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The situation has gotten more serious in that many Christians have bought into the idea that Pride is an identity—that what are rightly behaviors are considered to be identities. This is an assumption that may flow naturally from a Pelagian understanding of humanity, but not an orthodox, biblical one. Turning to the deep riches of historic Protestant doctrine, Roberts shows that sinful desire is itself sinful.

Identity is everywhere. We can hardly read an article in the news or watch a show on TV without encountering it. Identity defines our relationship to the world around us, to the other members of our society, and even to our own bodies. “This rapid rise in identity-thinking has caused a somewhat tense interaction with the Christian church,” says Matthew Roberts. “From the secular perspective, it has reinforced the assumption that Christians are just an irrelevance swept aside by the inrush of these new insights, featuring (if at all) as just one identity-group, and one for whom not much sympathy is spared. From Christians, it has been greeted with a combination of alarm at the outlandish new doctrines identity politics presents (gender fluidity in particular) and an assumption that there is a lot of new thinking for us to do to make sure that people of different identities are equally offered the gospel and (to a varying extent) included in the church.”
So what are Christians to do? How are we to think about modern notions of identity? That is the subject of Roberts’ new book Pride: Identity and the Worship of Self. “The conviction that underlies this book,” he explains, “is that, rather than being a new challenge to the Christian faith, the identity issue is, in fact, a very old one. Men have always identified themselves by their idols, and so the issue of identity is fundamentally one of idolatry.”
Key to understanding the book is his use of the word “Pride.” He does not use that word to communicate the opposite of humility, but as an umbrella term for the various identities more typically conveyed in the ever-changing acronym that begins with L and ends in +.
In the book’s first part, he explains that human beings are defined by worship—by what or who we worship. Created by God in the image of God to worship God, we fell into a state of sinfulness in which we will worship anything or everything in place of God. Yet our most basic and essential identity is defined by who we were made to worship. “Being images, our true identity is found in the God whose image we are, and whom we are made to love with all our heart and soul and strength. And so those who worship false gods, giving them the love due to the true God, cannot help but define themselves by those gods instead.” Not only that, but “individuals and peoples come to reflect the character of the (fictional) gods they worship. And integral to this is that individuals and peoples come to identify themselves by the gods they worship.”
This causes endless problems since “for all fallen human beings, there is a basic identity-conflict in play. We are one thing; we believe ourselves to be something else. We have a true identity, though we deny it and seek to suppress it; and we have a false identity, centred around our idols, which we cling to fiercely even though it diminishes our humanity.”
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God’s teaching on marriage and divorce can teach us to live not by our feelings but by the eternal word of God. It can help us practice real love and commitment. But marriage is not the ultimate source of love. An older single person once gave me a box of books. Tucked inside one book was a typed note: “The answer to our loneliness is love—not our finding someone to love us, but our surrendering to the God who has always loved us with an everlasting love.”[iv] 

The primarily calling of every person is to glorify and enjoy God. And in our pursuit of God we are ultimately responsible for ourselves. But we do not go through life alone. We need to know how to honor God in our relationships. And for most adults our most influential relation is our spouse. Marriage will either help or hinder our walk with the Lord. Unlawful marriages harm the partners, their families, the church, and even the generations that may follow.
So piety demands that we understand God’s rules for both establishing and dissolving a marriage. This is true for children in the earliest stages of preparing for marriage, and for singles old enough to no longer be considering such a union. We need to stand together against the forces that are trying to rewrite God’s rules for matrimony. And we must all do our part to help prevent marital failures.
Rules for Marriage
Marriage is good. God made it. But not all marriages are good. Marriage brings two lives together into one. So the two must be truly compatible. The question of compatibility raises an important question.
Who May Marry?
“Marriage is to be between one man and one woman” (see Gen. 2:24). Both polygamy and homosexuality violate God’s intent and disfigure his symbol of the union between Christ and his bride. “One man and one woman” is the most elementary of all marital qualifications. But there are others. Close relatives may not marry; marriage is to be the start of a new family (Lev. 18:6–18; 20:10–21). Believers must not marry unbelievers; marriage is to be the start of a Christian family. Believers must only marry “in the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:39). No disciple of Jesus should even consider a romantic relation with anyone who does not share with them a passionate commitment to God’s truth. To have a God-honoring marriage you must respect God’s parameters.
You also must respect his purposes for marriage.
Why Should Anyone Marry?
There are at least three reasons. First, marriage is for the mutual profit of husband and wife. Marriage partners help each other in their often-mundane responsibilities (Gen. 2:20). They help bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2). Often, two can face trouble better than one (Eccl. 4:9–12). But marriage is more than two people pooling their resources to decrease their housing costs. The oneness of marriage can help combat loneliness. “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Marriage is for joyful companionship. Christian marriage should help both partners follow Christ better together than they could alone.
Second, marriage is for producing children. A loving, committed, biblical marriage is the best scenario for raising children. God still ordains humans to fill and subdue the earth (Gen. 1:28). So believers marry for “the increase of mankind with legitimate issue.”
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