22Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.23For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.24Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her...
Here we have a Biblical model for the marriage relationship, and if we are committed to executing God's plan with His love and power, then we can find that marriages will work and bring glory to God. But, the Biblical prescription is centered around submission to Christ. Men are called to walk with the Lord and be the spiritual leader of the household and to fervently love their wives. As verse 31 in the same chapter points out, wives are called to show respect to their husbands. This is how it works - and where we depart from the Biblical model, we open ourselves up to all sorts of confusion and conflict. We have to make sure that we stay grounded in God's truth and connected to His Spirit as we walk in love toward our spouses.
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When Jesus was asked a question about divorce in Matthew 19, he turned to the Biblical definition of marriage:
4And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,'5and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?6So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."
In Florida, as well as across the country, it's being called "marriage," although it doesn't look like the model that is prescribed in the Bible. This week, marriage licenses for same-sex couples were being issued across Florida, and so-called "wedding" ceremonies were being performed at courthouse throughout the state...with some notable exceptions.
The Tampa Bay Times, as of last Friday, reported that a number of county courthouses would not be performing any marriage ceremonies whatsoever. Those include: Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Holmes, Washington, Jackson, Calhoun, Liberty, Franklin, Wakulla, Baker, Clay, Duval and Pasco. Interestingly enough, it was Washington county, whose courthouse is in Chipley, where the case originated in which a Federal judge ruled that Florida's marriage amendment was unconstitutional. Washington County, according to the website, ChipleyPaper.com, has not been performing wedding ceremonies since last summer, due to space constraints.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that several clerks, including Okaloosa County's J.D. Peacock II, have acknowledged that the judge's decision played a major role in their decisions.
Peacock wrote recently in a memo to his staff, "I do not want to have members of our team put in a situation which presents a conflict between their personal religious beliefs and the implementation of a contentious societal philosophy change."
Earlier, I reported to you about the couple in New York state who decided to halt weddings entirely at their facility rather than marry gay couples. It was reported in the fall that a number of North Carolina magistrates were resigning rather than perform gay weddings.
Now, there is a move afoot encouraging clergy to stop signing civil marriage certificates. Christianity Today reports that a prominent conservative Christian magazine, First Things, has launched that movement and hundreds of pastors and laypersons have signed a pledge to "no longer serve as agents of the state in marriage."
Pastors of small churches with fewer than 50 congregants were most likely to say clergy should no longer be involved, and evangelical pastors were slightly more likely than mainline pastors to say clergy should remain involved (77 percent vs. 69 percent).
LifeWay's Ed Stetzer is quoted as saying, “In many countries, there’s a split between civil marriage and religious marriage...In the United States, those two aspects have been combined. That’s led to some tension, as American views about marriage change." The findings of the survey surprised him. He said, “It’s the size of the minority view, among pastors and Americans, that surprises me—a noteworthy number are ready for pastors to stop saying, ‘By the power vested in me by the state…’ during a church wedding...We don’t know if the view is growing, but it certainly is worth noticing.”
R.R. Reno, editor of First Things, is quoted by Christianity Today as saying, "For a long time, Christianity has sewn its teachings into the fabric of Western culture. That was a good thing. But the season of sewing is ending. Now is a time for rending, not for the sake of disengaging from culture or retreating from the public square, but so that our salt does not lose its savor."
But there is disagreement from Christian leaders, including Russell Moore and John Stonestreet. Eric Teetsel of the Manhattan Declaration is quoted by First Things in a piece from last April soliciting the views of a number of writers: "...the most effective way to rebuild a culture of marriage is not abandonment. The task before the Church is to rebuild a culture of marriage one couple at a time."
Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation is quoted in the same article as saying, "Our efforts must be extended and multiplied. We need dozens of different ways of defending marriage philosophically, legally, and as a policy matter. We need theologians as well as artists, musicians, and other culture makers to engage in the same task." He adds, "That won’t happen if we let discussions about Church and marriage or state and marriage displace the more basic task of actually discussing what marriage is. The best defense of our interests is a defense of the truth by which we seek to live."
Recent guest on The Meeting House, Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family weighed in to Christianity Today: "We cannot so easily divorce Christian and civil marriage, because everyone has a compelling interest in legal, natural matrimony. It is a common grace. Every important measure of social thriving is driven by the prevalence of natural marriage in a community."
No matter where you may weigh in on this issue, I do agree with Teetsel: we have a task to rebuild a culture of marriage!! So what can we do?
We can make sure that our marriages reflect our love for and devotion to Christ and to one another. It is important to take the time to invest in loving our mate and following God's plan for marriage. That will call periodically for maintenance, and may in some circumstances call for repair, and thankfully there are numerous resources available to help us release the power of God in our marriage relationships.
We can also be ambassadors for the sanctity of marriage and the blessings of marriage. God has established marriage as a sacred institution, and in a culture where marriage is being redefined and the threats to marriage are multiplied, the Lord can work through devoted married couples to change the narrative and restore a healthy view of marriage consistent with a Biblical worldview.
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