You know about a shotgun wedding. When a man gets a woman pregnant, they are made to get married by the woman's father. I've been working through 1 Corinthians 7 and related texts. I used to think they should only enter into marriage if they were willing to commit to one another as any other couple might. Now, I believe I'm persuaded that it is God's will for parents of a child to marry one another in every case. In fact, the Old Testament teaches that a man who rapes a woman (whether she becomes pregnant or not) must marry her and never divorce her (Deut 22:28,29). Sexual union seems to equal marriage, in God's eyes (except in the case of adultery).
Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com and http://alex-kirk.blogspot.com
These ideas were at the forefront of my mind, though I don't have a shotgun and to my knowledge there would have been no reason whatsoever to use a shotgun for the recent wedding of my daughter and son-in-law. But I'd been thinking a lot about biblical marriage lately. Here's what I came up with.
Yes, I do know about shotgun weddings. A topic related to it has been under discussion on Gene Edward Veith's blog since August 7 http://www.geneveith.com/ is the link. About mid-day on Saturday some people started talking about whether it is right for a pastor to marry people who are living together. After all, it does immediately stop the extramarital sexual relationship. One of the people discussing it observes that, after all, if people come to the pastor and say they want to get married because they think it's wrong for them to be living together without marriage, the pastor can marry them on that day, provided there isn't a waiting period for a marriage license. And you could even argue that the pastor can marry them and they can bring the marriage license back for the signature so the government finds out the couple is married. Like any group of people discussing a blog there are some good ideas, some bad.
-- God clearly intends marriage to be more permanent than, for instance, buying a car or a house. And as the wedding sermon we heard on Saturday observed, it's quite an adventure. No doubt, sex is a much bigger deal than the world says it is.
Why do people marry when they have entered a sexual relationship? One historical reason is that the woman is no longer marriageable. The man has violated her purity and culturally she could not hope to marry well. But there is more to it than that. God seems to have wired us with this interdependence. Ask some people who come to you with sexual problems in marriage. If there was adultery or even use of pornography in the past it's highly likely that one or both partner is bringing some sort of division into the sexual relationship. It isn't a one flesh relationship because there's someone else involved somehow. That's highly damaging to everyone involved.
Does the sexual relationship automatically equal marriage? Probably not. Here's why. I'll let you look up the references. Men were prohibited from marrying their brothers' wives, but if a man died, his next younger brother would be responsible for trying to get the widow pregnant so she could have an heir to inherit and take care of her in her old age. The maids of Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah were never considered the wives of Abraham and Jacob. A relationship with a prostitute was not considered a marriage. It was just considered wrong, particularly for a married man.
Assuming the fornicating (love those old terms) couple should marry, which I think is a good assumption of what they really ought to do, what does it require? First and foremost, we would hope they are repentant and see that it is appropriate for their sexual relationship to be maintained within the bond of marriage. Second, we hope that they will desire to follow Christ in their marriage relationship regardless of the difficulties. It may be very difficult because they may not be the most ideal match for one another. They may not have originally intended to marry. It may take a lot of patience and self-sacrifice for both of them to make a marriage that glorifies and pleases the Lord and where their child(ren) will have a good upbringing. What's the big monkey wrench? How do you counsel a believer and an unbeliever in the situation? There are a lot of problems inherent in that situation, as we normally don't encourage a believer and an unbeliever to marry but we do encourage parents to marry. If the unbeliever is willing to give it a good try, do we take it at face value, marry them, and urge the unbeliever to give the young one a Christian upbringing?
Something we want to realize is that these situations aren't much different for us than they were in the 1st century. The only difference is that sex has effectively been separated from procreation by safe methods of birth control. People today are likely no more or less promiscuous than they were 20 centuries ago. Sin really hasn't changed over the millennia.
Something else we want to realize is how much baggage people carry. How many people in the Church know they were engaging in sinful behavior prior to marriage or even after marriage? What kind of baggage are they carrying around? How much are they under attack, with Satan telling them their repentance was not good enough, they should have known better, they are flops, they deserve condemnation, etc. This is a great opportunity to point out that Jesus died for that sin, that he granted repentance, that if the repentance is not sincere enough, he died for that sin too, and that when the Father looks at Christians he sees Christ's righteousness, not ours, which looks like filthy rags. Yes, in ourselves, we deserve all the condemnation that Satan would heap upon us. But in Christ we are indeed the righteousness of God. We are free from the tyranny of sin and death.
That's my two cents. And two cents is about all I have left. Remember, walking down the aisle, the bride looks happy and the father looks poor.
Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com and http://alex-kirk.blogspot.com
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