Your Marriage Is Not a Mistake

Audio Transcript

God is the doer of marriage because, in the becoming of one flesh, a man and a woman are experiencing a union that God himself performs. And this is the most weighty and perhaps the most crucial of all.

Genesis 2:24 is God’s words of institution of marriage. God had, in making the woman, it says, taken out a rib, and he closed up the flesh, then he made this woman and this man one flesh — from flesh to one flesh. Now, to see the magnitude of what’s going on here, in terms of our marriages today, we have to see the connection between Genesis 2:24 and Mark 10:8–9.

Mark 10:8–9 are the words of Jesus. Here, Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24. For Jesus, this verse was the most fundamental verse about marriage in all of the Bible. This is Jesus’s foundation stone for the beginning of all of his teachings about marriage.

“Only God joins a husband and a wife in one flesh.”

Mark 10:8: “The two shall become one flesh.” So, Jesus says, “They are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

That’s huge. Do you feel the weight of that? When a couple speaks their vows and consummates their vows with sexual union, it is not man, woman, pastor, parent, who is the main actor — God is. God joins a husband and a wife in one flesh. God does that. God does that. And Jesus draws the awesome conclusion: what God has joined, no man may separate.

The world does not know this, which is one of the reasons marriage is treated so casually. Christians often act like they don’t know it, which is one of the reasons marriage in the church is not seen as the wonder that it is. Marriage is God’s doing because it is a one-flesh union that God himself performs. They shall become one flesh, therefore what God has joined, in one flesh, let not man separate.


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