I think we have completely missed the bigger issue - that God's heart has been breaking over "Christian" marriages for centuries. The culture is just following the church's lead.
Marriage is instituted by God in Genesis 2:23- 25
"Then the man said,
This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." (ESV)
Marriage is first and foremost God's joining of two people into one entity. This passage is about commitment. It is a change of command, a change of loyalties from oneself and one's childhood family to a brand new being - a single being that incorporates two individuals. Jesus states in Matthew 19:6 "What God has joined together, let not man separate." (ESV) This is a permanent union, created only by God and divided only by God....
But that is not what marriage is in our culture. Modern marriage, modern "Christian" marriage, does not live up to God's definition of marriage. Even if you take the modern reason for marriage, love, it does not live up to God's definition.
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. If does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." (I Corinthians 13:4-8a; ESV)
Every time we are impatient or unkind to our spouse, we break the definition of marriage.
Every time we are irritable with our spouse, we break the definition of marriage.
Every time we walk out of the room angry, we break marriage.
Every time we loose hope, we break marriage.
Every time we look at another, even in a momentary glance, instead of our spouse, we break marriage.
Every time we loose faith in our spouse, we break marriage.
Every time we prioritize extended family, children, work, and play, over our spouse, we break marriage
Every time we dress in a manor that may tempt another, we break marriage.
Every time we expect a spouse to be at a church committee meeting, instead of attending to family needs, we break marriage.
Every time we even think sexually about someone we are not married to, we break marriage.
Every time a husband forces a wife to submit, marriage is broken.
Every time a wife is disrespectful to her husband, marriage is broken.
Every time we expect our spouse to do something for us, marriage is broken.
Every time we prioritize our need over our spouse's need, marriage is broken.
Marriage is not going to be broken, or redefined, because of a law or a court decision. Marriage is already broken and the church has already redefined it. Every time the church encouraged wives to submit, without enforcing that husbands are to love their wives "as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:25, ESV), we redefined marriage. When the church began making allowances for divorce, we redefined marriage. When we began focusing on making each other happy, instead of helping each other be godly, we redefined marriage. When marriage became primarily a way to raise children, instead of a reflection of God's love for us, we redefined marriage.
Over the decades of debate over legal marriage, the church has ignored its own centuries of failure to uphold God's definition of marriage. So why are we so upset that an ungodly, secular culture wants to "redefine" an institution created by a God it doesn't acknowledge, when we, who claim to know Him, have already done it?
If we are truly honest with ourselves, as Christians, we have already done exactly what politicians now attempt to legalize. The state is only following to its natural conclusions what the church started. Do our marriages live up to God's definition? Not a single one! So whom among us can justify "throwing stones"? Instead, it is past time to "remove the plank from our own eye". It is past time to take a good look at our own marriages and those in our churches. It is past time for husbands to lay down their lives (careers, sports, xboxes) for their wives and wives to respect their husbands, even when they don't deserve it. It is past time for the church to redefine marriage as "until death do us part" and reject "as long as we both shall love". It is time to look at our marriages in light of how they demonstrate God's love and grace, not in how we want to feel human love and acceptance. It is time to recognize that God has extended to Christian Marriage an enormous amount of grace and in response we are to extend that grace to others.
It is time for the church to redefine marriage within the body of Christ, to remember that we have fallen very short of God's mark and extend the grace He has given to us for centuries to a culture that does not know Him and cannot understand His standards. So Church - go and leave your life of sin.
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