{"id":49794,"date":"2017-01-24T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T22:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/?p=49794"},"modified":"2022-07-10T16:22:35","modified_gmt":"2022-07-10T21:22:35","slug":"is-a-marriage-in-front-of-a-justice-of-the-peace-valid-in-gods-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-a-marriage-in-front-of-a-justice-of-the-peace-valid-in-gods-sight\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a marriage in front of a Justice of the Peace valid in God’s sight?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t

Question:<\/h2>\n

Good afternoon,<\/p>\n

I have been praying for several weeks for the Lord’s guidance.\u00a0 The questions that I have led to more questions.\u00a0 One day I came across one of your articles and I read.\u00a0 I started to cry.\u00a0 The article I read was:\u00a0Can my girlfriend and I get married after committing fornication?<\/a>\u00a0 Shortly after I had my boyfriend read the article.\u00a0 We do not know where to start.\u00a0 Besides that, we have many questions.\u00a0 We think we may know some of the answers but need assurance I am on the right track.<\/p>\n

I got pregnant when I was a teenager.\u00a0 The father did not want to be part of our lives.\u00a0 So I raised my child as a single-parent mother.<\/p>\n

My boyfriend and I started to get to know one another a few years ago.\u00a0 We sat down with our pastor and my parents to talk about dating. Our Pastor told us to get to know one another first to see if we were compatible and to stay pure while we dated. Just recently we decided to get married and set a date.<\/p>\n

We fornicated.\u00a0 We went before God and repented and we forgave one another.\u00a0 I know it’s no one’s business besides my boyfriend, myself, and God, but we told my parents.\u00a0 My parents are both Christians.\u00a0 They gave some counsel to us, some Scriptures to help us, and prayed for us.<\/p>\n

The reason why we decided to tell them was that our pastor asked us questions, such as if we had our first kiss and if we fornicated.\u00a0 He indicated that there was a chance we would be kicked out of our church and a wedding could not be performed.<\/p>\n

We then told our pastor.\u00a0 He told us to continue to stay pure, and if we fornicated he could not marry us.\u00a0 But we interrupted him.\u00a0 My boyfriend told him that we had fornicated.\u00a0 Our pastor said he could not marry us because of the sin we committed.\u00a0 Our pastor told us to go to the justice of the peace. We were not entitled to a wedding ceremony because of our sin.\u00a0 He said that the rules the church has in place are to make us feel the weight of our sins.\u00a0 Because we already experience sin, we should just get married before the state and make it legal, but we cannot make vows before God.\u00a0 If we do have a wedding; it has to be a low-key wedding — meaning we cannot have an extravagant wedding because of our sin; no decorations, no bridesmaid, no ring bearer, no music, no flower girl, no family.\u00a0 This ceremony includes just the Pastor, the bride, the groom, and two witnesses — that is it. The family waits at the reception place.\u00a0 Then he said he can do the low-key wedding. He wants us to feel the weight of the sin that we committed, which is why this is an option.\u00a0 Out of curiosity, my boyfriend asked if we can get married in another church by a different pastor?\u00a0 Our pastor said we would be slapping our church and the congregation in the face because we were not sincerely holding to the church’s values.\u00a0 He said we could, but he doesn’t want us to have an extravagant wedding.<\/p>\n

He also said because of what we did. We will face so many trials and struggles in our marriage.\u00a0 Things will happen to us because of our sins. The only time there’s an extravagant wedding is if we stay pure and have a Sunday wedding; that means as a couple we stayed pure, at the altar is the first kiss, and we will be fully blessed. But because of our sin that has been taken from us because the pastor wants the people who commit fornication to feel the weight of their sin.\u00a0 And then our pastor said to let him know what we will be doing, but by the end of the week, we must be legally married before the state. He said there’s another wedding he could do: We can get married legally and have an actual wedding later. Because we fornicated, we can start living with one another after we are legally married.<\/p>\n