God has a divine plan and pattern for your marriage, and a divine picture he wants to convey. This is all for your good, for the health and prosperity of your family, and for his glory. Like every other area of your life, you cannot improve upon God’s best. It is perfect—beyond improvement. Do not crash into the wave; ride it.

What makes a good Christian marriage? At its core, it is two good Christian people, joined together in holy matrimony. Yet, a good Christian marriage is so much more than this. Two good Christian people are essential for a strong, Christian marriage—but that is not enough.

By tracing marriage all the way back to the beginning, to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, we can find God’s divine plan for marriage revealed in His creation as He worked to bind Adam and Eve to one another.

• Completion: God saw man’s loneliness, knew it was not good, and created “a helper corresponding to him.” The Bible teaches us that, on occasion, God sets apart individuals for a lifetime of singleness, but that is the exception, not the norm. For most of us, we experience relational emptiness only satisfied through the spouse God gives us.
• Compassion: Created from himself, Adam saw in Eve “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” In marriage, the two become one, because the two once were one. Thus, matrimony is to be marked by a sweet communion, a relationship of love, care, and compassion.
• Commitment: So attracted are we to our spouse that, in the covenant of marriage, “a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife.” This commitment is a permanent one, wherein we say “no” to all others for all time when we say “yes” to the chosen mate God has given us.
• Closeness: Within the covenant of marriage, the man and woman know a closeness, an exhilaration of love that can never be known outside of marriage. As they “become one flesh,” they can be “naked, yet [feel] no shame” because they are abiding in God’s divine plan, a union sanctioned by him.

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