Updated August 4, 2004 (first published July 24, 1997 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

Some have taught that the sexual union between men and women equates marriage, but this is not the case. The married man and woman become one spiritually and physically by an act of God, not by a mere act of sexual intimacy. The oneness between Adam and Eve was created when God brought them together as man and wife even before they knew one another in sexual intimacy (Gen. 2:22-23; Mat. 19:5-6).

Immoral sexual relations do produce a unity between the partners (1 Cor. 6:15-18), but the Bible nowhere says this equates marriage. When a married man and woman commit adultery or when a single man and woman commit fornication, they are joined together in their sin, but they are not thereby married.

If fornication created marriage, the fornicators would not need to get married; they would already be married to their partners through the sexual relationship. Yet this is not the case. According to the Mosaic Law, if a man enticed an unmarried girl and had relations with her, he was obligated to marry her unless her father refused to allow that (Ex. 22:16-17). The law did not say the two were already married because of their sexual union. The fact that the girl’s father could refuse to allow his daughter to become the man’s wife is proof that they were not already wed on account of the sexual act.

The New Testament teaches the same thing. In 1 Cor. 5:1, for example, we see the case of the church member who committed the sin of fornication with his father’s wife. The Bible says the woman was the wife of the sinner’s father, but it does not say that the woman was also the sinner’s wife because of the sexual relationship. In 1 Cor. 7:2, fornication is contrasted with marriage; it is not equated with marriage. Christ’s dealings with the woman at the well in John chapter four also teaches that fornication is not marriage. The woman was living with a man, but the Lord Jesus Christ plainly stated that he was not her husband (John 4:18).

Fornication is a union but it is not marriage. Malachi explains that marriage is more than the sexual union; it is a covenant before God and man (Mal. 2:14), and it is this covenant that God blesses by making the two one (Mal. 2:15).