Making Sense of Marriage - C
Making Sense of Marriage - C
Introduction
A sex-charged universe that teaches joy is a result of sexual-union alone will consistently seek to multiply such unions so that its self-seeking pleasure may be duly magnified. This is hedonism at its deadliest and indulgence at its most naive. The intimacy of body, soul and spirit can never be fully realised when sexual union is simplistically diluted to mere physical satisfaction or a carnal release. Sex and the City portrays a world that no more understands the true nature of sexual union than a merchant banker grasps poverty.
Marriage is to create union
Prior to Eve's creation Adam could not know, give or receive inter-human intimacy. He would walk with God and rule the animals but never know another human, let alone the joy that an equal but opposite partner could give. Through Eve's creation by the all-understanding God both intimacy and self-reproduction becomes available and possible.
(It is at this point I want to quote the now stale but still accurate thought; God made Adam and Eve - not Adam and Steve. If you wish to explore this further please click - Gay Days.)
With once again an extravagant divine generosity God consigned human loneliness to pre-history. Two can share, co-operate, achieve, keep each other warm and also reproduce.
The apostle Paul described the heterosexual union as a mystery, for there is both a spiritual as well as a physical uniting involved. As indeed a physical transaction occurs, so too a spiritual one in the union of male and female. This spiritual union is honored in heaven, it is a divine intent. The spiritual transactions of union have both a vertical and horizontal content. It is difficult to imagine God wanting to honor a physical union that He does not intend.
With once again an extravagant divine generosity God consigned human loneliness to pre-history.
In explaining marriage the late Derek Prince (an international Bible teacher who died in 2003) taught: marriage is a merger, not a partnership... life that is not shared remains sterile and fruitless.#
Within union God has created a depth of knowledge and indeed behaviour that invites both trust and a confident mutual dependence. Union is to be the result of good and healthy relationships and not the cause of them. This sequential order is very important. If physical union occurs early in a relationship it invites a dependence and knowledge of the other that one or even both parties may not want or seek - no wonder the Lord commands that the marriage bed should remain undefiled.
Three times in the Song of Songs Solomon advises do not arouse or waken love before its time. To do so is to reap an immature love, to pick a blossom before it has bloomed. That which is immature has far more difficulty of survival. There is a divinely natural order to sexual union.
Marriage union therefore clearly demands an interpersonal exclusivity and commands a relational myopia; union is faithfulness - union without faithfulness is simply wantonness.
Sex also becomes a channel of communication in the marriage for all that lies too deep for utterance... (April Holland) - no voyeurs voyage through pornography (in whatever medium it comes) or no sleaze sodden, bar frequenting pick-up merchant will ever capture the loud, unspoken and delightful silence of the God-created union that April Holland speaks of.
To be fully seen by somebody, and then be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous~ Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth paints in this single sentence the divine portrait of marriage.
Both Gilbert and Holland have sagely tapped into the interpersonal (horizontal) spiritual transactions of marriage. In a correct physical union spiritual harmony flows through both participants and across the relationship; then the marriage bed is literally the place of an unrestrained self-giving.
Marriage remains under attack
The strong divinely implanted desire for union satan will blast and corrupt. His pollution before marriage is to drive couples together prematurely and after marriage he seeks to drive them apart. Marriages are destroyed with equal force when union is too early or is ignored. (Note satan will send two large attacks upon physical union - the first is persistent ill-belief about the partner and the second is persistent ill-health of one or both partners so that intercourse becomes largely unviable.)
Satan is in the separation business
The apostle Paul advises (commands?) - do not deprive each other (of intercourse) except by mutual consent ... so that satan will not tempt you ... (1 Cor 7:5)
Remember satan's vengeful and eternal desire is to separate the creation from the creator and also spouses from spouses. He wants to isolate God's children on earth from their father in heaven and split the partnership of husband and wife. It is to be expected that he will also attempt to remove children from their parents and wives from their husbands. Satan has successfully plied this trade since Eden when Adam was expelled from his Father's presence. He still conducts this evil today by assaulting marriages, to split them and separate children from their parents; so introducing the seeds of a multiplying destruction for ensuing generations.
As satan continues to expand the practise of homosexuality and its acceptance, he also successfully interrupts the generational reproduction cycle and the unadulterated joy of correct heterosexual intimacy. Finally he destroys the core nurturing structure of society - the family.
God wants to join men and women together in fidelity - He does not want to separate them. Satan is in the separation business which is how he destroys the good work of God. Satan provides the enticement of multiple partners, he issues ill-belief about a spouse or invites the fault-finding of parents upon children to breakdown their relationships. These are simply more arrows he shoots from his evil laden quiver towards marriages.
Conclusion
So far the divine ideal of marriage has been discussed. There is a strong chance that you, the reader may not have reached this ideal in your marriage; if you have you are doubly favored of our Lord - if you haven't please do not feel guilty nor disbelieve in God's good intentions for your union. Anything less than the Lord's perfect marriage is evidence that satan has been or is at work against you.
For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked. ~ Bill Cosby
# Derek Prince - The Covenant of Marriage (New Kensington PA: Whittaker House 2006) 62-63