David Ayers - Christian Marriage: A Comprehensive Introduction

CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE

A Comprehensive Introduction

DAVID J. AYERS

Christian Marriage: A Comprehensive Introduction

Copyright 2018 David J. Ayers

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

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All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at . Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Lexham Editorial Team: Jim Weaver, Elliot Ritzema, Jennifer Edwards, Sarah Awa

Cover Design: Whantai Park

ISBN: 978-1-941337-92-9

EPUB: 978-1-941337-93-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

I dedicate this book to my wife of more than thirty-five years and best friend for longer than that, Kathleen Burd Ayers.

She was that cute, interesting, popular Hermitage House social-work intern who took a chance on this eccentric, uncool, ex-hippy born-again who was not quite out of the woods. Through adventures and trials across six states, we have built a family and a legacy together under the care and lordship of Jesus Christ. Kathy has had to encourage me far more often than should have been necessary, but she never gave up doing so. She always points me back to God as my anchor, confidence, and hope in good times and bad. Kathy is my steady source of words fitly spoken that are like apples of gold in a setting of silver (Prov 25:11). This book would not have been finished but for her.

CONTENTS

A s I write this, I am absorbing news of yet one more shocking defection from biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality by someone I have known for yearsup until recently a conservative office-holder in an established church with a sound confession. The departure of professing Christian individuals and institutions from orthodoxy in these areas, such as his, has become common, but I have not become numb to it. Long-term Christian acquaintances or friends whose children, raised in professing churches with solid gospel preaching, have come out as gay, transgender, and even actively bisexual and polyamorous are on my mind and in my prayers. There are many these days. The pace of change accelerates. I know I am not the only grandparent wondering how his children are going to raise his grandchildren to be faithful, effective believers in our increasingly post-Christian, and even aggressively anti-Christian, Western culture. I feel for them. I pray to God to guide and strengthen them.

We are a people who have never been healthier or more prosperous, our lives infused by a dazzling abundance of technological marvels. Yet two married parents will not raise most of our children from cradle to adulthood. The deaths of their mothers or fathers do not normally deprive them of this incredibly valuable gift. Rather, it is usually because, for whatever reasons, their parents did not enter into or maintain healthy, deeply committed, covenant marriages.

Meanwhile, most of our cultural and policy responses have not involved rededicating ourselves to strengthening these sacred unions. Rather, they have weakened marriage further, blurring the boundaries of matrimony and knocking down every distinction between it and a host of lesser, or even immoral, relational arrangements. Yesterday it was the casual acceptance of premarital sex, out-of-wedlock birth, no-fault divorce, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage. Polyamory, sometimes involving odd mixtures of sexual orientations and gender identities, seems to be the next thing on the horizon, but who knows?

For professing Christians, these problems are not out there somewhere afflicting only the overtly pagan, secular, or liberal. Many of those within the boundaries of the historically orthodox are moving in the same direction. They are sometimes one or two steps behind, but in other ways are keeping up. Already, in many key areas related to marital and sexual practices, there is little difference between professing believers and the world. For many of us these are not sterile statisticswe see it in our congregations and among our friends every day.

Yet I am also typing these words only a few days before Christmas, the time when we celebrate that the incarnate God was born to a virgin peasant woman betrothed to a Jewish carpenter, in the midst of an unbelievably corrupt and cruel civilization built on bloody war and the backs of slaves. Light burst forth into the darkness, witnessed by shepherds and announced by angels. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone (Isa 9:2). Here was hope for the hopeless, justice for the oppressed, comfort for the afflicted, wisdom for the foolish, sight for the blind, and salvation for lost sinners. Here was cause for confident anticipationnot because the world had suddenly become a great place filled with wise and righteous people, but because he was now in it, redeeming all things. In the shadow of the moral depredations of Herods court, here was the author of marriage preparing to become the faithful son of a simple couple heading a working-class family, destined not only to sit on Davids throne but also to be the flawless and triumphant husband of his eternal bride prepared from before time, the church.

When we look at the state of marriage and its trajectory, we can be tempted to despair and retreat. The more we understand the vital importance of this most original of all human institutions to so much else in Gods plan for humankind, the greater our despondency can be. However, when we look to the God who entered human history on that night in Palestine, all he has done and all he ishis love, wisdom, faithfulness, and powerthere is no longer cause for hopelessness and fear. If he who entered the world to redeem us, who was not only born of a virgin but rose from the dead, is for us, then nothing can stand against us (Rom 8:31).

With this confidence and hope, trusting not in our own strength and wisdom but his, we can now rededicate ourselves as the people of God to strengthen and advance what so much of the West has now abandonedthe beautiful order of Christian marriage. This has increasingly been my passion as a layperson, Sunday school teacher, and evangelical sociology professor for decades now. It has animated much of my research, reading, thought, and now, this book.

Writing this has been a delight but often quite difficult as well. The amount of research and the challenge of distilling complex realities into clear, succinct, orderly text has certainly accounted for many of my struggles in authoring this, and more than one sleepless night. However, most of my discomfort has come from confronting the gap between the biblical ideals I am often trying to present and my own weaknesses, shortcomings, and failings. It is hard to be an honest parent writing a book on Christian childrearing, and it is equally hard being a reflective but sinful married person writing about godly marriage. Close behind that are the vastness and importance of the subject versus the limitations of any book that seeks to adequately address it.

Thus, I present this book in the hopes that, despite its limitations and mine, it can be of service to Christian individuals and churches in recovering sound marital doctrine and practice. I also offer it with the intention of helping us to see not only the moral and practical truth of Christian marriage, but also its loveliness. With my sincere prayer and expectation that the chapters to follow will bear fruit by the grace of God, I offer this to you.