Reconstructiing Christian Sexual Ethics 03.1: How does marriage fit into all this?

Some people are going to ask, if virtuous sex can exist outside of marriage, and non-virtuous sex can exist inside of marriage, what's the point of marriage, then?

The question answers itself: the point of marriage is not sex. Anyone who gets married so they can have sex is, at best, being distracted from the dozens of other things that should be driving their decisions. But we all know this happens in purity culture. Our failure to teach how to subjugate our bodily desires (more on this later) has resulted in a lot of failed marriages. In an attempt to make marriage meet our man-made idea of the sacred, we have instead made it cheap.

But first, what even is marriage? We could be talking about several distinct things! If the Church chooses to be in the business of litigating what people should and should not do inside and outside a marriage, we need a clear definition. And if we're trying to argue from a Biblical perspective, it gets even more problematic.

• Are we talking about the legal structures?
• Those clearly didn't exist for much of the Old Testament period
• Are we talking about the religious ceremony?
• Are we then saying that people married in a civil ceremony, or in another religious tradition, aren't really married?
• Are we saying marriage is (gasp) a sacrament!? Evangelicals don't even have the language to participate in that argument!
  
• Actions like cohabitation, sex, having children?
• This implies that a lot of people are married without intending to be, which I would reject as a useful definition.
• The private commitment between two people?
• If this is what matters, why do we have ceremonies and paperwork?
• The public commitment between two people?

The public commitment seems to be the critical piece, with the legal and religious layers as additional covenants.

Now, there might be issues of Kindness, mercy, and generosity to keep in mind, but those are contextual, depending on your particular circumstances. In this virtue framework, the universal unique value of marriage is under Forgive and build peace, covenant, and relationship. Making and keeping covenants is a good, in itself.

Consider the story of the prophet Hosea.

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, he said to him, “Go marry a prostitute who will bear illegitimate children conceived through prostitution, because the nation continually commits spiritual prostitution by turning away from the Lord.”

God told Hosea to marry Gomer, to exemplify to the community how bad God's marriage to Israel was. Hosea was a prophet, not by words, but by action. This was an anti-marriage. Therefore, our marriages should be the opposite. We are to be a living prophecy, exemplifying the love of God for his people through love and sacrifice for each other. That is our holy calling. Making marriage about sex makes it less sacred, not more.