There are so many today who claim to follow Christ, yet they do not respect His plans for one of life’s most precious relationships. Marriage is an institution that was designed by God. If God’s design is not followed, the results are disastrous. Here are a few elements of God’s plan for marriage, which we must honor and respect:

1. God’s plan for marriage is for it to be between a man and a woman! Sex was designed for marriage and marriage was designed for people of opposite genders. God’s design has always been for one man and woman to share the marriage bed. The world may accept homosexual relationships as being legitimate, God just calls it sin!

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error (Romans 1:26-27).
2. God’s plan for marriage is for it to be life-long! God never intended for the marriage vows to be broken and forsaken. God intended for a man and woman to be together “until death do they part.”
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’ He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:3-6).
Divorcing your spouse and remarrying someone else, is not God’s plan for marriage. Our culture may accept it, but God does not.
They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery” (Matthew 19:7-9).
3. God’s plan is for husbands to be loving spiritual leaders. Men, the world may say that you have no more say over the direction of your family than your wife, God says you do! God does not necessarily call your leadership in the home a privilege–it is a responsibility!
For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior (Ephesians 5:23).
Men are to be the head, but not a domineering head! They are to be a loving and sacrificial leader; just as Christ is loving and self-sacrificing!
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).
4. God’s plan is for wives to be respectful and submissive helpers. This certainly wouldn’t be a slogan feminists are likely to adopt, but it is the will of God nonetheless.
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord (Ephesians 5:22).
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands (Ephesians 5:24).
5. God’s plan is for the marriage bed to be undefiled. Sex is a wonderful thing, designed to be enjoyed within the relationship of marriage. When people abuse sex by participating in it outside of marriage, it is made dirty and sinful.
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous (Hebrews 13:4).
If we want to be followers of Christ, then we ought to respect His plan for the institution of marriage. Let us not laugh or turn a blind eye when marriage is degraded and defiled. Let us all zealously fight for the preservation of our own marriages, the marriages of our friends and families, and the marriages of future generations!

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