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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
MATRIMONY
Marriage is a brilliant arrangement which allows for not only the propagation of the species, but for the mutual support and encouragement of wife and husband and the formation of the family structure, in which children may be nurtured, and by which nations may be established.
In short, marriage stands at the root of human civilisation.
When addressing the matter of divorce, in response to a combative question from the Pharisees, Jesus confirmed the accepted truth that the Creator made humanity 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’.
In the act of sexual intercourse the man and the woman become as one Adam and Eve as it were stitched back together.
‘Therefore,’ Jesus continues, ‘what God has joined together, let not man separate’ (Matthew 19: 4-6, NIV-UK).
As a union of male and female, marriage is an established fact of nature. One does not need to be Christian, Moslem, Hindu, of any religion or none, to recognise the obvious value and validity of the arrangement.
Anatomy proclaims it, the reproduction of the species confirms it, and society has long accepted it as a settled truth and aligned their understanding accordingly.
Our Lord’s caution needs only a little creative expansion to warn those who now, in the interests of social liberalism and political convenience, advocate the unmaking and diluting of this essential male-female arrangement, recasting it as sexually neutral, and opening the door to single-sex ‘marriage’. – W.R.
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