Marriage in the 1689 Confession: Why Chapter 25 Still Helps Us Today

The 1689 London Baptist Confession’s chapter “Of Marriage” is short, but it is not thin. It gives the church a biblical framework for thinking about marriage in a time when marriage is increasingly treated as private preference, romantic fulfillment, civil contract, or social experiment. The chapter helps us recover something more stable: marriage is God’s creation ordinance, governed by God’s Word, ordered for human good, and, for Christians, sanctified in Christ.

Marriage has both validity grounded in creation and sanctification grounded in redemption. Jesus Himself appeals to Genesis 2 when teaching on marriage and divorce in Matthew 19, and He says, “What therefore God has joined together,” even while speaking to Pharisees who were not regenerate. That matters. Marriage is not merely a Christian institution. It belongs to creation. Yet Christian marriage has a redemptive depth that unbelieving marriages cannot fully embody because marriage ultimately points to Christ and His church.

The confession begins:

“Marriage is to be between one man and one woman. A man must not have more than one wife, nor a woman more than one husband at the same time.”

That statement is basic, but in our day it is no longer treated as obvious. The confession reminds us that marriage is not something man invents, redefines, or expands according to cultural desire. It is something God made. Genesis 2:24 gives the pattern: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” The design is male and female, covenantal union, one flesh, permanence, and exclusivity.

This guards us from two errors at once. First, it rejects modern attempts to redefine marriage as though it could be between two men, two women, or any other arrangement outside God’s design. Second, it rejects older and recurring distortions such as polygamy. The confession’s language is precise: one man, one woman, one spouse at a time. Malachi 2:15 presses this same truth: “Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?” Marriage is not a loose partnership. It is a God-formed union.

This is also why civil law cannot finally determine what marriage is. The civil government may recognize marriage, record marriage, regulate certain legal consequences of marriage, and punish evils that destroy households. But the state does not create marriage. God does. A judge may sign a certificate, but God joins a man and woman together. This matters in a culture where legality is often confused with morality. Something may be legal and still be sinful. Something may be celebrated by society and still be contrary to God’s created order.

At the same time, the confession helps us avoid an opposite error. Because marriage is grounded in creation, unbelievers really can marry. Their marriages are not Christian marriages in the fullest sense, but they are real marriages under God’s created order. This is why Jesus can speak of God joining together those who are not regenerate. It is also why Hebrews 13:4 says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all.” Marriage is a common grace gift. Even outside the church, it restrains chaos, protects children, stabilizes society, and provides real temporal good.

But Christian marriage is more than common grace. It is sanctified in redemption. Ephesians 5 teaches that marriage points beyond itself to Christ and the church. A husband is called to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. A wife is called to honor and submit to her husband as the church does to Christ. That does not mean unbelievers are not married. It means they cannot live out the redemptive meaning of marriage because they lack the Spirit. They may receive the shell of the blessing. Believers are called to live in the substance of it.

The second paragraph of the confession gives the purposes of marriage:

“Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with legitimate offspring, and for the prevention of immorality.”

The order matters. The confession does not begin with children. It begins with mutual help. Genesis 2:18 says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Companionship is not a sentimental addition to marriage. It is central to the design. Husband and wife are not merely reproductive partners. They are covenant companions. They are joined together in shared life, shared mission, shared labor, shared burdens, shared worship, and shared joy.

This is a needed corrective in some conservative Christian circles. We rightly value children. We rightly reject the selfishness of a culture that sees children as obstacles to personal freedom. But children are not the first priority of marriage. The marriage union itself is. A husband and wife must not build a home where the children become functionally central and the marriage becomes secondary. That disorder damages the children as well as the couple. Children need to see a father and mother who love one another, prioritize one another, and remain bound to one another in covenant faithfulness.

The second purpose is “the increase of mankind with legitimate offspring.” Genesis 1:28 gives the creation mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Marriage is the proper context for bringing children into the world and raising them. The phrase “legitimate offspring” also had civil implications in the seventeenth century, touching inheritance, identity, and public recognition. For many seventeenth-century paedobaptists, legitimacy was tied to registered baptisms, while Baptists had reason to prefer civil registration rather than a state-church mechanism.

Today, the principle remains important. Children are not best served by adult instability, sexual chaos, or deliberately fatherless and motherless arrangements. God’s design is not random. The covenant union of father and mother is the proper garden for children to be received, loved, disciplined, taught, and sent out. This does not mean children from broken homes are defective. In the new covenant, grace is not bound by family background. Christ redeems sinners from every kind of brokenness. But we should not confuse God’s ability to redeem disorder with permission to normalize disorder.

The third purpose is “the prevention of immorality.” First Corinthians 7 is direct: because of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. Paul also teaches that husband and wife owe one another conjugal rights and should not deprive one another except by mutual agreement for a limited time and for prayer. Scripture understands human weakness. Marriage is one of God’s appointed means for guarding chastity.

This speaks directly to modern confusion. Sexual intimacy in marriage is not a weapon, a reward system, or a private possession. The husband’s body belongs to his wife, and the wife’s body belongs to her husband. But this mutual authority must be interpreted through Christlike love, not selfish demand. A husband cannot use 1 Corinthians 7 to justify coercion, harshness, or disregard for his wife’s physical, emotional, or spiritual condition. He is called to lay down his life for her. Likewise, a wife cannot use mood, resentment, or manipulation to habitually defraud her husband. Both are called to die to self.

This is one of the places where Christian marriage is most visibly different from the world. The world says, “My body, my autonomy, my desire.” Scripture says, “Your body is not your own.” In marriage, that principle is applied mutually. The husband belongs to the wife. The wife belongs to the husband. But because both belong first to Christ, neither may use the other selfishly.

The third paragraph says:

“Everyone who is able to give rational consent may marry. Yet Christians are to marry in the Lord.”

This is another example of the confession’s balance. Since marriage belongs to creation, everyone who can give rational consent may marry. Marriage is not restricted to believers. Yet Christians do not have the same liberty as unbelievers. A Christian must marry “in the Lord.” First Corinthians 7:39 says a widow may remarry “only in the Lord.” Second Corinthians 6:14 says, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.”

This remains urgent. Christians should not pursue missionary dating. They should not marry someone because that person is attractive, compatible, kind, or religiously interested while still outside Christ. Nor should they marry someone who professes faith but lives in open rebellion. The confession specifically warns against marrying unbelievers, idolaters, those who lead evil lives, or those who hold damnable heresy. That language may sound severe, but the point is pastoral. Marriage binds your life to another person. Do not bind yourself to someone walking away from Christ and assume you will pull them upward. Apart from the Spirit’s regenerating work, you will not.

This is not merely about personal happiness. Marriage is discipleship. The person you marry will shape your worship, your household, your children, your conscience, your habits, your church life, and your future suffering. To marry outside the Lord is not romantic, it is disobedience.

The fourth paragraph addresses forbidden degrees:

“Marriage should not occur within the degrees of blood relationship or kinship that are forbidden in the Word.”

The confession grounds this in passages such as Leviticus 18 and 1 Corinthians 5:1, where Paul condemns a man having his father’s wife. The principle is that some unions are unlawful no matter what civil law permits or what consenting adults claim. Consent does not make sin righteous. Law does not make evil holy. The Word of God stands above both personal desire and civil permission.

That principle is essential today. Modern moral reasoning often reduces everything to consent. If two adults consent, the act is treated as morally valid. But Scripture does not reason that way. Consent matters, but consent alone does not define righteousness. God’s created order, God’s moral law, and God’s revealed boundaries define righteousness.

One notable issue is that the Baptist confession omits Westminster’s fuller section on divorce. Historically, this omission likely reflects Baptist concern to distinguish church and civil jurisdiction, especially in a context where church and state were dangerously entangled. The framers still acknowledged legitimate divorce through the phrase “at the same time,” since remarriage could occur after death or lawful divorce. But the omission also raises a pastoral concern. Divorce is not merely civil. Jesus gives moral instruction on divorce. Paul gives moral instruction on abandonment. Therefore, the church must disciple, correct, and, when necessary, discipline its members regarding divorce.

The civil court may grant a divorce for almost any reason. The church may not treat every civil divorce as morally legitimate. A believer should not bypass the church, obtain a no-fault divorce, and assume the matter is settled because the state approved it. The state can record a divorce. It cannot cleanse sin.

That is one reason this confession chapter helps us today. It gives us categories. Marriage is created by God, not the state. Marriage is recognized among all, not restricted to Christians. Marriage is sanctified in Christ, not fulfilled by unbelievers. Marriage is ordered for companionship, children, and chastity, not merely personal satisfaction. Marriage is morally bounded by Scripture, not merely by consent or civil permission.

In a confused age, Chapter 25 gives the church a stable framework. It does not answer every pastoral question. It does not settle every hard case about divorce, abandonment, pornography, abuse, contraception, infertility, or common-law arrangements. But it gives the necessary architecture. From there, elders and churches can apply Scripture carefully.

The central usefulness of this chapter is that it makes marriage objective again. Marriage is not whatever the individual feels. It is not whatever the culture celebrates. It is not whatever the courts recognize. Marriage is one man and one woman, joined by God, for mutual help, the increase of mankind, and the prevention of immorality, bounded by the Word, and, among believers, aimed at displaying Christ and His church.

That is not outdated. It is exactly what we need.