Marriage Helps #8
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge (Hebrews 13:4).
Here is a double directive with a supporting motivation–two words of command with a warning attached. First, marriage must be prized. Our regard of marriage must be right. Second, marriage must be kept pure. Our enjoyment of marriage must be undefiled. The motivating reason is really a sober warning: God will judge those who do otherwise.
“Marriage is to be highly prized, and (synonymously, or rather more specifically) married couples are to keep themselves exclusively for one another, or incur God’s judgment (Ellingworth).”
The first directive is, “Let marriage be held in honor among all,” literally, “Precious [is to be] marriage among all.” In order to prize marriage as precious we need an understanding of God’s design revealed in the beginning in Genesis 1:26-1:31 and 2:18-2:25.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). The woman was made to come alongside of him and assist him in his God-ordained calling. More than simply to provide “good company”, she is to share with him life and its responsibilities. She was made to be a “helper suitable [corresponding to] him,” literally “a helper like what is in front of him”, matching him, complementing him, supplementing him. She was made “for him”, to be his companion and his help, to advise, assist and support.
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib, which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, ‘this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’ (Genesis 2:21-23). God makes the woman from the man, and, like a father with a young bride, presents the divinely prepared “complement and companion” to the man, upon which grateful poetry pours from Adam’s lips, expressing solidarity and authority.
For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). With this divine conclusion the Lord God institutes a new relationship of leaving and cleaving, leaving prior commitments, obligations and loyalties, cleaving to one another, holding fast to one another. Marriage establishes new and superior obligations between husband and wife in a relationship of purity and permanence, a relationship to which prior relationships are not so much terminated, as they are subordinated. In marriage two people become one new person in a shared flesh “oneness”.
