Helping Your Kids Know God's Good DesignНамуна

Talk About God’s Purpose for Marriage

We first see God’s design for marriage in the second chapter of Genesis. Directly after creating woman out of man’s rib, God leads Eve to Adam, giving her to him in marriage. Though we do not see a description of what we would typically recognize as a marriage ceremony, we know this is a marriage because a declaration is made: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 ESV). The term therefore makes clear that God is instituting this pattern for the rest of humanity; moving forward, a man shall now leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This pattern is then affirmed across multiple points throughout Scripture.

In Matthew 19, Jesus is questioned about marriage and divorce by the religious leaders. He responds by saying,

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate (Matthew 19:4-6 ESV).

Here, Jesus points back to Genesis 2, affirming what God established at the beginning of human history—that marriage is a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman.

This truth is again affirmed in Ephesians 5:22-33. In these verses, the apostle Paul reiterates the pattern of one man and one woman coming together in the covenant of marriage. He then explains that this covenant is meant to be a picture of Christ and the church. He writes,

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31-32 ESV).

Here, Paul is confirming the pattern established in Genesis 2, but he takes it one step further by explaining that in its most complete sense, this union is a picture of the gospel, a picture of Christ and the church.

When we introduce the concept of sex to our children, our goal should be to present sex as an inherently good part of God’s design for the covenant of marriage. We do not want to present sex as the purpose of a marriage, but rather as an act designed specifically for marriage.