My beautiful wife and I filter every aspect of our lives through the Bible and what it says and that goes the same for our marriage in a christian matrimony. With many years of marriage ministry experience, premarital and marital counseling, and the Holy Spirit, we rely on the scripture for our source of wisdom for marriage. We have found, the more we apply the Bible to our lives, the more fulfilled we are in Christ.
The Bible and Christian Matrimony
We believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction and for training in righteousness, that we may be complete, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). This blog is written as a biblical understanding of how the Lord created the institution of marriage and how he designed it in form and function.
In marriages, we need to use Scripture as our foundation for every understanding about marriage and how it applies to our lives. The Lord’s desire for us is to be holy as He is holy (Leviticus 20:26) and the Bible is how He examples holiness to us.
My desire for this blog is to have you and your spouse grow together in Christ and to out do each other in service to one another. Men are called to serve their brides by loving their wives as Christ loves His church and gave himself up for her. The wives are to respect and submit to their husband as unto the Lord. (If the word submit feels like a punch in the face to anyone, the biblical understanding of what submission is will hopefully settle any resentment or bitterness about the use and function of that word. This will be discussed at length soon.)
In all creation, there are three God ordained institutions the Lord created to benefit His creation. The first two were created before the fall of man, when sin entered the world. Marriage is the first institution the Lord created. The Family is the second institution the Lord created out of Marriage. The Church is the third institution the Lord created and was put in place after sin entered into the world. For a lasting marriage, we are going to primarily focus on the institution of marriage and take a quick peak into the institution of the family.
God’s First Institution: Christian Matrimony / Marriage
I understand the word institution carries with it a negative connotation in today’s culture. It may feel like it is a stiff, rigid, and impersonal organization that you may not want to be a part of.
If you would have heard the word institution for the first time in the Garden of Eden when marriage was created, you would not have any preconceived notion of what an institution would be. There would be no man made institution skewing your perspective of what an institution was. You would only know the good things about it, that God created it because the world was sinless and was as God designed it.
In today’s culture, marriage seems as though it is something that people can slip in and out of easily. You see it all over the media and internet. If your marriage is struggling, then why not just get a divorce because you have “irreconcilable differences”?
If you trace Christian matrimony back to its origin, it starts in the Garden of Eden as the very first God ordained institution ever created. God created Adam and Eve, and brought the two together to be joined into one flesh in marriage (Genesis 2:24-25).
From marriage, the Lord established the family as a by-product of the first institution of marriage and christian matrimony. We will see that one of the purposes of marriage is procreation and with that comes a responsibility to raise up Godly offspring who know and love the Lord.
Even if you do not believe in God or His son Jesus Christ, do not let that stop you from strengthening your marriage with the time tested principles in this book to grow your marriage. Even if you only take away one way to improve your marriage, it will all be worth it in the end.