Cohabitation (living together before marriage) seemed to be the topic of old times. We hear a message about cohabitation rarely in churches.

Why?

“It offends many people! We shouldn’t offend people, we should lovingly call them to Christ.”

But the truth has to offend us before it cleanses us. It has to confront us before it comfort us. That is the way we all came to Christ. As a matter of fact, this very topic is the one that confronted my sinful lifestyle and set me free. May His name alone be praised forever!

Some people think that the Bible doesn’t talk about cohabitation (living together before marriage), but it does.

Listen:

“Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”” John 4:4-18

The woman married five times, and now she is living with a man who is her “sex-partner,” but not a husband. Don’t you love the woman’s truthfulness? I do! I guess she’s been tired of her “fake life” and was looking for a way out and she met the Way. Praise God!

Jesus asked her to call her husband and she simply said, “I have no husband.” And Jesus said, “You are right when you say you have no husband.”

Why? He knows everything!

My friends, there is no blessing in disobeying God’s word. Our marriage on earth is a conventional representation of marriage between Christ and the church. Cohabitation does not represent the marriage of Christ and the church and it doesn’t bring any blessing to the next generation.

The foundation of marriage between Christ and the church and marriage between a man and his wife is called a covenant, a lifetime promise and commitment. And the law of the land the couple lives in has to know the couple as married couples, not as roommates.

People live together before marriage for various reasons, mainly for financial or immigration reasons but, when it comes to obeying the word of God, is there a good enough reason to disobey God and reject His words, living as sex partners, forfeiting marriage?

I leave that question to you.

Let me close today’s post with the findings of The National Marriage Project, taken from Focus on the Family website:

“According to The National Marriage Project, an estimated half of all couples now cohabitate before they marry. . . In fact, study after study shows that cohabitation is linked to poorer marital communication, lower marital satisfaction, higher levels of domestic violence and a greater chance of divorce.

Young people today are cynical concerning the validity and longevity of the marital union. Indeed, with fifty percent of all marriages ending in divorce, men and women believe it’s a good idea to try out different partners.

“Couples say that they need to kick the tires a little before settling down,” says Dr. Brad Wilcox, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, and director of the Marriage Matters Project. “But what they don’t understand is that once you adopt a consumer mentality, you undercut marriage and open yourself up to marital breakup and unhappiness.””

I don’t know about you but for me, not the above findings but the passage of Scripture above is convincing enough for me to reject cohabitation at any cost and embrace marriage. ///