Marriage Made In Paradise

Perhaps the most common wrong idea about the purpose of marriage is the belief that marriage is primarily for the propagation of the human race. That belief confuses mating and marriage. The human race, like gerbils, or cats, or rats, does not need the marriage institution for that purpose. Indeed, in many places, the human race, like animal races, is being propagated all too successfully without the benefits of marriage!

No, marriage is more than mating. Marriage is companionship, one aspect of which involves mating. The intimacy of biblical companionship extends to every aspect of human nature. That is one reason why sexual relations are to be limited to the marriage relationship. There can be no intimate companionship between two persons when a third intervenes. Fornication, adultery, and even polygamy vitiate true companionship because they destroy the intimacy of a constant, close relationship. There is an exclusiveness to this “one flesh” relationship.

You don’t really have intimacy without commitment! Josh McDowell writes:

A little over a year ago I debated the co-founder of Playboy on television for three hours. He agreed with me on this point. My statement was this—we have not been through a sexual revolution. We have not. What we have been through in the last fifteen years has been a revolution in the search for intimacy. Most of our young people do not want the physical aspect of sex, they want someone who cares. They want to be able to care. They want intimacy. We have allowed our culture to dictate to us that the only way you find intimacy is through the physical—and that’s an absolute lie!

One woman called me at a university. She said, “Mr. McDowell, in the last five nights I’ve gone to bed with five different men. I got out of bed tonight and looked back and said to myself, ‘Is that all there is to it?’” and she started crying. She said, “Please sir, tell me there’s something more!”

I said, “Yes, it’s called intimacy. It’s what the Bible calls ‘the two shall become one.’”

— Josh McDowell, Moody Founder’s Week 1986

The Promise of Marriage

The basic underlying obligation in marriage is to meet the other’s need for companionship. When a couple takes marriage vows, whether they realize it or not (and often they do not), they are vowing to provide companionship for one another for the rest of their lives; that is what their vows amount to.

∙ Notice, they do not vow to receive companionship, but to provide it for one another. Marriage itself is an act of love in which one person vows to meet another’s need for life, no strings attached.

That means that when a husband or a wife complains, “I am not getting what I want out of marriage,” his or her statement is nonsensical. And you must reply, “You did not enter marriage in order to get something for yourself. You vowed to give something to your partner. Marriage is not a bargain in which each partner says, ‘I will give so much in return for so much.’ Each vows to give all that is necessary to meet his or her spouse’s need for companionship, whether or not he or she receives anything in return. Therefore, the only question for you is, ‘Are you fulfilling your vows?’ “Many marry for what they can get out of the marriage; but that is lust, not love, and is biblically untenable. We ought ask “How can I please God and my mate?” not “how can I please myself?” To please God by rightly pleasing one’s spouse is the basic obligation of marriage.