–– Gideon Mpeni
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The monarch of Eswatini, King Mswati III, made headlines last month as he engaged Nomcebo Zuma, the 21-year-old daughter of South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma. The engagement was made official at the end of the eight-day reed dance ceremony—a traditional rite of passage for young women and girls held every year.
“The 56-year-old monarch is currently in a polygamous arrangement with 11 wives – and has been married 15 times in total.” What we see here is an entire kingdom whose cultures and traditions violate God’s Word, here we see how they have fine ways of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish their traditions, just as the Pharisees in Jesus’ day (Mark 7:9).
This calls for God’s people in Africa to rise amidst the perversity of marital corruptions in our day and resound one of the denial statements inscribed in Article 1 of the Nashville statement, yes we must categorically “Deny that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship. We also must deny that marriage is a mere human contract rather than a covenant made before God.”
Consider the creation of the world and mankind. God’s mandate in Genesis 1:28 was to be fruitful and multiply. He wanted the whole earth filled with imagebearers who would take dominion of His world for His glory. With such an enormous undertaking before mankind, one would think that would be the best occasion for God to show His creatures how to get ahead of the curve by extracting three or four ribs from Adam’s side so that Adam could get the ball rolling on population growth. On the contrary, how did God design marriage to be in the Garden of Eden? He made Adam one wife for life.
Marriage is not a mere human contract with Ts & Cs in fine print. According to Ephesians 5:31-32, what seems like such a normal human earthly experience in life has remarkable spiritual implications. Like a telescope that gives us a sense of the actual size of planets and stars, Paul’s discourse divulges how the covenant of marriage between a man and his wife points to the covenant that the heavenly groom, Jesus Christ, makes with His blood-bought bride, the church. Christ has one bride whom He loves for eternity and has vowed never to leave. These are the truths and realities that are at stake when we as Christians skim over headlines like King Mswati III taking another wife and fail to have revulsion rise up in our souls.
Will the church of the Lord Jesus Christ lose her biblical conviction, clarity, and courage, and bend to the spirit of the age? Or will she hold fast to the word of life, draw courage from Jesus, and unashamedly proclaim his way as the way of life? Will she maintain her clear, counter-cultural witness to a world that seems bent on ruin?
Standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us let us now more than ever be persuaded that faithfulness in our generation means declaring once again the true story of the world and our place in it. Christian Scripture teaches that there is but one God who alone is Creator and Lord of all. To him alone, every person owes glad-hearted thanksgiving, heart-felt praise, and total allegiance.
Considering two additional articles from the Nashville statement on marriage can fortify our resolve against this royal deviation from the bounds of Biblical matrimony.
Article 2 – to hold marriage in honour means,
WE must AFFIRM that God’s revealed will for all people is chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage. – to hold marriage in honour means,
WE must DENY that any affections, desires, or commitments ever justify sexual intercourse before or outside marriage; nor do they justify any form of sexual immorality.
Having already clarified that the nature of marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman, article 2 reveals how King Mswati III has failed to keep his affections, desires, and commitments limited to a single covenant relationship with his first wife. How can those of his own household, let alone his subjects, find in these endless controversial unions any resemblance of the relationship that Christ has with His bride, the church? (Ephesians 5:25-27)
Article 14 – Points us to our Glorious deliverance from the distortions.
WE AFFIRM that Christ Jesus has come into the world to save sinners and that through Christ’s death and resurrection forgiveness of sins and eternal life are available to every person who repents of sin and trusts in Christ alone as Savior, Lord, and supreme treasure. This empowers us to hold marriage in honour. Henceforth, we deny that the Lord’s arm is too short to save or that any sinner is beyond his reach.
This is the path not only to glorifying God but to knowing ourselves. To forget our Creator is to forget who we are. Our true identity, as male and female persons, and the true nature of marriage as being between one man and one woman, are given by God. It is not only foolish but hopeless, to embark on diabolical deviations from the created order as found in the Scriptures. As true as that is, this 14th article reminds us that All who have strayed, king and commoner alike, can find mercy at the cross of Christ.