What About Obedient Marriage?

In the stage of my life that I am in right now, I am con­fronted with the mon­u­men­tal deci­sion of what will I do? Should I stay in the gov­ern­ment? Should I leave infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy? Should I go to sem­i­nary? Maybe I should go on staff with The Trav­el­ing Team? But the pre­vail­ing prob­lem I’ve noticed in most of my friends are their pri­or­i­ties in decid­ing the path that they will take.

I have asked a lot of my Chris­t­ian friends about what they are going to do after grad­u­a­tion, and I have yet to have one sin­gle per­son start with con­cerns for their min­istry over earthly desires. I keep ask­ing in hopes that one day I’ll get an answer along the lines of, “well, I must make a deci­sion where my min­istry can be the focal point of my life.” And this ide­ol­ogy creeps over into the thoughts on mar­riage in the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity. The most impor­tant ques­tion in mar­riage should be: Should I marry, and if I do how can we align visions in our ministries?

I heard a man by the name of Tim Lewis, who is the pres­i­dent of William Carey Inter­na­tional Uni­ver­sity, on project for one of our Per­spec­tives classes. He spoke very briefly about his phi­los­o­phy on “strate­gic mar­riage.” That is, how can mar­riage be used as a strate­gic force to bet­ter exalt Christ and fur­ther the Gospel? In one of the most quoted chap­ters of the Bible on mar­riage, this was the very empha­sis of Paul:

But I want you to be free from con­cern. One who is unmar­ried is con­cerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is mar­ried is con­cerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his inter­ests are divided. The woman who is unmar­ried, and the vir­gin, is con­cerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is mar­ried is con­cerned about the things of the world, how she may please her hus­band.
1 Corinthi­ans 7:32–34

Paul directly deals with the fact that mar­riage can detract us from our ulti­mate purpose–fulfilling the call of God in our min­istries. It is when we become mar­ried that “our inter­ests become divided.” We must uti­lize mar­riage as an act of obe­di­ence to ful­fill the procla­ma­tion of Christ. In this, we can strive to avoid our inter­ests being divided from serv­ing Christ in our marriages.

In fact, way back when God cre­ated Eve for Adam: “Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suit­able for him” (Gen 2:18). But Adam need a helper, but for what?

God cre­ated man in His own image, in the image of God He cre­ated him; male and female He cre­ated them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply, and fill the earth, and sub­due it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every liv­ing thing that moves on the earth.“
Gen­e­sis 1:27–28

Eve was given to Adam to help ful­fill his min­istry! Adam’s min­istry was to be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply while rul­ing over the ani­mals! From Sarah bear­ing Isaac to Abra­ham to David and Bathsheba to Hosea and Gomer, God prov­i­den­tially pro­vides women to men to ful­fill their min­istries. It is this under­stand­ing that we must have to bet­ter under­stand­ing the Bib­li­cal inten­tion of marriage.

Even though Christ was obvi­ously never mar­ried in an earthly sense, God has pro­vided the “Bride” or the Body of Christ to ful­fill Christ’s min­istry to the glory of God the Father: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, com­ing down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her hus­band” (Rev 21:2).

I chal­lenge all those my age who are reflect­ing on mar­riage to not think of it as some­thing that is meant solely for each other. Mar­riage is meant for the exal­ta­tion of the glory of God. If our mar­riage does not reflect the love of Christ, and we don’t use our mar­riage as a means to the exal­ta­tion of Christ among the nations then our mar­riage is to be in vain.