God's Beloved Institution: Marriage

By Valerie Unruh

Husband and Father.

Of the many images we have of God and of His many names, those describe Him best. It’s the first role He takes in Genesis, though we may not realize it. We focus more on the creative act of God, but if we stop and look, He is most in Fatherly role as Creator.

Here He is the fruitful Father producing offspring. Then He gives Adam and Eve their very first commandment: be fruitful and fill the earth. Like a proud father marrying off his son to start a family, God says go forth and multiply!

We see from the beginning that God wants kids and lots of ’em!

So, why didn’t He just create a whole mess of people? Well, experience is the best teacher. How better to cause His creation to understand His heart than to have them become parents themselves? To reproduce in them the joy and pain of creating a new life and shaping it in the way it should go?

This is true of the marriage relationship as well. To help us better understand His desires for us and the relationship He seeks, He gives us the desire for marriage and family.

In marriage God’s desire is also children, and lots of them.

This, of course, runs contrary to our world’s view and, sadly, to many in the Christian world, too.

Today we’re told that children are a burden or a trial. They are only necessary to propagate the species.

So you should have your 1.2 kids solely to carry on the human race.

At worst, we hear we should stop having children altogether, and put this messed up race out of its self-perpetuating misery.

At best, people don’t think about kids at all; they just kind of happen along after physical intimacy.

Oops! Well, now, there’s another mouth to feed!

But let’s hear God’s take on the matter. In Genesis 33:5, Jacob spoke of God’s graciousness in giving him his twelve tribes. Psalm 113:9 speaks of God making a woman joyous by giving her children.

In Psalm 127:3, God uses the term heritage to describe children. That means an inheritance. He used the same word to describe the Promised Land, a blessing bestowed by a gracious God on those He loved.

He also calls the fruit of the womb a reward, given to bless the righteous man for his righteousness.

We see this thinking in our forebears. Great shame was attached to one who had no children; he was considered cursed of God.

God has a purpose for all babies. That’s why we must take this mandate of fruitfulness very seriously.

This is not just about more humans to fill the earth, but about men and women of righteousness and virtue.

In Malachi 2, the prophet tells the children of Israel why God designed marriage: He wants godly offspring. The prophet explains this is the reason God so hates divorce: it destroys the godly seed.

How can a child learn the love of God when his parents don’t live it?

If God says My love for you is like the love a husband for his wife – and the child sees only strife in the marriage – what will draw him to God?

This may very well be a scary prospect!

Why would he want the relationship he sees in his parents to be magnified in his life in a relationship with the God of the universe?

God intends marriage to be a centerpiece display to all the world of the love He has for mankind.

It is to bring glory and honor to His name in every aspect. It is to bring forth children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, so they will end up being a thorn in the side of the kingdom of hell.

They are to be defenders of the oppressed and wounders of the enemy of our souls.

They are described as “arrows in a warrior’s hand” (Psalm 127:4). A warrior is one who goes out to do battle with the enemy and his arrows are the tools he has to defeat that enemy.

This is why so many families of old had so many children. They lived with an understanding of warfare and weaponry.

No soldier wants to face an army with only one or two arrows. Gideon had seventy!

Now obviously there is no specific number of children that every family is supposed to have, and we must decide this between ourselves and God, but I think if we have a different perspective than the world, we’ll be less likely to hesitate about having large families.

The more important point is what you do with all these children. What you do with your marriage.

Are you actively seeking to glorify God in your marriage? To show the world a true and honest picture of God’s heart, His love and relationship with us?

Starting with your children, the first disciples that God already gave you?

It takes a lot of work and it doesn’t come easy. You must constantly be on your guard; constantly learning, studying, praying, and changing into God’s likeness and image.

I am unmarried but I have seen many marriages that have followed both paths. I have never heard regrets from those who made their marriages and their children a high priority.

And what about your children? Does the world look at them and see the blessing and joy they bring to all around them? Are they walking in righteousness and truth and leading others to Christ?

Are they ‘winsome,’ as Pastor Warner so eloquently puts it? This is what God seeks.

When God speaks of training a child in the way he should go, He doesn’t say, “Well, your child will stray; that’s just what teenagers do; but he’ll eventually come back.”

We never see that attitude in God’s Word. He says if you train them right, they “won’t depart from it.”

Is it an absolute guarantee that no child will ever walk away from Christ if you do everything right?

No. None of us can ever do everything right. And all humans have freedom of choice, including our kids.

But, if a child has been raised seeing the joy and blessing of serving God; if they have seen that no matter what hardships life has thrown at their family their parents are still joyful and in love with Jesus; if he has seen parents who have loved and esteemed each other and lived a life holy and set apart, glowing with the love of Christ; if he has watched his parents have a true and deep and real relationship with a real, wonderful and powerful God… why would he want to leave?