Outside of our relationship with God, the most important relationship that we see in the Bible is the marriage relationship. God has a very high view of marriage. It is not a fleeting feeling nor an institution of convenience that our society has made it out to be.

The Bible lays out the foundation of marriage in Genesis 2.

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:18-24; NIV)

Notice that this passage starts out with “It is NOT good for the man to be alone.” This is the first time in the creation account that God has declared something to NOT be good. Up to this point everything was good. Man in his aloneness was not good. Before creating the woman, God paraded all of the animals in front of Adam to show him that there was not a suitable mate for him in all of creation. God wanted Adam to appreciate the wife that He is about to give him and realize there is nothing in all of creation that compares to her and that she is a fellow image bearer of God. God’s creation of the woman was the completion and perfection of his creative acts.

When God created marriage, it was not simply that God considered marriage to be a good idea, though it certainly is that. He created marriage to illustrate to us spiritual truth, namely the relationship within the Trinity and the relationship of Christ to His church.

We are all as individuals made in the image of God. We are all image bearers individually. In the marriage relationship though, we get to image God in a different way. The marriage relationship is our best human example of the relationship within the Trinity. As husband and wife become 2 in 1, we mirror the 3 in 1 relationship that we see in the Triune Godhead.

The marriage relationship should be the pinnacle of unity in a human relationship and therefore mirror the perfect unity seen within the Trinity. The marriage covenant should reflect the selfless attitude and praise of the other as seen within the members of the Godhead. This is God’s ideal of marriage. I am afraid that too often, we buy into the lie that marriage is all about “me” and have elevated my perceived needs above that of my spouse.

It is because of sin that the marriage relationship has been tarnished and scarred. Because of this, the natural tendency in marriage is not for unity as designed BUT for DISunity. In Genesis 3:12 (The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” NIV). We see here that the fall has occurred and now the man is accusing his wife, and ultimately God, of his own short-comings. The marriage relationship is no longer naturally unified as God intended. One chapter after the institution of marriage, we see why we today struggle in our marriages and why it is all the more important to actively pursue oneness with our spouse.

In marriage and any other relationship for that matter, disunity happens passively. However, in order to achieve unity in marriage and therefore better reflect God’s image, we must ACTIVELY work at unity. Instead of working against each other and falling into disunity, actively work together toward unity. Actively pursuing unity is the only way that we will keep from sliding into disunity. We just saw in Genesis 2 that God created marriage as the greatest of human relationships. Keep in mind that Satan is the real enemy and not your spouse and that he worked a wedge into the marriage relationship in Genesis 3, and this is a wedge that we still battle today. You and your spouse MUST work together.

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