Audio Transcript

How do you know if you’re married to the right person? Short answer: look at the name on your marriage certificate.

Before we marry, we think about qualifications, and some people qualify to be a spouse and some people don’t. After we marry, there’s one qualification: The one we’re married to. The reason we know that is because in the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 7:39, it says, “Marry only in the Lord.” In other words, marry only a Christian, so there are qualifications. Some people qualify; some don’t.

After we marry, according to 1 Corinthians 7:12, if you’re married to an unbeliever, you stay married, so we know that something changes when we marry. One person qualifies. The one we’re married to. That’s the right person, and there’s a reason for that.

In Genesis 2:24, which is the foundational text for marriage, God said man leaves his mother and father, cleaves to his wife. The two become one flesh. And Jesus quotes that and then says, “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Paul quotes it and says, “This is a great mystery. I’m speaking of Christ and the church.” In other words, what happens in marriage is that God acts. Believer or unbeliever — God acts and creates a bond that is not to be broken by man, because it is a portrait, a drama, of the covenant commitment between Christ and the church.

Who is the right person to be married to? Answer: the one to whom you said, “For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. ‘Til death do us part,” because that is the only person with whom you can demonstrate the covenant faithfulness of Christ to his church.