Understanding the Christian view of marriage

From the Christian perspective, human marriage and sexuality are bound up with man, male and female, being made in the image of God—that is, created as the sons and daughters of God, made uniquely to commune with Him, to reflect His character, and to enter into His work, life, and glory (Gen 1.26-28; Psalm 8.3-9; Mat 5.45, 48; John 17.20-23; 2Cor 3.18; Eph 3.19; 4.13; Col 3.10; 2Pet 1.3). Thus when we look deeply into any aspect of marriage or sexuality or indeed of creation itself, we see that the fundamental purpose is never necessity, but opportunity—opportunity to share in God’s work, life, and glory while ever growing to reflect His character and to enjoy His communion (ibid.).

The creation itself is not necessary from God’s perspective, for God is fully blessed in Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John 17.5). The creation adds nothing to God (Rom 11.35-36). Indeed, judged by modern man’s supreme value of leisure—of being unencumbered by obligations and responsibilities—creation was a bad idea. Yet God created a world filled with trillions of things, all dependent on Him, imposing obligations and responsibilities in every direction, and He called it all “very good” (Gen 1.31). Thus we see that Jesus’ saying that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20.35) is more than a nice thought and a positive way of controlling human behavior, it is a description of the triune life of God Himself (1John 4.8, 16).

Marriage, procreation, male and female—these, too, are unnecessary, for God could have made humanity like the angels, all at once and fully developed. The real question is why did God take so much unnecessary effort? Why create humanity one baby at a time with nine months of gestation and twenty years of upbringing? Why require a man and a woman to come together sexually in order to have a baby? For that matter, why make men and women? And why require them to form a lifelong bond, one man and one woman, as the only proper setting for sex and children? The answer to all of these is, to give us as God’s images the opportunity to enter into His work, life, and glory, and in so doing to learn and display His character. This is what it means to grow up as children of God.

When we look more closely at God’s love, several things stand out. One is that He gives before receiving, as already noted. Another is that He voluntarily binds Himself to His creatures, and especially to mankind, forever, and He does so by oath and covenant (Gen 3.15; 6.17-18; 9.9-12; 17.1-7; 22.16-18; Jer 31.31-34). A third is that He loves and binds Himself to that which is fundamentally other—for there is no greater otherness than the difference between Creator and creature, yet God loves us and binds Himself to us forever, first in creation and then supremely in redemption (ibid.).

With this in view, we begin to see the privilege of marriage as God created it. Marriage is the opportunity to love like God loves—to give first, to love unmeritedly, to bind oneself for life by oath and covenant, and to love someone who is fundamentally other, not simply in the sense of another human being, but of another sex. Marriage is the opportunity to love someone who at the most fundamental level looks different than we do, who moves differently than we do, who thinks differently, values differently, needs differently, and gives differently.¹ This is why marriage as God created it is such an immense privilege, for being loved by God does not make us like God, but loving like God does (1John 4.10-11). Add to that the fact that we cannot love God precisely the way that He loves us, for our love will always be dependent on and in response to His (ibid; Rom 11.35-36). Understanding all of this help us see why seeking to marry the same sex is more than mistaken, it is tragic, and it is wrong. It misconstrues the love of God, misses out on the opportunity to love like God, and does not tell the truth about who God is and who we are.

There is yet another important aspect to the otherness of male and female, and that is the attraction of mystery and wonder. God intends the otherness of the opposite sex to produce a sense of mystery and wonder, and through that mystery and wonder to draw us to the opposite sex, just as He intends His own mystery and wonder to draw us to Himself (Song 4.1-9; 5.10-16; Prov 30.18-19; Judges 13.18; Job 9.10; Psalm 89.5-16; Isa 9.6; Col 2.2-3).

This helps us understand how things can go wrong in a fallen world, as well as how God redeems us out of our fallenness. In a fallen world, mystery and wonder can get misplaced. The mystery and wonder of God can be dislocated to the created order so that we end up worshiping it and ascribing to it the attributes of God (Rom 1.25). We see this in every form of idolatry, including the idolatry of modern naturalism which ascribes to the universe God’s power of eternal self-existence and creation.

In a fallen world, the mystery and wonder of the opposite sex can also be dislocated so that men and women find their own sex more of a mystery and wonder, and therefore more of an attraction, than the opposite sex. But dislocation of affection is not limited to sex, it runs the gamut of human behavior and experience, and it all results from the fact that in our fallenness we have become dislocated from the ultimate attraction of life, the triune God Himself (Rom 1.28-31). Our dislocations show up in each of us and in great variety. Some have impulses toward sexual disorientation, whether toward the opposite sex (e.g., serial partners, compulsive flirtation or fantasies) or the same sex. Some have other impulses—to lie, to cheat, to steal, to gorge, to hoard, to get high, to take advantage, to manipulate or control, to be impatient or angry, to be cruel, or to pity themselves—and many of us have more than one (Rom 1.28-31).

Whatever our symptoms, there is a sense in which each of us can say, “I was born that way” (Job 5.7; Jer 17.9). But properly understood, that is an admission of the depth of our need for God’s redemptive love and power, not a justification for our impulses, nor an excuse to remain as we are. To say that there is or may be a genetic component is simply to acknowledge that God has created us body and soul, and everything we do is a mix of both (Gen 2.7). But saying that genes or genes-plus-environment are the whole story is a different matter. That is a philosophical commitment driven by the desire to push God out of the cosmos, as it were, and out of our lives (Rom 1.21-23, 28). This always ends badly, for when we try to lock God out, no matter how sophisticated and “scientific” sounding our justifications, we always end up locking ourselves in—we lock ourselves in a panic room with no door knob to get out.

The answer is not our self-made panic room, but coming home to the God who made us and redeemed us. And coming always involves reorientation, first and foremost toward God Himself.  But any true reorientation toward God will always, over time, reorient everything in our lives—what we live for, how we regard and treat others, the things we do when no one is looking, and yes, how and where our sexual desires are channeled (1Cor 6.9-11).

In areas where our disorientations run deep, reorientation can be a belly crawl. That is true for each of us in at least one area that is highly personal to us. That is why Jesus called it “taking up one’s cross,” and it is why He insisted on it for all His disciples (Luke 9.23-24). But as Jesus told us, the way of the cross is the way of life, not just life in the by and by, but life in the here and now, a return to life as it was meant to be. Life always entails becoming like the One in whose image we were made (Col 3.9-10).