God Designed Marriage So We Would Multiply by Rick Warren

“So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth’” (Genesis 1:27-28a NLT, second edition).

God created marriage for the multiplication of the human race. It’s how we all got here!



You are sitting where you’re sitting because a couple got together and made you. This was God’s idea. For thousands of years billions of people have come into existence because men and women got married. God populated the human planet through marriage.

Let me give you a little background on this. The Bible says that God is love and everything that God has made he made it simply in order to love it. God created the universe because he wanted a family to love, knowing that some of us would choose to love him back and then we would live with him forever in his eternal family in Heaven.

Think about this: God chose everybody who’s going to be in Heaven to come into existence through marriage and sex. Nobody would be in Heaven if God hadn’t created marriage, because everybody has come into existence through the tool that he designed.

Genesis 1:27-28 says, “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth’” (NLT, second edition).

So God’s first command to the human race is to get married and have sex. That, by the way, is the only command of God the human race has been able to keep! And we’ve done a pretty good job at it. There are 7 billion of us on the planet because your parents and their parents and their parents were fruitful and multiplied and filled the world.

One of the main purposes of marriage is for the multiplication of the human race. Aren’t you glad God designed it this way?

“God, not you, made marriage. His Spirit inhabits even the smallest details of marriage. And what does he want from marriage? Children of God, that’s what. So guard the spirit of marriage within you” (Malachi 2:15 MSG).

Talk It Over

What do you think it means to be created in the image of God?
In what ways can you show your love to God within the context of marriage?
How can you and your spouse “guard the spirit of marriage within you”?