Many of our churches‘ theologians have recently been appealing to the Bible’s alleged principles to cancel out (“as time-conditioned”) its inconvenient instructions and details. Anyone who indulges in that practice is going to miss much of its Divine revelation. (In fact, by this process, today’s theologians, just like their Jewish predecessors, whom our Lord repeatedly called “blind guides” [Mt. 15:14; 23:16, 17, 24, 26], rapidly lose all of it, because in the very process not the Bible, but they determine what is to be “revelation.”)

In the Bible the light of God’s revelation often strikes the reader from places where he would least expect it. In the 24th chapter of the prophecy of Ezekiel (v. 16), for example, the prophet, commissioned to bring his people God’s warnings and threats, was informed that in this process his wife would be taken from him by a stroke. The way in which she is described arrests our attention: “I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes . . . .” Notice the significance of that remark. It suggests that in that godly home it was the wife who put sparkle in her husband’s eyes.

Again, in the Song of Solomon one notices the recurring charge to “awake not my love until he please”—suggesting the woman’s concern not to disturb her sleeping lover. Foolish people may talk of time conditioning, but they don’t change the structure of intimacy God designed when he surprised Adam with Eve.

Again, in the Song of Solomon one notices the recurring charge to “awake not my love until her please”—suggesting the woman’s concern not to disturb her sleeping lover. Foolish people may talk of time conditioning, but they do not change the structure of intimacy God designed when he surprised Adam with Eve. In this connection, we notice the currently popular and pervasive effort to interpret the gospel as a “liberation” from all restraints and laws both human and divine. That effort then encourages a couple to approach marriage with the assumption that in today’s world they must determine for themselves, perhaps by trial and error, what, if any, structure their relationship is to have. To adjust oneself to marriage is a complex experience for anyone. To impose or assume the additional assignment of determining, as though for the first time, what the relationship ought to be is to attempt the impossible. When a couple begins with that kind of misdirection, it should occasion no surprise that for many the exciting adventure may soon turn into a nightmare. God never left us to face marriage or any other human experience with such a total lack of direction. Perhaps nowhere else does the stupidity of acting as though He did show its bitter consequences more widely than in our society’s horrendous family problems. Almost any Christian minister could illustrate this with innumerable saddening examples from pastoral experience.

When we conduct a wedding, perhaps in deference to a couple’s desire to appear up–to-date, as though there were no specific rules or guides for their relationship, we do neither them nor any of the visitors a favor. A wedding offers an ideal opportunity to point all to the Creator’s design and revealed intent for what ought to be a happy home but can only become that if it complies with His design.

In one way or another, we need to stress what our older wedding form endeavored to do, God’s clear directions for the role to which He assigns each husband and wife. Then we can also proceed to what increasingly impresses me as one of the happiest details of the traditional form, the final blessing. As a “blessing,” echoing inspired Scripture, it is not so much wish as promise: “May the Father of all mercies, who of His grace has called you to this holy state of marriage, bind you together in true love and faithfulness and grant you His blessing.”