Continuing the series blogging through John Piper’s excellent book This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence we come to the first chapter entitled “Staying Married is Not Mainly about Staying in Love.” Here Piper first really makes the case that marriage is about something infinitely more than two people in love wanting to live their lives together. Our culture simply does not understand this, and neither did Jesus’ culture (Matt 19:10-12) or any human culture. Our sin and selfishness blind us to the wonder of God’s purpose for marriage.
Foundationally, marriage is God’s doing. Piper illustrates this in four ways:
- It is God’s design. He saw the solitude of the man and knew that he needed a helper suited to him (Gen 2:18). When Adam realized none of the animals would do, God created another creature in His image for Adam (Gen 1:27)
- God gave away the first bride. I’ve never seen this before but, as the Father of the bride, God “brought her to the man.” (Gen 2:22)
- God spoke the design of marriage into existence by saying “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24)
- God performs the one-flesh union. The preacher doesn’t make the couple one flesh and it doesn’t happen at the consummation. God joins them together and it is not in man’s power or prerogative to destroy (Mark 10:8-9).
But ultimately, Piper argues, this marriage that God has created is designed for God’s glory. That this holding fast and one flesh union is a sacred covenant is implicit in Genesis but becomes explicit in Ephesians 5.
Christ thought of himself as a bridegroom coming for his bride, the true people of God (Matt 9:15; 25:1ff; John 3:29). … Christ knew he would have to pay for his bride with his own blood. He called this relationship the new covenant … This is what Paul is referring to when he says that marriage is a great mystery: “I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Christ obtained the church by his blood and formed a new covenant with her, an unbreakable “marriage.”
The ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it exists for God’s glory. That is, it exists to display God. Now we see how: Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream.
Staying married, therefore, is not mainly about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant…Therefore what makes divorce and remarriage so horrific in God’s eyes is not merely that it involves covenant-breaking to the spouse, but that it involves misrepresenting Christ and his covenant. Christ will never leave his wife. Ever. There may be times of painful distance and tragic backsliding on our part. But Christ keeps his covenant forever. Marriage is a display of that! (pp 24-25)
So the most important thing about marriage is showing in real life the glory of the gospel. Let me share a couple of questions for reflection and comment below:
- How does the idea of marriage as a display of Christ’s covenant keeping love change the way you think about your own marriage?
- Does this mean that it is not important whether you stay in love? If not, what role should your feelings play in your marriage?
