When is a couple considered married?

[tonychanyt]

There are at least 5 perspectives:

1. From God's perspective, Mark 10:

9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

Genesis 24:

67 Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife.

People today do not accept this definition of marriage because they want to have sex without marriage commitment.

2. From an OT law's perspective, NIV Exodus 22:

16“If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife.

You have sex with a virgin; you take care of her. However, in this case, her father may intervene:

17 If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins.

Her father can prevent the marriage.

3. From the couple's inter-personal perspective, Ephesians 5:

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

The two are committed to each other. There are practical consequences. The husband gives himself up for his woman.

4. From the church's perspective, when you are married publically by a pastor in a church with witnesses.

5. From the civic perspective, when you have the civic legal paper, you are married. Judges 3:

6 They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

Matthew 24:

38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.

Would it be possible to get married in church without involving the state?

Yes, e.g., in the province of New Brunswick in Canada.

When a man and a woman live together without a marriage certificate, are they married?

When a man and a woman live together and have sex, they are married in the eyes of God.