Earlier this week, I mentioned some of the affirmations about marriage that I presented in a sermon on Sunday. I started examining those affirmations yesterday, starting with the first one, the fact that God created humans to be male and female.

The second affirmation is God created marriage.

This probably doesn’t seem like a particularly significant statement. Yet many people around the world would disagree with it. Marriage exists in virtually every culture around the world. From a scientific point of view, it would be hard to argue with the idea that marriage is a human convention.

Yet Jesus looks back to Adam and Eve as the first marriage. God saw Adam alone and provided what he needed: a wife. In Genesis 2, it goes on to say,
“The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:23–24)

The biblical text sees the creation of Eve as the creation of marriage. In Matthew 19, Jesus emphasizes that connection:

“Jesús les contestó: —¿No han leído ustedes en la Escritura que el que los creó en el principio, ‘hombre y mujer los creó’? Y dijo: ‘Por eso, el hombre dejará a su padre y a su madre para unirse a su esposa, y los dos serán como una sola persona.’ Así que ya no son dos, sino uno solo. De modo que el hombre no debe separar lo que Dios ha unido.” (Mateo 19:4–6)

So as we talk about marriage, it’s interesting to see how different cultures and different societies deal with marriage, both in the rituals that establish a marriage and the customs that surround the relationship itself. But we must never think that those trappings define what marriage is. Marriage was created by God and will be what he says it is.

Affirmation #2: God created marriage.

Photo courtesy of Morgue File