The Cosmic Significance of Marriage

By Rebecca McLaughlin

Some years ago, a semiretired lawyer told me about a time when he was working for a vehicle manufacturer whose new car design had been copied by a rival company. At the beginning of the trial, the lawyer placed a scale model of the car in question on the judge’s desk. Days later, he discovered that the judge had totally misunderstood. Instead of recognizing that the miniature was just a copy of the real thing, the judge had thought the trial was about a model car! Too often, we are prone to make a similar mistake when we consider marriage. We imagine it’s the ultimate relationship. But according to the Bible, it’s just a scale model.

Like my lawyer friend, the Bible starts by showing us the model. The first chapter of the Bible tells us that God made us humans “in his own image … male and female” (Genesis 1:27). In the second chapter, we see God creating an individual man from the dust of the earth and a woman from his side. When God brings this man and woman together, we discover that their union is a prototype for future marriages: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife,” we read, “and they shall become one flesh” (2:24). This husband and wife were naked and unashamed (v 25). So far, so “very good” (1:31). But in the Bible’s third chapter, this first marriage gets messed up. The man and woman break the one commandment God has given them. Immediately, they realize that they’re naked, and they try to hide from God. As Genesis 3 unfolds, we see that their sin has ruined their relationship with God and with each other (v. 1-21).

This ancient story makes surprisingly good sense of our experience today. It tells us that our capacity for sexual relationships is part of God’s extremely good design, and indeed we know that sex can be exhilarating and can forge a deep connection, as two people experience physical oneness. But Genesis also shows that our rejection of God’s rule has blighted every aspect of our lives, not least our sexuality—and, yes, we can all sense that there’s something deeply broken here as well. While humans can experience the joy of sexual intimacy, we can also feel the crushing pain when things go wrong. The agony of unrequited love. The poison of betrayal. The devastating force of sexual violence and abuse.

As we read on in the Bible, we see instances of all these things, from loving, faithful marriage to the wrecking ball of sexual sin. But we also hear prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea using marriage as a cosmic metaphor. Time and again, they picture God as a loving, faithful husband and Israel (God’s Old Testament people) as his all too often faithless wife. “Your Maker is your husband,” declares Isaiah, “the LORD of hosts is his name” (Isaiah 54:5). God’s love never fails. But his people are continually breaking faith with him and turning to false gods. “Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband,” God says through Jeremiah, “so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel” (Jeremiah 3:20). This marriage between God and his people is in crisis. But then Jesus comes.

The Bridegroom

When asked why his disciples do not fast, Jesus replies, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” (Mark 2:19). The response is surprising. Jesus never married in his life on earth. So how is he the bridegroom? This is one of many moments in the New Testament Gospels when Jesus steps into the role of the Creator God of the Old Testament. Jesus claims he is the rightful husband to God’s people.

John the Baptist (who was sent by God to get his people ready for his Son) also pictures Jesus in this way. When John is told that people who once followed him have started following Jesus, he replies:

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. (John 3:29)

John is just a groomsman, helping at the wedding. So he’s delighted when Jesus comes and claims God’s people, like a bridegroom claiming his bride.

In the Old Testament, God’s everlasting love and faithfulness were central to the marriage metaphor. God made a covenant with Israel, binding them to himself with promises. He pursued, protected, and provided for his people. In the New Testament, we see a shocking turn of events, as Jesus the bridegroom comes with love to take on flesh and die to save his bride. Now God’s people includes anyone who puts their faith in Jesus—that is, the church.

So, what does this cosmic metaphor of a marriage between God and his people have to do with earthly marriage for believers now?

Model Marriage

Like the model car resembling the real vehicle, the apostle Paul presents Christian marriage as a scale model of the marriage between Jesus and his church. “Husbands, love your wives,” Paul writes, “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). This call is drastic. Jesus loved the church by dying on a Roman cross. His people all together are his bride. So Jesus’ love for his people becomes the model for how Christian husbands are to love their wives. Paul continues:

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (v. 28-32)

According to Paul, the “one flesh” union between a husband and wife in Genesis 2:24 was always meant to model the oneness we can have with Jesus. Right from the beginning, when God made humans male and female—when he created sex and sexual desire and instituted marriage—he was building a scale model so that we could get a sense of just how passionately Jesus loves his church and just how intimately we can be united with him.

We see this marriage metaphor returning in the Bible’s last book. Revelation pictures Jesus as “the Lamb who was slain” and describes a deafening shout going up: “The marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 5:12; 19:7). The bride is the New Jerusalem—a double picture of God’s people—and this great wedding happens at the center of God’s new creation (21:1-3; 22:17). So Jesus’ marriage to his church brings heaven and earth back together, as all God’s people are made one with him and with each other.

To sum up: Christian marriage is designed to help us to wrap our minds round Jesus’ exclusive, sacrificial, neverending, flesh-uniting, life-creating love for us. Marriage, rightly understood, is not a distraction from the gospel—it’s a declaration of it.

So What?

This metaphor of Jesus’ marriage to his people has two huge implications for how Christians must relate to marriage. First, it means that sexual and romantic love is not the gem-encrusted goal of life. Too often, Christians talk as if getting married must be every Christian’s top priority and have no real vision for a faithful single life. But when we act like marriage is the thing we cannot truly live without, we make it an idol (or fake god) and undermine the gospel. Marriage is designed to be extremely good. But it’s not ultimate. It is a scale model, not the real thing.

Second, because marriage is a model of a greater thing, it’s vital that we stick with God’s design. Just as Jesus’ love for his people is a love across deep difference, so Christian marriage is a love across the deepest physical difference between humans: the sex difference that is written into every cell of our bodies. Jesus is both like us (human) and not like us (God). Likewise, man and woman are both fundamentally alike and deeply different. Our relationship with Jesus is not one involving two interchangeable partners but a relationship of oneness across difference. So, male-female difference in marriage is not incidental to the model. It is an essential feature. Strikingly, it’s union across this difference that makes it possible for humans to join God in his creation of new humans.

So can’t Christians just focus on the gospel? Yes. We must. The gospel message of Jesus’ love is at the heart of any truly Christian vision of sexuality. But just as everything that my lawyer friend was trying to argue made more sense when the judge realized that the case was not about model cars, so when we train our eyes on Jesus’ love for his people, we’ll find that what the Bible says on sexuality and marriage makes a whole new kind of sense.

. . . Our deep desire to be both fully known and unconditionally loved points us to the one true love relationship that none of us can ultimately live without: the neverending love that Jesus has for us.

— Rebecca McLaughlin gained a PhD from Cambridge University and a theology degree from Oak Hill Seminary in London before working at The Veritas Forum. She is the author of the award-winning Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion and a regular contributor for The Gospel Coalition.

Image by Joshua Choate from Pixabay

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Excerpted from Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships? Examining 10 Claims about Scripture and Sexuality by Rebecca McLaughlin (The Good Book Company, 2024). Used by permission.

“It can be easy for Christians today to wonder if we’ve got it wrong on an issue as high-stakes as same-sex sexuality. Deeply biblical, and illustrated in real-life examples, Rebecca McLaughlin’s book shows us the Bible’s consistent and compelling vision for human sexuality. Christians will find this illuminating, reassuring, and deeply encouraging.”

— Sam Allberry, Pastor at Immanuel Church, Nashville; author of Is God Anti-Gay? and What Does God Have to Say About Our Bodies?

“Rebecca McLaughlin is not afraid to tackle the toughest questions our culture has for Christianity, and in this short book she has again shown her willingness to teach biblical truth clearly, straightforwardly, and compassionately. I hope this book is widely read by both those who agree and those who disagree.”

— Kathy Keller, co-author of The Meaning of Marriage and Assistant Director of Communications at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York

Find Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships? at The Good Book Company and other booksellers.

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