The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Elizabeth D. during the 2008-2009 League.
Mission: Research - Sanctity of Marriage
According to Webster's dictionary, 'sanctity' means set apart, sacred. Marriage is defined in Webster's as the joining of a man and a woman in a close and lifelong relationship. The words sanctity and marriage together mean a relationship between a man and a woman that is sacred and permanent.
Marriage was intended by God to be sacred, and modeled after Jesus Christ and his church. Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom as he speaks to the Pharisees in Matthew 9:15. "How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them." Jesus Christ is the bridegroom, and the church is the bride.
Eph. 5:29-32 explains the sanctity, or sacredness of marriage. "After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church." Eph. 5:26 also tells us that "Christ loved the church so much that he gave himself up for her."
Marriage was God's idea, as we read in Genesis 2:18-25. "Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man." God created marriage for two purposes, for His glory, as we read in Isaiah 62:5, "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you", and to fill the earth with people, Gen. 1:27. "God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it."
Jesus Christ's relationship with the church is sacred and permanent, just as God created marriage to be. When the marriage union is destroyed, God hates it, as he states in Malachi 2:16, "I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel." According to the Bible, there are only two circumstances where divorce and/or remarriage are 'acceptable.' Romans 7:3 says that the death of a spouse allows for remarriage. "By law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage." God also refers to unfaithfulness as an allowance for divorce in Matthew 5:32, "Anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress." Divorce ruins children’s lives, splits families and communities. Broken communities lead to broken states and nations. People who were once friends and family take sides in divorce. Solid marriages, on the other hand, are the foundation of good communities.
Children from emotionally stable homes are free to be creative and become good students, focusing on their work at hand instead of worrying about their parent's marriage. We read in Psalm 127: 3-4 that children are a reward from God. "Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth." God also instructs how parents should raise their children in Ephesians 6:4, "Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Good marriages have a positive effect on a lot of people, especially the children who are 'raised up in the instruction of the Lord.'
God created marriage as sacred for productive children, a healthy community, and most of all, to glorify Himself, as Christ gave himself for his church.
