This article is intended to serve as ‘n guide and questionnaire for couples who plan to get married. The purpose is to discuss some of the most basic biblical principles and foundations of a Christian marriage.

The first and foremost question that a couple have to ask themselves is: Why do you want to get married?

Some popular answers are:

- Because we love each other.

- Because we think that we belong together

- Because we want to be legal before men and before God

- Because we want to do it the Christian way

- Because we want to be happy together and maybe have children.

Another question that goes hand in hand with this is: What is the foundation of a marriage?

We get no better answer than from Jesus Himself.

The Pharisees ask Jesus if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife:

Mat 19:4-6 "And He answered and said to them, Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning "made them male and female", (5) and said, For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cling to his wife, and the two of them shall be one flesh? (6) Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."

The important truth here is that:

1) God made them male and female

2) God has joined them together

This means that the foundation for marriage is the fact that God has put man and wife together. This is also the reason why people ought to get married. It has to start with God. If a couple want to get married for any other reason but the conviction from both that God has brought them together, from a Christian perspective, they do not want to get married for the right reasons. If you as a couple cannot honestly say this, I would suggest that you pray together about it and ask the Lord to convict you in your hearts about the real reason you want to get married and clearly show you how to go forward from here. And if you cannot pray together, then you ought to be alarmed and search your own hearts thoroughly before God.

Why is this so important? Because if anything else but God forms the basis of your marriage, then you do not have a solid foundation for your marriage.

This is the exact foundation that keeps a married couple together, NOT YOUR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER! The foundation of a marriage is therefore:

1) the fact that God has brought a man and a woman together, and that He sustains the marriage and that He remains the Centre of the marriage.

2) the fact that you make a commitment and covenant before God (and before men at the wedding) to stay together, for what God has put together, no one can separate (Mat 19:6).

If the foundation of your marriage is your love for each other, then:

a) you will risk building your marriage on feeling. You might wake up one day and not feel "in love" with your spouse any more. This is what Hollywood teaches by the way.

b) the basis of your being together is based upon your love and not God’s love. God’s love and His faithfulness is a much better basis than our love, for we might be unfaithful, but God remains faithful (2 Tim 2:13).

But what about love?