The purpose of marriage is more than God bringing a man and a woman together to rule – the purpose of marriage is to bring a man and a woman together to relate sexually.
Back to Genesis. Let’s look at the flesh! The women is taken from the flesh of the man (2:21), to become flesh of his flesh (2:23) and to then join together as one flesh (2:24), naked and not ashamed (2:25) – this is sexual and deeply relational.
We can dig deeper when thinking about the purpose of marriage.
Back to our verse in Genesis – It is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. (Gen 2:18)
The context in Genesis 1 reminds us that male and female are made in the image of God. Should we pause and consider what this means for marriage?
What is the purpose of marriage? Why does it exist?
The Lord said, ‘It is not good for a man to be alone’; I will make a helper fit for him’ (Gen 2:18)
The common reading of this verse implies that it is not good for a man to be lonely. – as if the night life for Adam in the garden was not great and there was nothing good on Eden Cable TV! But is that all that going on here? Man needed some cheering up?
The nature of marriage has been under attack since the Fall – but particularly in the last 100 years as culture norms have challenged Biblical patterns for marriage.
Western society used to think biblical marriage was a good idea, and that divorce, adultery, pre-marital sex, cohabitation; serial monogamy and same sex marriage were bad ideas.
‘Marriage: Will It Complete Me?’ by Geoff Lin is now available: http://bit.ly/1KtR10O
Thanks for the question.
Your question however is not really answered by the passage. Notice that Ephesians 5:21-33 is using an exclusive relationship to illustrate a point for the whole church. This passage is not saying ‘Women, submit to Men’ or ‘Men, love Women’. It is saying ‘Wives, submit to the husband you have married’ (my paraphrase) or ‘Husbands, love the wife you have married’ (my paraphrase again).
Good question. And here is a brief answer that by no means considers all the ‘issues’.
Australia’s polices and treatment of asylum seekers is not good (although I can recognise it is not a simple issue). The way that we are handling this humanitarian crisis (in my view) is driven more by protecting our sovereign rights (mostly our level of wealth) than it is driven by compassion for those who are vulnerable – for the myriad of reasons that they are more vulnerable.
Over the weekend, in a 5-4 ruling the US High Court ruled in favour of recognizing marriages between people of the same sex. This means that the 14 states which had not previously ruled this way would now be forced to allow same-sex marriage.
This makes me feel really sad.
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