For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”(Eph. 5:31).
That statement comes in the middle of some teaching that the Apostle Paul was giving the Ephesian Christians on the whole subject of marriage and family. You’ll notice, however, that the quotation that he gave is incomplete because it starts out by saying, “For this reason…”
Now if you’re thinking when you read the Bible – and you should always do that – you’d be immediately asking yourself the question: for what reason? And that would take you back to Gen. 2, where we have this foundational statement: “From the beginning of creation God created male and female; for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.” It’s interesting to notice that Jesus quoted that same Genesis passage and added to it “whom God therefore has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
So, take those three Scriptures – the one in Eph. 5, the one in Gen. 2, the one in Mark 10 – and you’ve got a basic statement: “From the beginning of creation, God created male and female, for the reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
Now why am I taking the trouble to reiterate that statement? The answer is that the institutions of marriage and family are coming under very powerful attack at the present time. There are very erudite, highly motivated forces that are extremely powerful who are setting out to redefine marriage and to restructure the family. If you’ve been following recent events in American culture, you will be well aware that there are some states which have taken steps to bring in legislation that, frankly, redefines marriage.
Other states are recognizing this and are concerned about it, for there are laws in the land that suggest that what is accepted in one state should automatically be accepted in another; so a number of state legislatures have been trying to adopt legislation which would counter this attempt to redefine marriage.
In fact, the Congress took the extraordinary step of bringing into law the Defense of Marriage Act, which includes a very basic, unmistakable attempt to define what marriage is and what by definition it isn’t. This is what it says: The word “marriage” means only a legal union between one man and one woman, as husband and wife. The word “spouse” refers only to a person of the opposite sex, who is a husband or a wife.