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Jesus and Marriage, Part 1

The Pattern for Marriage

When His Jewish opponents quizzed Him on the subject of marriage and divorce (Matthew 19:3ff.), Jesus invoked the Genesis account of Creation as the paradigm by which He understood such things. For Jesus, even millennia after the Fall, the union of Adam and Eve in Eden remained the pattern for marriage.¹

If, therefore, you want the mind of Christ on the subject — and you should — then to this passage in Genesis 1 and 2 you must turn first because it is the one to which He turned, and to which He directed others. Consequently, it merits our careful attention, to discover both what it says and what it does not say.²

What it Says

In the Genesis account of Creation, we read that after the various days, or stages, of creation God often deemed that day's work "good." In fact, when His creative efforts were complete, He judged the entire world "very good" (1:31). The finest and highest part of His "very good" creation was Adam, with whom God shared intimate, face-to-face fellowship. As God's picture and partner, Adam occupied a position of privilege and authority. To him, for example, God brought all the animals for naming.

Of course God could have named the animals appropriately Himself. But He apparently had a lesson in mind for His newly created human image. By examining and then naming all the animals according to their nature and characteristics, Adam learned first-hand that for him none was a suitable companion. Though he might relate to the animals pleasingly and well, Adam realized that at the deepest and most important level he was alone. He understood that, unlike the animals, he was unmatched and unmated — somehow incomplete. While all the other creatures had suitable companions of their own kind, he did not.

In light of Adam's solitary condition, God declared, "It is not good that the man should be alone" (2:18, KJ21), giving divine voice to what apparently was Adam's realization, in light of the lesson of the animals.

God determined to assuage Adam's aloneness: "I will make a helper meet [i.e., "suitable"] for him" (2:18).

Naturally, God knows His business. He knows perfectly well what will and will not remedy Adam's deprivation. So, God made a woman, and not just any woman, but a suitable woman. He made Eve. If something else, or someone else, were better for assuaging Adam's aloneness, God could have — and would have — provided it. Such is God's character.

When Adam was alone, God made for him a suitable helper, a woman to be his defense against loneliness, and, by implication and extension, a woman to be his support, inspiration, enlightenment, amusement and companion — all the things he could not have had on his own. God joined Eve to Adam so that she could be his second self, his other half, and his fulfillment, someone without whom he would remain incomplete.

Presumably, what she was for him, he was for her in return — which is the definition of a marriage: God conjoins a man and a woman who are to each other a defense against loneliness — that is, a moral, spiritual, social and intellectual support — someone to be an inspiration, an enjoyment and a companion in all the vicissitudes of life. A relationship that is not that is not a marriage, at least not according to the pattern invoked by Jesus.

In other words, marriage is a coin with two sides: It entails both a divine activity (conjoining) and a particular kind of human relationship (what Adam and Eve were for each other). Without either of those two necessary dimensions, the divine and the human, we have no real marriage.

Put differently, under God's conjoining activity, Adam and Eve's roles echo one another. If Adam were not for Eve what she was for him, then Eve herself would fall into the same lonely predicament Adam experienced before her arrival. God is not so foolish as to solve Adam's problem simply by re-creating it in Eve. Under God's providence, their life together was to be a life of profound mutuality and love. Short of that, they'd both still be deeply alone, even if they happened to be always in one another's company.

When Eve finally arrived, Adam exclaimed, "At last!" which, coupled with Jerry Maguire's "You complete me," is a graphic and dynamic articulation of the meaning of the Hebrew text (2:23), which is inadvertently stifled by the more staid KJV-ish "This is now bone of my bones."

What it Does Not Say

To this point, I have focused primarily upon what the text in Genesis 1 and 2 actually says or implies. I now turn to what it does not say, and to all those things that are absent from the passage that Jesus considers paradigmatic. What is missing from this passage is at least as telling as what is present.

1. There was no government.³ Consequently, true marriage, the sort that's invoked by Jesus as His pattern, is not reducible to a civil ceremony, a legal contract or a government-issued license. One can, and Adam and Eve did, have a real marriage without them. A legal contract, for example, might prove a highly useful civil and social protection for a marriage — I am quite certain that it has done precisely that many millions of times. But a legal contract is not a marriage, nor is it required for a marriage. Adam and Eve had a marriage without one. One can have a marriage without a legal contract or a government-issued license. They are different and separable. We cannot deduce from a legal contract that God Himself has joined two persons together, or that they have the relationship exemplified by Adam and Eve, the two things necessary for a marriage. Signing a contract, or having a license, does not make a marriage.
2. There was no church. True marriage, according to the passage invoked by Jesus, can exist without a church or a synagogue, and therefore without priestly blessings, actions and ceremonies. Not that they are evil in any way, but that they do not seem to be required. They might provide the appropriate solemnity and pageantry for a wedding, of that I have no doubt, but they neither produce the marriage nor are necessary for one. Wedding ceremonies and marriages are not the same. One can have the marriage without the church ceremony, and the ceremony without the marriage. A wedding is a churchly ceremony that we now customarily associate with the beginning of a marriage, though the pattern invoked by Jesus does not.
   
   I am not saying at all that Jesus is opposed to weddings or to ceremonies. He seems not to be opposed to them in the least. Indeed, He performs His first public miracle at a wedding feast in Cana, where He turns water into wine. Both by His presence and by His miraculous intervention, Jesus apparently endorses events like weddings and ceremonies. They can be, and frequently are, wonderful and momentous events. But while they might be good, useful and beautiful things in their own right, they are not a necessary part of the paradigm Jesus invokes or requires.⁴
   
   Of course, I am neither saying nor implying that a couple need merely to declare themselves married and go directly to the marriage bed without benefit of church, ceremony or clergy. After all, that's not the Genesis pattern either. There are no such declarations in the text Jesus invokes. Divine conjoining and the proper marital relationship produce the union, not a mere human declaration by two persons eager for sex.
   
   Nevertheless, having a ceremony does not make a marriage.

More to Come

C O F F E E  S H O P

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What is marriage, really?

Join the discussion!

I have many things yet to say about the view of Jesus on marriage, both what it does and does not entail. In the second installment of this article, I will continue to explicate what Jesus seems to teach, and how it might wisely apply to us, to our culture and to our churches. I invite you to pick up that thread with me in the article that follows.