The Biblical Marriage Worldview

Those who wish to support heterosexual marriage should take their cue from medical missionaries. Instead of denouncing witch doctors and their superstitious potions, they focus on offering sound medicine: penicillin, surgery, good nutrition, and cleanliness, and the nationals lose interest in their foolish medicine men.

Today, there are sexual and matrimonial shamans in the land. They may not sport feathers and body paint, but they are frauds just the same. Their patients are as pitiful as any natives to whom the 19th-century missionaries journeyed. But just as Christianity now holds sway in villages once enslaved by animism, so a godly view of marriage can gain ascendancy in a culture where lust is a cruel taskmaster and marriage is increasingly cheap.

In the current debate over homosexual marriage, it is tempting to dwell on the perversity of gay unions and the social wreckage they will bring. These are important topics, but Christians must also lift up the positive—wholesome marriage, as God designed it. In this connection, Charles Colson provides a helpful template. He offers a basic outline for the biblical worldview: “Creation—Where did we come from? Fall—What’s wrong with the world? . . . Redemption—What’s the solution, and how can we build a better world?”¹ The application to marriage is obvious:

Creation: The Bible teaches that God created humans with two similar but distinct blueprints, one male, the other female (Gen. 1:27). Though this basic fact of nature is dashed by wave after wave of ethical relativism, unisex ideology, and social engineering, it stands like the Rock of Gibraltar. God paired men and women for procreation and social accomplishment (Gen. 1:28), and put a hedge of prohibitions around the institution (e.g., Lev. 18).² The vast majority of humankind has understood this. Throughout history, people have celebrated God’s wisdom in establishing heterosexual marriage.³ Except in “small, isolated pre-literate tribes,” this has been the norm across the centuries and across cultures.⁴

Fall: Seldom has a more inappropriate term than “gay” been coined, for the homosexual lifestyle is anything but gay. It is furtive, septic,⁵ and barren, yet relentlessly self-justifying, even self-promoting. Gay activists want affirmation, whatever the cost to society. That cost is proving to be high. In Scandanavia, they have gained the right to marry, but now marriage is so little respected that relatively few gay or straight people bother with it, and the majority of kids in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway are born out of wedlock.⁶ The Netherlands has followed suit, and is experiencing similar woe.⁷ Pity, too, the poor children who will grow up in the increasingly bizarre families yet to be validated in an age of moral relativism, whether polygamous or polyamorous.⁸

Redemption: From Jesus’ teaching on the sanctity of marriage (e.g., Mark 10:10-12), to Paul’s marriage prescription for church overseers (1 Tim. 3:1-7), to the example of Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:24-26), the New Testament honors and outlines healthy heterosexual marriage. The Holy Spirit regenerates lost souls, and the formerly wayward gain a heart for righteousness. Ministries emerge for the sake of the family (e.g., Marriage Savers)⁹ and basic heterosexuality (e.g., Exodus International). Though the world masks and mocks the testimonies of those who leave homosexuality, the accounts of release and new life are numerous and powerful.¹⁰

As Colson reminds us, “[W]e are not only saved from sin, we are also saved to something: to the task of developing God’s creation.”¹¹ Salvation is more than escape; it is also guidance, not only toward heaven, but also for the good of this present world, including the nurture of sound marriage.

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