What is the Marriage Anti-type?

Introduction:

Having completed the theme, The Man and His God, in which we discussed in detail, how to develop Spiritual Disciplines, such as, how we are to pray, how to study God’s word, what it means to be holy, how to handle besetting sins, and how to find help when we need it, we determined that this theme was the foundation of all the rest, and because biblical leadership was designed by God, it would be impossible to lead without him.

We then moved into our next LEAD theme which I believe according to scripture would be the next in our progression toward becoming biblically based spiritual leaders. We’ve entitled this next theme, The Man and His Wife, and beginning with the basics, Where Did Marriage Come From? , we answered that question from Genesis 2:15-25.

We saw that man was created as a steward of God’s creation, caring for and enjoying it with boundaries set for obedience. We also saw that man was created for companionship and therefore he created woman to be his much needed help-meet to partner with him in fulfilling God’s purpose. Finally, we looked at the covenant of marriage, and saw that the relationship between the man and his wife was meant to be and unbreakable covenant between them and God.

This morning we will like more closely at this marriage covenant and to what extant is it binding, as we look at a question posed by the Pharisees in Jesus day regarding the marriage covenant, and Jesus response to that question, which should provide with the answers to our lesson question, What is the Marriage Covenant?, from Matthew 19:1-12.

Text: Ephesians 5:22-33

Ephesians 5:22–33 ESV

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Main Idea: God designed marriage as a holy covenant that mirrors the gospel, calling spouses to reflect Christ’s love and sacrifice in their daily interactions, thereby revealing His character to the world.

1. Submission in Love

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

A Christian wife is called to grateful acceptance of her husband’s care and leadership

23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

head of the wife … head of the church. In other passages on Christ’s headship in this letter, Paul speaks of the way Christ governs the universe and the church (1:22), and serves as the source of the body’s health and growth to maturity (4:14–16).

his body. That is, the church as His body—Christ Himself indwells the church (vv. 28–30).

Savior. It is especially in His role as Savior that Christ serves as the husband’s model.

24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives - The church’s subjection to Christ is a revealed and heavenly order, not a natural order. Christ’s disciples were His friends, not just His servants, and He died for them (John 15:12–15; cf. Luke 22:25–27).

2. Sacrifice in Leadership

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

Husbands, love. The emphasis in the passage is not the husband’s authority to govern, but his responsibility to love.

as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Nowhere in the New Testament is Christ’s self-sacrificing love applied more directly to a specific relationship as a pattern to be emulated (cf. v. 2).

26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Paul outlines in these verses the entire process to which Christ has committed Himself in His relationship with the church: He has washed her from sin and is preparing her for a glorious destiny with Himself. Husbands are called in like manner to adapt their lives to their wives’ needs, and to provide for their growth and development.

3. Self-Love through Union

28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body.

Paul reiterates a husband’s calling to self-sacrificial love for his wife by comparing this love to regard for one’s own body (their own bodies), himself, and his own flesh (vv. 28–29; see also v. 33) and then to Christ’s love for his body. As vv. 29–30 make explicit, the “body” for which Christ sacrificed himself was not his own person but the “body” which is the church

A person’s union with his or her own body is intimate and permanent, and marriage creates a similiar union (Gen. 2:24). Christ has joined the church to Himself through the bonds of the covenant He fulfilled, and this intimate union forms an analogy for Christian marriage

4. Sacred Mystery of Oneness

31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

one flesh. The command for a husband to love his wife as he loves “his own flesh” (v. 29) originates in the creation reality that God joins husbands and wives together to “become one flesh.” Paul’s quotation is from Gen. 2:24, speaking of marriage before there was any sin in the world.

32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

By mystery Paul means the hidden plan of God that has come to fulfillment in Christ Jesus (see 1:9; 3:3–4, 9; and 6:19), thus his quotation about marriage from Genesis 2 (in Eph. 5:31) ties in to the relationship between Christ and his church. Paul’s meaning is profound: he interprets the original creation of the husband-and-wife union as itself modeled on Christ’s forthcoming union with the church as his “body” (see v. 23). Therefore, marriage from the beginning of creation (Genesis 1) was created by God to be a reflection of and patterned after Christ’s relation to the church. Thus Paul’s commands regarding the roles of husbands and wives do not merely reflect the culture of his day but present God’s ideal for all marriages at all times, as exemplified by the relationship between the bride of Christ (the church) and Christ himself, the Son of God.

33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. - a summery statement of what was just declared.