Hebrews 13:4 “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”
For many marriage is nothing more than a “sexual handshake,” a “bureaucratic stamp” for one’s personal choices. Others redefine marriage to suit their own sexual interests. Porn functions like a new Sex Ed class, teaching all who view it that people are just parts, that the person isn’t to be cherished but just used, and that sex can be seized without cost or commitment.
Society has also learned to shame the one who’s waiting for marriage while boasting in their latest one-night stand. What’s honorable, they shame; and what’s shameful, they honor.
Listen to that first part again: “Let marriage be held in honor among all.”
He doesn’t mean just any union our culture decides to call “marriage.” The command isn’t to honor a so-called “same-sex marriage.” That sort of union the Bible describes elsewhere as shameful and unnatural. We honor the marriage God instituted from the beginning—the one that joins one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, covenant union as delineated in Scripture.
That’s the marriage Jesus holds in honor when he points a gang of hard-hearted Pharisees to Genesis 2. Let that marriage union be held in honor. To hold it in honor means that you esteem it as something precious.
Among all. The command isn’t for married people only. It’s for all of you—for children, for singles, for the widowed, for the abandoned. Even those in hard marriages or marriages to an unbelieving spouse like 1 Corinthians 7 or 1 Peter 3 point out—all must treat that union as precious.
He’s not saying that all must get married, or that if you’re not married you’re lacking what’s precious. One only needs to consider Jesus. Also, passages like 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Timothy 5 speak directly to the valuable role non-married and widows play in Christ’s church. Verse 4 simply states that marriage in itself is a precious institution; and if marriage isn’t held in honor, then it will lead to serious problems.
