Title: What God has Joined Together
Subtitle: A
reconsideration of the biblical ideal for marriage with an emphasis on
covenants
Author:
Christopher Travis Haun for
http://rethinker.net
Draft Status: Basically complete. February 2008
© Copyright 2008 - C.T. Haun - This rethink may be distributed or reproduced freely
so long as no changes are made and no sale is made.
If there are 10,000 distinct people groups on this planet today, perhaps
there just as many traditions regarding marriage. The only common denominator across all these
cultures and traditions is that it has something to do with a man and a woman
and something to do with starting families.
But even this is in question in some circles today. When it comes to seeking answers to my
questions about marriage, this author is attempting to use the Lord Jesus
Christ as the key to unlocking the answers.
It is my hope and intent that my thinking about marriage are beginning
to follow his truth about marriage. With
Jesus as the authority I quickly note that he himself seemed to put the written
word of God above his own authority when tested upon a question involving
marriage.
When the Pharisees attempted to test Jesus on matters of marriage and
divorce, the Rabboni didn’t just offer his own opinion. He took them back to the original precedent
and paradigm. He brought them back to
the Torah, the foundational portion of the Hebrew prophetic Scriptures. He quoted to them from the earliest chapters
of the scroll we call Genesis.
“Some
Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to
divorce his wife for any and every reason?" "Haven't you read,"
he replied, "that at
the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and
said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to
his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are
no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not
separate." "Why then,"
they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of
divorce and send her away?" Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to
divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for
marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." The
disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and
wife, it is better not to marry."
Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those
to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born
that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage
because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept
it." Matthew
19
And to the ruling religious party, Jesus also set marriage
on the bedrock of the Torah.
“That same day the Sadducees, who
say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. "Teacher,"
they said, "Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his
brother must marry the widow and have children for him. Now there were seven
brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no
children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the
second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman
died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since
all of them were married to her?" Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the
Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither
marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But
about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 'I
am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the
God of the dead but of the living."
Matthew
22
The main reason I bring these two episodes to the forefront
of our attention is to show that Jesus derived his understanding of the
doctrines of marriage from the word of God written upon the ancient scrolls by
the prophet Moses. But they also serve
well to begin defining what marriage is.
The original model was obviously with Adam and Eve. A man and a woman are somehow joined
together by God. The union lasts for
their lifetimes—“till death do we part.”
It is already clear from these two passages that the proper marriage
union, as defined by God, as reported by Moses, and as validated by Jesus,
involves a lifelong union characterized by togetherness and sexual
faithfulness. Marriage is also
evidently not just between a man and a woman; in some way God must join the two
together.
Who Does the Joining?
Which authority creates the marriage? Many marriages are rituals conducted by a
member holding a priestly office—a Catholic priest, an Orthodox priest, an
Anglican Priest, a Mormon Priest, a Protestant pastor. Often at the end of an American style wedding
we hear the priestly figure announce as official the joining with words like,
“by the power invested in me by the State, I now pronounce this man and this
woman as husband and wife.” In this
popular scenario there are the twin authorities of the Church and of the State
which are either pretending to create the marriage or, as a more acceptable
function, making a public recognition that the union is valid in the eyes of
God, in the eyes of that Church attempting to represent their God, and in the
eyes of the State. From Jesus words it
is clear that it should be God doing the marrying/joining of the man and the
woman. The role other men play in this
is to “let no man separate what God has joined together.” And of course in the Adam and Eve precedent,
there was no priestly figure. It was
just God joining Adam and Eve.
A persuasive argument can be made from the Hebrew Scriptures
that Caesar (used here as an all-encompassing symbol for the State) has been
delegated some power from God and is to act as his proxy/vicar in some
ways. There is some warrant for saying
that church leaders are granted some authority to act as God’s proxies/vicars
in some ways. So it is not surprising
that priestly figures representing Churches and/or the State attempt to
represent God in the formation ceremonies of marriage unions. But it so far seems to me that in Jesus day,
marriages had little or nothing to do with the priests in Jerusalem. If this is true it is profound. The historical Christian tradition evolved
over time and created a priestly tradition in the third and fourth centuries
A.D. to mimic and replace the Israeli system of Levites and Priests. It also of began creating large church
buildings to take the place of the Jerusalem temple. But if the Jews of Jesus day did not involve
a Priest to officiate the marriage where God joins a man and a woman together,
then why should those who operate in the Christian traditions? Also, there is so far no documentation I have
seen so far to indicate that the councils of elders present in the town or
villiage played any significant part in the covenant.
This rethink posits (and hopefully substantiates) the thesis
that ultimately and primarily the marriage covenant is between a man and the
woman he wants to marry. God is the only
witness that is crucial; but other human witnesses of the covenant are critical—important
but not crucial.
The
Hebrew and/or Biblical Ideal?
Here I attempt to begin to delineate the sequence which our
Lord Jesus seemed to affirm as the ideal sequence for marriage. I say he affirms it as ideal because he
himself uses it as pattern and metaphor for the work he was and is and will be
doing for his own bride, the Church. I
do not offer this as the only acceptable sequence however. It is offered simply as the sequence which
our Lord seems to approve of and operate with.
The sequence seems to look much like the following:
1. THE REQUEST
When a man wanted to marry a woman the first real step
towards marrying was to go speak with her father (or the oldest male kin). There were negotiations. There may or may not have been exchanges of
gifts, dowries, etc. The main thing here
was that the father, who basically owned the young lady, would agree to
transfer ownership of the girl to the suitor.
2. COVENANT OFFERED
The father of the girl would basically act as the priestly
figure when the union was made official.
The father did not send a request to the Jerusalem temple to ask for a
Priest to come officiate the ceremony.
The father would perform the ceremony.
At some point soon after it was clear that the man wanted to marry the
woman and that the father was blessing the man’s request, the suitor would pour
wine into a cup and place the cup within reach of the girl. This seems to have been a rather private
affair. There would have probably been a
few witnesses to the happenings, but it seems that neither Priests nor Levites
nor the general public of the village were witnesses of them. The wine in the cup had at least two symbolic
meanings to the Hebrew mind:
A. The wine was a symbol for joy. Although drunkenness on wine was eschewed,
the general Hebrew view of wine was that it was a gift from God which gave
enjoyment to life. Presumably this wine
then implied then that he was inviting the woman to begin to share the joy that
marriage should bring. This was
basically his way of asking her to marry him and to accept the joy that the
marriage would bring.
B. The wine was red and known as “the blood of the
grapes.” It was also then a symbol for
blood. And to the Hebrew mind the
symbolism of the blood covenant would have almost certainly be recognized here
too. (But to those of us with
English/American minds, the symbolism is missed.) The offering of the cup also was understood
to be an offering of the man’s covenant to the woman with terms of lifelong
faithfulness and lifelong togetherness.
A covenant to the Hebrew mind was understood not to be just a pledge,
oath, promise, or contract but an unbreakable super-pledge.
3. COVENANT ACCEPTED
If she took the cup to her lips and drank, it was her way of
agreeing to marry him. If she refused
the cup, she wouldn’t be coerced. When
the woman drank of the cup the man was offering to her, she was entering into
covenant with him. She was agreeing to
the terms of the covenant. She was
agreeing to give him togetherness and sexual faithfulness for the rest of their
lives—until one of them should die.
4. THE JOINING
After she drank of the cup, the father would make it known
to whatever witnesses may have been present (presumably at least the mother and
family would be there?) that his daughter had accepted the man’s covenant and
she now belonged to him. God had at this
point joined the two together. The talk
in Matthew 19 about divorce actually applies to this stage of the relationship
that had just begun. It was debated in
rabbinical circles whether or not a man could divorce a woman between this
point and a later point in time when they would actually cohabitate with one
another. (Jesus said No.) After the two were living together the
question of divorce was presumably not debated.
The English mind here is tempted to reinterpret this as ‘engagement’ or
‘betrothal’—as if the man and the woman are now engaged to be married. The correspondence is not exact however. They are not just engaged to be married. They are married in the eyes of God, in the
eyes of the father of the girl, in the eyes of the man and the girl, and
married in the opinion of all acquainted with Jewish ways at this time.
5. THE GOING AND PREPARING
When the woman drank the wine and thus accepted the man’s
covenant, they were married in the eyes of God.
God had joined them together and no man should separate them. But surprisingly they didn’t begin to live with
one another at this point. Also
surprisingly, the man was not to take her off to a honeymoon suite at this
point and consummate the marriage by taking the girl’s virginity that same
night. Strange to Western minds, the
man then left. He would journey to his
father’s house and begin to build an extension or wing that he and his wife and
their kids would soon begin to use. Our
Lord seems to endorse this pattern by having done the same thing for us. Even though his own blood paid the bride
price and ratified the new covenant, he did not immediately take his disciples,
his church, with him to Heaven, his Father’s house. Instead he told them, “I go to prepare a
place for you.”
"Do not let your hearts be
troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's
house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going
there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare
a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may
be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am
going." John
14
This is interesting in that it may suggest that a man be
able to provide for a woman’s needs before he asks her to marry him.
6. THE RETURN
After the man had finished building a wing on his father’s
home he would return for his bride’s village.
The man, or bridegroom, would fetch his wife. There seems to be some element of surprise
and uncertainty about when the bridegroom would come for his bride. In a parable teaching about the future return
of the Christ, Jesus again plugs his future actions into the Jewish wedding
motif.
"At that time the kingdom of
heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the
bridegroom… The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became
drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: 'Here's the bridegroom!
Come out to meet him!' Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps..
. the bridegroom arrived. The
virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door
was shut… keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” Matthew
25
7. THE
CELEBRATION/FEAST/PARTY
What had been a somewhat private affair became a very social
and public affair involving all the friends and relatives of the two
villages. The celebration of the union
would involve feasting, wine, and dancing.
Jesus participated in such a celebration and this, in my opinion, is
another hint that he accepted this form of marriage.
“On
the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there,
and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine
was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine." . . .
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial
washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the
jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them,
"Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet." They did so, and the master of the banquet
tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it
had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called
the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first
and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you
have saved the best till now." This, the first of his miraculous signs,
Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his
disciples put their faith in him.”
John
2
According to Victor Matthews, in his book Manners and Customs in the Bible:
Those
social activities which existed in the rural areas centered around family ties
and seasonal religious festivals.
Marriages were celebrated with a wedding feast. The ritual included having the bride brought
to the wedding by the groomsman (Jn 3:29) while the bridegroom was accompanied
to the celebration by the bridesmaids (Mt 25:1-10). A steward was placed in charge of the
arrangements for the feast, orchestrating the festivities and parceling out the
wine and other refreshments (Jn 2:8-10). To separate these activities from other
gatherings, a special wedding garment was required for admission the feast (Mt
22:11-13).
According to Jewish-Christian scholar Alfred Edersheim in
his book Sketches of Jewish Social Life,
“The
ceremony itself consisted in leading the bride into the house of the
bridegroom, with certain formalities, mostly dating from very ancient
times. Marriage with a maiden was
commonly celebrated on a Wednesday afternoon, which allowed the first days of
the week for preparation, and enabled the husband, if he had a charge to prefer
against the previous chastity of his bride, to make immediate complaint before
the local Sanhedrim, which sat every Thursday. ... This circumstance enables
us, with some certainty, to arrange the date of the events which preceded the
marriage in Cana. Inferring from the accompanying festivities that it was the
marriage of a maiden, and therefore took place on a Wednesday... On "the
third day" after it, that is, on Wednesday, was the marriage in Cana of
Galilee."
8. SHE BECOMES HIS
Although the two were married earlier, there is an obvious
sense in which the woman doesn’t truly “become mine” for the man until the
bridal party has marched her to his house and they begin the life of full
togetherness.
God uses Hebrew marriage imagery to explain the time when
his bride finally becomes his in Revelation chapters 19 and 21
“Let us
be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made
herself ready.” And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen,
clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then
he said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of
the Lamb!’ ” . . . Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven
and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John,
saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for
her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying,
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with
them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their
God. 4“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more
pain, for the former things have passed away.” Then He who sat on the throne
said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these
words are true and faithful.”. . . Then one of the seven angels who had the
seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me,
saying, “Come, I will show
you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” ...
But what event or moment occurs which we can point to and
say at this exact point the man and the woman are married?
There are thousands of opinions about what exact event or
point marks the demarcation in time between unmarried and unmarried. What do the man and woman do, humanly
speaking, so that God joins them together?
An old African-American slave tradition seems to suggest
that when the man and woman jump over a broom together, that this ‘seals the
deal.’ (ref.) An ancient Tamil marriage ceremony has “seven
steps” the husband leads the wife through by the big toe. On the seventh step they are married.
One popular misunderstanding is that that it is a sexual
union which unites a man and a woman into “one flesh” and therefore into a
married couple. This is an
understandable misunderstanding; but it is a misunderstanding
nevertheless. One problem comes from the
Mosaic law indicating that in the case of rape, sex does not create marriage:
If a man happens to meet a virgin
who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall
pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he
has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. Deuteronomy
22
Note how sex here is related closely to marriage but does
not actually create a marriage. A more
powerful counter to this misunderstanding comes from John
4 where Jesus telling a woman that the man she is living with is not her
husband.
"I
have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband.
The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you
now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet.
Some might argue that the magic moment occurs after both the
man and the woman have said “I do” (in the English tradition) to one another in
the presence of God (and/or an ordained clergyman who supposedly represents
God) and some human witnesses. While
affirming that this is probably a suitable and satisfactory a look at the
mechanics and concepts of covenanting would help make this answer more suitable
and satisfactory.
The best my detective work can do to explain the heart of
the thing which, humanly speaking, makes a man and a woman into a married
couple is a covenant. We English minded
people don’t have much of a sense of what a covenant was. Many or most of the ancient Hebrew minds
would have understood its significance much better. All throughout the Hebrew scriptures,
relationships between God and peoples—particularly the more special and
important relationships—are based on covenants God made with men. So it is not surprising that the most
important relationships—and none is more precious or important than that
between husband and wife—should be understood in terms of covenants. The Lord spoke of his relationship to his
covenant people in marriage terms.
Please consider the following passages from the prophetic
scrolls of the Hebrews to ponder the relationship between covenant and marriage
Ezekiel
16 - An
Allegory of Unfaithful Jerusalem
The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her
detestable practices 3 and say, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says to
Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your
father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 On the day you were
born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean,
nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. 5 No one looked on
you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you.
Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born
you were despised. Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood,
and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!" I made you
grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most
beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were
naked and bare. Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you
were old enough for love [sex? marriage?], I spread the corner of my garment over
you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered
into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine. I bathed you
with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed
you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in
fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry: I
put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, 12 and I put
a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your
head. So you were adorned with gold and
silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered
cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautiful
and rose to be a queen. 14 And your fame spread among the nations on
account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty
perfect, declares the Sovereign LORD. . . 59 " 'This is what the
Sovereign LORD says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. 60
Yet I will remember the
covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an
everlasting covenant with you. . .
So I will establish
my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the LORD. 63
Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember
and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation,
declares the Sovereign LORD.'
Here it seems exceedingly clear to me that the God that
spoke to the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel understands that marriage occurs when a man
gives a woman a solemn oath and enters into a covenant with the woman.
16 [Wisdom] will save you also from
the adulteress,
from the wayward wife with her seductive
words,
17 who has
left the partner of her youth
and ignored the covenant
she made before God.
Here the notion of “lifelong faithfulness” between the
marriage partners is clear. It is
likewise quite clear that adultery is a violation of the covenant the woman
made (or entered into) with God as her witness.
Malachi
2 - Judah
Unfaithful
Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one
another? Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has
been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the
LORD loves, by marrying
the daughter of a foreign god. 12 As for the man who does this, whoever
he may be, may the LORD cut him off from the tents of Jacob —even though he
brings offerings to the LORD Almighty.
Another thing you do: You flood the LORD's altar with tears. You weep
and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them
with pleasure from your hands. 14 You ask, "Why?" It is
because the LORD is acting
as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken
faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And
why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your
spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. "I hate divorce," says the
LORD God of Israel, "and I hate a man's covering himself [d] with violence as well as with his
garment," says the LORD Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit,
and do not break faith.
31 "The
time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with
the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
32 It will not
be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,"
declares the LORD.
Again we see the connection between making a covenant and
being a husband. That Israel/Judah had
broken the first marriage covenant with God seems to help explain the need for
God, the husband, to make a new covenant with them. Even though the wife had been unfaithful and
thus destroyed the first marriage covenant, God opted in love, mercy, grace,
compassion, patience to reward the unfaithful with an even greater marriage
covenant!
Just as Yahweh entered into a possessive relationship with
the Jews by means of blood covenant, so too Christ has entered into a marriage
relationship with the Church by means of His blood covenant. The proper relationship for a Christian man
and his wife is patterned upon the relationship of Christ to his bride, the
Church. Again implicit is the idea of
covenants making the relationship.
22Wives, submit to your husbands as
to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the
head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the
church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in
everything. 25Husbands, love your wives, just
as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make
her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the
word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain
or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same
way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his
wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he
feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are
members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be
united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."[c] 32This is a profound mystery—but I
am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also
must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her
husband.
But
what is a covenant?
So just what is a covenant?
Covenants were common in the ancient Near East. Canaanites, Egyptians, Mesopotamians and
Israelites all understood them well. In
one sense they were just contracts or pacts.
There were several kinds of covenants.
The blood covenant was the most serious of them all. A covenant isn’t just a vow or oath or
promise or contract. It is intended to
be a basically unbreakable thing. In Genesis
15 Abram asked God how he could trust that God would ‘make good’ on all the
amazing promises he had been making to him.
God told him to gather the animals to be used in cutting the proper
covenant. Abrahm didn’t have to ask,
“What’s a covenant.” He knew all too well what it was. And after he had cut the animals up and let
their blood pool up he was afraid of the gravity involved in it all. For you see, when the two parties entering
into the covenant walk into the blood it seems that the likely meaning was that
it would be better for the two parties entering into covenant to be slaughtered
like the just slaughtered than to break the covenant. [I’ll expand this later.]
In the Bible, covenants were God’s way of establishing the
most important relationships with groups of people.
Here is a partial list of covenants God has made with men:
·
Bilateral covenant between
God and Adam?
·
Unilateral covenant between
God and Noah (and Noah’s descendents)
·
Unilateral covenant between
God and Abraham (and the descendents of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob/Israel)
·
Bilateral covenant between
God and Israel (through Moses at Sinai)
·
Unilateral covenant between
God and David
·
The New Covenant between
God and Israel/Judah
Covenant also seems to be the biblical method of a man being
related to a woman in the most important way.
Based on the serious nature of the covenant, the marriage covenant can’t
be taken lightly. And based on the
parallel between God relating to his people in a covenantal-marriage type of
way, we should take marriage more seriously.
For those who are trying to marry, are you committing
yourself to lifelong togetherness and lifelong faithfulness as if you were
ankle deep in a pool of blood? As if you
were saying it would be better for me to be slaughtered than for me to break
the terms of this covenant?
Can a
non-believer make a valid marriage covenant?
When I talk about a man and a woman making a marriage
covenant before God, one of the natural and predictable questions is whether or
not the man and the woman have to be believers or not to make a valid covenant.
This is a great question, I think. Must one be rightly related to God (by the
grace shed in the New Covenant and through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who
made that covenant to give us peace with God) before they can be rightly
related to one another? My knee-jerk
opinion would be to affirm that the two must be covenantially related to God
before they can be covenantially related to one another. For why would God care about the covenant of
two people who have not entered into peace with God? But so far my exploration of the New
Testament seems to suggest that my knee-jerk assumption is wrong. Consider these passages. . .
12 . . . If any brother has a wife who is
not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13And if a woman
has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she
must not divorce him. 14For
the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the
unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise
your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15But if the
unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such
circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. 16How do you know, wife, whether you will
save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your
wife?