Algona Article - 2/9/23

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Cohabitation Before Marriage

Living together before marriage has become very popular in the past couple of decades. So much so that the majority of the population doesn’t consider it wrong to live together, especially if the couple is planning to get married anyway. However, just because cohabitation has become common and popularly accepted doesn’t mean that it is okay or even morally neutral.

The Word of God teaches us that marriage is the lifelong union between one man and one woman. Jesus said: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Marriage is God’s institution which He founded for our good.

Marriage exists for the sake of raising children, for the chastity of the husband and wife, and for  mutual companionship. Ultimately, in marriage we see a picture of the communion between Christ and His bride, the church. So when marriage is honored among us, Christ is honored, and when marriage is dishonored among us, Christ is dishonored.

How is marriage honored? We honor it when marriage isn’t entered into inadvisedly or hastily, when we keep the marriage bed undefiled, when we live in chastity, and when we keep it according to God’s institution. But it’s dishonored among us when we treat marriage as easily dissolvable through divorce, when spouses commit adultery or unchastity, when unmarried people live unchastely according to their lusts, and when marriage is redefined to mean something other than what God instituted.

Cohabitation dishonors marriage by treating fornication as equal to marriage. (Fornication is sex outside of marriage.) God has reserved sexuality to the confines of marriage. This is hard to understand today with the prevalence of birth control, but the primary purpose for sexuality is the procreation of children, not 15 seconds of pleasure. Children need and deserve the stability of a father and a mother that marriage provides. Cohabitation robs children of that stability.

Even if children are not yet present, cohabitation mocks marriage. Marriage is the life-long one flesh union of one man and one woman; the two become one flesh. Cohabitation isn’t life-long, since the two can leave whenever. Cohabitation sexually looks like a one flesh union, except that it’s not a union since the two remain separate and aren’t committed to each other for life. Cohabitation is not God’s design and is not God pleasing. It is sinful.

Instead of cohabitation, God desires something much better for us, something that He Himself founded in the beginning, in the garden: marriage. Cohabitation rightly recognizes the intimate and special love that a man and a woman have for each other and their desire to spend their life together, but it falls so short. Marriage not only recognizes their love for each other, but it establishes the commitment necessary to ensure that the two remain together in a stable household for the good of them and their children. Afterall, it’s not only children who thrive on stability, but so does the couple. The spark of romance that often initially brings a man and woman together dimly pales in comparison to the robust love shared between a husband and wife after many years of marriage.

If you’re living in the sin of cohabitation now or you did in the past, let me assure you that there is forgiveness for you in the sacrificial death of Jesus. He is the bridegroom of His bride the church, and He laid down His life for us. He doesn’t hold us at arm’s length or selfishly keep anything from us, but being made one flesh with us, all of His righteousness is ours and all of our sins were taken from us by Him and graciously forgiven.

Instead of living according to the common and popular ways of this world, Christ our Lord has brought us out of our works of the flesh, so that we may know a still more excellent way. Marriage is truly a blessing from God by which He cares for us daily. Marriage even points us to Jesus, by Whom we may live not only in this life but in the one yet to come. Come out of the darkness of your sins, my friends, and dwell forever in the light of Christ!

In the name Jesus,

Rev. John Henry Koopman

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