Christian Marriage (15) Church and World

The institution of marriage legislated by modern governments is very different from Christian marriage. These differences affect:

• Who can get married. Many governments are moving towards allowing same sex marriage. Anyone can get married provided they are over the required certain age. Christian marriage is for couples who have reached a level of maturity.

• The nature of the relationship. Marriage legislation does not care about how couples behave. It does not care how the couple treats each other, provided they do not engage in violence. Christian marriage requires mutual love and submission.

• Who can get divorced. Most government allow no fault divorce and serial marriage. The splitting of income after divorce is proscribed. In Christian marriage, love should cover most differences, so divorce is limited to adultery and wilful desertion. Where divorce is the only course, wealth is not split equally, but the women gets back the Bride Gift and its increase, which means that she will often be better off than the man.

The differences between legal marriage and Christian marriage are already significant, and will become much starker in the future. This does not matter. It is just one more difference between the church and the world. If legislated marriage moves further way from Christian marriage, we should not fight it, because we cannot expect the people of the world to live by Christian standards.

The decision to enter a Christian marriage should always be a free choice. We should not force Christian marriage on those who are not Christians. Some may see God’s blessing on Christian marriage and freely choose to live that way because they want the benefits. That is fine if their choice is free, but unwilling people should not be forced into Christian marriage, if they want a different type of relationship. God does not want us to force biblical marriage onto an unwilling world.

We cannot demand that non-Christians commit to the unconditional love that God requires of Christian couples. It is impossible to live that way without the forgiveness of the cross and the blessing of the Holy Spirit anyway, so we should not try to expect it of those who do not know him.

Likewise, the biblical conditions for divorce only apply to Christians. People who have chosen to ignore the Holy Spirit can do what they like. We should not expect them to live up to God’s standards. Where sin abounds, divorce will be inevitable, for a huge variety of reasons. Moses principle of allowing divorce for hardness of heart will always apply in the world.

I am disappointed that same-sex marriage might become legal in this nation, but fighting against it is not the most important challenge facing Christians at this time. It is far more important that we are demonstrating the love of Jesus, walking in the power of the Spirit, and presenting the good news in a way that the world can understand and receive it.

This full series can be found at Christian Marriage.