Marriage is God’s institution? No.
God created marriage? Not quite.
God is reflected in marriage? I mean; true but not we’re after.
God is a covenant keeping God (Yes!) and marriage is his covenant between a man, a woman, and the Lord.
Wait, I fell asleep just reading the title.
And on it went, like that, for a while as I struggled for the perfect title. But the infinite truth that, “To finish an article, you must at first begin.” crept in and I decided on the title you see above. BTW, the labels above this paragraph aren’t wrong. I fact, what the word of God reveals about God is that he is faithful, caring, and longsuffering. Marriage is a covenant, and our heavenly Father is a covenant God. He blesses those who obey and curses those who break with his terms for life as husband and wife. Marriage IS God in that all the truths we see in the covenant between man, woman, and the true God come from our Creator.
Marriage Is A Vow. To enter into covenant relationship as husband and wife, a vow is made. Marriage vows are the reciting of the terms of a covenant and prayer to enjoy the benefits of the covenant. We are in fellowship with God when we enter the New Covenant. We are joined to Christ as a bride to her groom. The blessings of the covenant are for those who make a keep their vows. Listen carefully to the words of Josiah who sought to cleanse Israel of great sin and idolatry by restating the terms of the Mosaic covenant. “the king…made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book.”-II Chronicles 34:31.
Marriage Demands Faithfulness: This is why marital unfaithfulness breaks the covenant between man and woman. In all covenants, there is one who sets the terms and another who vows to live by them. Jehovah is the great God above whom is no other. He sets the terms: love, respect, provide for financially, support in old age, share in children, love, and sexual fulfillment. Only a covenant relationship is strong enough to provide the foundation for the marriage relationship. Above it all, hangs faithfulness. Our God is faithful. He cannot lie or “go back” one a promise. He will always fulfill his part in any relationship. If we pledge ourselves to be faithful as God is, we will share in the divine nature. “The LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,”-Deuteronomy 7:9.
Marriage Demands Grace: We often, only think of grace within the confines of our salvation by God, “by grace you have been saved through faith.”-Ephesians 2:8. But grace is much more than the unmerited forgiveness of the guilt of my sins. God is gracious and forgiving toward all mankind because that is his nature. God is not combing through the details of our lives to find that one indignity on which to hang a sign that reads, “Condemned to a devil’s hell!”? Why would a Father who sent his Son to the cross as an eternal sign of grace and, “salvation for all people”-Titus 2:11, look for a technicality to send us to hell?
God is gracious to us and wants to forgive! This trait of God is expressed in I Corinthians 13:4-7, “Love is patient and kind…it is not irritable or resentful (Greek: does not count up wrongdoing). Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If you want to know what God is like on a soul level, look at marriage. The God who keeps his covenants, is the God who cannot lie. There is no doubt the most loving marriages are based on faithfulness. Our Lord is faithful and cannot change. He “so loved the world,”-John 3:16, to show his grace toward us. We are saved by that same love and his unmerited forgiveness teaches us to forgive and bear with the trifling mistakes of others. When we are faithful to our marriage vows we dwell in covenant with the Father of lights where we are one flesh in support, fulfilment, love, and we are gracious toward the shortcomings of our fellow saints, particularly the ones to whom we are joined as one flesh. We are one body. There is one Lord. To know him is to joined together and like God, to never be, “put asunder.”-Matthew 19:6 (KJV). Praise God he is revealed in the lives of godly husbands and wives.
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