Let’s Redefine Marriage… the Right Way

In America, we come at marriage the wrong way. We assume that marriage legitimacy depends upon a sheet of paper. This sheet of paper, which often gets tucked away in a drawer, serves as proof that we have, in fact, said some vows.

But at the first wedding, there was no paper. There was God, a man, and a woman. No one signed a sheet of paper, got a notary stamp, or surrendered money to a clerk. And when Isaac married Rebekah, there was also no solemn, sealed piece of parchment necessary. (There wasn’t even a cake.)

You see, the biblical view of marriage dispenses with paper altogether. And that’s not because it’s somehow lesser than government-sanctioned unions. In fact, this lack of paper means that God intended more.

A marriage the Bible way is about covenant, a promise that only ends when hearts stop beating. Paper marriages can get tossed out by the same legal machinations that set them up. Covenants are serious. So serious that God gets involved.

We too often get this backward. When we think of marriage, we think ceremony and paper and tax benefits. But God’s intention for marriage is a three-fold cord—with a man and a woman joined together in Christ.

When we say that the government is destroying the sanctity of marriage, this isn’t completely accurate. Civil marriages are not God-marriages. They’re legally recognized unions. An “evolving view” of civil marriage simply means the government is altering what it does and does not accept for tax purposes. They’re changing forms and paper.

But no government can change what God made. A true covenant marriage has nothing to do with taxes, and everything to do with God revealing Christ through us, through the joining of the husband and wife. Covenant marriage points to Jesus like this: husband + wife = Christ + Church. It’s a big deal.

Let’s be blunt here. The governments of this world have long condoned marriages that had nothing to do with covenant, nothing to do with what God meant. When two unbelievers marry, for example, they’re not revealing the mystery of Christ and His Church. The supposed “redefining” of marriage isn’t new; it’s old. Since Noah’s day, according to Jesus.

Things called marriage have existed for thousands of years. But not all things called marriage are true covenants with God involved.

We need to put this in the right perspective. Covenant marriages have nothing to do with a government. The justification is higher—way higher. Governments like to get involved so that they can gather the profits and regulate such unions, but they can’t change what God intended.

So, no matter what presidents (or even priests) say marriage must be, they’re only commenting on civil, temporary, and earthly matters. They’re changing what can be allowed on a piece of paper. Paper that may one day be shredded or burned or stuck in a birdcage.

But God’s definition for the covenant of marriage never stops being the same. It’s continued through floods and towers and rising-to-fall empires. It’ll stand through “tolerance and equality” just the same. We’d do well to remember that.

Marriage doesn’t start with paper. True covenant marriage starts with God.