08 Sep Recap | One | Oneness {Part 1}

What is marriage? How are we meant to define it? The world around us offers many answers to these questions, making the truth about it less and less clear. The institution of marriage itself seems broken within our culture, leading some to reject it outright. Now, more than ever, we must recover a Biblical perspective of marriage as oneness, and more importantly, a practice of this oneness to match.

It is important to note that our purpose for doing a series on marriage is not to assert a position from which we may condemn the world around us. Any position that we take as a church is meant to clarify the standard that God has set for us as His people. What we should be primarily concerned with is practicing marriage in a way that is rooted in God’s truth about it. Our position on marriage will be clearer and more winsome to the world around us when we are able to “burnish the practice of marriage until its radiance dazzles the pagan eye.”

The Two Are United Into One

In Matthew 19, Jesus is discussing questions of marriage and divorce with the Pharisees, who mean to trap Him and undermine His credibility. Jesus’ argument centers upon two ideas that act as a solid foundation for a right understanding of marriage.

First, a fundamental truth about people: “God made them male and female.” Because God has made us, the purposes of our lives and every aspect of them can only be derived from God’s purposes in making us. The hard truth is that we do not have the freedom to define our marriages for ourselves. God holds a claim to our lives as the Author of them, and doubly so since He has paid our ransom (1 Corinthians 19-20). Therefore, the truth about marriage can be neither fluid nor relative from person to person, but only defined by Him.

Second, the truth about marriage is this: that when two people are married, “the two are united into one.” Marriage is not merely a physical engagement in a human institution, but also a spiritual engagement in a covenant with God and person, resulting in a profound union of two people. This union is binding, and a right practice of marriage is found in reckoning upon this oneness and willfully living it out.

Three Questions

1. Does your marriage find its primary purpose in God? Marriage is meant to display the intimate nature of the relationship between Jesus and His church (see Ephesians 5:31-33) – is your marriage animated by this purpose?

2. Does your marriage find its home in the local church? Living in Biblical community provides a husband and wife with accountability, care, and a wealth of marriage experience to learn from.

3. Does your marriage find its hope in the Gospel of grace? The only hope that we have in marriage, as in all of life, is that where we have failed, Jesus was able to succeed, and that what we have lost, Jesus will restore.

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Worship Songs from the Weekend

• Glorious Day: Revelation 11:15
• Whole Again: John 6:53-54, Mark 14:24, Ephesians 1:7, 1 John 1:7
• To The Cross I Cling: 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Ephesians 2:4-6
• Seas of Crimson: Isaiah 53:4-5, Matthew 26:28, Revelation 12:11
• O God of Our Salvation: 1 Chronicles 16:29