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THE
TEN COMMANDMENTS OF A MARRIAGE COVENANT
Samuele
Bacchiocchi, Ph. D., Prof. of Theology, Andrews University
Both the covenant between God and His people
and the
covenant
between marital partners entail privileges and obligations.
The privileges of the old
covenant included God's choice of
the Israelites as His special
people, His promise to bless
them, to give them the land
of Canaan, to send them a
Redeemer, to reveal to them His
will and to make them His
chosen instruments for the conversion of the world. The
obligations consisted of the
commitment of the people to
obey the principles of conduct
God gave to them in the form
of commandments (Ex
24:3). God's choice of the
Hebrew
slaves as His own people was
unconditional: "The Lord your
God has chosen you to be a
people for his own possession,
out of all the people that are on the face of the
earth. It
was not because you were more in
number than any other
people that the Lord set his
love upon you and chose you,
for you were the fewest of all
peoples; but it was because
the Lord loves you . . ."
(Deut 7:6-8)
While God's covenantal commitment to Israel was
unconditional, the blessings of
the covenant were
conditional. If the people
obeyed God's commandments, then
"the Lord your God will
keep with you the covenant . . . he
will love you, bless you, and multiply you." (Deut
7:12-13). God spelled
out the obligations of the covenant
in terms of commandments.
These included the Ten
Commandments as well as other
regulations governing their
social and religious life.
A Double Concept of the Law. The terms "law" and
"commandments"
are almost dirty words today. They are
generally associated with the
Old Covenant in which
allegedly the Israelites had to
earn their salvation through
strict obedience. Many Christians
believe that in the New
Covenant they do not need to be
concerned about obeying the
law because they are
"justified by faith apart from works of
law" (Rom 3:28). Such a
reasoning creates a false
antithesis by assuming that
salvation was offered on the
basis of human obedience in the
Old Covenant and is now
offered on the basis of divine grace in the New Covenant.
Why would God offer salvation in
two mutually exclusive
ways? The truth of the matter is that salvation has always
been a divine gift and never a human achievement.
Those who appeal to Paul to negate the role
of the law in
the
New Covenant fail to realize
that Paul does not attack the
validity and value of the law as
a moral guide to Christian
conduct. On the contrary,
Paul emphatically affirms that
Christ specifically came "in order that the just
requirements of the law might be
fulfilled in us" (Rom
8:4). What Paul criticizes is the soteriological
understanding of the law, that
is, the law viewed as a
method of salvation.
When Paul speaks of the law in the context
of the method of
salvation (justification-right
standing before God), he
clearly affirms that law-keeping is of no avail (Rom 3:20).
On the other hand, when Paul speaks of the
law in the
context of the standard of Christian
conduct
(sanctification-right living
before God), then he maintains
the value and validity of God's
law (Rom 7:12; 13:8-10; 1
Cor 7:9).
Law as a Loving Response. Many Christians
fail to realize
that the Old Covenant made at
Sinai contained not only
principles of conduct
(commandments to be obeyed-Ex. 20-23),
but also provisions of grace and
forgiveness (instructions
on how to receive atonement for
sin through the typological
services of the tabernacle-Ex.
25:40). God's biddings are
accompanied by His enablings.
The commandments of the covenant were given
not to restrict
the Israelites' delight and joy
in belonging to God, but to
enable them to experience the blessings of the covenant.
The Psalmist declares as
"blessed" or "happy" the man whose
"delight is in the law of
the Lord, and on his law he
meditates day and night" (Ps 1:1-2). The function of the
commandments was not to enable
the Israelites to become
God's covenant people, but to
respond to God's unconditional
choice of them as His covenant people. The law is designed
to spell out the lifestyle of those
who already belong to
God.
The relationship between covenant and
commandments appears
to
be a vicious circle: God chooses us to be His people but in
order really to belong to Him we must obey His commandments.
In reality,
however, as Gordon Wenham points out, what
looks like a vicious circle is a
gracious circle, because
"Law both presupposes and
is a means of grace."12 It
presupposes God's unconditional
election and it provides a
means for the reception of the blessings of the covenant.
Obedience to God's commandments is our love
response to
God's
unconditional choosing of us.
It is because God showed "his
love for us . . . while we were
yet sinners" (Rom 5:8) that
He commands us to love Him by
living according to the
principle of conduct He has
graciously revealed to us (John
14:15).
Our love response to God's covenantal
commitment to us is
shown through worship and law.
Through worship we bless God
for His goodness to us.
Through the law we love God by
living in harmony with the
principles He has revealed for
our well being. Both
worship and law find their parallel in
the marriage covenant.
As Paul Stevens rightly explains:
"The first, worship, has
its parallel in marriage in the
different languages of love.
The second, the law, is
paralleled in marriage by its
own 'laws'-without which the
full blessing of the covenant cannot be appropriated. These
are not the conditions of the
marriage relationship but
conditions of blessings within the relationship. They are
lifestyle statements for persons in covenant. These
marriage 'laws' are the
structure of the marriage house,
which is built on a covenant foundation."13
Sinai Covenant and Marriage Covenant. It is an
enlightening
exercise to compare the Sinai
covenant with the marriage
covenant by interpreting the Ten
Commandments as ten
principles of conduct for married people. Paul Stevens
has
produced a most perceptive
comparison between the two
covenants by means of the following
table:
Covenant Between Covenant Between
Israel and Yahweh Wife and Husband
1. No other Gods 1. Exclusive
loyalty to my spouse
2. No graven image 2. Truthfulness
and faithfulness
3. Not taking the Lord's name in
vain 3. Honoring my spouse
in public and private
4. Remembering the Sabbath day 4. Giving my spouse
time and rest
5. Honoring father and mother 5. Rightly relating to
parents and in-laws
6. No murder 6. Freedom from hatred and destructive
anger
7. No adultery 7. Sexual
faithfulness; controlled appetites
8. No stealing 8. True community of
property with the gift
of privacy
9. No false testimony 9. Truthful
communication
10. No coveting 10.
Contentment: freedom
from demands 1
This table shows that the implications of
the Ten
Commandments for the marriage
covenant are profound. To
appreciate these more fully, we
shall briefly reflect on how
each of the Ten Commandments apply to the marriage covenant.
These reflections are an expansion and
modification of Paul
Steven's exercise called "marital meditations based on the
commandments."2
The First Commandment of the Sinai covenant
summons the
Israelites to worship only
Yahweh who delivered them from
Egyptian bondage: "You shall have no other gods before
me"
(Ex. 20:3).
In this commandment God appeals to us to put
Him first in our affections, in
harmony with Christ's
injunction to seek first God's
kingdom and His righteousness
(Matt 6:33). We can violate
the spirit of the first
commandment by putting our trust
and confidence in such
human resources as knowledge, wealth, position and people.
Applied to the marriage covenant, the first
commandment
calls
us to give exclusive loyalty to our spouse. In practice,
this means making our spouse the
most important person in
our life after God. It means not allowing such matters as
professional pursuits, parents,
children, friends, hobbies,
and possessions to become our
first love and thus take the
first place in our affections
which is to be reserved for
our spouse. It also
means not amending the commandment by
making our loyalty to our spouse
contingent on other
factors, as when people
say: "I am prepared to give
priority to my spouse as long
as it does not hinder my
professional pursuits."
The first commandment, then, calls
us to give unconditional and exlusive loyalty to our
spouse.
The Second Commandment of the Sinai covenant
emphasizes
God's
spiritual nature (John 4:24) by
prohibiting idolatry: "You
shall not make for yourself a
graven image . . . you shall
not bow down to them or serve them" (Ex 20:4-5).
The
commandment does not necessarily
prohibit the use of
illustrative material for religious instruction. Pictorial
representations were employed in
the sanctuary (Ex
25:17-22), in Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 6:23-26) and
in the
"brasen
serpent" (Num 21:8,9; 2 Kings 18:4).
What the
commandment conmdemns is the
veneration or adoration of
religious images or pictures
since these are human creations
and not the Divine Creator.
Applied to the marriage covenant, the second
commandment
enjoins us to be truthful and faithful to our spouse. Just
as we can be unfaithful to God,
we can also be unfaithful to
our spouse by having false image of her/him in our
mind. In
practice, this may mean trying
to shape our partner into our
own image of an "ideal
spouse" by nagging or manipulating
threats or rewards. It
may mean clinging to false images of
love relationships with real
or fantasy partners. It may
also mean making an idol of
social relationships outside
marriage. This would
include forming relationships with
friends or relatives that are
closer than those with one's
spouse. The second commandment, then, summons us to be
truthful and faithful to our
spouse by not making idols of
anything that can weaken our marriage covenant.
The Third Commandment builds upon the
preceding two
commandments by inculcating
reverence for God: "You shall
not take the name of the Lord in vain" (Ex 20:7).
Those
who serve only the true God and
serve Him not through false
images or idols but in spirit
and truth will show reverence
to God by avoiding any careless
or unnecessary use of His
holy name.
Applied to the marriage covenant, the third
commandment
summons us to respect and honor
our spouses in public and
private. In practice, this means respecting our spouses by
showing them deference and
courtesy both in public and
private. It means
avoiding belittling our spouses, or
cutting them off before the children or on social occasions.
It
also means not taking our spouses' presence for granted
as though they were just another person. The third
commandment, then, enjoins us to
show respect toward our
spouses by avoiding words or
actions that can belittle them
and thus weaken our marriage covenants.
The Fourth Commandment calls us to
honor God by
consecrating
the Sabbath time to Him: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep
it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work;
but
the seventh day is a sabbath to
the Lord your God" (Ex
20:8-10). The first three commandments are designed
to
remove obstacles to the true
worship of God: the worship of
other gods, the worship of God
through false images, and the
lack of reverence for God. Now that the obstacles have been
removed, the fourth commandment
invites us to truly worship
God, not through the veneration
or adoration of objects, but
through the consecration of the Sabbath time to God. Time
is the essence of our lives. The way we use our time is
indicative of our priorities. By consecrating our Sabbath
time to God we show that our
covenant commitment to Him is
for real. We are willing
to offer Him not mere lip-service,
but the service of our total being.
Applied to the marriage covenant,
the fourth
commandment
invites us to show our love to
our spouses by setting aside
a regular and special time for them. In practice, this
means
learning to put aside our work or personal pleasures on a
regular basis, in order to
listen to, to enjoy, to celebrate
and to cultivate the friendship of our spouses. It means,
especially, using the climate of
peace and tranquillity of
the Sabbath day as an
opportunity to draw closer to God and
to our marital partners.
It means taking time, especially
on the Sabbath, to walk
together, to relax together, to read
together, to appreciate good
music together, to meditate
together, to pray together, to
visit together, to bless our
spouses in every way their need to be blessed.
The celebration of the Sabbath, the sign of
our covenant
commitment to God (Ex 31:13;
Ez. 20:12), can strengthen
the marriage covenant in two
ways: theologically and
practically. Theologically, the Sabbath being a sign of our
sacred covenantal commitment to
God, serves to remind us as
marital partners of the sanctity
of our covenant commitment
to our spouses. Practically, the Sabbath offers time and
opportunities to Christian
couples to strengthen their
marriage covenants by coming closer to one another. The
Fourth Commandment, then, calls
us to show in a concrete way
our covenantal commitment to our
marriage partners by
setting aside a regular and special time for them.
The Fifth Commandment enjoins us to honor
and respect our
parents: "Honor your
father and your mother" (Ex 20:12).
The first four commandments tell
us how to show our
covenantal commitment to God
while the last six commandments
teach us how to love our fellow beings. Since parents stand
as the representatives of God to
their children, it is
logical and fitting that the
second table of the law begins
with our duties toward our parents. The way we respect and
obey our parents is indicative
of our obedience and respect
for God and for those placed in authority over us.
Applied to the marriage
covenant, the fifth
commandment
calls us to rightly relate to
our parents and to our
spouses' parents. We do
not evade our responsibility toward
our parents as they grow old. As married persons, we assume
responsibility for our parents
rather than to them. In
practice, this involves
welcoming our respective parents to
our home without allowing them to control our home. It
involves working out with our
spouse how to honor our
respective parents in their old age or when ill. It
involves seeking our parents' counsel,
without allowing them
to dictate their ideas. It involves honoring our spouse's
parents by not making constant jokes about our in-laws. The
fifth commandment, then, enjoins
us to rightly relate to the
parents of each spouse by
respecting and supporting them
without allowing them to
interfere in our marital
relationship and thus weaken our marriage covenant.
The Sixth Commandment orders us to
respect others
by not
taking their lives:
"You shall not kill" (Ex
20:13).
Jesus magnified the meaning of
this commandment to include
anger and hate (Matt 5:21,22; cf. 1 John 3: 14,15). This
commandment forbids not only
physical violence to the body,
but also moral injury to the soul. We break it when, by our
example, words, or actions, we
lead others to sin, thus
contributing to the destruction of their souls (Matt 10:28).
Applied to the marriage covenant,
the sixth
commandment calls
us to renounce hatred and destructive anger. In practice,
this commandment forbids abusing
our spouses verbally or
physically. It forbids
provoking our spouses to anger by
criticising them appearance, speech, actions, or decisions.
It forbids nourishing hostile
feelings toward our spouses
and attempting through words or
actions to destroy their
integrity. It forbids harping on at past offenses which have
been confessed and forgiven. It challenges us to offer our
spouses constructive and not destructive criticism. The
sixth commandment, then, calls
us to renounce any form of
hatred or hostility that can
hurt our spousse and thus
weaken our marriage covenants.
The Seventh Commandment explicitly
enjoins sexual
faithfulness: "You shall
not commit adultery" (Ex 10:14).
Jesus magnified this commandment
to include not only the
physical act of adultery but
also any kind of impure act,
word or thought (Matt 5:27,28). The seventh commandment
summons us to be faithful to our
marriage covenant by
refraining from illicit sexual acts or thoughts.
Applied to the marriage covenant,
this commandment
calls us to
be faithful to our spouse in our
body as well as in our mind
(Matt 5:27-30). Such fidelity involves among other things:
not seeking sexual experiences
outside marriage; not
allowing the attractiveness of
members of the opposite sex
to become deliberate
fantasy of intimacy in our mind;
repulsing thoughts of sexual
lust or perversion and refusing
to be sexually stimulated by
erotic books, films or
magazines; treating our spouse as
the object of our love and
romance rather than as the means
of sexual gratification;
viewing sex as a good gift of
our Creator and as an
expression of mutual and total
self-giving to a love
relationship. The seventh
commandment, then, calls us to
honor our marriage covenant by
being sexually faithful to
our spouse both mentally and physically.
The Eighth Commandment enjoins us to
respect others
by not
stealing what rightfully belongs
to them: "You shall not
steal" (Ex 20:15). This commandment forbids any act by
which we dishonestly obtain the goods or services of others.
We may steal from others in many subtle
ways: withholding
or appropriating what rightfully
belongs to others, taking
credit for the work done by
others, robbing others of their
reputation through slanderous
gossip, or by depriving others
of the renumeration or
consideration they have a right to
expect.
Applied to the marriage covenant,
the eighth
commandment
summons us to live in true
community, without taking from
our partners the right of privacy
and self-determination.
In practice, this means that we
must not deprive our spouses
of the right to make their
decisions in demanding a complete
community of property. It
means that one spouse must not
control the finances so that the other feels dispossessed.
It means that we must not hold
back any security from our
partner as a safety measure or bargaining chip. It means
that no sacrificial demands must
be made of our partners in
order to please our personal desires or whims. It means
that we must not
"steal" the individuality, dignity,
and
power of our spouses, by making decisions for them. It
means that, like Zacchaeus, we
must be willing to give back
what we have taken from our
spouse: freedom,
money,
dignity, power, goods.
The eighth commandment, then, calls
us to honor our marriage
covenants by living in a true
community, without
"stealing" from our partners their
freedom, dignity, money, power, or goods.
The Ninth Commandment enjoins us to
respect others
by
speaking truthfully about
them: "You shall not bear false
witness against your neighbor" (Ex. 20:16). This
commandment is violated by
speaking evil of others,
misrepresenting their motives,
misquoting their words,
judging their motives, and criticising their efforts. This
commandment may also be broken
by remaining silent when
hearing an innocent person unjustly maligned. We are guilty
of bearing "false
witness" whenever we tamper with truth in
order to benefit ourselves or a cause that we espouse.
Applied to the marriage covenant,
the ninth
commandment
enjoins us to be faithful
communicators with our spouses.
In practice, this involves
respecting our spouses' integrity
by not "hitting them below
the belt," or by not exaggerating
the truth about them, saying,
for example, "You never take
my feelings in consideration ...
You always do what you
like ...." It involves
learning to understand not only the
words but also the feelings behind the words of our spouse.
This enables us to interpret
their thoughts and feelings
more accurately. We
can bear false witness against our
spouses by projecting on them
what we think they say or mean
by certain actions.
We can bear false witness also by
quoting our spouses out of
context or by suppressing
information that would give more accurate pictures of them.
The ninth commandment, then,
enjoins us to be faithful
communicators with our spouses
by learning to accurately
understand, interpret and
represent their words, actions and
feelings.
The Tenth Commandment supplements
the eighth by
attacking
the root from which theft grows,
namely, coveteousness:
"You shall not covet . .
." (Ex 20:17). This
commandment
differs from the other nine by
prohibiting not only the
outward act but also the inner
thought from which the
action springs. It establishes
the important principle
that we are accountable before
God not only for our actions
but also for our intentions.
It also reveals the profound
truth that we need not be
controlled by our natural desire
to covet what belongs to others,
because by divine grace we
can control our unlawful desires and passions (Phil 2:13).
Applied to the marriage covenant,
the tenth
commandment
enjoins us to be content and grateful for our spouses. In
practice, this contentment is
expressed in different ways:
refraining from comparing our
spouses' talents or
performances with those of other
spouses; welcoming and
rejoicing over our spouses'
achievements, gifts, and
experiences without coveting
them for ourselves; learning to
express gratitude to God every
day for giving us the
spouses we have; maintaining the
proper reserve toward
persons of the opposite sex and
reserving expressions of
special affections for our
spouses; avoiding making
unreasonable demands on our
spouses to force them to become
like real or fictitious spouses we covet. The tenth
commandment, then, enjoins us to
be content with and for our
spouses, by resisting the
temptation to look for "greener
grass over the other side of the fence."
Conclusion. Christian
marriage, to be stable and
permanent,
needs to be built upon the
foundation of an unconditional,
mutual covenant commitment that
will not allow anything or
anyone "to put
asunder" the marital union established by
God. To accept this Biblical view of marriage as
a sacred
covenant means to be willing to make total,
exclusive,
continuing, and growing
commitments to our marriage
partners. Such commitments
are not easy
or trouble free.
Just as our covenantal
commitment to God requires obedience
to the principles embodied in
the Ten Commandments, so our
covenantal commitments to our
marriage partners demand
obedience to the principles of
the Ten Commandments which
are applicable to our marriage relationships.
There is no other way to enter into
the joys of
Christian
marriage than by assuming its covenantal obligations. When
we commit ourselves to honor our
marriage covenants of
mutual faithfulness "till
death do us part," then we
experience how God is able
mysteriously to unite two lives
into "one flesh."
Honoring our marriage covenant is
fundamental to the stability of
our family, church and
society.
ENDNOTES
1. R. Paul Stevens,
Married for Good (Downers Grove,
Illinois, 1986), pp. 87-88.
2.
Ibid., p. 86.
3.
Ibid., p. 88-94.
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Professor of Theology and Church
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Andrews University
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