Family life in modern society is falling apart. Why? Because people are breaking God’s laws of marriage and family.

Family is a God-plane relationship, and God intends it to be governed by His eternal spiritual law to prepare us for His eternal Family. God created male and female to point to the beauty of the eternal marriage covenant between Christ and His Bride. He created human reproduction to picture the expansion of His Family. His laws safeguarding marriage point to how the marriage of the Lamb will be an eternal, binding covenant, never to be severed. His laws to protect a woman’s virginity until marriage illustrate that Christ’s Bride will be a chaste spiritual virgin. His laws on the use of sex solely within marriage show how exclusive and special that Christ-Church marriage will be. His laws respecting a husband’s role point to Christ’s role in His marriage. His laws respecting the wife’s role point to the Church’s role in that spiritual Family. The role of the father vividly illustrates God the Father’s role—and the role Christ will have as “everlasting Father” toward His children. The mother’s role illustrates the Church’s responsibility toward those children. The laws governing the children show how God expects His children to treat Him.

All these laws must be seen in the context of God’s very purpose for creating human beings: to invite us to be in His eternal Family! “The family relationship is a God-plane relationship. And of all His creatures, God bestowed it solely on man. … [M]an alone was created for marriage! For enjoying a home and a family relationship!” Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in his booklet Why Marriage—Soon Obsolete?“And man’s potential—the very purpose of human life—is that man, born again—born of God—born into the God Family—may enjoy that blessed marriage and family life in blissful happiness forever!”

The means to achieve that awesome potential are found in God’s family law, recorded throughout the Bible. The New Testament supplies crucial details, but here we will focus on laws in the Old Testament.

Sex and Morality

The scriptures we are about to study define sin. They illuminate the unchanging, absolute moral standard of the Being who created marriage, family and sex.

Read Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 to see God’s view on homosexuality. This practice totally contravenes God’s design in sex. It mocks God’s specific creation of male and female and perverts the beautiful spiritual vision God built into that relationship. Read the law in Deuteronomy 22:5 by which God intended to accentuate and preserve the differences between the sexes. Look at the curses proliferating today because we ignore this law! God created male and female for a reason.

Back in Leviticus 18, read verse 23 for another specific prohibition. This act also scorns God’s creation and purpose for sex. It lowers man to the animal level and creates a perverted spiritual image. God forbids such confusion and, under that administration, commanded the death penalty. Even self-professing “Christians” today dismiss these laws as if they don’t reflect God’s thinking at all. But God would not have given these laws defining the right and wrong use of sex if they don’t actually explain the right and wrong use of sex! We shouldn’t even need this to be reiterated in the New Testament, but of course, it is reiterated, several times. Yet there are still people who claim to believe the Bible who won’t accept that this is the fully valid and clear expression of God’s thinking.

Because God wants the sexual relationship to be shared only between husband and wife, He carefully ensures that all other family relationships remain devoid of that sexual element. So He specifically forbids incest of every type. See this in verse 6, and then read the detailed explanations in verses 7 through 17. God wants every marriage—which means every sexual union as well—to point back in a pure, uncomplicated way to the Christ-Church relationship. That means the husband and wife come from two different families and join to create a new family of which the husband is the head.

Preserving Premarital Virginity

Also to ensure that physical family points to the spiritual, God wants every couple to marry as virgins. Read the Apostle Paul’s explanation of this ideal in 2 Corinthians 11:2.

Preventing sex before marriage has been a challenge throughout human history, and it is important to God. His laws that address the issue provide a fascinating study. They highlight His wisdom and understanding of human nature, and how He creates motivation to do it right and strong incentives to avoid doing it wrong.

These laws are also a wonderful example of how we must join all the laws on a subject in order to get the whole picture. His various provisions complement one another, working together to produce unforeseen blessings. Many of God’s laws have concealed purposes and only yield the desired effect when obeyed in conjunction with other laws. This is why meditating on God’s perfect laws is so beneficial. The more we contemplate them, the more we can recognize those hidden benefits. Most people dismiss any commandment they don’t understand, but God only promises to give understanding to those who simply obey (Psalm 111:10).

Now, these laws are different from those we just looked at. They exist to prevent people from breaking the overarching spiritual law to keep sex within marriage. They are examples of laws added to that eternal spiritual law. They do not define sin: They provide guidance on what to do when a sin has occurred. They do not even apply until someone commits fornication.

Read Exodus 22:16 for a law that would almost eliminate premarital sex in one swoop. The fornicating couple must marry, and the man must pay the dowry, or bride-price (that is what “endow” means)—a considerable sum—to the family of his new bride. By God’s law, two young people who decided to have sex were required to accept the full costs and responsibilities of family life.

This points to another super-important reason behind God’s laws on virginity. Sex produces children, and children need to grow up in families! God intended every child to have a father and a mother who are committed to each other and dedicated to bringing him up and preparing him for the God Family! So if a young couple engaged in the activity that produces children, God said, OK, you’re married. Now: Welcome to the adult world. Your first responsibility is to fulfill this important financial obligation to the bride’s family!

Now, read verse 17 to see an additional provision that gives this law even more teeth. The woman’s father had the right to refuse to allow her to marry—and the young man was required to pay the bride-price anyway. Both young people were held responsible, but it was the man who had to pay more dearly. God held him accountable as the decision-maker.

This law illustrates the authority a father had over his daughter. The principle you find in God’s law is that the daughter is under her father’s authority until she marries. However, this is the only place God actually gives the father the right to refuse to let his daughter marry. It’s as if, by fornicating, the couple surrendered the right to marry without the father’s permission. This was a real risk: Any young couple that reasoned, We want to get married anyway, so let’s just go for it, actually gave the girl’s father veto power—which, presumably, he would not have had if they’d done things the right way. Imagine how that would weigh on a couple’s mind that considered fornicating: If we do this, your father could refuse to let us marry—and I’d have to pay the bride-price anyway!

Preventing Deceit

God didn’t stop there. He realized that young people often think everything will be fine if they don’t get caught. A couple that fornicates has strong incentive to try to cover it up, committing the additional sin of deceit. God put additional laws in place to remove that incentive. These laws are based on the fact that, biologically, premarital sex can be subsequently ascertained when a woman later marries someone else.

The first law here is for a man who accuses his new wife of having already slept with someone. Such an accusation might be just. Apparently, however, some men were saying this falsely! A man would gratify himself with a woman, then turn around and accuse her of unfaithfulness just so he could put her away! This gives you an idea of just how carnal the Israelites were!

Read Deuteronomy 22:13-17, which show how God forcibly stopped such evil. The “tokens” are the blood on the bedsheets from the first intercourse. This would be quite an ordeal and cause significant embarrassment. Any young people who witnessed this procedure just once would have a strong incentive not to make the same mistake!

In verse 17, these elders receive proof that the man was lying and that the girl was, in fact, a virgin. Read verses 18-19 to see how God protected the young woman from falling victim to this young man’s treachery. After some severe punishment, this man was told in no uncertain terms: This is your wife—you learn to love her. Not only did the punishment dissuade other young men from trying the same stunt, but it also preserved this marriage. These two young people who had slept together remained together. Obviously this wasn’t the best way for that particular couple to start their marriage, but God was decisively confronting this sin. How many times would you have to enforce this law before no one ever tried that again? A man would understand: He had nothing to gain—and everything to lose—by making such a hateful false accusation against the woman he was to be married to for the rest of his life!

But what if the man’s accusation was right, and she really had slept with someone? Think carefully about verses 20-21 to see what God’s law of love commanded. If two young people who fornicated were found out, they had to marry. But if they had premarital sex and then lied about it and covered it up, then she tried to present herself as a spotless virgin, she was to be executed!

This law works together with the others we have looked at, combining to form a strong incentive for young people not to try to sleep together without getting caught. If two people commit fornication, God wants them to come clean—and marry!

Step back a moment and think about how these laws all work together. What is weighing on the minds of two young people tempted by premarital sex? If we do this, we have to get married—because if we don’t, when it’s found out, she could be put to death! Yet, if we do this and want to marry, her father could forbid it—and I’d still have to pay the dowry for her!

Notice in verse 21 where this severe punishment was to take place. The Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary explains, “The whole family were thus virtually involved in her punishment, because they were all bound to watch over her conduct, especially her father, in whose house she resided until her removal to that of her husband.” So this law also tells you something significant about family government.

Think about how much this part of the law would encourage families—especially fathers—to instruct their children about this important part of their conduct and to watch after them to ensure they were behaving rightly. God’s law gave the father critical responsibilities as the guardian against evil influences, the preserver of innocence, and the protector of his children.

If two people fornicated and the woman was a virgin, the penalty was that they had to marry. Read in Deuteronomy 22:23-24 the penalty if she was already engaged to someone else. This is the same penalty as adultery. Clearly, God took betrothal very seriously.

You might notice that there is more emphasis on the virginity of the woman in these laws. Obviously God was also concerned with the virginity of the young man. But there is a spiritual reality: Christ is a perfect Husband—and the Bride of Christ must be a spiritual virgin!

The Importance of Family

God also put laws in place to stop the heinous sin of rape. Read Deuteronomy 22:25-27 to see how God dealt with a man who forced a woman who was engaged to someone else. The woman was not to be punished, but protected, and her husband was presumably to proceed with the marriage. That is a stark contrast to Muslim societies where a woman who is raped is often killed!

Now, contemplate verses 28-29 to understand God’s thinking for what to do when a virgin boy raped a virgin girl. God clearly wanted to dissuade young men from committing this act and to stop rape in Israel. He also wanted to protect young women. At the same time, He was deeply concerned about preserving the family and ensuring that children grow up in a family.

Consider that law in conjunction with what we studied in Exodus 22:16-17. Remember, the girl’s father could forbid this marriage. If she told him, Daddy—I don’t know this guy! He’s detestable to me! Don’t let him marry me!, the father could “utterly refuse” the marriage—still requiring that the young man pay the money—and thus protect his daughter from a bad situation. That is how the rights of the young woman were preserved.

But there may be cases where the father deemed it in her best interests to proceed. Upon his approval, the two young people were to marry. This, again, shows the authority of the father over his unmarried daughter. It also shows just how serious God is in ensuring that a young man who makes this decision live with the responsibility.

As a practical matter, the woman may have gotten pregnant. If God just said, This man must die, it could leave the child without a father. If the woman was betrothed to someone else, that child would have a family.

Discerning the Truth

To see another law that probably would have come into play whenever a father accused a young man of raping his daughter, read Deuteronomy 25:1. See the penalty that could be dealt to the perpetrator in verses 2-3. If the young woman had any feelings for him, this law would have surely prevented her from making a false accusation that the young man she had slept with had raped her.

These laws would prevent a young man from preying on young women. The first young woman he seduced or forced would step forward, and he would have to pay the bride price to her father, would probably receive a beating, and might end up having to marry her! His days as a Don Juan would be over!

All this illustrates how God solved the problem of premarital sex in a carnal nation. We do certainly look at these God-given laws for wise guidance on how to deal with young, carnal unmarried people who have broken God’s law.

During the Millennium and beyond, not only will the principles of these laws be in place—but we will also have the additional help of God beings working with young people to prevent these sins in the first place. You can be sure: There will be no premarital sex in God’s Kingdom!

That means young people will grow up in a world that helps them to prepare for marriage the right way rather than pressuring them to make a horrible mistake. It means no out of wedlock pregnancies. It means every child will have two parents! That alone is a revolution: It will eliminate an enormous amount of the social problems and welfare dependency we see today, not to mention the savings in health-care costs with the elimination of social diseases.

How does society today think it can solve all these ills? By distributing birth control to children. That “solution” creates more unhappiness, more disease, more broken families, more fatherless children—problems all caused by breaking God’s law! Soon, however, all of those problems will be solved—by keeping God’s law!

For part two of this series, click here!