What is the purpose of marriage?

How intimate the relationship. Taken out of man (Ish) she was called woman (Isha). Marriage is instituted for man and woman’s comfort and joy, and for the procreation of the human race. In Genesis 1 man and woman are exhorted to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, to subdue it, to have dominion over it, Adam being head over all. A man is to leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, one in affection and interest, each the complement of the other.

We have souls also, and the soul seeks companionship; it needs relationships in which its affections can be exercised and developed. God's desire is that His creatures should be unselfishly happy, and in His wisdom and compassion He has said, "It is not good that man should be alone." So He has ordained marriage and the family life. It is true that the Word says, "They that marry shall have trouble in the flesh," yet, even so, every sensible person realises that the greatest natural happiness that any can know is found in marriage and the family life. And for Christians who dwell together as heirs of the grace of life there is the added joy of the home being the Kingdom of God, in which He is owned in dependence and prayer so that marriage yields a fuller communion with God than meats.

We have souls also, and the soul seeks companionship; it needs relationships in which its affections can be exercised and developed. God's desire is that His creatures should be unselfishly happy, and in His wisdom and compassion He has said, “It is not good that man should be alone.” So He has ordained marriage and the family life. It is true that the Word says, “They that marry shall have trouble in the flesh,” yet, even so, every sensible person realises that the greatest natural happiness that any can know is found in marriage and the family life. And for Christians who dwell together as heirs of the grace of life there is the added joy of the home being the Kingdom of God, in which He is owned in dependence and prayer so that marriage yields a fuller communion with God than meats.

Marriage possesses the unique feature of being an institution established by God from the very beginning of human history. God's authority is, therefore, behind the prominent place it occupies in man's social life. The first marriage was ordained in the Garden of Eden for the increase of Adam's comfort and the consummation of his bliss.

In the beginning of the Bible God says, “ It is not good for man to be alone”. Genesis 2 verse 18. He knows what is best for us and so provides a “help-mate”. Marriage is what He has instituted.

"A marriage" carries us back at once to Eden, and to the divine word whereby it was instituted. "It is not good for man to be alone." He is made for communion, as the gift of language shows — to communicate and to receive communication. And in this, too, he realizes not merely the need of the creature, but is in the likeness of his Creator. In the very preface to his creation, the words, "Let us make man," speak of communion.

Man truly is made to recognize in it the dependence of a creature, to whom independence would be every way unsuited and unwholesome. If not mere misery, the pride through which an angel became a devil would be fostered by it, and God's will is to "hide pride from man." His whole mode of existence here is but one interconnected series of dependencies in which marriage is a central point. And here love finds its opportunity and displays itself in the sweet ministries of life, which reflect so much of the character of God and of His ways who is Love.

We are introduced to another great thought of God in verse 18. Man was not created to be an altogether self-sufficient being. He needed not only companionship but an "helpmeet" or "counterpart." We see the goodness of God as well as His wisdom in the way by which the counterpart came into being. The object being the good and profit of Adam, he was allowed to see for himself that no such counterpart existed in the animal creation by the whole range of beasts and fowls being brought before him.

Yet that "it is not good for man to be alone" is the word of his Creator as to Him. Looking at the circumstances of the fall, he who has learned to suspect God everywhere may suspect Him here. He provides in the woman one whom Scripture itself pronounces inferior naturally in wisdom to the man, but on the other hand supplementing him otherwise. The rib out of which she is made is taken from the breast; and if man be the head of humanity, woman is its heart. Even spite of the fall, this still is clear and unmistakable; and man's heart is correspondingly drawn out and developed by her. The awful perversion of this now shows but the fact the more; and the perversion of the best thing commonly produces the worst. For Adam, where all was yet right, here was not only a spiritual being with whom was possible that interchange of thought and feeling which our whole being craves, but also an object for the heart. Pledge of his Creator's love was this fair gift, in whom love sensibly ministered to him and drew out his own, redeeming him from self occupation as from isolation: surely it was not, — "is not good for the man to be alone," and the help provided was a "help meet for him."

Marriage is central, therefore, in the web of human life, the basis of all relationships as God has instituted them. And as marriage (not mere sexual union) it has at most its mere shadow in the temporary attachments of the creatures below man. Personal obligation, voluntarily assumed, and expressed in constant fidelity, distinguishes it by the height of a whole heaven from these partial reflections of it.

The primitive marriage in Eden was remarkably simple and exclusive. Two only shared the delights of the occasion. And this mutual reserve is a character marriage still retains. In matrimony two hearts, two lives become one exclusively in each other. At every wedding a new little world is formed with a total population of two numerically, but administratively of one only. How happy the new experience, and how momentous!