Jesus says in Matthew 19:4-6, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Jesus defines marriage as between one man and one woman. When Jesus defined marriage as between one man and one woman, He never gave any authorization for any other kind of marriage, nor did He define it in any other way. No matter what 5 people, called Judges, in a nation of over 300 million people say, marriage has not changed. God has spoken in the Holy Scriptures, and what He has said settles this issue once and for all.
The institution of marriage is unchanging. It cannot and will not change. Genesis Chapter 1, verses 26 through 27 say, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” God in the very beginning established marriage for what it shall always be as the union of one man and one woman. The only exception ever given whereby a marriage could be broken is the fornication of the guilty party whereby the innocent party could then divorce that person. The guilty party would have to return to his wife or if that was not possible forever remain single as he would have forfeited his right to remarry. Jesus says in Matthew 19:9, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” We see then that only those who are Scripturally qualified to marry may marry. Who are these? The first requirement is that one be male and the other female. Another requirement is that each must be able to be married to each other by having never been married before, having been divorced for the only Scriptural reason of being the innocent party in a marriage in which the guilty has committed fornication, or being a widow (I Corinthians 7:39).
Truly, marriage is an unchanging institution. It is unchanging, because God’s Word does not change, and He has already spoken about it. I Peter 1:25 says, “But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.” In Malachi 3:6, God says, “I change not. . .” May we hold to His unchanging hand and not be conformed to this world.
-Jason Gann, TBC Registrar
