I’ve been hearing a lot about young people waiting much longer to get married these days than their mothers and grandmothers did back in the day. Those in the business of monitoring such statistics believe that the preference of living together and enjoying the benefits without the commitment of marriage is one of the reasons for this. As single believers who study, believe, and live by the Word of God, we must know that this isn’t God’s Will.
Our Heavenly Father is a covenant God, and we can see from His Word how important these promises and commitments are to Him. In Genesis 9:11, God confirmed His covenant with Noah that never again would a flood destroy the earth. He placed the rainbow in the clouds as a sign of His covenant with Noah, and the rainbow is still in the clouds as a sign that God never breaks His promises. He said in Genesis 9:13(NLT), “I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth.”
The Old Testament also reveals the covenant that God made with Abraham, his son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob, as well as their descendants. In Genesis 17:4-7,9(NLT), God said “4 This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of a multitude of nations! 5 What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations. 6 I will make you extremely fruitful. Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them! 7 “I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 9 Then God said to Abraham, “Your responsibility is to obey the terms of the covenant. You and all your descendants have this continual responsibility.”
As a sign of this covenant God had made with Abraham, Genesis 17:10 tells us that God required every male within Abraham’s descendants to be circumcised. God said in Genesis 17:11-12(NLT), “11 You must cut off the flesh of your foreskin as a sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 From generation to generation, every male child must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. This applies not only to members of your family but also to the servants born in your household and the foreign-born servants whom you have purchased.” This is still very much a practice for generations of the Jewish nation including those living today, and for many believers in the Lord Jesus Christ as well.
In the Old Testament, Jeremiah 31:31- 33(NLT), God prophesied about a new covenant. He said, “31 “The day is coming,” says the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32 This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the LORD. 33 “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day,” says the LORD. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” This new covenant is in Jesus Christ!
Hebrews 9:15 tells us that the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, brought an end to the old, and introduced the ‘new’ in every sense of the word. He redeemed us from the curses of the first covenant, where God’s people continually sinned against it and didn’t keep their commitment. A covenant is like a will in many respects. A testator is a person that makes a will, and this will is a testator’s promise that comes into effect only after the testator dies. Before the testator’s death, a will is just a promise of something that will take place in the future. This should aid our understanding of the first covenant between God and Abraham. Even with the first covenant, the sacrifice of animals was necessary, so they had to die. By this we know that the blood of a covenant binds it.
Jesus only needed to die once. His blood covered our sins completely, and this was our Heavenly Father’s plan. God’s Will is that His children understand what a covenant is and that they know how to keep it. The blood of Jesus Christ secured for us God’s seed, the gift of Holy Spirit. He, the Spirit, comes to live and abide in us because of what Christ accomplished. Ephesians 1:13-14(NLT) says, “13 And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. 14 The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.” The Holy Spirit is Christ in us! He is God’s guarantee of our future inheritance in Christ.
Marriage is God’s institution. His Will is that the first act of physical intimacy for the man and the woman is their marriage, and this act binds their covenant to one another. We are very far from God’s standard on this, and we need to repent because some of us have forsaken His Word. Marriage binds a man and woman to such a degree that they are one in the spirit of unity in Christ, and this is ordained to demonstrate unity in the same way that God is One with Christ and the Holy Spirit. Only the covenant of marriage, as sanctioned by God, can do this.
2Samuel 22:31 (NLT) tells us, “God’s way is perfect. All the LORD’s promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection.” Through society and the world, satan is trying to demolish marriage, tear down its sanctity, and steal the unity in Christ that clothes it. We cannot allow that to happen. God’s way is perfect, and only His purpose will prevail. If you have a heart and mind that says that God is okay with anything less than the marriage covenant for a man and woman, please get right with God on this. Marriage is a gift from Him, and it must be honored and reverenced according to His divine Word and the standard of Christ that we are commanded to uphold.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“The Covenant between Man and Woman”, written by Kim Times, edited by Fran Mack and K. Stephens for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2023. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!