God's Design for Marriage

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.” (rf. Eph. 5:31–32 NASB)

            When my wife and I got married, we were both blessed to have had sets of parents who provided to us examples of what it meant to be committed to one another in marriage. Neither set would have admitted to perfection in their relationships, having struggled and committed many mistakes along the way, learning and growing together through the journey. However, their respective commitments to one another provided for Lori and me a tremendous groundwork upon which we could build our own marriage together. We could, hopefully, learn from their mistakes while understanding that we would make enough of our own, maturing together in our roles as husband and wife as well as parents when the kids came along, enjoying the victories together and rejoicing in this adventure called life and marriage.

            In quoting from the original passage from Genesis, Paul here in this text is not only connecting his teaching about marriage to the initiation of its institution, but is also laying the groundwork for its success. This passage in question has tremendous application, especially in our day when, not only is marriage itself under fire and stress, but is being undermined by a total void in grasping the importance of fulfilling God’s design for marriage itself. In other words, if those who are married would obey the tenets concerning the respective roles within marriage as God has set forth in His Word, then their marriages would work so much better and fewer marriages would end on the trash heap as do in our time.

            First of all, God states originally in Genesis that “a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife”. This truth is made all the more poignant when one considers that in Jewish culture the distance between a new husband and his father was often as far as across the patio since it was the son’s job to build his new home adjoining the father’s house. Therefore, it may not be a physical distancing in view here, but more of the son purposefully moving to the position of being the authority in his own home, rather than being under the authority of his father as he was previously before getting married. As a husband, he now becomes fully accountable for the goings-on in his home and is responsible for the provision and protection of his new bride. This is God’s design for the husband. He must be willing to sacrifice himself for his wife because of his great love for her, even as Christ was willing to give Himself up for His Church (rf. Eph. 5:25). He is now to be “joined to his wife”. They are now in unity with one another. They are now one body, “one flesh”, a family unit unto themselves, separate from his father and mother (and from her father and mother as well, mind you). Their decisions are now their own before God for which they are totally responsible. They are still connected by bloodlines to their respective families and are bound by the commandments to “honor (their) father and mother”, but this husband and wife are a family now unto themselves by God’s design.

            In the same context of Paul’s text, not only is the husband to take up his mantle of authority and responsibility before God to lead his new family, but the wife is to respect his leadership and encourage him in it (rf. Eph. 5:22, 33). Paul encapsulates these concepts within the backdrop of Christ’s love which is a must if these actions are to be correctly applied. The husband is to express his love for his wife in the same way “as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her” (rf. Eph. 5:25). Likewise, the wife is to love her husband as she loves Jesus, showing him respect “as to the Lord” (rf. Eph. 5:22). And, if you haven’t caught a parallel yet, the Scriptures clearly affirm what men have long known, that love and respect are two sides of the same coin. Men do not recognize one without the other. It is the way God has wired us. Thus, the admonition to wives is an encouragement that falls hand-in-hand with God’s creative signature.

            One of the reasons that marriages fail so often today is a failure to recognize and apply the truths of God’s design for His institution. Many husbands eschew any efforts to assume responsibility for their own actions, let alone responsibility for their family’s provision and protection. The allure for entertainment and personal pleasure has lead them to pursue other agendas, including means of sin, and left their wives and children, if any, barren of what could have been a loving husband, a strong marriage, and a blessed family life. Wives as well have assumed roles that were never designed to be theirs in the first place, either by choice or by default, resulting in anger, frustration and resentment, leading to bitterness. Respect would be a virtue hard-pressed to be located and, in many cases, deserved or awarded. Marriages suffering from these types of afflictions are, at the outset, in dire straits, very difficult to redeem. Only the grace of God through the power of His transforming Spirit can even hope to bring healing and restoration to such hurting marriage relationships.

            It is incumbent upon all of God’s true children to know what God has designed for His institution of marriage. He has a standard in place already for husbands and wives to strive for in serving each other and how to show His love one to another. If we have failed in the past to do so, His forgiveness is readily available for the asking. His Spirit is always willing to take us forward to a new and better experience in making our marriage more reflective of what it should be—like the relationship between Christ and His Church.