The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is asking you to join us in praying for the preservation and strengthening of marriage as oral arguments involving several cases on same-sex marriage are heard before the Supreme Court on April 28.
It’s important that we stress just how significant these cases are. Before the Court is an up or down vote to redefine marriage. Like Roe v. Wade was to abortion, what the Supreme Court decides regarding whether to redefine marriage will be on the same historic level.
In 1 Timothy 2:1, the Apostle Paul instructed Timothy to pray for leaders in authority. According to Paul,
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior.
The command to pray for leaders is an appeal to pray for leaders, who in Paul’s time were avowed enemies of Christ and his church. Still, despite their hostility to the burgeoning Christian movement, Paul says that government is a gift from God meant for our good, and that Christians should pray for government officials’ betterment and their wisdom; that they’d execute justice accurately and indiscriminately. So we must.
As Christians prepare for the April oral arguments and a late June decision, we should remember the essential truths of marriage: It is an institution embedded into the created order that unites men and women into husbands and wives that they might become fathers and mothers. At the same time, marriage is a shadow or icon that depicts the truest reality of the cosmos: Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection that secures for him, his own bride—the church.
The outcome of this decision will shape the landscape of the church’s ministry in the United States for generations to come; and it will have significant consequences on the future of religious liberty.
