Tips on Marriage: The Path to Eternity

An article on America's morality from www.badeagle.com!



Tips on Marriage: The Path to Eternity
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The Fall of Man honors marriage. The story of Adam and Eve, and the decision to disobey the creator, involves a profound revelation of the nature of marriage.
Theologians have dramatized the deceived state of Eve’s mind (Gen. 3:1-6), and her influence on Adam, and most concur that Adam failed in his responsibility to the Lord, his creator. He should not have listened to his wife. He should have transcended her influence, and kept the Lord’s will first in his mind. Such a position was spelled out emphatically in Deuteronomy 13:6-11. No human relation is to exempt one’s primary responsibility to his Creator.
I say Adam did what marriage made him do, and God created marriage. God made Eve for Adam. She was literally part of him. He did not search the world for a wife, so to speak. God created a woman, out of man. It would have been unseemly if Adam had not stood by Eve. It would have insulted the bond between them. It would have denigrated marriage from the beginning. Adam honored marriage. Yes, he dishonored his being, morally, but, he honored marriage. Marriage, as a human ‘institution’ continued beyond Eden. Marriage was part of creation. It was the last act of material creation (Gen. 2:21-23). It survived the Fall. It is indeed a triumph of nature, and of human nature. God created it.
Some 2,500 years later, Abraham experienced another unique tribute to the honor of marriage. God had promised Abram (his original name) a child. Years passed, and the promise did not come to pass. Sara, Abram’s wife, suggested or rather demanded, that Abram take a family servant woman and have a child by her. Sara was post menopausal, and there could be no child from her. The promise was too late in coming. Abram listened to his wife, and had a son by an Egyptian servant woman, Hager. (Abram was 86 at the time. Gen. 16:15,16.) It was at this point, not before, that God told Abram specifically that it was Sara, “thy wife,” who would have Abraham’s son, the heir of the promise (Gen.18:10). Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. Sara was 90.
The point here is that Abraham’s seed, the heir of the eternal covenant and promised son, was from his wife, Sara. Not from any other woman. A man is to have only one wife. That was the story at creation, and that was the story with Abraham.
In other words, the birth of Israel is the honor of marriage–one man, and one woman, forever. An entirer nation was born in honor of one marriage.
Given these momentous events in sacred scripture, one gets the distinct impression that marriage is very, very serious business. It is the honor of God Himself. It has to do with His own image. “In the image of God created He him, male and female created He them” (Gen. 1:27). As the Swiss theologian Karl Barth so luminously pointed out, the imago Dei is in the male and the female–together, in marriage. Marriage represents the image of God on earth.
It is a good thing, to at least know what the ideal is, to have a concept of perfection. Yes, we obviously have our problems down here on earth, in all the lostness, the confusion, the improprieties and impossibilites of the human heart. We are fallen. And yet, the ideal is given to us. We have something to which we can aspire.
Though sexuality is the basest of all perversion, the most immediate of our discomfitures, marriage is still the imago Dei within our grasp. We can still participate in it. We can still share its meaning. We can still learn through it. It is a wonderful thing that Christian literature and radio makes such a powerful effort to instruct the public on the value and meaning of marriage, and offer such passionate and touching appeals to work through the personal, human problems in marriage.
This is indeed a great thing, especially when the American government actually works against marriage, encourages illegitimate child birth, murder of the unborn, and whole neglect of the woman’s honor and dignity.

Posted by David Yeagley