The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Kayla M. during the 2009-2010 League.
Mission: Research on Marriage
God demonstrates the sanctity of marriage through His clear establishment of it, His commands regarding it, and His revelation that marriage represents Christ's relationship with the church. The value and sanctity of marriage laid out in the Bible needs to direct both personal decisions and government policies.
Soon after creation, God established marriage with purposeful and benevolent design. He gave Adam and Eve to each other as husband and wife and explained that "a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24). Later when He gave laws to the nation of Israel, God set boundaries regarding marriage and established protections for couples; for instance, a man could not be sent to war within a year of his marriage (Deut. 24:5). Not only did God establish and protect marriage among His people, but He also declared it good. In Proverbs 18:22, Solomon writes that "he who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord."
To protect marriage and satisfy His holiness, God has commanded purity for His people throughout Scripture. According to Hebrews 13:4, "marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure." The sanctity of marriage is so serious in God's eyes that He hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). When questioned, Jesus called divorce and remarriage adultery except on the grounds of marital unfaithfulness (Matt. 19:9). In His call to faithfulness and longevity in marriage, Jesus exhorted, "What God has joined together, let man not separate" (Mark 10:9). Not only does God command the protection of marriage, he also calls us to purity outside of marriage. For instance, Paul writes that we must "flee sexual immorality" because the body is the Lord's temple, belonging to Him and bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:18). Since we belong to Him, we honor God by following His design within the sacred boundaries of marriage.
Beautifully, God has revealed the correlation between marriage, God's relationship with Israel, and Christ's relationship with the church. Hundreds of years before Jesus' coming, Isaiah prophesied that Israel's "Maker is [their] husband" who would call His people back from unfaithfulness and rescue them (Isaiah 54:5). Through the prophet Hosea God revealed qualities of marriage with relationship to His redeemed; He promised, "I will betroth you to me forever…in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion" (Hosea 2:19). On an earthly level, the sacrificial love of a husband and the devotion and submission of a wife represent the ultimate love of Christ and the gratitude and submission of the church in response. The consummation of Jesus' love for His church is prophesied in Revelation 19:7 – "the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready." Since marriage is a sacred institution that designed by God, let us look to Him for guidance and obey His commands when making personal decisions and forming public policy.
