MARRIAGE, DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE (4): What is a Marriage?
The great confusion about divorce and remarriage often springs from this: most believers do not even understand what marriage is. How can a person speak with authority on what ends a marriage if he cannot say what begins one? Ask the leading voices of modern Christianity to show from the Bible the moment a man and woman become husband and wife, and watch how quickly they shift from Scripture to tradition. You will hear eloquent opinions, but not divine definition. They cannot tell you what a marriage is because they have quietly rejected what the Word says. It does not fit the systems they have built. It shakes their tidy theology. It undermines their authority. So they teach around it. But the Bible is clear, and it must speak louder than our ceremonies and customs.
If we are to let the Bible define marriage, we must return to its first mention in Genesis. The modern church has allowed culture to draw the lines, and once the culture defines marriage, every doctrine about divorce collapses. “The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and while he slept, He took one of his ribs and made it into a woman, and brought her to the man. And Adam said, ‘This one is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:21–24). There is the Bible’s definition. Not ceremony. Not legal status. Not a social agreement. It is covenantal union—“the two shall become one flesh.”
That phrase—one flesh—is the essence of biblical marriage. It is covenant, expressed through union. It is not a temporary joining, not a casual act of passion, but the giving of two entire selves before God. When Adam received Eve, there was no priest, no paperwork, no vows written in ink—only covenant sealed in body and soul. The act of union did not create the covenant, but it sealed it. It was the visible expression of a spiritual truth. The covenant sanctifies the union. The union displays the covenant.
This is what Paul reaffirmed centuries later. “For this reason,” he wrote, “a man will leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31). The Spirit of God did not change the definition. Marriage has always been the covenantal union of two becoming one under God’s authority. Ceremonies can honor it, governments can recognize it, but only covenant makes it real. When the church allows culture to define what God designed, truth becomes tangled in tradition.
Marriage in the sight of heaven is a holy covenant, not a civil agreement. It is not the preacher who makes a man and woman one, nor the witnesses who confirm it—it is God Himself. “What God has joined together, let no man separate.” (Matthew 19:6). The physical union does not create the marriage apart from covenant, but within covenant it is the expression of that joining. When Isaac took Rebekah into his mother’s tent, the record says, “She became his wife, and he loved her” (Genesis 24:67). She became his wife “in the tent.“ What are we to make of that? No mention of ceremony, no public vow, just covenantal union under divine providence.
The Bible itself proves the point: covenant and becoming one flesh—not ceremony—makes marriage.
This teaching cuts deep, because it exposes the layers of man-made religion that have smothered simple truth. Many in the modern church cling to a legalistic, clergy-controlled view of marriage that owes more to Roman Catholic tradition than to the Word of God. Pastors and elders often refuse to face this truth because it topples their own false security. They think, “I have only had one ceremony, therefore I have only had one wife,” while ignoring the fact that they have joined themselves to others in their past. The word of God will not bend to protect pride. Truth exposes hypocrisy. The Pharisee spirit is still among us—it hides under robes and suits and “reverence,” but it trembles when light shines through.
Paul drives the truth home in 1 Corinthians 6. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and join them to a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall become one flesh’” (1 Corinthians 6:15–16). That verse alone destroys centuries of man-made tradition. The joining of bodies is not trivial—it is covenantal. God sees that act as one flesh. Even when done sinfully, the pattern of creation still applies. This is why sexual immorality is not just another sin. It takes what God made sacred and profanes it.
Paul continues, “Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin a man commits is outside the body, but the one who commits sexual sin sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18). Why? Why is sexual sin a sin against one’s own body? Because the body is meant for covenant. Sexual sin is a counterfeit marriage. It imitates the physical sign of covenant while denying the covenant itself. That is why it is unique among sins. It defiles the very image of Christ and the church—a union meant to be holy, exclusive, and eternal.
Fornication, then, is not simply lust out of control—it is covenant torn from its roots. It is saying with the body what the soul refuses to say with the heart. It joins what God never authorized to be joined. A man who gives himself to another in that way joins his body to one he does not intend to love, protect, or honor in covenant. He sins against his own flesh because that flesh was designed to belong to one woman in covenantal union. “So husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself” (Ephesians 5:28). The husband’s body is his wife’s body, and the wife’s body is his. They are not two, but one.
This mystery runs deeper than human understanding. Marriage is not merely about companionship or pleasure. It is a divine portrait of redemption. Christ and His church are one. He has joined Himself to His Bride through the covenant of His blood. The two have become one Spirit. That is why the one-flesh union between a husband and wife is sacred. It reflects the gospel. To distort it is to blur the image of Christ’s love for His people.
The world laughs at this truth. The modern church avoids it. But the Bible stands unmoved. Marriage is covenant. Union without covenant is sin, and covenant without union is—generally speaking— incomplete. God designed both to mirror His own nature—faithful, holy, and indivisible. The one-flesh relationship is not just physical. It is the visible sign of a spiritual truth. To treat it lightly is to mock the Creator.
So what, then, is marriage? It is the covenantal joining of a man and a woman before God, expressed and sealed through the one-flesh union. No ceremony can create it, and no man can dissolve it apart from sin. It is sacred because it reflects the deepest mystery in all of Scripture: “This is a great mystery,” Paul wrote when he was talking about husbands and wives being one flesh. “But I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32).
To understand marriage is to glimpse the gospel. To misunderstand it is to twist the very image of Christ’s redeeming love. Let every believer tremble before this truth: the covenant is the marriage. The one-flesh union is its expression. To give either away without the other is to take what is holy and make it hollow.
Bryan Dewayne Dunaway
