Marriage in the New Testament

In the New Testament, marriage is patriarchal (via the man) in character, as it is in the Old Testament: the man married, his wife was married to him.

It is not known what the average age was for marriage in the New Testament. It would probably have been similar to the situation in neighbouring countries, where young men were on average 18 years old and young women between 12 and 13 when they married.

In the first century AD there were also people who preferred not to marry. People were expecting the imminent coming of the Messiah, and after that there would be no more sexuality or marriage.
In addition, there were influential philosophical movements which took a negative view of sexuality and so were also against marriage.

Paul speaks about marriage a few times. He does not think it is necessary for Christians to marry (see 1 Corinthians 7).
But he thinks that people who are married should not practise abstinence. By not having sex with one’s own partner, people would absolutely be susceptible to immorality.

In the New Testament, marriage is also used as a metaphor, for instance in 2 Corinthians 11:1-4. There the church of Corinth is compared with the bride of Christ.