Do you celebrate God’s plan for marriage? Does your family? Does your church? I certainly hope the answer to all three of those questions is a resounding, enthusiastic, “Yes!” because every marriage that reflects God’s design of one man and one woman should be celebrated because God’s plan for marriage is universally good and well worth celebrating.
Because we have so much biblical illiteracy both outside our churches and sadly within, I’m going to rehearse what the Word of God says about marriage. The opening chapter of the first book of the Bible, the book of beginnings, Genesis, tells us, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it’….”
In Genesis 2, God gives more details about the creation of woman in particular and in verse 24 of this chapter we have the first use of the word wife: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined [or cling] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Clearly God created marriage when He created Adam and then saw the need for Adam to have a helper exactly suited to and for him and made woman using a rib from Adam.
In the Ne ...