Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - June/79

Contributor - Sharon Van Beek

Title - Christian Home and Family Life - Part 2 - Why Should We Get Married ?

Topic - Family

"A responsible Christian person will respond to his total situation as he sees it in the light of what Christ wills for him and for all who are affected by his actions."

"God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one."

To become one flesh always remains a goal to be achieved in marriage in the sexual relationship as well as the total personality.

It is difficult for modern man to see marriage as the important thing because culture has conditioned him to think that sex is what marriage is all about. The Bible however, regards sex as only one aspect of the marriage relationship and not the most important one at that. If in fact, husband and wife are not providing each other with the respect, concern, love and security, which at times human beings need more profoundly than they need their sexual satisfaction, there is every reason to suspect that their sexual life will be disappointing as well. Marriage is God's way of providing the necessary ingredients which can enable two people to find the ultimate sexual pleasure.

If your love is not deep enough to become marriage-love, then it is not deep enough for se x. That's why the so called "trial marriage" is a contradiction in terms. If it is a marriage, it's a lifetime commitment, if it is a trial it isn't.

Marriage is compared to the union of God's Spirit with those who belong to him by faith (Ephesians 5). Your union with God involves commitment of your entire self for a life time. It is a public commitment (Matthew 10: 32,33). In the same way sexual union is only to be an expression of deep loving, lifetime commitment, publicly announced through the rite of marriage.

Today, we try to prevent things from going wrong by indulging in sex outside of marriage. The Biblical injunctions are not to prevent what might go wrong, but to protect what should 90 right; not because sex outside marriage is so bad, but because sex inside of marriage can be so good - and because you can't have it both ways. Once you have taken what is special and used it as if it weren't, there's no way you can make it special again. It is far more than sensual pleasure or a means of begetting children, it is the outward sign of two people who have joined themselves together for life (Genesis 2: 24).

The Bible says that sex is very special, so special that it belongs only to the one special love, that one person to whom you give so much more than your body: to whom you pledge your life. However, some people may say they live together with a kind of commitment and yet do not want to get married. The fact that the-v do not get married seems to betray some reservations in their commitment. Others may say marriages are not created only by the words of a preacher or a piece of paper. We do not always have a clear moral law at our disposal, but people are always called to responsibility. The responsible person is one who responds with human sensitivity and intelligence to each situation as it calls for a decision.

Our response has to be given in our own situation. In previous days couples needed only to make love, they then would be married. But today people cannot be responsible within previous cultures. They can be responsible only within their own. They have to do the humanly and Christian responsible thing in the advanced and legally complex culture of the twentieth century. How it is done in remotest Africa has nothing to do with a couple in Toronto.

In the Christian view, a marriage is not only a private affair between two people who happen to live under the same roof. These two people form a new unit, and as a unit their relationship to the community is not the same as it was when they acted simply as individuals.

If this is true, getting married is If couple's way of affirming publicly that they intend to accept the responsibilities of what their marriage makes of them; a new social unit within a society of such social units.

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