What Should Make Christian Marriages Distinctive?

Allison Woolford I _____, take you ______, to be my wedded wife/husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish 'till death do us part. Based on the Merriam-Webster dictionary, marriage is the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law. Simply put, it is a contractual relationship between a man and a woman. Contractual is one of the key words in the definition due to the fact that contracts can be terminated. If one or both parties want to get out of the contract, it is possible. There is nothing binding to keep them together. This causes people to take marriage lightly and not to think that once you say I do you are joined to the hip with that person. It is as if people forget that death part in the vows or maybe they think of it as not being a literal sense of the word. Based on information obtained from the CDC website, as of March 29, 2012, there have been 2,077,000 marriages within the United States with a marriage rate of 6.8 per 1,000 total population. Sadly, 3.4 per 1,000 result in divorce (within 44 states reporting including DC). Within North Carolina in 2010, there were 62,645 marriage and 35,827 divorces and annulments (Selected Vital Statistics for 2010 and 2006-2010). That is over half of all marriages ending in divorce or annulment. So, what makes a Christian marriage so distinctive? First, one must look at each individual and the courtship between the man and the woman. Each person must be in a solid spiritual place where temptations wont be able to interfere in the beginnings of the relationship. 2 Corinthians 6:14 tells us that we should not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. It is hard to have a relationship that is based on spiritual principles if both parties dont believe in the same thing and are trying to move towards the same goals.
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The big topic of discussion within any relationship stems around sex.

Corinthians 7:1-3 states: Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. 3 Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.

This touching can cause a man/woman to sin especially when it leads to sexual immortality. This sexual immortality is designated for the husband and wife. The idea of providing the affection due to the wife/husband makes it so that Satan cant tempt the spouse to step outside the marriage to receive the affection they are seeking. The next step in a relationship is making it permanent. Besides Ephesians 5, Colossians 3:18-19 states that:
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Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

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Husbands, love

your wives and do not be bitter toward them. When women see the word submit, it puts a bad taste in their mouths. Women have fought for years to have equal rights to men. They have fought to be able to think on their own, to have their opinions valued and not to be looked at as second class citizens. They have fought to be given the right to decide what happens to their bodies, the right to vote and well as the right to lead multi-billion dollar corporations. To this day the fight is still going on for women to be paid equally to their male counterparts. In their eyes, this idea to submit to their husbands is just absurd. Just walk around the house barefoot and pregnant while my husband is out running the streets. Women have developed into these independent beings that dont need a man to do anything. They can cook, clean, take out the trash, cut the grass, fix their own cars, repair a leaking faucet and raise kids. The Bible is not saying that women cannot have free will to think or do as they like but when they say I do to that man that they want to spend the rest of their lives with, they need to realize that they are no longer by themselves but are now joined to somebody else that is supposed to provide and love them and take the weight of the world off their shoulders. There is nothing wrong with allowing the man to take control; to surrender some aspects of their life to them because the man maybe better at certain things. Now, the scriptures do not let the men get away with murder. Christ gave his life for the Church and the husband should be willing to do the same for his wife. Marriage is not a one way street. The husband has to be in the right frame of mind spiritually to lead his wife and eventually family in the right direction toward Christ. The husband

cannot just ignore his role in the marriage and think that he can do whatever he wants to do and the wife just has to do his bidding. Marriage requires compromise. In Matthew 19:3-9, Christ teaches the multitudes in Judea that the only way that a Christian marriage can end is through sexual immorality. If one divorces their spouse for any other reason and marries another, they are committing adultery. This forces the couple to talk out their issues and not just run away from their problems.

Bibliography
Selected Vital Statistics for 2010 and 2006-2010. North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics. http://www.schs.state.nc.us/schs/vitalstats/volume1/2010/nc.html Retrieved December 18, 2012. New King James Bible