Young Business Leaders of Jackson

Why Get Married?

Why get married? The typical answers to that question by people today are "Because I love him/her" or "I want to spend the rest of my life with them" or "They are my soulmate", something to that effect. In other words, because it will make me happy and fulfilled. The problem with those answers is that fulfillment is about 4th on the list of God's reasons for two people to get married, not first. Getting married for self fulfillment is not wrong. It just should not be the primary reason for getting married. If it is, then when things go wrong as they inevitablly will and you are not happy anymore in your marriage, you will have a great excuse to bail out. So if happiness is not the primary reason for marriage, what is?

To understand the answer to that question you first have to understand that marriage is created and ordained by God and is a calling. God officiated the first marriage between two human beings in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. God gave Eve to Adam to be his wife not just for their pleasure and fulfillment, but for other reasons as well. This makes the marriage between a man and a woman a calling that God ordains for His purposes. This makes the number one reason for two people to get married to be because God has called them to it. To marry someone without being sure of God's call is a dangerous proposition. See also 1 Cor. 7:20.

The other reasons that God calls two people into marriage are 1) a human marriage is to be a reflection of God's marriage to His bride, the church (Eph. 5:22). A marriage between a man and a woman is a message to the world about God and His committment to His bride. He promises in the scriptures never to divorce his bride, no matter how unfaithful she may be (see the book of Hosea). One reason God hates divorce is that it takes this message about God away and people can't see God through the marriage anymore. 2) God created marriage to put man/woman in relationship. God said that it was not good for Adam to be alone. God uses relationships to shape and mold us, to sanctify us. The marriage relationship is one of the great classrooms that God uses in our lives. 3) God ordained marriage for procreation. The family is the basic building block of society. God designed that people would be conceived by a husband and wife and raised in a family relationship, another great classroom that God uses in our lives to train us up; again relationships. When the family is fractured, the incubator that God planned for children can't work as effectively. These children grow up into broken adults. People who grow up apart from the family God intended are like people who never go to school. 4) God ordained marriage to complete a man and a woman (Gen. 2:20-24). A man and a woman in a marriage ordained by God become one and complete each other. They fill each other's gaps. They balance each other out and together they are better than they are seperately. 5) God ordained marriage for man's/woman's fulfillment and pleasure. If you study the Hebrew in the Gen. 2 passage you see that Adam was pretty pumped when he saw Eve, the perfect woman. And I am pretty sure the feeling was mutual. Fulfillment is a reason to get married. It's just not the only reason nor is it the primary one. Being married is a calling from God. He has several reasons for calling men and women into marriage. And so when we are not happy in our marriage as will be the case in every marriage, that is not a reason to bail. It is a time to walk by faith, to trust God, to address issues in a biblical way as needed. Walking in obedience to God can sometimes be very difficult. You can't be selfish, you have to let go of your agenda. The rewards though are worth it everytime.