Building on the Foundation

Marriage is many things, but unlike the way it is practiced today, it is not a legal contract between two parties that can be nullified on a whim simply by filing the right piece of paperwork. In fact, marriage as practiced in the Bible really has no paperwork at all.  If you’re a Christian, you’ve probably heard it said many times that marriage is a covenant and perhaps assumed that covenant is simply the Biblical word for an agreement or a contract of some type.  A covenant is a little more than that, however, when you consider that, for a covenant you are putting something forward to guarantee the fulfillment of the contract.  You have to put up collateral, and the collateral of a covenant is your own life.   In a covenant, one party offers the covenant, and they can either offer terms with the covenant, or, as God did with Abraham, the offering party can leave all of the requirements on their own end to perform.  The accepting party either agrees to the...

What is the biblical structure of marriage? Is there even a structure for marriage laid out in the Bible? By this point in the series, I’m sure you already know the answers to these questions, but now we’re going to dive into the structure of marriage a little more thoroughly.  Marriage does indeed have a structure that is laid out quite clearly in the Bible, and it is that structure that will really tell us how we are supposed to be operating our marriages if we are going to say we practice Biblical marriage. I realize that many of the things I am going to discuss in this particular article are going to be very counter-culture and will probably upset quite a few people. Still, I’m writing them anyway because the truth needs to be taught. I’ve made every effort to show that women are extremely valuable, and they have the same spiritual potential as men, but if you find a place where I seem to be degrading women, be sure to let me know (if it’s my own opinion, that is).  As for...