This year, I am working on a new book entitled “A Biblical Theology of Marriage in the African Context.” I intend to look at every passage in the bible that deals with marriage, pull out some of the timeless truths that are universal for all, and then write some specific application for African marriages today. From time to time, I will be publishing snippets of these musings in addition to my regular devotional thoughts. Below is my first attempt based on insights from Genesis chapter 1. I hope you enjoy!
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:27-31)
Theology of Marriage
For us to rightly understand marriage, we must go back to the very beginning and look at God’s original purpose for marriage, as well as understanding His original purpose for mankind. We learn several things about humanity in this passage…
We discover that we have all been created in God’s image:
This means that every person on the planet has intrinsic value because they are in the image of God. We must respect each other regardless of who they are, and we must seek to preserve life because we are image-bearers who relate to other image-bearers. Even though we will later see how sin comes into the world and mars the image of God in man, that latent image is still there, and this is why we respect ourselves and others, especially our spouse.
We also see that God created humanity in two sexes, male and female:
While all are created in the image of God, all are not the same. God intended for there to be two, equally valuable, types of people in the world, men and women. These two are different in many ways, but they are equally valuable because they complete each other. Men need women and women need men, and no gender is better than the other. Regardless of what our contemporary culture tells us, God’s intention was a “binary” perspective. A person is either created as a man or a woman and there is no middle ground in the creation account. The current expansion/twisting of human sexuality in the LGBTQ world is not biblical and it is not legitimate; it is instead sinful humanity’s defiance of the created order of God.
God intends a husband and wife to be fruitful and multiply, and this is a blessing:
A part of God’s blessing on the first husband and wife was the gift of sex and procreation. There is nothing sinful about sex between a husband and wife and it is a wonderful gift that God intends for us to enjoy. He is present when husbands and wives engage in sex with each other, and it pleases Him when they enjoy the gift He has given them. In addition to pleasure, God created sexual intercourse to be the means of procreation where new babies are born. This is also a blessing from God, and He intends that Godly husbands and wives will produce Godly offspring and subdue the world by the procreation of a Godly offspring.
God is the source and sustainer of all life:
He provides all that man needs to subdue the earth. He has provided food for man and He has provided a purpose for man in Creation, and all of this was “good.” While God wants husbands and wives to produce and raise Godly offspring, He is still the ultimate source of life. Conception happens during the union of a man and woman because God is the one who creates that life inside the woman. We are responsible to procreate and to care for our children, but it is God alone who gives life. If for some reason, within His sovereign will, a man and a woman are unable to conceive this does not imply some kind of fault in that couple. As the sole creator of life, the Lord must still be the one who works through that act of procreation, bringing a living soul into the world at the point of conception.
