Marriage After the Fall

Today, we are told that “love is love” and that any two consenting adults can form an equally valuable union. However, while biblical marriage reflects God’s love and is a picture of Christ and the church, the perversion of marriage, whether through unmarried cohabitation,1 gay marriage, polyamory, or polygamy, twists God’s beautiful design into heartache and wreckage.

Marriage is one of the unifying themes woven throughout the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.

God’s Word contains a theology of marriage that defines and sets boundaries around it and practical advice for husbands and wives as we seek to build lives that proclaim Christ as Lord while we wait for his return. Marriage is one of the unifying themes woven throughout the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.

Foundation in Creation

The reader of Genesis will notice the repeating statement that the things God has created are good. This culminates at the end of day 6 when God declares the creation to be “very good.” So we should take notice when this pattern is disrupted by the declaration that something is not good:

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (Genesis 2:18)

Genesis 2 goes back to day 6 to look at its events in greater detail—as such, the events described here happen before God’s final “very good” assessment. Something is “not good” here, not because of sin, but because God has not finished creating yet.

Before God addressed this lack, he wanted to show Adam that he needed a spouse. So he brought Adam certain animals and had him name them. This was important to show that he had authority over creation. He may have also noticed that each animal had a mate that was suitable for it. Adam noticed that there was no helper for him. God created most things by simply speaking them into existence. But he created Adam through a more intimate process of shaping him out of dust and breathing life into him. And when he created Eve, he took Adam’s rib to create the woman.

When God brought Eve to Adam, his declaration is a poetic break in the account, which is otherwise a simple narrative.

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
    and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
    because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:22–23)

The narrative of Adam and Eve’s pre-fall marriage closes by noting that they were naked and unashamed. Commentators often point out that there is nothing shameful about nakedness in marriage and that the marriage relationship is good. But the emphasis on the lack of shame is the lack of sin. They are unashamed of being naked not only in each others’ presence but in God’s. After the fall, they covered themselves and hid from God because they needed a covering for their sin.

Marriage Corrupted by the Fall

Genesis 3 opens with the introduction of an interloper, the serpent. He approaches the woman (though the narrative may imply that Adam is present for this exchange) and challenges God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She thinks about the situation, eats the fruit, and gives some to Adam.

However, even though Eve technically disobeyed first, God asked Adam to account for his sin first. That is because, as the husband, he was called to lead and protect his wife. Instead, he blamed her and indirectly blamed God, who gave him his wife to begin with. Eve blamed the serpent but admitted that she was deceived.

Every aspect of creation was affected by the fall, including marriage.

Every aspect of creation was affected by the fall, including marriage. God designed men and women to be different and complementary to each other so that they would help and support each other in marriage. However, sin often creates a desire to dominate and twist God’s good gift.

The first overt twisting of marriage recorded in Scripture took place in Cain’s line when Lamech took two wives—Adah and Zillah. Man and wife were meant to become “one flesh,” which is meant to be reserved for one man and one woman together. Throughout Scripture, we see that polygamy creates rival wives, and often one wife is loved more than the other.

In Sodom, sexuality was twisted so much that the entire town’s male population tried to beat down Lot’s door to get to the two angels inside, rejecting Lot’s sinful offer to trade his virgin daughters for the travelers’ safety. Not only was this sex outside of marriage, but it was outside of God’s intended pairing of man and woman to create life. Other passages make it clear that homosexuality was not their only sin but rather the culmination of a decadent culture that had long been permissive of all types of sin.

Marriage Enshrined by the Law

While marriage existed from Adam and Eve on, and there were probably taboos around marriage that started early, the Mosaic Law was the first time in Scripture that God explicitly regulated who could marry whom beyond the definitional “one man and one woman.” People who were too closely related could not marry, and Israelites were prohibited from marrying unbelieving foreigners so their idolatry would not be an influence.

There were also penalties for adultery, showing how seriously marriage was regarded. The death penalty was likely regarded to be preventative—no matter how attractive someone else’s wife was, it wouldn’t be worth risking one’s life! And if someone were foolish enough to do so, he would be an example to everyone else.

Marriages are so important that the Mosaic Law included a provision that a man be allowed a year of exemption from public service so that the man and his wife can enjoy their marriage and establish their household.

When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken. (Deuteronomy 24:5)

Notice how the emphasis is on the happiness of the newly married couple. Even in a culture where marriages were often arranged by the parents of the bride and groom, marriage was intended to make both of them happy.

Marriage Extolled as a Blessing

The Song of Solomon celebrates the romance of two young people as they move from courtship to marriage. The man and woman speak about each other in terms that emphasize their delight in each other. They adorn their descriptions with imagery that leaves much to the imagination and protects the intimacy they describe. The timelessness of their romance means that married people can identify their own love story within the book even today.

Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful. (Song of Solomon 1:16)

My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.” (Song of Solomon 2:10)

If you want marriage advice, you might not take it from someone who had 700 wives. However, Solomon’s accumulation of wives (which probably had more to do with political alliances than lust) is explicitly said to be part of his turning away from the Lord and may have mainly happened during his older years. When he penned the proverbs that were gathered together with the sayings of others into the biblical book of the Old Testament, he probably had not yet been so corrupted. He warns against adultery (maybe learning from his own father’s sin against his mother and her first husband) and instead urges his son to be content with the wife God has given him.

Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. (Proverbs 5:18–19)

Even in otherwise perilous times, marriage is a grace that makes people’s lives better and gives hope to a population through the creation of a new generation.

Even in otherwise perilous times, marriage is a grace that makes people’s lives better and gives hope to a population through the creation of a new generation. Even during national disasters and cultural decline, when hostile governments were in power and false prophets were selling false hopes, God’s messengers encouraged his people to marry and raise families.

Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. (Jeremiah 29:6)

Even though life in this broken world can be hard and short,

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 9:9)

All of this means marriage is a good creation of God. It reflects a deep truth about his character. It is no mere man-made social contract, and it is our privilege as followers of Jesus to proclaim this truth to all nations (Matthew 28:20).

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. (Proverbs 18:22)

House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord. (Proverbs 19:14)

An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. (Proverbs 31:10)

Marriage Perverted by Legalism and Licentiousness

The Bible records many ways that sin distorts marriage and its gift of sexuality: polygamy (Genesis 4:19), prostitution (Leviticus 19:29), rape (Leviticus 19:29), sodomy (Genesis 18:20), incest and bestiality (Leviticus 18), the sacrifice of children (Leviticus 20), and divorce (Malachi 2:13–16).

In both the Old and New Testaments, the Bible condemns everyone who corrupts God’s good creation.

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9–10)

But Scripture goes deeper than these sexual sins, confronting the idolatry at the heart of our rebellion. The prophets describe the worship of false gods as prostitution and adultery. God even commands his prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. The wayward wife became an image of faithless Israel, pursuing her false gods. The scorned, grieving, and angry husband provided a glimpse into the faithful character of God.

And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. (Hosea 2:19)

Marriage goes right to the heart of creation—to the relationship between God and his people.

In Jesus’ ministry, he opposed the Pharisees and their legalistic hypocrisy. They sought to follow the letter of the Law of Moses but neglected the spirit of the law, which would have condemned their sinfulness and pointed to the need for a changed heart.

During Jesus’ time, there were two schools of thought regarding divorce. One was that divorce was only allowed for sexual wrongdoing—adultery or finding that a woman had misrepresented herself as a virgin, for example. The other was that divorce was allowed for the most minor misdemeanor. Burn dinner? Divorce!

The Pharisees asked Jesus what his take was, probably to try to trap him into saying something to offend about half his following. Jesus told them their interpretation was wrong because their starting point was wrong. They were starting from the Mosaic Law, which required a writ of divorce (this was actually for the woman’s protection, giving her proof the man no longer had a claim on her and she was free to remarry), but Jesus pointed out, “From the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). God’s original intention was expressed in creation—marriage was designed to be the lifelong union of a man and a woman. Sometimes divorce is the sad result of marriage being affected by the fall, but the Pharisaic tendency to expand divorce to as many instances as possible went against God’s design.

Marriage Redeemed by the Cross

Christians are held to a higher standard because we have the indwelling Holy Spirit helping to transform us into the image of Christ—a process called sanctification. Christian marriage is no different. Christians are supposed to model Christian life, especially regarding our marriages.

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. (Hebrews 13:4)

That is why, for two thousand years in cultures around the world, Christians have asserted and tried to live out God’s principles for marriage, though imperfectly as humans.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Ephesians 5:25)

Christian marriage is an act of worship—a lifestyle dedicated to manifesting eternal truth.

Christian marriage is an act of worship—a lifestyle dedicated to manifesting eternal truth.

That is why the New Testament is full of practical instructions on marriage.

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. (Colossians 3:18–19)

Much of the ancient world only recognized the rights of a small percentage of men, and marriage was mainly a benefit to them as well. Most women and enslaved or poor men weren’t really a priority. The Bible’s teaching was revolutionary—instead of focusing on patrician authority, where a man could do what he liked to his wife, children, and slaves, there was a focus on love and mutuality.

Each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (1 Corinthians 7:2–5)

The idea that a husband had control of his wife’s body was nothing new. But to suggest that a wife had authority over her husband’s body was revolutionary. This means that not only should her physical wants and needs be equally considered in the marital relationship, but it also means that a man cannot have multiple sexual partners because the wife has authority over his body.

Two passages talk about wives submitting to their husbands:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. (Ephesians 5:22–29)

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. . . . For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands . . . Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3:1–7)

Submitting to husbands was a standard marriage exhortation that any woman from a Jewish, Greek, or Roman background would have heard from the time she could understand what marriage was. What wasn’t emphasized anywhere else but in Scripture is the idea that a woman’s submission to her husband is a beautiful picture of the gospel that might even draw an unbelieving person to faith in Christ.

The Ephesians passage also emphasizes the sacrificial love a husband must give to his wife. In the analogy of Christ and the church, the church is made up of sinners who need forgiveness every day. We strive for holiness and attempt to obey, but we often fail. Jesus is the one who loves perfectly—Paul gives men the far harder task!

In order to be qualified to serve as an elder or deacon, a man and his wife must show that he can live out these principles in daily life. The tree is judged by its fruit.

Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach. (1 Timothy 3:2)

Marriage: A Picture of Christ and the Church

In Christian marriage, we glimpse the divine romance. God himself is the ultimate Lover. We are his beloved. Marriage is important—here and now and in eternity.

“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” (Revelation 19:7–9)

Our earthly marriages in this life serve as pictures that foreshadow this future reality.

During his earthly life and ministry, Jesus was never married. This is because Jesus’ bride is the church, and one of the closing scenes of the Bible is the marriage supper of the Lamb. In heaven, there will only be one marriage—that of Christ and the church. Our earthly marriages in this life serve as pictures that foreshadow this future reality.