Therefore all men should marry and be married, and since through the fall of our first parents we have been so spoiled that we are not all fit for marriage, yet those who are not fit for the married state should so live that they walk chastely and honorably and give offense to no one, though at the beginning it was not so and all were fit to become married. But now it happens that some do not want to enter the state of matrimony even though they are fit and qualified to marriage. Some, on the other hand, would like to be married and are unable to do so. Neither do I condemn and disapprove of these. The third group, however, who desire and want to be married and are also fit and competent to do so, even though they enter the marriage state contrary to human laws, do what is right, and nobody should be scandalized by what they do. For the married state should not be forbidden to anyone who is competent to be married, but should be free and open to everyone. And this estate should not be condemned and rejected as something foul and unclean, as the pope and his followers do. For to be married is an ordinance and institution of God, since when God created man and woman, he himself placed them in this estate in which they not only could but should live godly, honorable, pure, and chaste lives, bearing children and peopling the world, indeed, the kingdom of God.

Who, then, would be so bold as to tear down the glorious, holy ordinance of God or to say anything against it? Who, then, is so bold as to condemn this ordinance and despise it as useless, unholy, and unnecessary? (“Sermon at Marriage of Sigismund von Luindenau, 1545” (Luther’s Works, v. 51, p.359)

For there it is, written in the first book of Moses: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it’ ” [Gen. 1:27–28].

There it is; these are not my words nor those of any other man, but God’s Word. This is the way he created and ordained it, and he who will not believe it, let him leave it. Moreover, the daily birth and arrival of all men proves that God wants his creation and ordinance, the holy estate of matrimony, to be maintained, in that little men and women are born and begin to grow up every day.

So every single one of us must declare and confess that we have not made or created ourselves; nor can we do it, neither could our parents do it. Who, then? The almighty, eternal God, the creator of all things, who first created and ordained little men and women for the marriage estate, he created us too for this estate. For I must freely confess and declare that I was created a male child, another a female child; I must confess that I am not a stone or a stick, but rather born and created a human being, man or woman. No man in the whole world, from the first to the latest, can say anything else. The people, especially the papists, are still raging and fuming beyond all bounds against this glorious creation of God, as if it should not exist. And if it were in the pope’s hand and power to create men, it would surely not exist; for he would not create or allow a single woman to exist in the whole world. What would happen then? Human beings would pass away. For it is certain that nobody is born without a mother; but what is born comes from the mother. And just as Adam did not make himself, but was created by God, so all men must be created by God in the womb and there sustained and later be born with God’s help into the world. (“Sermon at Marriage of Sigismund von Luindenau, 1545” Luther’s Works, v. 51, p.358-359)

“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous” (Heb. 13:4).

This is a sermon concerning the holy estate of matrimony which is highly necessary, especially among Christians, that all men may know what the holy estate of matrimony really is and where it comes from, so that we shall not go on living so casually from day to day, like the heathen and dumb brutes who neither ask nor think about these things, but simply go on interbreeding and cohabiting promiscuously. No, among Christians, it must not be so; but rather as St. Paul says in I Thess. 4 [:3–5], “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from immorality; that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God.”

Therefore Christians should live in sanctification, not like swine and animals, nor like the heathen, who neither regard nor honor this estate. There is much to preach concerning this holy estate and divine ordinance of marriage, for it is the oldest of all estates in the whole world; indeed, all others are derived from that estate in which Adam and Eve, our first parents, were created and ordained and in which they and all their God-fearing children and descendants lived. (“Sermon at Marriage of Sigismund von Luindenau, 1545” (Luther’s Works, v. 51, p.357-358)