The Purpose

God's Purpose for Marriage:

1.)    It is not good for man to be alone: God has therefore joined him with his wife to be one flesh.  (It is good to note that this results in Man not being alone in other ways, even if God has not brought him a wife: when Eve was created, Adam gained children and grandchildren, who in turn had parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and friends.  The observation that it is not good for the Man to be alone does not just refer to Man being unmarried.)

      Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." 
                                                                                                                                  - Genesis 2:18 (ESV)

      Jesus replied, "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'  For this reason, a man will   
      leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.  So they are no

      longer two but one.  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
                                                                                                                                  - Mark 10:6-9

2.) The purpose for becoming one flesh is to produce Godly offspring. (It is not good to be alone...)

     Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?  And what was the one God seeking?  Godly     
     offspring.  So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.
                                                                                                                                   - Malachi 2:13-15

3.) The purpose for producing Godly offspring is to pass the memory of God's great deeds down from generation to generation for his glory.

     Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.  One generation will commend

     your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts.
                                                                                                                                  - Psalm 145:3-4

Ben and I are preparing for the wedding ceremony in a few weeks.  One of the tasks Dad gave us was to pick out Scripture verses we would like to see included.  We had three main headings we chose representative Scripture verses to illustrate: God's purpose for marriage, God's expectation for our marriage, and God's promises for marriage.  Here's the first: God's overall purpose for marriage.

It was difficult to choose from all the verses possible to illustrate these points, but we attempted to pick the ones that were simplest, clearest, and most concise.

The overview of our wedding actually begins with these words:

"We will be proclaiming our vows before God and before the invited witnesses.  The purpose is to give glory to God."

That is the point and purpose of our ceremony; and actually, of all the subheadings and verses we thought of and chose, really all of life comes down to the last sentence of that short statement.  People have endless debates about the meaning of life.  To us, the meaning of life in all it's facets is very simple: to give glory to God.