For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband. (Ephesians 5:31–33; KJV)
Throughout history, Satan and sin have consistently worked to undermine the institution of marriage. As a gift of God, marriage provides us with healthy societies and images that reflect the nature of the Trinity and Christ’s love for His bride, the Church. For these reasons, we must maintain a robust defense of a Biblical understanding of marriage.
The Civic Marriage
The institution of marriage is a work of God’s common grace called into being by Him before the Fall of man into sin. As a work of common grace, it is applicable to all men and women, not just Christians. And, since the Fall, it has worked throughout time, along with other common graces, to preserve us as individuals and communities from withering completely under the effects of sin.
In the Garden, God made the first marriage between Adam and Eve after having divided mankind into two distinct genders. As the seventeenth-century Anglican priest and poet John Donne proclaimed, “ever since, they are he and she, man and woman. They must be so much; he must be a man, she must be a woman; and they must be no more” than that.[1] They cannot be related to one another, they cannot be bound to any other person in marriage, and they cannot be of the same gender. God makes these limitations very clear throughout Scripture.
Through this mystical union of two people into one flesh—of two households into one new one—God works to preserve harmony and order in the world. The nineteenth-century Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper explained that the family is the foundation of good society. Its institution preceded both the state and the church.
The family is designed to be the social institution where individuals develop the good character and civic courage necessary to serve as valuable members of their communities and remain independent of the state by holding firm to civil liberties. As Kuyper puts it, “marital happiness . . . constitutes the vigor of our national existence”[2] and elevates the cultural development of our communities.[3]
However, not all marriages are the same. Some so-called marriages are merely caricatures of the true institution: men and women who live together outside of the law, or married couples who bear no affection for one another or their children, as well as those who lightly and repeatedly divorce, do not build “a true family life” but rather “only . . . work at its destruction.”[4]
While unbelievers and Christians alike can take part in this form of marriage, Christians who are truly following Christ ought not to fall into a caricature of marriage. But, of course, there are days when our affection for our spouse and children is not what it should be and we have to practice repentance.
A second type of marriage is that which exhibits warm affection between spouses and careful attention to the raising of children. These families, whether Christian or not, spread harmony and peace in society.
The Religious Marriage
Love
The religious marriage is the third and fullest form of marriage, exhibited only by Christians whose redemption provides them with God’s particular grace revealed through Scripture. A godly marriage will exhibit love and attentive care for each member of the family. In addition, Abraham Kuyper explains, the “sweet savor [that] emanates from Christian faith” will permeate “all of family life” and bestow “a higher level of consecration upon all relationships within the family.”[5] In short, the Christian ethic will guide our interactions with one another. In marrying, our spouses become our nearest neighbor, whom we are to love as our selves. Beyond this selfless love, the Holy Ghost will work in all our interactions to assist us in building one another up in the Lord.
In a Christian marriage, our homes also become small churches led by the head of the family, the husband, where daily the Bible is read aloud, public prayer is offered, and the singing of hymns is shared. In this way, the Christian family “is the ‘family under the sign of the cross.’”[6] It does not replace the gathering of the church but rather prompts us to seek the fellowship of a broader pool of believers in the local congregation.
The Christian husband and wife realize that the union “of [their] two loving hearts” into one flesh is more than what John Donne calls “love’s strong arts.”[7] As I have written elsewhere, it is, in fact, a type of our union with Christ and even a type of the three-in-oneness of the Trinity.[8]
The nature of our relationship with Christ is also revealed in the structure of the marriage. Paul states here in Ephesians 5:33, “let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.” The husband is the head of the home, but his headship, like Christ’s, is grounded in sacrificial love for his wife. Christ set aside His glory to be born as a man and then suffered the disgrace of the cross so that we might enjoy the riches of His grace.
The husband has the same weighty calling toward his wife. But the husband, not being omniscient like Christ, can often find it difficult to know what is best for his beloved. John Donne refers to women as “mystic books” whose mysteries are revealed to their husbands as they study them over a lifetime.[9] Only then can a man love his wife as his own flesh, which Paul instructs here. To fail to love his wife sacrificially is not only harmful to the woman but even destroys the man.
The Puritan theologian Paul Bayne explains, “In not loving [his wife], a man doth kindle such a discontent in himself, which like a gentle fire, doth dry his bones, which doth make him eat his own liver, and after a sort become his own hangman.”[10] More, a cold and tyrannical husband proclaims to the world a false teaching about Christ’s love for His bride.
Submission
For the wife, the willing submission to her husband’s headship typifies for us the submission of the church to Christ. Her faithful companionship and respectful support for her husband’s leadership was instituted at the first marriage before the Fall. So, the Christian virtue of submission is not a response to sin but an intrinsic aspect of the marital relationship that brings order and harmony to the home and to society. Expanding on this thought, in I Corinthians 11:2, Paul explains that the submission of the wife to the husband is connected to the man’s submission to Christ, and even Christ’s submission to the Father. Thus, it is part of a cosmic chain of order and harmony that Paul describes as mysteriously benefitting the angels (I Cor. 11:10).
Thus, if the husband defaults on his leadership or the wife becomes dissatisfied with God’s design and sets herself up as the head of the home, it disrupts the harmony of the family, society, and even the cosmos. It gives a distorted image of the church’s relationship to Christ and even Christ’s submissive obedience to the Father as He journeyed toward the cross. For this reason, it is not surprising that churches that embraced an egalitarian understanding of marriage years ago now stand in full rebellion to God’s Word on a host of issues related to the nature of reality.
The Prophetic Marriage
Lastly, the nature of the marriage relationship is important because it foreshadows the great and last wedding made by God the Father, when the great Bridegroom will receive His bride in glory. When we attend a wedding, we glimpse a shadow of the coming new heaven and earth with the holy city of the “new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven” (Rev. 21:2). Just as the couple has been preparing for and longing for the day of union, so we too long for the coming of the Bridegroom.
When we celebrate the uniting of a man and woman, give them gifts, and share food with them, we are practicing for the day when we will receive our glorious inheritance in Christ, Who is the head over the church and the fulfillment of all things. We are preparing ourselves to sit down to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Our joy, our glory, will be in His riches, His nobility, and His power, not our own. And through the ages, the Father will show the “exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7).
Conclusion
Marriage is not simply a social act. It is instituted by God for our benefit, serving to bring order to society as a civil institution. In a spiritual sense, marriage typifies for us Christ’s relationship to His bride and even His relationship to the Father and Holy Ghost. Lastly, marriage reminds us of the coming glory of Christ’s return.
[1] John Donne, “Of Human Marriage and the Marriage of the Soul with Christ; A Wedding Sermon,” in The Showing Forth of Christ: Sermons of John Donne, ed. Edmund Fuller (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 90.
[2] Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, vol. 3: The Practical Section, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and J. Daryl Charles, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas (Bellingham, WV: Lexham, 2020), 345.
[3] Kuyper, 349.
[4] Kuyper, 351.
[5] Kuyper, 369.
[6] Kuyper, 372.
[7] John Donne, “Epithalamions or Marriage Songs,” lines 223–25.
[8] See Phillip T. Morgan, “This is A Mystery: Marriage, Sex, and the Trinity” Helwys Society Forum (February 15, 2015), Internet, accessed August 4, 2023, https://www.helwyssocietyforum.com/this-is-a-mystery-marriage-sex-and-the-trinity/.
[9] John Donne, “Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed,” lines 41–43.
[10] Paul Bayne, Puritan Commentary on Ephesians: Volume 2, Chapter 2:11-6:18 (1866; reprt., Wilmington, DE: Sovereign Grace, 1959), 522.
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