In the disorientation following my second broken engagement, I found myself struggling with the question, "What is the purpose of marriage"?

At the time, I came up with the following: "The purpose of marriage is to help each other identify and carry out God's will for their life with joy." While I still think it's a helpful definition, just this morning I came across a stronger one, provided by Dr. Al Mohler:

"The ultimate purpose of marriage is the greater glory of God -- and God is most greatly glorified when His gifts are rightly celebrated and received, and His covenants are rightly honored and pledged."

Some of you might recognize a bit of the Westminster Catechism in that definition ("Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever").

Let's bring that definition down to earth. Historically, according to Mohler, the church recognized three key purposes of marriage:

1) The "procreation and nurture of children, if God should grant children to the marriage."

2) "[A]s a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication . . . that [believers] might marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body" (see 1 Corinthians 7:9).

3) "[C]ompanionship throughout life, through good and bad, comfort and loss, sickness and health, until death parts the husband and wife."

Sounds pretty clinical, hm? Feels like all the romance has been stripped away. Yes, the day-to-day working out of marriage is fairly earthly, but ultimately it points to something more lofty:

"Marriage is the source of great and unspeakable happiness. Yet because of sin it is not unmixed happiness. But marriage is not first and foremost about making us happy. It is for making us holy. And through the covenant of marriage two Christians pledge to live together so as to make each other holy before God, as a testimony to Christ."

I guess the definition I came up with a dozen years ago wasn't too far off.