Hey Alex,
As I said before, I think the "piece of paper" is quite important. Even though some people with the piece of paper divorce, and others who never marry stay together their whole lives, that doesn't mean we should not make the commitment before God. Saying we don't need the marriage certificate is a convenient excuse for fornication--I think Ray taught us some important things about marriage, and for us who know better, we should take marriage pretty seriously.
You should listen to Part 2 of the marriage talk---in Part 2 he talks more about this issue: is it really just a piece of paper, can we be married without the paper, etc. Here are some of the best parts:
Well what about the email I got. If you just have to say, I love you as a husband and wife, and we’re married. So you could do this the very day you met. The first night… a one night stand, you go to bed and say I take you as my wife or whatever and now you are married? But what if that’s all it is, a one night stand and then you split up. So are you still married? Can you marry somebody else? By this man’s own admission they are husband and wife.
Let’s say they are together a year. After a year of fornicating outside of marriage, they say, ‘let’s take each other as husband and wife. But we’re not going to have a ceremony, we’re not going to swear an oath, we’re not going to have an covenant, we’re not going to have witnesses, we’re not going to have a license, we’re not going to have it done legally, we’re not going to do it by the custom of the land you know. We’ll do it right here in bed.’ Now it’s a year or two later and they hate each other and they split. Does this person really tell me that for the rest of his life, he’s going to consider he’s married to that woman? I mean I may have been born at night, but not last night. He would no more consider himself married.
But now for arguments sake, to fight the system, you come across the super pious and religious and spiritual person and he’s got this spiritual marriage. There doesn’t need to be a marriage, it’s going to just be what he says and what he believes. So if they were together for a year or so, would they get a legal divorce, with a piece of paper? What if she claimed for the rest of his life, half of what he has is hers. Do you think he would go along with that? Probably not. What if he found another that he wanted to marry one night in bed? You think he would first say to his other ‘wife’ lets have a spiritual divorce together?