A high school student asked me this years ago when I worked with Youth for Christ — and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The answer reaches all the way from the first pages of the Bible to the very last.
We averaged about 20-30 students at our weekly meetings. The students would often ask good but tough questions. One time a student asked me why should people get married? Why not just live together?
A very good question. I can’t remember the exact answer I offered her but over the decades since then I’ve been pondering that question and revising the answer. While I’m sure there are better answers by experienced theologians this is just one person’s answer to the question, “Why get married?”
First of all, marriage is really important to God because since the very beginning, marriage has been His idea because He invented marriage.
I think it was Adrian Rogers who pointed out that the Bible, which is God’s Holy Word, begins and ends in a marriage ceremony.
Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man aid, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
– Genesis 2:22–24 (NIV)
In Genesis Chapter 2 Father God creates Eve and then brings Eve to Adam so they can know each other.
This scene is repeated in every wedding ceremony when the Father of the bride escorts her down the aisle and gives her to the groom.
In the final chapter of the book of the Revelation, God’s word tells us, Jesus is coming again and He is coming for His bride, the church, and then taking her to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
So marriage is extremely important to God!
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.” (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s holy people.) Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.”
– Revelation 19:7–9 (NIV)
God also desires us to keep the marriage bed pure. I have noticed that couples who remain sexually pure before their wedding and faithful afterward tend to have the strongest, healthiest marriages. Another argument for marriage is that marriage is God’s example of the highest form of Love. The Bible calls it Agape Love.
Agape Love is the Love of commitment.
When a couple recites their wedding vows they are committing themselves to each other and committing their marriage to God in Holy Covenant. A covenant is not a contract which can be broken. In ancient times a covenant was an agreement signed in blood that could never be undone. It truly meant that everything I have is yours and everything you have is mine, forever. God really means it when He says the two shall become one flesh. It’s the modern equivalent of two pieces of metal being welded together in such a way that they cannot come apart.
The agape love (the selfless love modeled by God) continues to grow through life’s challenges through every season. It’s a love that gets deeper and stronger over time.
If I could give one piece of advice to young people, it would be this:
Jesus poured out His life on the cross for us — the ultimate act of agape love. He owes us nothing; we owe Him everything. In the same way, marriage calls us to lay down our lives for one another, reflecting His love to the world.
Will you love with that same commitment?
- Genesis 2:24
- Matthew 19:5
- Ephesians 5:31
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