“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
(Ephesians 5:31-32 ESV)
I was struck today while reading “This Momentary Marriage” by John Piper by the role that marriage plays in our world. Piper restates and elaborates on the point that Paul made in Ephesians 5:31-32. Piper articulates the biblical truth that marriage was formed from the beginning [Gen 2:24]. God intended marriage to be a picture and a parable revealing the relationship Christ has to His church. Something struck me, however, that I’ve never pondered before. God said, “Therefore a man shall leave his mother and father and hold fast to his wife”. And in saying that, he was picturing what Christ would do for His bride, the church.
I think back to my wedding and the events prior, and I remember what trembling I felt in the thought of becoming responsible to God for another human being–financially, spiritually, prayerfully responsible for another human being before God. And what I now see in the Gospel and in Paul’s words in Ephesians are words that I wish someone had said to me.
In the trembling fear and anxiety I was experiencing as a man nowhere near mature enough to handle marriage, it would have been helpful to hear that Jesus had been through this. So often we hear: Jesus came to earth and put on flesh so that we could see him and see him interact with things in this world and know that he understands. But there was the obvious problem: Jesus never had sex, nor was he married. How could I find guidance in the gospels and NT when nowhere in them could I turn and find Jesus encountering his wife in his first year of marriage. But today my eyes have been opened to see I was dead wrong.
Jesus did leave His Father, just as man and wife leave their father and mother and cling to one another, as Paul says “so that he might present the church to himself” [Eph 5:27]. And what is more, he endured far worse things than I will ever endure in his pursuit of his bride, including his own death. So to young married couples or to those soon to be, please–be encouraged: the entire gospel account is one long story of Christ in pursuit of marriage. And we should find encouragement for the trials of marriage in the gospels because as John says, “[He] shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [Him]” [John 1:5].
Tags: Christ, Marriage, Newly-weds