Marriage

Introduction
    Discussion of marriage should go beyond the controversial questions of male and female roles, important as these are. Scripture elevates the subject to a more sublime level. Marriage is not merely a human institution, completely malleable in the hands of human custom. It is a divine creation, intended to project onto the screen of the human imagination the beauty of a Saviour who gives himself sacrificially for his bride and of his bride who yields herself gratefully back to him.

Genesis 2: Definition
    The biblical concept of marriage is grounded in Genesis 2:23–24. After naming the animals and finding no suitable helper for himself, Adam encounters his newly created wife, given to him by God. He greets her with joy and relief, uttering the first recorded human words in poetic verse:

Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man this one was taken.’
(Gen. 2:23, NRSV)

    Adam rejoices over her, because he identifies with her. He is no longer ‘alone’ (Gen. 2:18). But then the author arrests the progress of the narrative and addresses the readers directly in a one-verse explanatory comment: ‘Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh’ (Gen. 2:24). Extrapolating (‘therefore’) from God’s creation of the first woman as the first man’s bone and flesh, taken from his very body, the author reasons that human marriage is a ‘one flesh’ union. Those two words are central to the biblical definition of marriage.
    Genesis 2:24 makes two points in connection with the ‘one-flesh-ness’ of true marriage. First, in marrying, a man is to leave his father and his mother. Although the father and mother give a man his very life out of themselves, and although a man’s early emotional attachment is to his parents, a married man’s primary loyalty is to be directed elsewhere. Secondly, a married man is to cling to his wife. This is the positive complement of leaving his parents. The language suggests a profound union of husband with wife, so that his primary identification in all of life is with her. The outcome is that the man and woman become ‘one flesh’.
    The ‘one flesh’ meaning of marriage calls a man and woman together into a fully shared life. Two things stand out here. First, this is a ‘one flesh’ union. Overriding even blood relationships (‘his father and his mother’) to create a new kinship, marriage is the most profound bond that exists between two human beings; within it nothing can be withheld. Secondly, this is a ‘one flesh’ union. Profound as it is, marriage is still less than ultimate, for mortal ‘flesh’ (v. 24 has post-fall people in view) falls short of the divine (cf. Ps. 78:39).
    Genesis 2, therefore, teaches that God created marriage when he made the first woman out of the flesh of the first man, so that the bond of marriage reunites man and woman as ‘one flesh’. All other relational claims are subordinate to those of marriage. ‘One flesh’ entails a life-long, exclusive clinging of one man to one woman in one life fully shared. Marriage puts a barrier around a husband and his wife and destroys all barriers between them; they belong fully to one another, and to one another only.

Genesis 3ff.: Distortion and Restoration
    After the fall of the man and woman into sin against God, the Creator imposes parameters on the woman’s existence:

To the woman he said,
‘I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing,
in pain you shall bring forth children;
and your desire shall be for your husband,
but he shall rule over you.’
(Gen. 3:16, author’s translation)

    The woman is condemned by an offended God to endure suffering in childbirth and in marriage. In the latter, her own desire and her husband’s ruling will distort the beauty of their union. Her controlling impulse is matched by his lordly ego (cf. the logic of the analogous language in Gen. 4:7). In different ways and to different degrees, every marriage thereafter shows the effects of God’s decree.
    The distortion appears in various forms in the biblical narrative. For example, Genesis 4 records that ‘Lamech took two wives’ (4:19). He reappears in verses 23–24, boasting before them of his vengeful and murderous power. Male domination and violence are seen here in all their ugliness, and no comment is needed from the author. This brief scene, in its striking contrast with the tender monogamy of Eden, casts a shadow upon all subsequent polygamy as having arisen not from God’s original design but when the race was tumbling from one level of ignominy to the next. As the biblical narrative continues, the story of marriage reflects that of human sinfulness; the institution can be only as beautiful as human moral character allows. So Abram’s cowardice puts his wife in jeopardy (Gen. 12:10–20), and Rebekah manipulates and deceives her husband (Gen. 27:5–17). The breakdown of marriages leads to the regulation of divorce and remarriage in the Mosaic law (Deut. 24:1–4). But this is only a concession to the hardness of the human heart; the original norm of ‘one flesh’ is not changed by human failure (Matt. 19:3–9). God openly declares that he hates divorce as a violation of the marital covenant (Mal. 2:13–16). It is God himself who binds the two into one (Matt. 19:6).
    The post-fall picture is not entirely bleak, however, for the Bible tells the story of God’s restoring grace. The entire Song of Songs is devoted to celebrating married love, assuring the covenant community that God’s will is marital happiness. If, as seems likely, the final line of 5:1 (‘Eat, friends, and drink, and be drunk with love’), is addressed to the two lovers, then whoever the speaker(s) may be, the larger (biblical) context invites the reader to hear the voice of God approving marital pleasure (cf. 1 Tim. 4:1–5). A note of warning is also heard, for marriage entails risk. Song of Songs 8:6 utters the heart-cry of the bride that her husband would make her ever near and dear to himself; love cannot be betrayed without pain. The partner who feels keenly her vulnerability yearns for the full realization of the one-flesh union. ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ cannot satisfy her heart. The Song of Songs supports the NT command that marriage be held in honour by all and the warning that the marriage bed must be kept undefiled (Heb. 13:4). Moreover, a wholesome view of marriage as wisdom’s alternative to sexual folly is urged upon the young in Proverbs 5:15–23. Proverbs 31:10–31 exalts the virtuous wife as the living embodiment of Lady Wisdom.

Ephesians 5: The Mystery
    Ephesians 5:22–33 is the theological and hermeneutical intersection through which all biblical questions about marriage must eventually pass. In this passage Paul identifies the institution of marriage as a ‘mystery’ revealing Jesus Christ and the church. Throughout his instructions to wives (vv. 22–24) and to husbands (vv. 25–30), he draws parallels between the Christian marriage of a man and a wife and the ultimate marriage of Christ and his church. It follows that the betrothal of the church to Christ (2 Cor. 11:1–3), and the union of the believer with Christ (1 Cor. 6:16–17), are not mere metaphors. They are the reality to which a Christian marriage points when it demonstrates the beauty described in Ephesians 5. In 1 Corinthians 7:27–38 Paul affirms that marriage is good, but also that the greatest human allegiance is to Christ himself.
    Paul’s statement that a man should love his wife as he loves his own body (Eph. 5:28) might be misunderstood as allowing base self-interest. He excludes this interpretation by pointing to Christ’s love for his body, the church (vv. 29b–30), love which took him to the cross (v. 25). But Paul’s declaration in verse 30 that ‘we are members of [Christ’s] body’ gives him the opportunity to show a typological connection with Genesis 2:24 (‘one flesh’) in verse 31. His logic is striking. ‘We are members of [Christ’s] body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”’ (vv. 30–31). Christ’s union with the church as his body is the reason why a man should become one flesh with his wife. It is the heavenly marriage that warrants and dignifies an earthly marriage. In Paul’s reasoning, therefore, human marriage is not the reality for which Christ and the church provide a sermonic illustration, but the reverse. Human marriage is the earthly type, pointing towards the spiritual reality. This being so, the privilege of a Christian married couple is to declare the ‘great mystery’ (v. 32) by incarnating in their own marriage sacrificial divine love wedded to joyful human reverence (v. 33).

Revelation: Ultimacy
    After Babylon, the ‘great whore who corrupted the earth with her fornication’ (Rev. 19:2), has been judged by God, the victorious saints rejoice that ‘the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready’ (Rev. 19:7). It is granted to her to be clothed with ‘fine linen, bright and pure’, which is the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev. 19:8). The Husband of the bride presents the church to himself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind (cf. Eph. 5:26–27). The antitypical reality finally appears as the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband
    (Rev. 21:2). There will be no human marriages in heaven (Mark 12:25), for heaven will be the marriage. It is difficult to discuss this without using more lofty prose, as Jonathan Edwards illustrates (Works [Edinburgh, 1979 reprint], vol. 2, p. 22):

Then the church shall be brought to the full enjoyment of her bridegroom, having all tears wiped away from her eyes; and there shall be no more distance or absence. She shall then be brought to the entertainments of an eternal wedding-feast, and to dwell for ever with her bridegroom; yea, to dwell eternally in his embraces. Then Christ will give her his loves; and she shall drink her fill, yea, she shall swim in the ocean of his love.

    To sum up: the overall pattern of biblical teaching on marriage discloses typological symmetry from Genesis to Revelation, as the ‘one-flesh-ness’ of human marriage, sacred but provisional, points forward and upward to the eternal spiritual union of Christ with his bride, the church. The symbolism inherent in earthly marriage lends the relationship greater dignity; its significance goes beyond the human and temporal to the divine and eternal.
    See also: ADULTERY; FAITH.

Bibliography
    S. T. Foh, ‘What is the woman’s desire?’, WTJ 37, 1975, pp. 376–383; R. C. Ortlund, Jr., Whoredom: God’s Unfaithful Wife in Biblical Theology (Leicester and Grand Rapids, 1996); J. P. Sampley, ‘And the Two shall become One Flesh’: A Study of Traditions in Ephesians 5:21–23 (Cambridge, 1971).
R. C. ORTLUND, JR