Christian Marriage
CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
EPHESIANS 5:22-33
The principles Paul has been teaching are now applied to Christian marriage, which is to be a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church.
Paul has said that it is necessary for all Christian relationships to maintain unity (4:3), to walk in love (5:2) and to be subject to the claims of one another (5:21). He now applies these principles to Christian marriage. The apostle supports marriage as a form of Christian obedience (notice how 5:22 echoes 5:21) and bases his teaching on Genesis 2:18-24, where marriage is disclosed as God’s intention for man and woman. In 5:31 Paul quotes Genesis 2:24.
The distinctiveness of Ephesians 5 is that here Paul says the relationship between husband and wife should be a model of the relationship between Christ and the church. In Colossians 3:18 reverence for Christ provides the motivation for wives to respect their husbands as the head of the home. Paul makes the same appeal in Ephesians, but emphasizes it by also saying that a wife’s submission to her husband should be a picture of the submission of the church to Christ, its head (5:22-24).
Just as the union of Christ and the church is made possible by Christ’s giving himself in love on the cross, so the husband must in love renounce himself in order to benefit his wife. In this act of renunciation the husband is consecrated. Because he consecrates his wife by bringing her to her true destiny, he may be regarded as her “savior” (5:23,25-27).
In this way, the Christian husband and wife reflect to the world the intimate relationship between Christ, the head, and the church, which is his body. With profound insight Paul describes the woman as her husband’s body (5:28-29), and it is through her that he is revealed to the world. This sheds light on the meaning of the church as the body of Christ. The church has the privilege of revealing her Lord to the world by making him visible. For that reason Paul sees a deeper implication in Genesis 2:24 than simply counsel having to do with marriage. He suggests that in their marital union the Christian couple is to come to a deeper understanding of the relationship of Christ and the church. And they are to declare that understanding to the world by their obedience to each other (5:31-33).
For the pagan world, in its sexual confusion (see 4:17-19; 5:3-6), the Christian couple is both a judgment and a promise. They represent a judgment because their fulfilling the will of God while living in the world calls into question all merely human solutions to the challenges of our sexual nature. They are a promise because their example in this age is a promise of the fulfillment of God’s purposes for man and woman in the age to come.