Marriage is a covenant that God has given and how he wants life to be ordered. Bible verses for singles who want to get married are easy to find but what we really need are the what no to do verses. Marriage has been corrupted for all of human history but that does not mean that we should abandon it or its ideal. Marriage in God’s eyes is between a single man and a single woman bound together for life. This ideal is enough just as God himself is enough. Anyone who wants more than this is corrupting their own soul through lust and covetousness. In Judges we find Samson asking his parents to secure a wife, but he wants a wife from the pagan Philistines.
3 But his father and mother said to him, “Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.” 4 His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel. Judges 14:3-4
Marriage as an Object Lesson
Marriage is a common institution all through the Bible and it is a common institution in the lives of most people. Bible verses about being single and married give us examples we can learn from. Some marriages are unhealthy and some are loving and stable. God planned for Samson to desire the Philistine wife because God wanted a confrontation between the Israelites and their oppressors the Philistines. Does this surprise you that God put this into Samson’s heart? There are other times God uses Marriage to make a point. Hosea is a prophet of God who is called to proclaim God’s perspective to the people. God asks Hosea to make is very life an object lesson to the nation.
2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” Hosea 1:2 ESV
Christ and the Bride
Yes, you read this scripture correctly. God ask his prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute and to make babies with her. They have multiple children and then she leaves him to return to her line of work. Hosea’s entire life is how God feels about his chosen people who leave him to chase after false Gods. The people who God created are the whores in this object lesson. The cringe levels at this idea of me cheating on God with the things of this world are painful to contemplate.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Revelation 21:2 ESV
God Honoring Marriage
The idea that the church is the bride of Christ is all through scripture. The church and who I am in the church is being made as a wife to Jesus. Paul in his letter to the Church in Ephesus uses the bride and bridegroom example to demonstrate what a healthy marriage should look like. These verses highlight what any single person needs to know from the Bible about being married.
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Ephesians 5:22-24 ESV
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, Ephesians 5:28-29 ESV
Two People One Purpose
A healthy marriage has these characteristics of a wife who submits to her husband and a husband to loves his wife so much that he provides for her and cares for her in the same way that Christ loves the Church. The irony of modern feminism and western culture is that women can do anything a man can do. The idea that a woman must submit to a man is forbidden. Some of you reading this might even be mad at the idea. I can see your mind conjuring up all kinds of evil scenarios where the man demands submission and is abusive to the woman. That is not submission. Submission is where both the man and the woman are walking in the same direction toward God. They are one before him.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Ephesians 5:31 ESV
Waking Two Paths to Disaster
Returning to Samson we can apply what we have learned. Samson asking for a Philistine wife is like asking for a stick of dynamite. His parents were right to ask him to find a wife who loves God. A wife that would be able to submit because she trusts God. Samson needed a wife who would prioritize him and their life together before God.
What Samson got instead was a wife who was loyal. She was not loyal to God or Samson but to her own pagan community. In the end Samson’s wife is killed and Samson goes on a murderous spree killing the Philistines. God arranged this to judge the Philistines and he gave Samson the power to make it happen. Hard times for everyone involved.
If looking to be married yourself ask God to provide who he wants for you. Ask for a husband or wife that will walk with you lock step as one before God.
6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Matthew 19:6 ESV
Thanks for reading. I pray this was helpful to you in your devotional time with God.
