The Marriage Bed is Undefiled!

An age old question within the Christian community is “what defiles the marriage bed?”. In this blog, I seek to answer that question and shed some light from a biblical perspective on what I believe that actually means. Now, I will base this on my understanding of scripture but I ask you to challenge me and open up dialogue if your interpretation of the scripture deviates from mine.

To full understand this, we need to look at marriage in its original form. I love the wedding ceremony, the wedding reception, the wedding cake, the speeches and all that other good stuff that we have brought into the modern idea of marriage but these things are the niceties. They are the trimmings, the side dish, the complementary elements to a marriage. In fact, I will go as far as to say that in modern society we put so much more emphasis on the wedding day than the actual marriage itself.

Marriage in its original form is a covenant, a contract between two families (I will simplify this later) that binds a couple together.

From the research I have been conducting on the marriages of old, I can see that it consisted of three parts.

• The marriage contract
• The act of marriage (consummation)
• The wedding feast 

In the days of old, there was no such thing as a marriage certificate, but the bible tells us that people were given and taken in marriage. As early as Genesis 2 we are told “this explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one”.

The earliest account of a marriage certificate I can find is 1837 in England when civil registration was introduced to provide a central record of all births, deaths and marriages.

This was obviously not the beginning of the institution of marriage, rather a system to track and record all marriages that they may be legalized in accordance to the law of the land in which they took place.

The first clear record we have of the ancient marriage is that of Isaac to Rebekah. The first part, the marriage contract, took place when Abrahams servant found Rebekah, put the gave her the gold ring for her nose and bracelets for her wrists and went to explain to her family what had happened. During this conversation, a verbal agreement was made that the Rebekah would be given to Isaac as his wife. The agreement was sealed with the giving of expensive gifts to her family.

The second part, the act of marriage, took place when Rebekah returned with Abrahams servant to Negev. In Genesis 24:67 it says that “and Isaac brought Rebekah into his mother Sarah’s tent, and she became his wife. He loved her deeply, and she was a special comfort to him after the death of his mother”.

Although there is no recording of the wedding feast for Rebekah and Isaac, it was customary and what was culturally done.

I apologize for the long introduction but I wanted to drive home that what we consider marriage to be today is different to what the bible considers marriage to be. We have trivialized the most important part of these 3 steps, we have made it cheap and use it to sell products and whatever else we can. We have allowed our youth to be sold a lie that it can happen with no strings attached and it can be done with whoever you want whenever you want as long as they consent. Let me clear this up and state that all we have come to know is a lie. Sex, intercourse, bumping uglies or whatever you want to call it, is the act of marriage and it is a sacred act. It is not something that should be entered into lightly and it should not be something that is trivialized.

So back to the topic of this blog, what defiles the marriage bed? Well if we are considering sex as the act of marriage, where sex is an act where a covenant (contract) between the two participants and God is sealed through the shedding of blood (breaking of the hymen), then we are asking what act can defile this. I am of the opinion that the only act that can defile the act of marriage is an act that defiles that covenant. When you enter into a marriage 2 individuals have joined together to become one and then that one is united with God. A perfect union between two parties who have become one flesh and a triune God, a perfect symphony.

How does one defile this covenant? Well one does not defile the covenant by what the individuals do with their bodies (consensually), because we are told in 1 Corinthians 7:4 “the wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife”. What I infer from this is that what a husband and wife choose to do consensually with their bodies is between the two of them as they have given each other authority over their bodies. So this throws out the notion that sexual acts such as oral sex, anal sex or any other sexual act between a consenting husband and wife can defile the marriage bed. When we look at the songs of Solomon we see the use of language such as “I sit in his delightful shade and taste his delicious fruit” (Songs of Solomon 2:3) or “Your thighs shelter a paradise of pomegranates with rare spices – henna with nard, nard and saffron, fragrant calamus and cinnamon, with all the trees of frankincense, myrrh, and aloes, and every other lovely spice. You are a garden fountain, a well of fresh water streaming down from Lebanon’s mountains. Awake, north wind! Rise up, south wind! Blow on my garden and spread its fragrance all around. Come into your garden, my love; taste its finest fruits” (Songs of Solomon 4:13 – 16).

God has designed the act of marriage for our pleasure, not just for procreation. If that were its sole purpose then you may as well close up shop once you have however many children you plan on having. You may as well class yourselves as roommates and ask Sheldon Cooper for a copy of his roommate agreement.

Read the songs of Solomon and see how Solomon and his lover explored and enjoyed each other’s bodies. Their passion was unrivalled; just read this part, “I caught and held him tightly, then I brought him to my mother’s house, into my mother’s bed, where I had been conceived” (Songs of Solomon 3:4). As they say today, they were getting it in! I don’t know about you but I don’t think passion has ever over taken me so much that I would take my wife into my mother and fathers bed. I may be a freak but I am not stupid!

Song of Solomon tells us an amazing love story, with deep sexual intimacy, passion and lust for each other. I doubt they left much to the imagination when they were intimate so that to me says that there is no act that a husband and wife can commit with their bodies that defiles the covenant. So what it is?

Well, when we are in breach of contract what does it mean? It means we have broken the terms of our agreement. We have gone outside the rules we stipulated when we made our agreement. So when we defile our covenant with God (our contract with God) we do this by going outside of our agreement of the marriage contract.

The bible tells us in Deuteronomy 4:23 “So be careful not to break the covenant the Lord your God has made with you. Do not make idols of any shape or form, for the Lord your God has forbidden this. The Lord your God is a devouring fire; he is a jealous God”.

You see the act of marriage is an act of worship unto God. I can just picture the faces of the men as the read this now, making a mental note of just that part so they can use it over and over again… “Baby, let’s go upstairs and worship the Lord together”. Anyway, as I was saying, it is an act of worship onto God. When we engage in sex we remind God of our covenant that we made when we took our vows, we remind him that we joined ourselves with him and invited him into our united lives to live and walk with us together as one. In the scripture above it is reminding the Israelites not to take up idols in place of God. In the next chapter we get the 10 commandments and commandment number 1 is “you will have no other god but me”. You see if the Israelites took on another god, they would be in breach of their covenant (contract) because they have invited another individual in to unlawfully substitute in for God. My friends the one act that defiles and breaks our covenant with God is an act where we willfully invite a 3^rd party into our covenant with God. We break the perfect union God has created to make an uneven union. To spell it out, the acts that I believe defile the marriage bed are:

·      Adultery

·      Threesomes

·      Bestiality

·      Any act that brings another party into the act of marriage

In the 10 commandments the only commandments relating to marriage that God gave was “you must not commit adultery” and “you must not covet your neighbor’s wife”. In essence God is saying to the husband and wife, go ahead and enjoy each other to the fullest but by no means break your agreement with each other or me by engaging in the act of marriage with anyone else.

God desires worship from us, so God wants us to enjoy each other and make beautiful worship with our bodies in the act of marriage. I implore you love each other, make love to each other, worship God with your bodies and most of all enjoy each other to the fullest, but all within the confines of your covenant with our holy God.

Let no man or woman come between you and your covenant with God. Let no man or woman tell you what is permissible within the four walls of your home and within your act of marriage; that is between you and God.

God bless you all.