What is Marriage Then?

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ ? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” —Matthew 19:4-6

The world focuses on marriage as an extension of the love a man and a woman feel for each other; a union based on feeling. Marriage is so much more…

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Oh, How He Loves Us! | The Marriage Metaphor

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” –Ephesians 5:22-27

“Jesus Christ is the focal point of history and the reference point for all our obedience. Husbands find in Christ a model for sacrificial, loving, strong, tender headship. Wives find the church’s submission to Christ, a model for intelligent, gracious, trusting, respectful submission…these roles are meant to be an expression of the unchanging gospel dynamics of Christ’s relationship to the church and the church’s relationship to him,” –Gospel Transformation Bible.

Marriage is a union, a joining, two become one, cleaved together, a promise, a covenant, a bond, representational of Christ and the church; a living, breathing, dynamic reflection of grace extended to us mercifully via spilled blood, nailed to the cross, a debt cancelled…

Please continue reading here: Taft Avenue Community Church: Orange, CA > Oh, How He Loves Us! | The Marriage Metaphor.