The marital covenant and sexual union....

I've been challenged on the connection between the covenant of marriage and the marital act. Ordinarily, I don't respond to bald assertions or negations. But because such criticism has been directed at a sermon I preached, I add the following evidence for the covenant at the heart of marriage being effected by the shed blood of sexual union between a man and a virgin....

1. The marital relationship is formed by the establishment of a covenant (Malachi 2:14).

2. Covenants are not vows or oaths. Covenants possess unique characteristics which set them apart from other binding statements or agreements.

3. The shedding of blood is central to the establishment of Biblical covenants (Heb. 9:18). (Though there are several examples of Biblical examples which do not appear to include bloodshed--including God's covenant with Noah demonstrated by the rainbow, and the covenants of salt God declared Himself to have made with Aaron, establishing his sons in the priesthood, and with David, establishing his sons as Israel's kings--such covenants are rarities Scripturally, and the absence of blood at their formation is assumed rather than established.)

4. Scripture demonstrates marriage to be a covenant confirmed in blood in a variety of ways:

a. The first marriage in Scripture took place as woman was formed out of the rib taken from the side of man--with the hole in Adam's flesh closed by God, an act of marital creation from the midst of bloodshed.

b. The principal Old Testament test of the establishment of a valid marital covenant was the presence of shed blood at initial sexual union (Deuteronomy 22:13-19).

5. Marital covenants are negotiated in a variety of ways in Scripture. But without fail, they are finalized by the marital act. This does not diminish the importance of agreement, of common understanding. But forms of marital agreement vary, from Adam's presumptive marriage to Eve, to Jacob taking Rebecca into his mother's tent, to the extreme of Jacob taking Leah for her sister and yet remaining bound by the marital covenant effected in the blood of sexual union.

6. Finally, God speaks of Israel's unfaithfulness to Him in these terms in Isaiah 57:

Isaiah 57:7-8

7 On a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed, and there you went up to offer sacrifice. 8 Behind the door and the doorpost you have set up your memorial; for, deserting me, you have uncovered your bed, you have gone up to it, you have made it wide; and you have made a covenant for yourself with them, you have loved their bed, you have looked on nakedness.

The adulterous progression is clear: from making a bed to going up to it, to sexual union with false gods--an act simply referred to as God's people having "made a covenant for yourself with them."

Honestly, Biblical evidence for the covenant of marriage being effected through sexual union is indisputable and it is for this reason that the people of God through the millennia have viewed sexual union as essential to the establishment of marriage. Seeking to separate the covenant of marriage from the act of sexual union is nothing more than ignorance of Scripture propounded.

One additional note.... I'm not a fan of the modern Reformed approach to Scripture which insists on viewing everything in Scripture through a covenantal lens. I fear Reformed thinkers often think more of covenants than of the promises and conditions embodied in those covenants--an act of theological hubris which makes the construct more important than the fact. But in thinking about marriage, covenant is the right lens. It's there in Scripture just as it is in the flesh.