We, the West Hill Baptist Church of Akron, Ohio, endeavor to set forth here our distinctive beliefs and doctrines. We are made humble believing the Bible to be the infallible Word of God, accepting it as our authority and guide. We teach everything that the Bible teaches. We continue to stand firm in the old-time, New Testament faith even in the midst of the treacherous modernism that is creeping into Christendom today.
(Acts 2:41, 42, 47; II Cor. 8:5; I Cor. 5:12);
We believe that marriage is the sacred union of one man and one woman in a covenant relationship with God as instituted by God and as stated in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. In Genesis 2:18 and 21-24 we find the following…
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Here we see the first wedding. From this we can conclude that marriage is God's idea, designed and instituted by the Creator. In these verses we also discover that at the heart of God's design for marriage is companionship and intimacy between one man and one woman.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 19, verses 4-6, Jesus Christ said…
4 He [Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’? 6So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Further, God’s intent for the marriage of a man and a woman was procreation as stated in the first chapter of Genesis verse 28…
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
We also believe that sexual intimacy is to be expressed only within the bonds of a Biblically defined marriage (see above). And we believe that any other form of marriage or sexual intimacy is immoral and a perversion of God’s gracious will, as expressed in Romans 1:26-27, 1 Timothy 1:10, Hebrews 13:4 and 1 Corinthians 6:9.
Romans 1:26-27
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
1 Timothy 1:10
the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine,
Hebrews 13:4
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.
1 Corinthians 6:9
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
All Scripture above quoted from the English Standard Version (ESV).