WhoAmi,
Have you read this paper by Ray yet or listened to the Audio, it answers most if
not all the questions you have posed.
george.
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,5675.msg45929.html#msg45929Excerpt from: Feb. 2007 Bible Study
WHAT IS MARRIAGE?
[Is a License and a Ceremony Required?]
I’m going to talk about what constitutes marriage, not the marriage state of how to have a happy marriage, that’s a subject for another Bible study. But we are going to talk about specifically, in detail, what is marriage.
Can you just marry yourself? Just say, ‘well we live together and I kind of think of you as my wife. And she says, yea I kind of think of you as my husband. So I guess we’re married. We don’t need a piece of paper. What’s a piece of paper? People who get pieces of paper get divorces and that’s nothing. We love each other and we are more married than they are married.’
Sounds good? There’s not much truth to it though and I will talk about it.
What is marriage? Is a license and a ceremony required? I want somebody to give me some idea of what marriage is. What is the meaning of the word?
[Two people living together, sharing their lives] No.
[ A union, created by God] Closer.
[A mutual commitment] No, partly, but no.
It is not what most people think and people will be dumb founded when they find out what the Bible has to say about marriage. I’m going to give you a little secret, the marriage state, that is the institution of two people being married together, sharing their lives together, living in a home producing children, so on and so forth, of that the Bible has virtually nothing to say. Yet the word marriage or marry is in there over and over and over and over……but not the things I just said.
[Is it two flesh becoming one flesh] No, not even close. You would think so though, wouldn’t you. Isn’t that part of it? I mean Christ Himself said that, right. It’s part of it, but it does not fit the definition of marriage though, at all. Not even at all.
[A contract] Now we are getting closer. A contract. Marriage is a contract.
Now maybe a more important question would be, is love required to make a marriage? [No] Right on, no. Love does not even enter into the definition of a marriage. It does not. Proof……how many arranged marriages have been in the world? Millions. Do most of them when they get an arranged marriage, love each other? They don’t even know each other.
Does sexual union have to be involved, in the definition of a marriage? [Unless it is consummated, you can annul it, right?] How long do you have to do that? Two years, eight years? Now we are putting time limits on it.
Sex and love has nothing to do with the definition of marriage. Nothing to do with it and I’m going to prove it to you. So What is marriage? We are going to find out. Get ready for a revelation, because this may not all be what you think it is.
I received an email it contains that this person is living with this person and it says, ‘we’re married.’ Here’s what he says:
“I can’t believe you would call that sinful living.
Maybe Babylon is right; we do need to have a physical circumcision and a physical water baptism and a physical wedding ritual etc… etc… etc… everything’s physical, it’s all physical. Perhaps even God’s law is physical and it matters not whether you truly love your wife or not, as long as you got that physical marriage license, you’re good to go. And there is no ‘law of the land’ that says it’s illegal for two people to live together without having a marriage license.” (Ray’s comment - Is there a law that says you can’t do that? That sounds good, I mean the guy is spouting off all this worldly wisdom. Of course I have a little statement in my notes here too: Likewise there’s no ‘law of the land’ that says when two people live together that they are LEGALLY husband and wife, either, is there. [What about common law?] It doesn’t, you can claim it sometimes, but the powers that be do not make you husband and wife. They do not.). “Maybe in the dark ages, and OT but not now, not in the U.S. nor Europe or any other civilized society. Perhaps in the middle east, but they’re still physically stoning people. So I wouldn’t want to follow that ‘law of the land’.”
“God declared who is man and wife, not some magistrate or a piece of paper.” (Ray’s comment - sounds good, I mean he’s just really nailing it, isn’t he? Wrong pale face. Are magistrates and pieces of paper worthless and ungodly? It sounds like it from his perspective that they are.) “I know Adam and Eve were husband and wife, that’s why I used them as an example of how you can be married in God’s eyes under God’s Spiritual law without having a physical wedding ritual.”
Oh really. And he knows for a fact that Adam and Eve had no wedding? He knows that for a fact?
george.