Marriage a picture of the Church

As a Christian, I have always valued the institution of marriage. Yet coming from a broken home of nine years of age when my parents divorced, I was often fearful of my childhood being outworked in my adulthood. That it, though I new marriage was a part of God's plan, never quite understood the symbolism and the power that marriage is to society as a whole and the church specifically.

Marriage is a picture of the relationship God has with His church, which He affectionately calls His bride. Revelation 19:7-9 culminates this expression of God's love for His bride in these versus. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

God's plan of salvation was never just to save us from hell, but to establish a covenant relationship of love with the redeemed of God for eternity. It is in marriage we have a picture of this relationship and one of the reasons why marriage must remain pure to its intentions. Marriage was always between a bride and a groom. that is the female which was made in the image of the male coming together to be the one flesh. This same picture we have in the relationship that Adam must have had with his creator. He who came from God, that is made in the image of, would be in perfect relationship with his creator.

Marriage is also a covenant relationship, which also symbolises the covenant that God has with his bride the church. Just as God saw Israel as one who was naked and abandoned, He made a covenant promise to take her in and make her his own. Covenants are important as they are not like contracts that can be merely torn up or broken based on a set of rules or regulations. But true covenant relationship is life long. Once again a symbol of God's life long (eternal) promise to us who love him. This is even demonstrated  as said in Romans that "Whilst we were yet sinners, Christ died for us".

As we know from 1Corinthians 13, marriage is based on love. The kind of love that is not merely feelings or emotions, but the kind of love that is enduring and sacrificial. When we say our vows at the altar, that is before God and our family, we promise to love and cherish in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer till death do us part. This kind of love is at the core of God's relationship with his church. Almost every commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, of which we are their fruit and offspring, was based on this kind of love.

When we erode away the importance and values of marriage, we ultimately do the same to the true values of the church and God's plan with His church on this earth. Marriage was established well before the church was and for a good reason. Marriage is a true picture and symbol of the kind of relationship that God desires with his bride the church and therefore the reason why we must fight to retain it as established by God.