Marriage At The Millennium’s Dawn -- By: Peter R. Jones

Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 03:1 (Mar 1998)
Article: Marriage At The Millennium’s Dawn
Author: Peter R. Jones


Marriage At The Millennium’s Dawn

Peter Jones

The Subversive Character Of The Biblical Instruction In Ephesians 5:22–33

Contemporary american culture has gone beyond, “Daddy has a roommate.” Recently the state of New Jersey created a moral and legal monstrosity by recognizing for the first time in America—and perhaps in human history, that an unmarried gay couple could adopt a child jointly. The infant boy, Adam, now has not one daddy plus his gay roommate, but two legal homosexual fathers.

On the heterosexual side, a recent book by secular commentator, Wellesley grad and single mother, Maggie Gallagher, The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love, says:

Not only is marriage in danger of disappearing…. Though we do not realize it yet, it already has… By expanding the definition of marriage to the point of meaninglessness, courts are gradually redefining marriage out of existence (p. 131).

David and Eowyn, you marry today in an ethos of egalitarian androgyny and sexual confusion. You marry in a culture that has “redefined marriage out of existence.” What you are doing today is profoundly counter-cultural, and thus extremely significant.

Ephesians 5:22–33, this bright jewel of Scriptural revelation regarding marriage, calls to us across the centuries. How surprisingly appropriate are the three lessons it teaches us:

Marriage Is Total Commitment

Yesterday, you could have awakened, wondered what you were about to do and called the whole thing off—as happened to a New York socialite whose beau did not show but took the airplane to the honeymoon venue—alone, the cad! And so the would-be bride and her guests celebrated the sixty thousand dollar reception without him. This morning that option remained for you—though not the $60,000.00 reception. Tomorrow morning it will no longer be open. Today, before the Lord, the swearer of unbreakable oaths, you totally commit yourselves to each other “till death do you part.”

In days ahead, emotions will sometimes flag and seemingly intractable problems nag. Faithfulness to the Scriptures may become more and more difficult as the culture collapses into paganism which Barbara Dafoe Whitehead describes in The Divorce Culture. You will watch half the marriages around you break up. This can never be a solution for your problems—not simply because of the solemn vows you take before the Lord and these people, but because the model of marriage is Christ’s covenant love for you.

Our love is weak and we are insecure. In Isaia...

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