"For this a man will leave father and mother and he will be joined to his woman, and the two will be unto one flesh."
-They will become one flesh. They. Will be. One flesh. Actually, the man will be joined - BY GOD - to the woman, and God will make the two into one. Let us not dillute the power of this truth nor the significance of its meaning. One life, one heart, one body even, a divine and mystical union with an obvious physical element - yet deep and ancient spiritual truth as old as creation itself. This unity, this divine oneness then becomes critical to strength and health and growth of the family, which of course is the basic building block of society. To be sure, the procreative act (where the physical joining is anatomically obvious) is quite impossible apart from the specific coming together of the seed of the man and the woman, but more than this the man and the woman do indeed come together to complete one another in a very holistic way. There is a higher purpose to their union than just convenient (and the ONLY) safe sex and companionship. They are designed to complement each other. They work together to manage and provide for the household and to train up any children God may bring along. Together they are enabled to pursue and uniquely display the breathtaking goodness of almighty God in a way not achievable in isolation. It is not good for the man to be alone, is it (Genesis 2.18)? Two are better than one, are they not (Ecclesiastes 4.9)? God knew what He was doing when He designed marriage - His ways are always best.
-Sigh. Much devalued and diluted and disrepected in our day, this. Sadly, the beautiful majesty of marriage is rarely manifested, rarely ascending to the divine glories for which it was designed. What we see so often today is a poor caricature, having been badly marred by generations of neglect, abuse and misuse, unfaithfulness, and divorce, not to mention degraded as men with men and women with women try to make themselves one (cf Romans 1.26-27). When you remove the Designer from the mix, you get something which increasingly fails to follow the design. And so now that whole let-no-man-separate-till-death-do-you-part part is all-too-optional (cf Matthew 19.6). Forsaking all others, to love and honor and cherish and respect, for better or worse - that all sounds dreamy until it one day gets worse and I get a seemingly better offer. Truth is, this lifelong covenant really takes not just two people but three, that third being the One Who set the whole thing up and Who brings the two together in first place. A tall order it is indeed for two broken people to navigate the minefields of life together for a lifetime. Forgiving each other. Believing the best. Long-suffering. Bearing with one another and bearing each other’s burdens. Loving and giving and serving unconditionally. Honesty and trust and respect. Open communication and sharing interests. These things which contribute to a healthy lasting relationship are all Divinely-sourced. Absent His power and guidance and divine provision - into which my spouse and I must tap daily - this whole one-flesh thing becomes an iffy proposition, progressively so in a culture which increasingly rejects God and what He wants. But with His help, with God in the mix, love can blossom in full flower, it can truly become all it was designed to be, a many-splendored thing...!
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