God-designed
Marriage
and Family: The Missing Dimension
God
designed us to be part of His family
Paul also encouraged God’s people at Corinth with His specific
promise: “Therefore ‘Come out from among them and be separate, says the
Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.’ ‘I
will be
a Father to you, and you
shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty’” (2 Corinthians
6:17-18).
Just as human families have children born to them who are part
of their families, God initially created Adam and Eve and their progeny—
all of us—to become part of His family. Physical families are
thus a type of God’s own spiritual family.
Continuing this theme, Revelation 21:7 adds, “He who overcomes
shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.”
These scriptures and others tell us that God’s plan from the
beginning was to first create people as temporary flesh and blood beings,
subject to death,
and then give us the opportunity to live forever as spirit
beings in His eternal family. If we will respond to God in love and obedience,
God offers us this great promise.
God eventually is going to make this offer to become part of His
family to every human being. Explaining God’s love for all His children, another
follower, Peter, wrote: “The Lord is not slack concerning His
promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward
us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance”
(2 Peter 3:9). God doesn’t want anyone to lose out on this opportunity
of a lifetime—the opportunity for an eternal lifetime! This is
God’s overall, transcendent purpose for creating humanity—to offer us the
opportunity to become part of His eternal family, His
own children. If we will repent and be baptized, we can receive
this marvelous gift. When baptized, we receive God’s Holy Spirit (Acts
2:38)—something that sets us apart as His children. Paul, in Romans
8:14, explains that “as many as are led by the Spirit of God,
these are sons of God.” additional indicators among many that all point to the
inescapable fact that humanity was designed and crafted by God. The Bible
explains that we were made in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27)—meaning in our
general appearance as well as with minds to think. An important principle is
also revealed here that is continued in
marriage and family—that human life is patterned after
spiritual, nonphysical, unseen realities. Just as human beings were made in the
image of God, marriage and family are patterned after spiritual concepts. To
learn more about mankind’s origin, request our free booklets
Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe? andLife’s
Ultimate
Question: Does God Exist?
God,
the Designer of marriage and family
To understand the spiritual significance of marriage and family,
we
must turn to God, our Creator, to learn what He had in mind in
making
the human race.
While we could go to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, to
learn about marriage and howGod created the first human beings (something we
will cover in greater detail later), we must go to other sections of
God’s Word to learn
Why He created us as we are.
When we turn to these passages, we learn of a plan that God had
not
only for Adam and Eve, the first human beings, but for all of
humanity—
every person who has lived or will yet live. We also find that
human
marriage and family reflect this plan, which was determined
before the
foundation of the world.
Shortly after Jesus Christ came to earth and lived as God in the
flesh,
one of His followers, John, wrote a book to prove to his
contemporaries
and humanity today that Jesus was indeed God.
In this work, John says of Jesus: “He was in the world, and the
world
was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to
His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as
received
Him, to them He gave the right to become
children of God,
to those
who believe in His name” (John 1:10-12, emphasis added
throughout).
The phrase
“children
of God” tells us that God is creating
His
own
family. Additional passages reveal this same astounding truth.
In Hebrews 2:10 we find that Jesus was and continues to be
involved
in God’s plan and purpose of “bringing many sons to glory.”
Paul, another first-century writer of the New Testament of the
Bible,
noted that human beings are “the offspring of God” (Acts
17:28-29).
Paul also wrote of “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from
whom the
whole
family
in heaven and earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14-15).
Just as human families have children born to them who are
part of their families, God initially created Adam and Eve and
their progeny all of us to become part of His family.
Marriage
and Family: The Spiritual Significance
Marriage
and Family:
The
Missing Dimension
the church.
Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his
own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her
husband”
(Ephesians 5:32-33).
What a beautiful example the relationship between Christ and the
Church is! Paul explains that Christ loved the Church so much
that He
gave His life for her (verse 25). How could those of us in the
Church
ever doubt His love for us? How could we not respond to the
things He
asks us to do?
The understanding that marriage between a man and a woman is
a type of the relationship between Christ and the Church is
further
understood by a vision Jesus Christ revealed to John at the end
of the
first century. John recorded this vision in the last book of the
Bible, the
book of Revelation.
After Jesus returns to take over the kingdoms of this earth and
establish the Kingdom of God, He reveals that He is going to be
involved
in a very special marriage.
Here is how John recorded the vision: “‘Let us be glad and
rejoice
and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and
His
wife has made herself ready.’ And to her it was granted to be
arrayed in
fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the
righteous acts of the
saints. Then he said to me, ‘Write: “Blessed are those who are
called to
the marriage supper of the Lamb!”’” (Revelation 19:7-9).
The faithful saints who have been part of the Church founded by
Jesus Christ will become the Bride of Christ. Their righteous
behavior
is likened to fine, costly linen.
A happy human marriage gives us insight into a greater marriage—
one that will truly last forever because both parties will be
spirit. Similar
and closely related to family, marriage also gives us a window
of insight
into God’s love and plan for humanity. Because human marriages
are
patterned after this spiritual relationship, they can help us
comprehend
this present and future God-plane relationship.
Now that we have an understanding of God’s view of what marriage
and family represent, we can more closely examine the
instructions
He gave for marriage.
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