I am currently working on the chapter in my book tentatively entitled “Marriage Redeemed.” I want to post some excerpts here for comment, of which this is the first. Feel free to comment below.
Marriage is the first institution established by God, and also the only institution of human government required before the fall. Other institutions, such as civil government, Mosaic law, covenants, religious rituals and even the church, were not necessary before sin. It is the sin of man that makes all these necessary, but if mankind were still perfect, family would be the sole structure of human society and marriage would be its foundation.
Even after the fall, marriage between one man and one woman is still the basic unit of society. All cultures have a marriage institution that is based on the union of man and woman. Human forms of government take many shapes with varying degrees of success. Religious organizations are established and destroyed, often at the whim of others. Various laws can establish many institutions for purposes of good and evil. But marriage continues as the foundational unit of society. You can call all sorts of other arrangements a marriage, but only the male/female covenant establishes a foundation for successful societies. Every civilization that has embraced other behaviors and called them “marriage” has collapsed. I’m not saying that officially labeling relationships that are not male/female as marriage causes the collapse of civilization. Rather, when a civilization begins to regard what the Bible calls sin as acceptable, that culture has already descended into a degraded society that will turn from the family as its foundation and from other proven societal norms that uphold it. Those who would argue that modern man no longer needs such an institution forget that their own existence was created by a marriage, maybe generations before, but there was marriage in their personal history without which they would not exist.
