What God Hath Joined Together

    In this chapter we will look at the marriage union itself. Is it just a partnership between two people who stand on the same ground? Is it merely a contract that is analogous to any other contract with which we might be familiar?

    We have begun to discover that marriage is not a contract; it is not a partnership. It is a union – a union of such consequence that two people, as it were, have become fused into one being. The Bible uses the language: "they are no more twain, but one flesh" (Matthew 19:6). The intensity and reality of this fusion are described in I Corinthians 7:3-5:

Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

    In this statement God establishes the principle that the two who are married are to live in the greatest possible intimacy. Their bodies belong to each other. Except for brief spiritual activity, they are not to deny their bodies from each other. No other physical relationship exists in the world like this relationship. They are to live as one body because God has ordained that they are one flesh.

    God emphasizes that this union is not made by man but by God (Mark 10:9). Does this refer only to a Christian marriage? If that were true, then all non-Christian marriages would not be marriages; they would simply be a man and woman living together in an adulterous relationship.

    God is speaking of every marriage in the human race. We know that God has all marriages throughout the history of the world in view because Mark 10:6-8 takes us all the way back to our first parents who were created to be husband and wife. Mark 10:6-8:

But from the beginning of the creation of God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.

    When two people are joined in marriage and consummate that relationship in the marriage bed, it is a union made by God. This is indeed a remarkable truth. It is hard to find any other physical human experience wherein we can say conclusively, "This is God’s action."

    Even the marriage that was consummated as an act of rebellion against God is still a marriage which God has made into an indissolvable union. This does not make God guilty of sin, because God cannot sin. Rather, in accomplishing His divine purposes, God utilizes the sinful desires of man.

    For example, God allowed the brothers of Joseph to commit the dastardly crime of selling their younger brother into slavery so that later, Joseph, as Prime Minister of Egypt, would be able to save them from starvation. Likewise, God can utilize a sinfully contracted marriage for His own purposes. God informs us that once a marriage is consummated, a union has come into being by the action of God.

    For that reason, God speaks of the wife being bound to the husband (Romans 7:2; I Corinthians 7:39). If the wife is bound to the husband, then it logically follows that the husband is bound to the wife. Earlier in our study, we saw that the word "bound," which God uses in these verses, means to be "tied to" or "shackled together." Remember that God declared that only He could break the marriage union. He does this by claiming one spouse in death.

THE MARRIAGE UNION MAY NOT BE BROKEN BY MAN

    Counselors who encourage quarreling spouses to try a trial separation are in violation of God’s Word. Divorce, which is so much in vogue in our day, is a terrible violation of God’s edict concerning marriage. Rather than encouraging separation, the Bible insists that the bodies of those who are married belong to each other (I Corinthians 7:3-5). No matter how badly the marriage is going, that principle is to be observed. Woe unto us when we take these matters into our own hands.

    God underscores the sacredness of the marriage union in Mark 10:11-12:

And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.

    Romans 7:2-3:

For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.

    Jesus restates the principle in Luke 16:18: "Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery." Surely the Bible could not be any clearer! There is not to be separation! There is not to be divorce!

    Why has God put such emphasis on the sanctity of marriage? God in His mercy has placed great protection around the family. These laws protect the

husband and fathers so that he is included in the family as long as any of the other family members are living. The wife and children are protected in the same way.

    In our day, divorce has become so rampant in our land that we know of wives who are trying to get along without husbands, husbands who have rejected their wives, and bewildered, broken children who hardly know who their parents are. Indeed, when the church first began to rewrite the rules of the Bible to permit divorce, it was the beginning of the end for families. The wind was sown, but the whirlwind is being reaped.

    There is a staggering amount of evidence in the lives of those from broken families to indicate that the church committed drastic sin when it tampered with God’s marriage laws. It is like the mythical Pandora’s box, the lid of which could not be closed when sin began to pour forth. We have begun to see the reality of the magnification and terrible consequences of tampering with God’s sacred laws.

    There is another reason why God enters into every marriage and claims responsibility for fusing two people into one flesh. God uses the human marriage as a picture of Christ and the believers; God fuses the husband and wife into one flesh, and through the Lord Jesus Christ, He makes Himself one with the believers.

    This unique oneness is spoken of in many different ways in the Bible. The believer is "in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1); Christ is in the believer (Romans 8:10); God the Holy Spirit dwells within the believer (Romans 8:11); and sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." The believers are called the bride of Christ (Revelation 21:2, 9). God develops the human marriage as a type or figure of Christ’s relationship to the believer in the beautiful language of Ephesians 5:28-32:

So ought men to live their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

    In this passage, God carefully declares that the joining of the husband to the wife as one flesh points directly to Christ and the eternal church. Thus, God has placed His divine hand on the marriage union because He has made it a type or figure of the intimate and eternally-binding relationship that exists between Christ and the true believers, His eternal church.

    Even as the husband and wife live together in the greatest intimacy, so Christ lives in similar intimacy with the believer. Even as God has fused the husband and wife together into one flesh, so God has fused Christ and the believer together in such a way that God can use the same phrase, "one flesh," when speaking of this spiritual union.

    Death is the only way the physical union of husband and wife can be broken, but the believer in Christ has eternal life. That is, he can never die spiritually. Since Christ is eternal God, who died once at the cross and will never die again, there is no possibility of breaking the union between Christ and the believer. Neither the bride (the believer), nor the husband (Christ) can ever die. Therefore, no sinful action on the part of the believer can threaten his marriage with Christ. Even as in human marriage there cannot be divorce for fornication, the spiritual marriage between Christ and the believer cannot be broken by the spiritual fornication of the believer. What tremendous comfort and assurance we should receive from this glad truth!