Andrew Walker asks and answers the question, “Should the Church ‘Get out of the marriage business?” on The Gospel Coalition Blog:
Christians are frequently tempted to excuse themselves from the kerfuffle over same-sex marriage by insisting that the church should get out of the marriage business altogether. Many suggest that we should separate the conception of marriage into the “sacred” and the “secular.” These evangelicals aren’t questioning the Scripture’s teaching on homosexuality. Some Christians just want to bypass debate and focus on weightier matters within the church’s walls—like preserving the theology of marriage from being corrupted by democratic fiat.
This argument assumes that Christians can maintain and safeguard their own definition of marriage by refusing to impose a particular viewpoint in the public square. Often with good intentions, some Christians wish to privatize marriage into a strictly ecclesial practice, treating it like we would the Lord’s Supper or baptism.
But therein lays the problem: The church’s theology on marriage, while certainly ecclesial, isn’t sectarian. Marriage leads one outside the walls of the church and into the public square because marriage, by design, reveals a certain cosmology about our essence as being made male and female. Marriage has an innately public purpose by bringing together the two halves of humanity. If you embrace man as man and woman as woman, you might be on the losing end of a culture war over marriage, but you’ll be on the side of truth when the dust settles about human nature.
Read the full story at TGC site.
3 Comments. Leave new
The “church” is the body of believers in CHRIST. Indeed, those who reject the principles of that belief should reject … i.e .. “Remove themselves” from a body that espouses the belief that marriage is the union of a man and woman. In today’s vernacular: cancel the account…form a new corporation … On with the new! For heaven’s sake leave us alone those who celebrate and have celebrated years and years of the true marriage sacrament!
Let’s rewrite the PCUSA Bible (no make that a guide that might be used). Let’s leave marriage and anything else out that is controversial. It would be a best seller I bet (not).
The words of Christ himself reflect marriage. Please, review Matthew 19 verses 4 through 6, and examine the actual words of Jesus himself on the definition of a marriage. He addresses a union between a Man and a Woman, period. This is a union between a man and the helper God made for him, a woman, in Genesis 2 verse 18.
This leads to the definition of a Christian, which is someone who follows Jesus Christ. Since he is not currently amount us in bodily form we must rely upon his testimony in the Bible. If an individual cannot follow the words of Christ, then this individual is not a Christian. It matters not, how much credit for seminary, personal good deeds, who feels offended or anything else, if one does not follow the testimony of Jesus Christ they are not definable as a Christian.