Genesis 2:24 (ESV) … “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
When God brought the first woman to the first man, as we are told in the second chapter of Genesis he did, he did not merely provide Adam with a suitable helper and companion. He also established marriage as the first and most basic of all human institutions. Long before there were governments or churches or schools or any other social structures God established a home based on the mutual respect and love of a husband and wife, and all other human institutions came from it.
From the authority of the father there developed the patriarchal and later tribal systems of human government. These gave rise to monarchical systems and then democracies. From the responsibility of parents to raise and educate their children came more formal systems of education: academies, institutes, colleges, and centers of higher learning. From the need to care for the family’s health came hospitals. From the obligation of parents to educate their children in the knowledge of God and the ways to worship came synagogues and then churches. One cannot think of a contemporary social or cultural organization that does not have a derivative relationship to the home and marriage.
And that is the problem! Today marriage is under attack. It is being destroyed, and if marriage falls then all these other institutions—churches, schools, businesses, hospitals, and governments—will inevitably fall with it.[1]
As Christians, let us this Valentine’s Day commit to praying for the institute of marriage.
[1] Boice, J. M. (1998). Genesis: an expositional commentary (pp. 136–137). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
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