“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Mark 10:6–9
When nations, cultures, organizations or churches begin to decline, it’s often because of mission creep. Slowly, they move away from their original mission. Those who come many years after the founding forget or ignore the reason why their entity began.
Jesus was there at the beginning of creation. Therefore, He knows God’s plan for marriage and sexuality. God Himself created male and female as sexual persons, making them anatomically different while also amazingly similar.
If He had made two males and no females, or two women and no men, the human race would have been extinct in one generation. Clearly, in creation, God made the first two humans heterosexual. Nothing in God’s intention for man and woman has changed since the day Adam and Eve took their first breath.
There is a culture war raging in the Western world to accept gay marriage. As Christians, we stand in opposition to this redefinition of marriage—not because we are narrow-minded or bigoted, but because we know what God intended when He made male and female and gave them to one another in marriage.
Furthermore, God intended the union of a man and woman to be for life. Jesus designed each marriage to be a re-enactment of creation. Once the husband and wife come together in marriage, no other options exist. They are now “Adam and Eve,” and there is no third party. In fact, they are “no longer two, but one.”
The couple is to establish a new unit, separate also from in-laws. The “man will leave his father and mother.” God allows the opportunity for a new identity to emerge separate from the identity with parents. There would be no mother-in-law or father-in-law problems if everyone understood this. The newly married must establish their own life, cutting the cords of dependence and control from their parents. This doesn’t mean that warmth and social relationships are severed; it does mean that interference from parents should not occur.
In responding to the Pharisees’ question on divorce, Jesus clearly returned to God’s original intention in creation: One man plus one woman equals marriage. No other alternatives exist because there are no other people. When they become one, they are as inseparably bound to each other as the hand is to the arm. Just as the body is one, the couple is one. God didn’t make parts of our body detachable, nor did He make marriage detachable.
It’s a rather radical view and totally opposite of contemporary culture that espouses living together or the severability of the marriage covenant.
Perhaps if people went into marriage with the commitment that marriage, once entered, doesn’t have an “opt out,” they would be more careful in the first place.
The marriage between a man and a woman isn’t only their choice, it is God’s. He designed male and female to be joined together as one.
A Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me again today to reflect on Your original intention for everything about my life. You created me. Help me to be all You want me to be.
Excerpted from Dr. Wood’s forthcoming book, Fearless: How Jesus Changes Everything, available in September from Vital Resources.
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