Five Points Blog
Marriage Comes from God
- Brent Nelson
- Feb 10, 2012
Since marriage comes from God, it gets its meaning from God. And God means for all human marriage to portray His Son’s eternal marriage with His Bride, the Church of Jesus Christ. Marriage is not a human institution available for our use, but a divine one designed to make much of Christ.
That’s why Jesus said to the Pharisees that the permission to divorce in the Law of Moses was owing to their hardness of heart. Can you imagine a more devastating statement from our Lord? They were trying to trap him with the law, but he simply turned the question back to them and exposed their unbelief.
On what does Jesus rest his understanding of marriage and divorce? He rests his teaching not in convention, but in creation. We see that as he quotes Genesis 1 and 2 then draws divine truth from it: “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Mark 10:6-9 ESV)
So God creating us male and female to be fulfilled in the marriage union, meant to portray the permanence and beauty of Christ’s marriage to the Church. God designed it, described it and accomplishes it. “What God has joined together, let no man separate.”
Why does Jesus utter the ocean-deep oracle that what God has joined together no one should separate? He speaks so solemnly because marriage is far more glorious and grave than anyone realizes. It is the display of God’s eternal, unfailing, love for His own Bride. He will never put her away; because God never has a hard heart. His heart is always brimming with tender love. The rock-solid hope we have for our future salvation hangs on God remaining true to His character: an ever-tender, always-loving, forever-gracious Husband to his guilty Bride.
No matter how you have lived in the past, know that grace sufficiently covers my sin and yours. Only let not grace be twisted into license for marital sin. Rather let grace draw you closer, higher, nearer to God’s clear and precious design for marriage.