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Building Block
One: Lifelong Commitment
The first biblical building block for a strong marriage is for
the man and woman to make a lifelong commitment. The Scriptures
make it clear that God’s ideal for marriage is one man and one
woman for a lifetime. With this kind of commitment in view,
the Lord Jesus said:
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 (Mt. 19:4-6).
Then, in response to a question about divorce, Jesus continued:
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 (vv.8-9).
Except for the serious exception of marital unfaithfulness,
the marriage vow is a lifelong commitment—a vow to God and to
each other that is not to be broken (see Eccl. 5:4-5). Marriage
is for life.
Consider the following true story: A man and woman had been
married only a year when she was diagnosed as a victim of multiple
sclerosis. After thinking seriously about it, she told her husband
she was “setting him free.” But he did not leave her. The tender
care and love he showered on her made her remaining years happy
and special. Why did he do it? “Because,” he said, “when I vowed
before God ‘for better or for worse’ and ‘in sickness and in
health,’ I meant it. And God made both of us unbelievably happy
as a result.”
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©1986-2001
RBC Ministries —Grand Rapids, MI 49555 Printed in USA
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