who joins them together, and who brings them together. That’s why Christian young people often pray
to God for a good, devout husband or wife—because God is the one who creates
marriages and gives the people to each other. Psalm 127 says: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who
build it labour in vain.
So marriage is the public and lasting
union of a man and a woman in the closest fellowship of body and life. It’s public:
weddings can be small and informal, but there needs to be a public recognition
of it. Simply deciding to move in together is not a marriage, and couples who
live together outside of marriage know that what they have is not a
marriage. They know this because at a wedding the couple promise to live
together and love each other until they die—and unless people say this with
witnesses, both the man and woman know that they are not bound to that
commitment. They know that in theory they can always just leave. That’s not a
marriage – that’s just an informal arrangement.
Also, marriage is between one man and
one woman. It is not between two men and it is not between two women. It’s also
not between one man and two women, or one woman and two men. Even if governments
change their definitions of marriage, God does not change his definition of
marriage. What we call “gay marriage” today is simply an oxymoron. The
relationships between men and women are completely different and work and
function completely differently to those between men and men and women and
women. This has not always been clear in every culture, and today it is
certainly not clear in our own. Christians also believe that this understanding
of marriage is good and beneficial for everyone: it is good, it works, it is a
beautiful and lovely thing.
Marriage is so good because God Himself
instituted marriage in the Garden of Eden. He came up with the idea.
We read: the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while
he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib
that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her
to the man.
We also read: [God] created them male and female. And God
blessed them.
Notice that the woman is not simply made
from another lump of clay just like the man. The woman is made from the side
of the man, and when God brings her to him, Adam says: This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of
my flesh. What a great miracle! Here is someone
who is just like me. She is a woman! St Paul puts this beautifully when he
says: in the Lord, woman is not
independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is
now born of woman. And all things are from God. So man and woman need each other equally, and have an equal dignity in
marriage. Men and women are equally precious in God’s sight.
God instituted marriage, because, we
read that God said: It is not
good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him. Marriage is the basis for all human community. In fact, marriage is the
closest fellowship where couples share their bodies and their lives. They share
a home, and their possessions, their money, their bed, their whole lives.
Married men and women have a particular fellowship which only they can share,
which no other relationship can imitate.
Also, God says in Genesis 1: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Marriage is the basis of family life. Christian couples should be open to
having children. Everywhere in the bible children are always called a blessing,
never a curse. It is not just the task of Christian parents to have
children, but also to raise them and bring them up in the Lord. Psalm
127 says: Children are a heritage from the
Lord. St Paul says: Bring [your children] up in the discipline
and instruction of the Lord.
Now, it’s true, some couples can’t have
children, and this is a great sadness for many people who have this struggle.
God still blesses these people in their cross and promises to strengthen them
with his grace and Holy Spirit in their suffering. It is not an excuse for a
person to get divorced because their husband or wife can’t have children with
them. Some couples also get married too late to have children. God still
blesses these marriages too. This is
quite different from couples who refuse children to be given them from God. In
Genesis 38, we even have an example of a man who refused to allow his wife to
conceive children, even though he was happy to use her for his own
gratification in bed. We read in Genesis 38:10: What he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to
death. Each child is created by God, and is
precious in his sight, and especially once a child is conceived, we must
remember that it is a precious creation of God, and cannot be killed.
There is also another reason for marriage,
which St Paul talks about. He says: Because of
the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife
and each woman her own husband. Marriage
is a help against sexual sin.
Now, God has glorified earthly
marriage—he has made it particularly special—by making it a kind of picture on
this earth of the highest and eternal marriage, the marriage
between Christ and his church.
St Paul says: A man shall leave his father and his mother
and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is
profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Christ is our bridegroom, and all of us Christians who are part of his
church, who have been born again by water and the Spirit, are made Christ’s bride.
We are not Christ’s individual brides, we are one bride together. Christ
only has one wife. And we share our bodies and our lives, like a marriage, with
Christ. We present our
bodies as living sacrifices to Christ, and
Christ says to us: Take, eat
and drink, this is my body and my blood given for you. The Lord’s Supper is a kind of wedding banquet, week after week, which
we share with our bridegroom, our husband, Jesus Christ. Christ was not married
to Mary Magdalene as some people imagine—Christ is married to his church.
At the beginning of every marriage, a
husband and wife promise each other that they will love each other as Christ
loves His church and the church loves him.
We read in Ephesians: As the church submits to Christ, so also
wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives,
as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
There is no place in a marriage for
wives running down their husbands and talking and gossiping about them to their
friends—that’s completely sinful and shameful. The best thing a woman can do
for her husband is to respect him, and to show honour to him, just as we
Christians submit to Christ, and respect him and love him and honour him.
That’s what “submission” means here. It doesn’t mean that husbands can beat
their wives. St Paul says to husbands: Do not be harsh with your wives. St Peter says: Live with
your wives in an understanding way, showing honour to the woman as the weaker
vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life. “Weaker vessel” here doesn’t mean intellectually weaker, it means:
“husbands, keep your muscles to yourself and use them on your workbench, not on
your wife.” And in Ephesians: Husbands,
love your wives as your own bodies. The
Qur’an allows a man to beat his wife, the bible does not. Muslim husbands can
beat their wives, Christian husbands cannot. Christian marriage is built on
mutual love and forgiveness, not on force.
And “submission” is not talking about
sex as if husbands can rape their wives, and force them. St Paul says: The husband should give to his wife her
[conjugal] rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not
have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband
does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive
one another, except perhaps for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves
to prayer, but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you
because of your lack of self-control. You can
see that St Paul gives fair and good advice: both men and women need to be
considerate to the other.
Now in the heavenly marriage, Christ
loves his church perfectly so that He gave up heaven and earth to seek her and
hold fast to her. He loves her exclusively and will exchange her for no one
else. Christ loves the church in a holy way and in order to make her holy. St
Paul says: He gave
himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the
washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself
in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy
and without blemish.
The Church also seeks to loves Christ
perfectly, exclusively, indissolubly, just as He loves the church. The church
also submits to Christ and reveres him. Husbands and wives should also love
each other in the same way as Christ loves his church, and as the church loves
him. Christian husbands are called to imitate Christ in the way he loves the church
and cares for it. Being a Christian husband does not mean dominating and
oppressing your wife, just as Christ doesn’t behave like that towards us.
The difference between human marriages
of a man and a woman and the marriage of Christ and the church is that human
marriages are only for a time and are ended when one person dies. St Paul says:
A wife is bound to her husband as
long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom
she wishes, only in the Lord. But the
marriage of Christ to the church is eternal and is perfect, because Christ is
perfect. The marriages of men and women are imperfect.
We sin against marriage when one is not loved
exclusively, or unchangeably, or when our heart thinks of or seeks another or
gives itself to another, or when the bond of marriage is broken through
adultery, or when one forsakes the other. Divorce is a sin, but the bible does
allow divorce, but only in certain circumstances, when a marriage is broken by
sexual immorality, or by desertion. In these cases, the innocent person is
free. (Now divorce is a complicated issue, and is perhaps the topic of a sermon
on another day. If you have some questions about divorce, please don’t hesitate
to talk to me about it.)
In most cases, what leads to adultery is
an unchaste heart and putting oneself in bad company. Luther summarises this in
the catechism: We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure
and decent life in what we say and do.
Jesus says: You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
So not only married people are
called to a sexual purity and a decent, chaste, and modest life, but also those
who are single too. Sexual purity in marriage is where a husband or a
wife hold fast to each other alone. But sexual purity in single people is
free from every man or woman.
Sexual purity inside or outside of
marriage is no better than the other. Single people and married people are both
treasured by God, and marriage is not better than singleness or
the other way around. Also nobody should be forbidden to marry, and forced
to remain single. St Paul says in 1 Tim 4 that it is a false teaching of demons and deceitful spirits to forbid
marriage.
It all depends on the person as
to whether it is easier to remain single or get married. Marriage is a gift
from God, and also singleness is a gift from God. St Paul, who was single,
says: The unmarried man is anxious
about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is
anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are
divided. So there’s a blessing in remaining
single, and there’s nothing wrong with being a 40-year-old virgin, even if
Hollywood producers want to make stupid movies mocking single people. There are
plenty of people who have lived long celibate lives and have accomplished great
things in God’s service. Virginity is a precious thing and is not to be thrown
away on the first thing that moves that comes along. That’s simply not Christian
love.
So, it is possible to live a sexually
pure and decent life by the grace of God, but our sinful nature and evil
thoughts often resist God’s grace, as they do in every aspect of our life.
It is a great help to people who are
married not just to love each other, but also to honour and respect each
other. Martin Luther summarises this in the catechism: We should fear and love
God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband
and wife love and honour each other.
When honour and respect dies, loves dies
too. Respect feeds love. Marriage without love and respect can never prosper.
Let's rejoice in God's word to us today
about the topic of marriage. For many of us this will mean a call to
repentance, and for everyone it will be in a different way. We might even think
of some friends of ours whose marriages or relationships have many problems.
Treat their sins as if they were your own, and bring them to your loving
bridegroom Jesus Christ, who treated your sins as if they were his own, even
though he had no sin. Christ is our loving husband, who loves us more than even
the best Christian husband or wife on earth. Week after week, he invites us to
his marriage banquet, before that time when we will enjoy that same heavenly
banquet forever and ever. And he gives us his body and blood to eat and drink and
even has made us part of his body in baptism, and members of it, not through silver
or gold, but with his holy and precious blood.
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, send us the
Holy Spirit so that we may lead sexually pure and decent lives in what we say
and do, and may all husbands and wives everywhere love and honour each other,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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