God’s Design for Marriage

Since God instituted marriage at creation, His law for marriage extends as far as creation extends. Today, R.C. Sproul explains why the Lord’s design for marriage and sexuality remains the same for all people, at all times, and in all places.

Some people say, well, whatever God gave through Moses in the Old Testament, doesn't apply to us anymore. Or whatever stipulations God gave through Jesus to His people in the New Testament may apply to Christians, but they don't apply to non-Christians. But any law that God instills in the covenant of creation extends as far as the creation extends. So that if God sanctifies marriage in creation, then the sanctity of marriage would apply to all generations. And a given culture at a particular time and place does not have the right before God to dispense with the sanctity of marriage and say, well, we're just going to live together and we're not going to have marriages anymore. That's an old-fashioned Puritan or Christian concept that's not binding us.

One of the reasons, for example, why the church recognizes civil ceremonies of marriage and does not restrict marriage to the church and grants that the State has the right to regulate marriage is the conviction that marriage is not just given to human beings as Jews or human beings as Christians, but it is given to human beings. That it is in the state that God blesses and sanctifies for the entire human race and there is no requirement that one be a Jew or a Christian in order to participate in the sanctity of marriage. It's built into creation. That's why ethical issues that touch on the nature of the family, the nature of sexual relationships, as well as the nature of marriage, transcend contemporary cultural considerations. If indeed these things are rooted and grounded in creation, then they can never be treated as a matter of custom.