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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies
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A HUSBAND, A WIFE, AND THE GOSPEL OF THE
KINGDOM
By A. Prentice
For this reason a man will leave his
father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.
Ephesians
5: 31, 32
MARRIAGE IS A brilliant arrangement which allows for not only the propagation of the species, but for the mutual support and encouragement of wife and husband and the formation of the family structure, in which children may be nurtured, and by which nations may be established.
In short, marriage stands at the root of human civilisation.
When addressing the matter of divorce, in response to a combative
question from the Pharisees, Jesus confirmed the accepted truth that the
Creator made humanity male and female. ‘For this reason’, He said, ‘a man will
leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh’. In the act of sexual intercourse the man and the woman become as
one – Adam and Eve stitched back together. ‘Therefore,’ Jesus continues, ‘what
God has joined together, let not man separate’ (Matthew 19: 4-6).[*]
As a union of male and female, marriage is an established fact of nature. One does not need to be Christian, Moslem, Hindu, of any religion or none, to recognise the obvious value and validity of the arrangement. Anatomy proclaims it, the reproduction of the species confirms it, and society has long accepted it as a settled truth and aligned their understanding accordingly.
A Lesson from Matrimony
Ephesians 5: 25-32:
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. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no-one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.
Natural theology broadly asserts that nature displays, by its design and operation, the mind and intent of its creator – that it mirrors the arrangements in Heaven. To put it another way, the laws and operations in Heaven find a rough correspondence in the laws and operations visible in the natural world. Thus, goes the argument, by studying nature one is enabled to understand God.
While this is approximately correct, the natural record on earth is distorted and incomplete. From a study of nature alone we may learn about geological disruptions and catastrophes, but nothing about the character of a maker who allows such things, other than, perhaps, his permissive regime. But those arrangements which are delineated by Scripture as pre-figures, or types, of the ‘heavenlies’, admit us into an understanding of God’s long-term plans and intentions. (Compare Hebrews 8: 5; 9: 23; 10: 1.)
As a general rule, the heavenly pattern precedes in time the earthly pattern. The figure of marriage, though first recorded in Genesis, is itself predicated on the plan of God laid down an indefinite time before earth was created. Certainly the death of Christ, as the sacrificed Lamb, was assumed to be a foregone conclusion before man’s history began:
John 17: 24
Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
Revelation 13: 8
All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast – all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.
The Divine View of Matrimony
The Apostle Paul refers to marriage as concealing a ‘profound
mystery’ – a truth whose significance is not understood until revealed. And
this particular mystery is far more than an allegory drawn from the
union of a man and a woman in marriage – after the fact. For there is nothing
original on earth, under this permission of evil, that has not already been
anticipated in Heaven’s plan (Ecclesiastes
1: 9). This is an important point to keep in mind:
it means that the
stamp of God’s approval is on the marriage arrangement.
Seen in its proper, sanctified light, the institution of marriage holds a profound and eternal truth that was hidden until a defined point in history.
Christ’s Offices
Christ Jesus is the Saviour of the world. Those saved are broadly of two classes: the elect and the non-elect. The elect are called out in the Gospel age; the non-elect will wait for a resurrection and reformatory judgement until the Millennial Age, God’s Kingdom on earth.
The Scriptures refer to the Elect as the ‘church’ (1 Timothy 3: 15) , ‘the little flock’ (Luke 12: 32), and the ‘body’ of Christ (Colossians 1: 18). They are also denoted the ‘bride’ of Christ (John 3: 27-29). Under this latter figure, Christ Jesus is the groom, for whom the Heavenly Father selects a bride, foreshadowed in the choosing of a wife for Isaac, detailed throughout Genesis chapter 24 (in which narrative Abraham represents God).
In his epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul in the authority of a plenipotentiary Apostle, writes (2 Corinthians 11: 2):
I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.
The promises of the Scriptures are primarily to this espoused class. Their call and development during the Gospel Age has prepared them to be the perfect Wife of Christ. Through this model union of Christ and His Church – Groom and Bride – the blessings of the future Kingdom on earth will be fulfilled. It’s not pressing the figure too far to assert that this Husband and Wife will be the parents of the regenerated world of mankind in the Millennial Age – the Kingdom on earth. Revelation 22: 17 says as much:
The Spirit and
the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty,
let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of
life.
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Notes
^[*] Our Lord’s caution here needs only a little creative expansion to warn those who, in the interests of social liberalism, advocate the unmaking and dilution of this essential male-female arrangement, recasting ‘marriage’ as sexually neutral, and prising open the door to ‘same-sex marriage’.
Copyright 2010 A. Prentice. You may reproduce any or all of this article.