Blogging thru “This Momentary Marriage” – Introduction

I recently completed my first reading of what has become my new favorite book on marriage, and it comes from my favorite preacher. In This Momentary Marriage, John Piper looks at the biblical teaching on marriage from a perspective not often taken, asking “What is it’s eternal meaning?” The result is profoundly convicting and instructive.

In her forward to the book, John’s wife Noel Piper shares about their own marriage and how their extreme differences have led their marriage to swing on a pendulum between “How in the world did I get such an amazing husband?” to “How in the world did we get into such a mess?” However, in spite of the ups and downs, she affirms that marriage is ultimately a reflection of Christ’s relationship with the church. That’s all marriages, regardless of sin. So the question she asks is, “How clear and well-focused is the portrait of Jesus that our marriage is displaying?”

The Introduction begins with the story of Dietrich Bohnoeffer, who was engaged to be married when he was hanged at dawn on April 9, 1945 by the Nazis for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.Piper writes:

So he never married. He skipped the shadow on the way to the Reality. Some are called to one kind of display of the worth of Christ, some to another. Martyrdom, not marriage, was his calling. (p 13)

Piper then shares the story of John and Betty Stam who were martyred in China leaving behind an infant daughter. They were reunited in heaven, but not as husband and wife for there is no marriage in heaven (Mark 12:25).

The shadow of covenant-keeping between husband and wife gives way to the reality of covenant-keeping between Christ and his glorified Church. Nothing is lost. The music of every pleasure is transposed into an infinitely higher key. (pp 14-15)

In “A Wedding Sermon from a Prison Cell,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote

Marriage is more than your love for each other…In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal – it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.

So this is the theme of the book:

to enlarge your vision of what marriage is…The meaning of marriage is the display of the covenant keeping love between Christ and his people. … It is a good gift from God, but it is only one possible path along the narrow way to Paradise. Marriage passes through breathtaking heights and through swamps with choking vapors. It makes many things sweeter, and with it come bitter providences. Marriage is a momentary gift.

In the coming weeks, I will be blogging through the fifteen chapters of this short 180-page book, sharing some of the most meaningful insights that I have gained as a result of reading it. I hope they will be meaningful to you as well.

If you’d like to read the entire book, which I highly recommend, it is available for free in PDF form on Piper’s web site, or you can purchase it from the common sources.

Some questions in the meantime:

• Does your own marriage swing on the pendulum from idealism to pessimism? Do you spend more time on one end or the other?
• Have you ever considered marriage as a picture of the relationship of Christ and the church?
• What do you think about Jesus’ words that there will be no marriage in heaven? Does that disappoint you? What about Piper’s comment that in heaven “the music of every pleasure is transposed to an infinitely higher key?”
• Bonhoeffer talks about marriage as more than a personal thing but as a responsibility toward the world. How does that strike you? How would it change things if you approached it that way?

Share your thoughts or comments below