Marriage That Give Life

Preface

Jesus said that one of the reasons He came was to give us life, a more abundant life. So passionate was He to give us this life that He went to the cross to purchase it and has given us the Holy Spirit so we might live it. The apostle Paul made it clear in his letter to the church at Rome, especially in chapters 6 to 8 that this life was on the other side of death. Just as the victory of the resurrection life of Jesus was after the cross so it is with us. The more abundant life that Jesus promised we could experience comes after our dying to self not before it. The Christian life is not God helping us to be good; it is a brand new never before experienced life that has its origin in God. It is a completely different way of living. It is so different that there is nothing in our old life that is of any use to us in living our new life. Gal 2 v 20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

This book has been written to help Christians have marriages that are full of this abundant life which not only gives life to their family but to all those who know them.

In Mat 19 v 3 – 9 Jesus was having a dispute with the Pharasees about whether God permitted divorce The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?” He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.” In His answer Jesus refused to get embroiled in a discussion about the current issues of the day, how things had changed since the law had been given and whether it needed to be adjusted in the light of current beliefs. Twice in His reply he directed them back to God’s original plan. Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning and from the beginning it was not so. In this book I have attempted to do the same thing, rather than write about Christian marriage from the perspective of current trends and how relevant the bible is I have returned to the beginning to look at the heart of God when he decided to create us and give us the institution of marriage. When God created us as men and women able to bond together in marriage He had a deliberate intention as to who we should be, what we should do, and how we should do it. Everything about our creation was done with a purpose in mind and we will look in detail at that creation for it is here where we find the answers to many of the issues that cause family break ups. It is our most important start point when we are dealing with those issues. Jesus said that the truth would set us free. It is God’s word which reveals God’s ways that bring us true life and Jesus said that it was the truth that set us free. When God inspired His Word to be written he was fully aware of the condition and beliefs of society in the 21st century and in that knowledge He caused to be written what He has written. God has not been caught out by the things society believes today yet the church seems to have become embroiled in a desperate attempt to adjust God’s word so it is more acceptable today on the grounds that the old ways are far to intolerant for today’s ‘all inclusive’ society. It is not intolerant towards people, it is all inclusive whosoever may come but it is intolerant towards sin and its practices because they bring death.

Finally all the scriptures that teach about the relationship between man and woman and husbands and wives only find their true interpretation in the light of our creation as recorded in the first three chapters of Genesis.