We have seen that marriages serves several important purposes.
1. Mutual companionship.
2. To reflect the imago Dei and glorify him.
3. A means of rearing children.
4. A portrait of Christ’s relationship to the church.
THE MARRIAGE COVENANT
It is also critical to understand that the marital bond involves a binding covenant. Marriage, then, by definition is a covenantal relationship – ordained and instituted by God almighty. My late uncle, Pastor Paul Steele points out the seriousness of this covenantal union: “Because God honors marriage and because people agree to a commitment in marriage, the covenant of marriage is sacred and binding in God’s sight” (Paul Steele, Meant To Last, 11). The Lord himself joins a couple together in covenant love (Mark 10:9; Matt. 19:6). Indeed, this covenant is designed to endure until death.
The Bible describes this God-initiated union established before witnesses at the wedding ceremony as indissoluble. God’s plan is for a man and a woman to enter a marriage covenant that endures a lifetime. Jesus told the inquisitive Pharisees, “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Mark, 19:6b). The only event that may break the covenant is death (Rom. 7:2) at which point the living spouse is free to remarry.
We must jealously guard the God-ordained stipulations that concern the marriage covenant. To do any less is to dishonor the covenant that God has set before his creatures.
