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Why Must Marriage Be Between One Man And One Woman?

by James Barringer
7/25/2011 / Christian Apologetics

Twenty or thirty years ago it might have been easy to believe that homosexuality was never going to become a major pressure point between culture and a counter-cultural Christianity, but those naive days are behind us and the question of homosexuality is here to stay. Most of us know by now that the Bible strongly, repeatedly - in some of the strongest language of condemnation in the entire Bible - says that homosexuality is not a legitimate lifestyle. But I have not encountered many Christians who could answer the question, "Why did God make that rule in the first place?"

It's critically important that we have a good answer to that question. If someone says "Why does God say that marriage has to be heterosexual," and our only response is "That's just the way it is," it makes God look silly and arbitrary, like he has nothing better to do than hand down rules with no good reason behind them. "Homosexuality doesn't hurt anyone," people will protest, "so why can't I do whatever I want as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else?" Answering "Because God says so" is less than satisfying. Isn't it about time that we learn why exactly God laid down this commandment, and why it's so important to him?

First, I'd like to point to the fact that God loves visual imagery and object lessons. If you've never read through the major and minor prophets in the Bible, you really have to in order to understand what I'm saying. God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute, tells Ezekiel to lie on his left side for 390 days, tells Jeremiah to buy a loincloth and then travel 300 miles to bury it in a particular spot. Why on earth would he do all of these things? The answer is that he likes to act things out. He knows that words don't always pack the right punch, so he goes for visual pictures instead. Rather than simply saying, "I love you," he gives us the institution of monogamous marriage to represent how much he loves us, and when you see a husband crazy in love with his wife, that teaches you something about God. He calls himself "father," so when you see how a good father disciplines and loves his children, that teaches you something about God. Rather than saying, "I want Israel to be faithful to me," he tells Hosea to marry a prostitute so the whole nation of Israel can see how much it tears the man up when the one he loves keeps cheating on him.

Marriage is one of these visual pictures. Check out what Paul says about marriage in Ephesians 5. He begins by quoting Genesis 2:24, which says, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." Paul's commentary on that verse is, "This mystery is profound, but I am telling you that it refers to Christ and the church." Wait, what? Why does Paul introduce the idea of monogamous, one-man-one-woman traditional marriage as "a mystery"?

If you think about it, there's no sociological or ethical reason why marriage has to be a lifelong relationship between a man and a woman. There are plenty of animals in nature who do not form lifelong committed bonds; they mate for a season and go their separate ways, leaving one parent to raise the child. Why did God command us to do it differently? Why is he so adamant as to say "I hate divorce" (Malachi 2:16) and "What God has joined together, let no man ever separate" (Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9), and why does he have such harsh words for people who want to enter into consensual committed relationships with the same sex (1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10)? Why is God so worked up about marriage and so absolutely unbudging in his definition of what marriage has to be?

Well hey, as long as we're on the topic, why does he have such a crazy definition of marriage in the first place? Just earlier in that same chapter, Paul was saying some very hard things about how wives and husbands are supposed to interact: husbands are supposed to be the head of the household, which is not a popular thing to say these days, leading their wives and loving them sacrificially. Wives, likewise, are supposed to submit to their husbands, a very bitter pill for wives all over the world to swallow. The women's liberation movement and progressive politicians have leaped all over this doctrine as "proof" that the Bible teaches sexist patriarchy and that Christianity is a backward religion. So why did God say that it has to be this way?

The answer is found in the second half of Paul's commentary on Genesis: "This mystery is profound, but I am telling you that it refers to Christ and the church."

Marriage's value - its sole value - is that it is an earthly picture of a spiritual reality. It is not for the purpose of letting two people in love commit their lives to each other. It is not even for the purpose of giving children a stable environment in which to be raised. Its one and only purpose is to teach us something about God, and the way that God interacts with his people.

The man in the marriage relationship represents Jesus. This is why "the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church" (Ephesians 5:23). It's also why the husband is commanded to love his wife "as Christ loved the church - and gave himself up for her" (5:25). The way a good husband treats his wife is supposed to be a visual picture of the way Jesus treats his church, and the way God treats us as believers. It's a visual picture stronger than any on-paper description could ever be.

Similarly, the woman in the marriage relationship represents Christ's church, and also represents each individual believer. The way she submits to a godly husband is a visual picture of the way that you and I submit, completely and unquestioningly, to God on a moment by moment basis. So when you see a Biblical marriage, with one man who leads his wife with unconditional love and one woman who submits to her head with unconditional allegiance, you are learning a lesson about the spiritual reality that existed before the world began, the love of God toward his people and of Christ toward his church. This lesson is, as I have said and cannot stress strongly enough, the one and only purpose of marriage.

So obviously we see why marriage simply must be between one man and one woman. Masculinity and femininity are important, and they exist for the purpose of creating this visual lesson. When marriage breaks down because of divorce, the visual lesson loses its purpose, and that is why God forbids divorce so strongly. When the woman is removed and replaced with another man, the visual lesson loses its purpose, and that is why God forbids homosexuality so strongly. Marriage has no value whatsoever except to teach us how Christ (the man, the husband, the groom) relates to the church (the woman, the wife, his bride). That's simply not possible in a relationship that contains two men, because God intended the female to be the one who submits and the male to be the one who leads, so even if one of the men agrees to submit and play the wife role, you still have masculinity trying to fit into a role that God ordained for the feminine. The same is true if the marriage contains two women, one of whom is trying to play the masculine role. At that point the visual lesson breaks down and stops teaching us what it was supposed to teach us about God, which renders it worthless.

All of this teaching about submission tends to rub Christian women the wrong way, but I want to suggest that submission is actually a harder doctrine for men than for women. Christian women are told that they are to learn and practice submission in church, in the home, and in their relationship with God. Christian men are told that they must be the spiritual leadership in the church and the head of the home - but that we must be totally submissive to God as well. Where women must learn and practice submission, men must perfect two totally different sets of skills, submitting and leading - and know when is the right time to lead and when is the right time to be submissive. The fact that so few men in the world ever perfect that balance ought to tell you something about how difficult it is.

At any rate, that is the short answer (and not so short, at that) to why Christians can never accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. Our inability to accept it is not legalism or regressive moralism; it's predicated on the belief that marriage is a mystery, a spiritual mystery, an earthly picture of a heavenly reality. Even as homosexuality gains broader acceptance in the world around us, we must hold fast to what we know to be true. We're beginning to reach the point where being truly counter-cultural will cost us something, which is why it's saddening to see certain arms of the church blindly going hand-in-hand with culture and accepting whatever lifestyle the culture favors, regardless of Biblical truth. Now you have the real truth, the big picture of the truth, and a better answer than "God says so" when asked about your stance on homosexuality.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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