Introduction

Whether you are married or not, I think the following is all applicable. I want to give you six facts that your children need to know about marriage before they get married. It is your job to teach them what that is all about.

The first fact is the purpose of marriage. The second is the essence of marriage. The third is the mission of marriage. The fourth is the design of marriage. The fifth is the reach of marriage. And then the sixth has to do with the various expressions of oneness.

Marriage is one of God’s beautiful designs to express His loving kindness in so many ways.

1. The Purpose of Marriage: To Proclaim the Gospel

The purpose of marriage is so important for your children to understand. The purpose of marriage is to proclaim the gospel. Marriage is designed by God to be a picture of the gospel.

Read Ephesians 5:22–33.

It is absolutely clear that a mystery is revealed there in Ephesians 5 that answers the question: why marriage? The Apostle Paul says something about marriage that does not appear anywhere in history until that time. He tells us what the purpose of marriage really is — it is to be a picture of Christ’s love for the church. You have Christ and His church. That is the whole reason God created marriage. That is the exclusive reason, in terms of the big picture, of why He has created marriage.

It is a picture of a husband who seeks and saves and leads and loves and sacrifices his life for his wife. Wives are designed to play the role of the church, respecting their husbands and submitting as the church submits to Christ. Children, too, are designed to honour and obey their father and mother, looking to them for authority, as a picture of how the children of God look to God for authority and leadership.

Your children must understand why marriage. If they do not understand this, it will be hard for them to be married rightly. A wife will always struggle because she does not know that God has appointed her to be a certain person in the marriage. A husband will not know what he is supposed to be either.

Marriage is the fountainhead of all society. God desires that fountain to pour forth the knowledge of the waters of salvation. One of the reasons you have weak churches is because you have weak marriages. If a husband does not know what it means to be a husband, and a wife does not know what it means to be a wife, how can the church be the church?

The purpose of marriage is not your satisfaction. It is God’s satisfaction in looking at His sons and daughters and how they love the way that He is loved. Teach your children this first: the purpose of marriage is to declare the glory of the gospel.

2. The Essence of Marriage: Oneness

The essence of marriage is explained in one single word: oneness. The central component of marriage is oneness. God is one — the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit working together in unity and love, in humility and delight, in coordination and submission. That is why the most prominent picture, the very essence of marriage, is oneness.

God has called a husband and wife to oneness in everything, absolutely everything. One of the great hardships marriages suffer is when a husband and wife begin to live two different lives — when they are not talking, not sharing, not living life together, not fighting the same battles together. The theological foundation of this is communicated in Genesis 2, picked up by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 19, and by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5.

The kind of oneness God has inaugurated for marriage does not obliterate individuality — it actually enhances and beautifies it. Consider some practical expressions of this oneness: Do you have oneness in your understanding of marriage? In your thinking about life purpose? In the priorities of your daily schedule? In your overall goals? In your understanding of your role in the family? In child discipline? In your ministry in the community? In your life and ministry in the local church? In your very hearts?

A biblical vision of oneness will deliver our marriages from a Hollywood vision that is so poisoned with individualism, self-seeking, and selfish focus. There is something greater: hearts beating together as one.

3. The Mission of Marriage: To Spread the Glory of God Across the Generations

The mission of marriage is to spread the glory of God across the generations. The purpose of marriage is not fulfillment, companionship, or entertainment. God’s design for marriage is that it has a mission. That mission has four elements.

Partnership. It is not good for man to be alone. He needs a helper. In Genesis 1:26–28, God blesses them — a partnership — and commands them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and have dominion. Marriage is designed for labour, for partnership in taking dominion. God does not provide a slave or a servant, but a helper corresponding to him — ezer k’negdo — a helper complementary to him, to supply something he does not have, so that the two work together as one.

Cultivating and keeping. Taking dominion together, arranging the things that God has put in their hands together. You get to create a whole new world together — what a wonderful thing that is.

Procreation. The creation of godly seed, filling the world with worshippers, disciples of Jesus Christ, who will proclaim the gospel from one generation to the next to every tongue, tribe, and nation.

Reflection. The reflection of Christ’s love for the church.

4. The Design of Marriage: A Shared Mission with Role Distinction

Marriage has a particular structure and design: a shared mission with role distinction. Our culture hates everything that implies gender distinctions, which is why it hates the doctrine of marriage. The two reigning philosophies of the world — Marxism and feminism — destroy the whole role distinction in marriage. They emasculate the man and masculinise the woman, destroying this shared mission with role distinction.

In God’s scheme there is authority and submission in marriage. God has never installed a perfect authority on earth — only imperfect governments, imperfect bosses, imperfect husbands, imperfect fathers. We ought to get reconciled to that, and quit thinking that our submission is earned by the perfection of the authority. The happiest wives I have ever known understand authority. The unhappiest never understood it.

This whole design of marriage needs to be communicated and demonstrated every day in life: there is a division of labour, the labour is shared, there are role distinctions, and there is authority.

5. The Reach of Marriage: To Spread the Knowledge of God Across the Generations

God has designed marriage to throw forth into the next generation, so that the family life is such that values, knowledge, and things of the heart are so communicated that they live on. So that when you die, the glory of God that was worked through you does not die. The glory of God is concentrated and communicated from one generation to another.

6. The Bond of Marriage: A Vow Between Heaven and Earth

You must teach your children about the bond of marriage. The bond of marriage is a vow between heaven and earth. A bond of marriage connects the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit with the husband and wife. It creates a unified vision, the same heart and soul to accomplish the same things, so that as a husband and wife grow closer to God, they grow closer to one another.

The beginning of oneness and the preservation of oneness is in a vow. That vow is a sacred thing to take. God is always able to make life flow along the line of that vow again. The vow inextricably links the daily purposes of a man and woman with the overall purposes of God. Marriage is not designed for you — it is designed for God. If we do not understand that, we will never be able to have a happy marriage.

I, Peter David Braderick, covenant before God and man to you, Kelly, to be your loving husband and to lead you, to protect you, and provide for you in the fear of the Lord. I vow to love you as my wife, even as Christ also loved the church, to lay down my life for you, to wash you with the water of the word… You alone will be my delight as the wife of my youth. I will fight for you, for our sons, for our daughters, and for our household. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.
I, Kelly Jeanette, covenant before God and man with you, Peter David Braderick, to be your loyal wife, and to submit myself under your headship, just as the church is subject to Christ… I will be your discreet, chaste keeper at home, diligently, industriously, and faithfully caring for the affairs of your household… Wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.

Conclusion: Teach Your Children These Six Things

God created marriage. Only He is worthy to define it. And marriage has particular purposes. As you teach your children about marriage, teach them at least these six things:

The purpose of marriage — to proclaim the gospel.
The essence of marriage — to be one.
The mission of marriage — to spread the glory of God.
The design of marriage — a shared mission with role distinctions.
The reach of marriage — to spread the knowledge of God from one generation to the next.
The bond of marriage — to live out its various expressions of oneness in real life.

“Therefore be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” — Ephesians 5:1–2

You have many young children watching you. They are learning from you every day. If God gives you grace to communicate and live out these six things, His glory will be cast forth into the next generation.