Covenantal Marriage Essay

Covenantal Marriage: The Implications on Marriage, Sex and Sexual Ethics Marriage. What is it? Most of society would say it is a union of love between two persons that can be dissolved at any time. This modern sentiment of marriage lacks a sound foundation, meaning and purpose. One can enter into a marriage based on feelings and end it just once the butterflies are nowhere to be found in the realities of daily life. In stark contrast, Scriptures present marriage as a covenant. Viewed in the scriptural context of a covenant, marriage is a union of self-sacrificing love to become one with another. One of the Old Testament’s overarching theme is the covenantal marriage between God and Israel. God initiates a union with Israel to be his People and their God out of love, loyalty and fidelity. “A covenant…is an agreement or oath of fidelity between parties made with or before God in which one promises one’s very self to another” (Grabowski, 29). It was not a transaction of a service or good nor an act of natural law, but a fully conscious binding agreement. Israel entered into a new familial bond that “demand[ed] an unconditional and more person form of fidelity” (Grabowski, 29). Understood in this context, marriage is not mere an …show more content…
This love of total self-gift, not one of a transactional nature, is modeled in the New Testament by Christ. “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). He is the head of the Church and the Church is his body, in which brings people into his fold. Drawing on this covenant between Christ and the Church, the love of the spouses has to be unitive and life giving. Sex then is not mere a means to satisfy one’s pleasure but it is to bond a couple in deeper union and create new life through children. Thus a covenant, both marital and non-marital, is not a cold, sterile agreement, rather it is a union that creates