I’ve attended scores of weddings and congratulated numerous newly-married friends. My husband and I are looking forward to celebrating our nineteenth anniversary in a couple of months. I never thought hearing a young man and woman promise lifelong faithfulness to each other would strike me as revolutionary.

But last Saturday, when my friends Jeff and Sophie stood before our congregation of over 500 people and took their marriage vows, I couldn’t help feeling how out of step with the times – and how perfectly right – their promises were.

Jeff and Sophie vowed to bear with each other in joy and sorrow, in health and sickness, and they specifically promised never to divorce each other. They testified that faith in Christ is the basis of their relationship, and acknowledged that only through mutual respect and honoring of each other’s God-given roles can a true Christian marriage be sustained. Further, they promised to bear witness, in word and deed, that a marriage is a God-ordained bond for life between one man and one woman.

Today, when marriage is desecrated in almost every aspect of popular culture, such promises can seem daring, or naïve. But revisiting the Old Testament book of Genesis provides perspective. There in the opening chapters, we read how God, having created heaven and earth and all life, created man in his own image. And God saw it was not good for man to be alone and, finding no suitable companion for him from among all the creatures He had already created, made woman from man.

In purity and unity, marriage was born. And, as the closing lines of this movingly simple and beautiful story of creation state, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).

Jesus sealed these words with, “Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt. 19:6). He deemed the bond of marriage so sacred, that he called a lustful glance adulterous. Often he used the symbolism of marriage in his parables about the Kingdom of God. Yet his obvious joy in weddings is apparent, as his first miracle was performed at one.

As years pass, it seems society increasingly rebels against this beautiful, God-inspired creation of one man and one woman – two soul-mates whose faithful, chaste and holy bond is forged in eternity, and lasts into eternity.

And on this wedding day, Sophie and Jeff’s joy was infectious. Their confidence that God will see them through any challenge or storm shone clearly through their simply stated vows and inspired all present that a true marriage is not only still possible, but is a much-needed and daily demonstration of God’s eternal, unshakeable love.

 

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