As Jesus recalls the melodrama of God’s presentation of Eve to Adam, He says, “But from the Beginning of creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh” (Mark 10:6-8). This passage presents five guidelines for building a strong and godly marriage, which I find myself returning to again and again.
There are principles in Scripture that are the biblical basics. This is one of those mandates that must use the rabbinical method of teaching: repetition!
Guideline 1: Leave
The Hebrew word for leave quoted by Jesus here literally means “forsake dependence on.” Many married couples have never stopped depending on their parents or on those who raised them. To leave doesn’t mean to cut all ties, but to establish your independence from your households of origin. You have formed a new family unit; you’re not merely an extension of someone else’s family.
Guideline 2: Cleave
To cleave means that you make a commitment to your spouse that you will always stick together, until death or until the Lord’s coming separates you. Such a commitment is the missing ingredient in many of today’s marriages. In God’s original plan, there were no escape hatches, no prenuptial agreements, no bailout clauses. Cleaving means you burn your bridges and make a lifelong commitment to love your spouse. No matter what.
Guideline 3: Be Physically Intimate
Notice the progression: leave, cleave, and then one flesh. There is no room in God’s plan for couples to try one another out before the marriage to see whether they are sexually compatible. That is a lie of this world, not the truth of God’s Word. God designed sex to seal the deal between a husband and wife.
Guideline 4: Become Transparent
The Genesis account says Adam and Eve were “both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). They felt no fear or rejection, but instead felt total acceptance from each other. Barbara knows that I accept and love her, just as she accepts and loves me. This enables both of us to be transparent, be ourselves with each other fully without fear.
Guideline 5: Fulfill Your Responsibilities
The final part of God’s plan calls for fulfilling your responsibilities. I believe that because we have been deceived in to making some incorrect assumptions about what God intended, the discussion of roles in marriage has produced a lot of heat and very little light.
The dictionary says a role is “the part played by an actor”. In marriage, however we don’t act. According to the Bible, husbands have clear responsibilities to sacrificially love and lead their wives, while wives have clear responsibilities to respect and support their husbands. When we fulfill those responsibilities, it makes for oneness and intimacy in marriage.
When a couple learns how to practice these five biblical blueprints on a daily basis, they begin to experience marriage as God intended it.
