Anonymous Asks (350)

“Does an unmarried couple who have sex become married in God’s eyes?”

Some years ago, I had a late night phone call from an old friend to whom I hadn’t spoken in years. He was reviewing his relationship history. Many of these, frankly, had been sinful and ended in disappointment. The most recent was no exception. Despite professing to follow Christ, he has been initiating and falling into uncommitted sexual entanglements most of his life.

“I’ve been ‘one flesh’ with over thirty women,” he confessed. “Which relationship does God regard as ‘the one’?”

The Two Will Become One Flesh

It was a trick question, of course. At least one of his dalliances was with the wife of a co-worker. We can certainly rule that one out.

Part of his confusion, I believe, came from associating the words “one flesh” with being married in the eyes of God.

Now, that was certainly God’s original design. As it says in Genesis, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” We can see God’s intent was to associate the sex act with both leaving and cleaving, the creation of a new family, a life-long partnership independent of one’s parents.

An Act Out of Context

However, when we come to the New Testament, we find the apostle Paul teaching that it’s possible to abuse the act of becoming one flesh, and to rip it out of the context in which the Lord intended it to be a blessing. He writes:

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ ”

There’s plenty more to the “one flesh” concept as God originally intended it than just sex, as I have written here, but sex is a critical component. Sadly, humanity has always found ways to corrupt and debase things God intended for our good. Sex is no exception. So then, becoming “one flesh” in scripture is not always synonymous with getting married, though it should be.

Meaning and Intended Meaning

A man can be intimate with thirty women — for that matter, a woman can be intimate with thirty men — and not have been married in God’s eyes to any of them. Equally, a person may be a party to more than one legitimate, God-sanctioned marriage in this life, just not at the same time. As the Lord Jesus said to the woman at the well, “You have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.” Her sex life and her marital history may have had some overlap, but they were not entirely congruent.

So no, merely having sex does not create a marriage. The spiritual significance of any act in the eyes of God depends on the intentions of the participants.