“Why should God have anything against there being four of them rather than two?” is the question a clergywoman in Germany asked recently while defending her decision to “marry” four men—a “polycule”—during a pop-up wedding festival at the St Paul the Apostle Church in Berlin.
Well, let’s let God, through the Apostle Paul whom her church is named after, answer that question: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:31–32)
In reference to marriage, Paul quotes Genesis 2:24, affirming yet again God’s design for marriage as one man (male) and one woman (female). Notice he—like Genesis and like Jesus in Matthew 19:4–5—says, “The two shall become one” (emphasis added), not “The three or the four become one.” Why is that important?
Well, in this Ephesians passage specifically, it matters because marriage is a picture of the relationship Christ has with his church. Christ is the husband of one bride, the church—not two, three, four, or more brides. The husband is to reflect Christ, the head, and the woman is to reflect the church in submission to the head. Polygamy, or a “polycule,” destroys the picture of what marriage is supposed to represent.
And not only that, but this was four men “marrying” each other. This was not a legal ceremony as polygamy is not legal in Germany, but the clergywoman said it was “marriage in the eyes of God.” But it is no such thing since God defines marriage as one man for one woman and calls the relationship these four men have with each other an abomination (Leviticus 20:13) and evidence of God turning them over to “dishonorable passions” and then to “a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:26, 28).
Of course, her acceptance of this polycule is the natural consequence of the “love wins” ideology that has taken over in progressive circles. The woman who performed the “blessing” said, “You could see right away that there was so much love between them,” and that’s why she believes it was honorable for her to “marry” these men. But “love” (as defined by our culture) is not the standard for or definition of marriage—rather, God’s Word is both the standard for marriage and for love. And Scripture is clear: “[Love] does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6), and truth is only found in God’s Word (John 17:17).
But at least she’s being consistent! She’s obviously rejected God’s Word as the authority and is taking her belief that “love wins” to its natural consequence. She’s consistent with her beliefs, but she’s wrong because God’s Word says so.
This isn’t just a problem in Europe with progressive denominations. Here in the US, the pastor of a nondenominational church in Missouri has made headlines for taking a second wife, claiming “polygamy is biblical” and that God “never prohibited polygamy” and even supposedly “divinely ordained it.” Again, this man (who has now disqualified himself from being a pastor, as a pastor is to be “the husband of one wife” according to 1 Timothy 3:2) is ignoring Genesis and God’s design for marriage!
God created marriage as one man and one woman—he didn’t create Adam and then give him a couple of wives to help him in his mission to “be fruitful and multiply”! He created one man and one woman and said the two become one flesh. Jesus affirmed this definition, as did Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit. (You can read more about polygamy and the Bible in this article and in a previous article I wrote).
So this very liberal German clergywoman and this Midwestern pastor both have something in common: They reject God’s Word in Genesis, instead sculpting the Scriptures to suit their own sinful desires.
God’s design for marriage is clear when we start with Genesis: “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27)… “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
