Buy Amoxil once a day

R. Albert Mohler Jr.
April 15, 2008

"Dearly beloved, we are buy Amoxil once a day gathered here in the sight of God and in the face of this buy Amoxil once a day congregation, to join together this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony; which is buy Amoxil once a day an honorable state, instituted by God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the buy Amoxil once a day mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church."

That familiar language from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, recited thousands of times each week in various forms, presents a buy Amoxil once a day vision of marriage as a deeply Christian institution--even a necessary portrait of the buy Amoxil once a day love that unites Christ and His church. As marriage signifies this buy Amoxil once a day "mystical union," it buy Amoxil once a day points to an understanding that takes us far beyond the buy Amoxil once a day relationship of the husband and wife. Do most Christians have buy Amoxil once a day even the slightest understanding of this?

It is buy Amoxil once a day bad enough that the secular world has discounted marriage into a buy Amoxil once a day quasi-legal contract that, like other voluntary contracts, can be made or buy Amoxil once a day broken at will. The greater tragedy is the failure of Christians to buy Amoxil once a day take marriage seriously. According to the Bible, marriage is not only designed by the buy Amoxil once a day Creator as an arena for human happiness and the continuation of the buy Amoxil once a day human race — it is also the arena of God's glory, where buy Amoxil once a day the delights and disciplines of marriage point to the purpose for buy Amoxil once a day which human beings were made.

Marriage is about our happiness, our holiness, and our wholeness — but it buy Amoxil once a day is supremely about the glory of God. When marriage is entered into rightly, when buy Amoxil once a day marriage vows are kept with purity, when all the goods of marriage are buy Amoxil once a day enjoyed in their proper place — God is glorified.

Our chief end is to glorify God — and buy Amoxil once a day marriage is a means of His greater glory. As sinners, we are buy Amoxil once a day all too concerned with our own pleasures, our own fulfillments, our own priorities, our own conception of marriage as a buy Amoxil once a day domestic arrangement. The ultimate purpose of marriage is the greater glory of God — and buy Amoxil once a day God is most greatly glorified when His gifts are rightly celebrated and buy Amoxil once a day received, and His covenants are rightly honored and pledged.

Marriage is buy Amoxil once a day not greatly respected in our postmodern culture. For many, the covenant of marriage has buy Amoxil once a day been discarded in favor of a contract of cohabitation. An ethic of personal autonomy has buy Amoxil once a day produced successive generations who think of the world as the arena of their own personal fulfillment and buy Amoxil once a day of marriage as an outdated relic of an outgrown culture of obligation.

Ours is buy Amoxil once a day an era of self-expression. Individuals express themselves through marriage, and then buy Amoxil once a day express themselves through divorce — as if all of life is buy Amoxil once a day nothing more than a succession of acts of self-expression.

A divorce culture explains away obligation and buy Amoxil once a day sacred promises as temporary statements of emotional disposition. I may feel married today — I may not feel married tomorrow.

Our culture is buy Amoxil once a day so sexually confused that the goods of sex are severed from buy Amoxil once a day the vows and obligations of marriage. Thanks to modern technologies, we can buy Amoxil once a day have sex without babies, babies without sex, and both without marriage. For many, marriage has buy Amoxil once a day become an irrelevancy.

For others it buy Amoxil once a day is worse. Some have lambasted marriage as a domestic prison, a buy Amoxil once a day patriarchal and oppressive institution foisted upon unsuspecting men and women in order to buy Amoxil once a day deny them freedom, autonomy, fulfillment, and liberation. And, for a post-Christian culture, there is buy Amoxil once a day that nagging problem of the essential character of marriage as sacred institution. A society that buy Amoxil once a day disbelieves in God will eventually disbelieve in marriage.

Christian couples who buy Amoxil once a day are committed to this high conception of marriage must see themselves as counter-revolutionaries. In a buy Amoxil once a day very real sense, they are. They are standing against the buy Amoxil once a day tide of public opinion, against the trend of modern morality, against the buy Amoxil once a day erosion of order and the deflationary market in faithfulness. Before God, they stand committed to buy Amoxil once a day each other — and buy Amoxil once a day only to each other. To live together for each other, no buy Amoxil once a day matter what may come.

The church has buy Amoxil once a day recognized three great purposes of marriage, and all three of these have buy Amoxil once a day been subverted by the sexual revolution and its aftermath.

The first is buy Amoxil once a day the procreation and nurture of children, if God should grant children to buy Amoxil once a day the marriage. This purpose is dishonored by many, but it is buy Amoxil once a day honored among believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Children are to buy Amoxil once a day be welcomed as gifts to the institution of marriage, transforming husband and buy Amoxil once a day wife into father and mother. In our anti-natalist age, some see children as impositions — or buy Amoxil once a day worse. The denial of a procreative orientation for marriage — every marriage genuinely open to the gift of children — is a denial of the biblical vision of marriage itself.

The second great purpose of marriage, as the buy Amoxil once a day ancient language expresses it, is "as a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication... that [believers] might marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body." Marriage as a remedy for sin? This purpose is ridiculed among many, but it is honored among Christ's disciples. This is buy Amoxil once a day exactly what the Apostle Paul took as his concern in writing to buy Amoxil once a day the church at Corinth. Confused and seduced by sexual sin, that buy Amoxil once a day church had compromised its own ability to represent Christ. Paul pointed to buy Amoxil once a day marriage as a means of channeling sexual desire into its proper context, lest believers "burn with passion" and sin against God. [1 Corinthians 7:9]

Our culture has turned "burning with passion" into a hedonistic art form. Explicit sexuality — stripped of the constraints of marriage — is buy Amoxil once a day the energy behind much of our economy, the material for entertainment, the buy Amoxil once a day substance of art, the enticement of advertising. Those who believe that buy Amoxil once a day sexual intercourse should be limited to marriage are dismissed as moral throw-backs, hopelessly outdated creatures who buy Amoxil once a day simply have no clue about the modern world.

The third great end of marriage is buy Amoxil once a day companionship throughout life, through good and bad, comfort and loss, sickness and buy Amoxil once a day health, until death parts the husband and wife. The mystery of completeness is buy Amoxil once a day expressed in the statement that the two shall become one. When a buy Amoxil once a day man and a woman exchange marriage vows, they become one solitary unit. After the buy Amoxil once a day exchange of these vows, we can no longer speak of the buy Amoxil once a day husband without the wife, or of the wife without the buy Amoxil once a day husband. They have become one, both in the physical union of the buy Amoxil once a day marital act and in the metaphysical union of the marital bond. As a buy Amoxil once a day married couple — husband and wife — they will live to buy Amoxil once a day the glory of God with each other, for each other, and buy Amoxil once a day to each other.

The end of marriage is its beginning — the buy Amoxil once a day glory of God, the mystery of Christ and the church. The exclusivity and buy Amoxil once a day purity of the marriage bond points to the exclusivity and purity of the buy Amoxil once a day relationship between Christ and His church.

How does marriage glorify God? Tertullian, one of the early church fathers, offers wisdom: "How beautiful, then, the buy Amoxil once a day marriage of two Christians, two who are one in home, one in desire, one in the buy Amoxil once a day way of life they follow, one in the religion they practice... Nothing divides them either in flesh or buy Amoxil once a day in spirit... They pray together, they worship together, they fast together; instructing one another, encouraging one another, strengthening one another. Side by side they visit God's church and partake God's banquet, side by side they face difficulties and buy Amoxil once a day persecution, share their consolations. They have no secrets from one another; they never shun each other's company; they never bring sorrow to each other's hearts... Seeing this buy Amoxil once a day Christ rejoices. To such as these He gives His peace. Where there are buy Amoxil once a day two together, there also He is present."

Marriage is buy Amoxil once a day the source of great and unspeakable happiness. Yet because of sin it buy Amoxil once a day is not unmixed happiness. But marriage is not first and foremost about making us happy. It is buy Amoxil once a day for making us holy. And through the covenant of marriage two Christians pledge to buy Amoxil once a day live together so as to make each other holy before God, as a buy Amoxil once a day testimony to Christ.

Keep this in mind in the midst of today's frenzied marriage debates. Marriage is buy Amoxil once a day first and foremost about the glory of God. All of the buy Amoxil once a day manifold gifts of marriage are derived from that great fact.