Beginning of Marriage

Nearly every event in the life of Samson recorded for us in Judges stems from one of his relationships with Philistine women. While the author of the book assures us that God was using Samson’s unsuitable relationships, that does not redeem the choices he made. Simply put, he should not have married a Philistine, and he should not have dallied with a prostitute and with Delilah. He seems to have had no idea of what marriage (or, indeed, any male-female relationship) should be, and many of his troubles stemmed from that ignorance. In light of his failures, it behooves us to consider anew what the ultimate human relationship is intended to be. Therefore, we will spend the remainder of this month working through Dr. R.C. Sproul’s “Renewing Your Mind” teaching series Christian Marriage.

As Christians, we believe marriage is more than a human institution. We believe it was instituted by God at Creation as a good gift to the human beings He had formed. Genesis 1:27 is the initial Biblical record of the formation of human beings, and it tells us two very important facts. First, God created both male and female. He did not create unisex beings; the man and the woman He formed were distinctively different. And yet, while there were and are profound differences, there was and is a significant similarity, too. This verse tells us, secondly, that man and woman were made “in the image of God.” The traditional understanding of this phrase posits that there is some sort of analogy of being between humans and God—in other words, like Him, humans can think, will, and so forth. However, it also has been said that there is an analogy of relationship. Just as the members of the Trinity enjoy relationships within the Godhead, so man and woman can experience a oneness in their differences. Humans were not made for isolation, but with the capacity for deep and profound relationships. And the decisive relationship, in terms of our humanity, is the male-female relationship of marriage.

Upon their creation, God commanded Adam and Eve to “ ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth.…’ ” This is a mandate for propagation, but this propagation is to take place within the proper framework—marriage. So this mandate to fill the earth is a call to establish the institution of the family through the institution of marriage.