THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE

Is marriage about companionship or about transformation? I think most of us want to get attached because of the fear of loneliness but recently, I came to the conclusion that marriage is nothing unless the person helps to be more like Christ.

There's a question that I've been asking for a period of time. Why will there not be husbands and wives in the afterlife when marriage was instituted by God before the Fall? Won't God restore earth back to what it was before? And if marriage is good, why would He not restore it and instead, remove it?

Thanks to a conversation between YX and my boss, I slowly start to see why.

First, God created Eve because He said that it was not good for Adam to be alone. We usually take this at face value – that Adam requires companionship. But we overlook the verses preceding that.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

God saw that it was not good for man to be alone after He gave the specific commandments. Therefore, it was not because of companionship that God gave Adam Eve. He gave him a woman to help him to obey God.

And this is the reason why our marriage has to help us become more Christlike. It is the main reason why God instituted marriage – not companionship – even though it is one of the perks that comes along. We know that all of us will be perfect in the New Heaven from Philippians 1:6. Therefore, marriage is no longer needed because we will be completed by God!

For I am confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will continue to perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

You may ask: If we will be made complete in the New Heaven, then why wasn't Adam complete in Eden even though He was walking with God? I also asked this question but this question makes the assumptions that 1) Adam's state was perfect before the Fall and 2) we will revert to Adam's state after resurrection.

Let's deal with the first assumption. By perfect, I mean he still had his human nature. That is, he had his fleshly desires which might run counter to God's desires. And this is shown through how God was worried Adam could not obey the commandment and Adam's actual failure to obey it. So in that sense, Adam wasn't perfect.

I understand this can be hard to swallow. I actually laughed at YX and called "blasphemy" and "heretic" on him when he first proposed the theory that Adam wasn't perfect to begin with. But think about it. Why won't there be pain or sin in the New Heaven? Isn't it because there is a difference between Eden and the New Heaven; Adam and us? What exactly is the difference?

The only logical conclusion is there won't be free will in the New Heaven and Earth.

I'm not saying that God removes our free will. No, to do that is to remove any sort of love because there's no love if there's no free will. But I think our will will become one with God's will so much so there won't be space for our free will per se in that sense.

Which is why it is so important for us to choose if we want to acknowledge God as our Lord and Saviour in this life. Because when the Second Coming comes, we will be brought to completion according to what we've chosen and our "free will" will end.

Hence, we won't revert to Adam's state in the eternal life. Unlike Adam, we won't have "free will" to choose anything besides God and of Him. And unlike in the Garden of Eden, there won't be sin nor pain because we won't have "free will".

And this further cements the point of why there won't be marriages in the New Heaven and Earth – because we no longer need a spouse to help us in our walk with God. We will be one with Him!

Understanding this has a huge impact on why we choose to get attached/married. I realised that a lot of believers settle for nominal Christians as their partners because Aiya as long as we are of same faith can liao right? I mean biblically speaking yes. But that's really the minimum requirement because how will your partner fulfil the purpose of marriage of making you more Christlike when he/she isn't even a believer in the first place?

But when we understand that the purpose of marriage is not for companionship but for transformation, then we need to be more careful in choosing our partners. Marriages doesn't exist in the New Heaven so will we make our decisions based on this life, or with eternity as our perspective? Will we choose someone who can take care of us in this present age but also prepare us for the age to come?

This is something we have to consider carefully.