Why are there marriages?

Have you ever wondered why God designed marriages? If I interpret Matthew 22:30 and Mark 12:25 correctly, there are no marriages in heaven. And so why have it here at all?

I suppose you won't ask the question if your marriage is perfect and smooth sailing. But even the strongest of marriages are not perfect. And I have seen a few too many broken marriages these days that I'm feeling so scared and disappointed.

I may be wrong but this is what I think. The reason God designed for us his creation to have marriages is to allow us to live a prototype of what heaven will be like in our relationship to him, in that our relationship with God is and will ever more be the closest relationship we will have in our lives.

A marriage is an experience of living for the other, in sickness and in health, in lack and in abundance, till death do us part. We each lay down ourselves for the other. It's no longer I, me and myself but we, us and ourselves.

But what if we betray our husbands or wives? Woe is he who commits adultery for he will face death (Lev 20:10) and he who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away. (Proverbs 6:32-33). The are many, many more passages like these. God is serious about fidelity and faithfulness.

If you think about it, don't you agree that acts of adultery are the most selfish and self-centered of all kinds of sins? It's a betrayal of the person who is one flesh with you. It is the most painful experience with the literal cutting and separating of flesh from flesh.

And with that, God uses the theme of marriage to teach us faithfulness, and the inverse of it unfaithfulness. Israel was many times been accused of adultery in her unfaithfulness to God.

If we cannot even be faithful to our spouse, how could we be faithful to God?

pearlie