A Fresh Look at Divorce and Remarriage, Part 9

It is important to understand that marriage is a high and holy commitment. It is not to be entered into lightly. There is nothing wrong with marriage. The problem lies with the people getting married. This is why again and again we have to turn back to the Scriptures and focus on what God says about a subject so as to come face to face with reality.

Here let me show you what I mean. In Ephesians 5:22, we find the Apostle Paul giving us God's view of marriage: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the savior of the body."

Notice immediately the fact that marriage is a picture of Christ and His Church, that's obvious from verses 22-23.

Further, verse 24, "Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." Verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church."

The writer then sums it all up by saying in verse 32: "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church." In other words, marriage becomes a symbol defining for us in visible terms the relationship between Christ and His Church.

Now I ask you very simply, is the relationship between Christ and His Church permanent?   The answer is an absolute Yes! Then it is demonstrably significant that marriage be permanent, if in fact it is to reveal the truth about Christ and His Church.

Going back to Ephesians 5:31, "This is the reason that a man should leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they two should be one flesh."

What is the reason for a man to leave his parents and join permanently to his wife? It’s because his marriage to his wife is an emblem of Christ and the church.  Husbands are to be as faithful as Christ is to His Church; wives are to be as faithful as Christ is to the church and the church is to Christ.

This is what we need to see here. What is God doing when He compares marriage to that of Christ to the church? God is lifting marriage out of the human dimension into the divine perspective.

Marriage is a symbol of the relation between Christ and His Church.

Marriage is not to be viewed as an end in itself.  Now listen carefully: Marriage was not designed primarily for your happiness, and it was not designed primarily for my happiness.  Marriage was designed primarily by God to be an illustration on a human level of a divine relationship that exists between Jesus and His love of His bride, the church.

When you lose that sense of priority in marriage and you make marriage a mundane thing that belongs only in the carnal world of the expression of personal preference you have deluded marriage of its divine priority.

We can't expect the world to understand this but for God's sake we can expect the church (the Christian) to understand it.

Now watch this:  What would happen to us if Jesus dumped us as easy and frequently as we do away with our spouses? Now remember: Jesus is the perfect husband. He does no wrong. So all the problems associated with a bad relationship or marriage all lies with us. Yet, no matter how rotten to the core we are – and we can be pretty rotten – Jesus never seeks to divorce us.  Rather, Jesus assures us with this promise:  “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you” (Heb. 13:5). 

Why would Jesus ever want to hang onto us (sinful and vile as we are), when we keep bringing drama into the relationship?  

Why?  The answer is not complicated, but it is deep.  He loves us with a love that is absolutely permanent and totally committed to us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:35-39).

If Jesus loved us the way we tend to love our spouses, would we still be Christians today? Would we still have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ?  Probably not!

We’re told in Acts 1:8, Jesus said, “You shall be My witnesses.”  We tend to think of a witness as someone who tells others about Jesus. This is true, but there is more to it. A witness is someone who can personally attest to the facts of what he has seen and heard.

Through our marriage, we are witnessing to others of the reality of love and commitment that exists between Christ and His bride the church.  Like the prophets in the Old Testament, God wants to use our lives and our marriage, as a means to preach to the world a mystery.  The mystery is that Jesus gave Himself for His bride the church, and loves her with a commitment that’s eternal. 

Are our marriages that frequently end in divorce a good witness of Jesus’ love and commitment to His bride?

Marriage is not to be entered into lightly. We must take marriage out of the human fleshly level and into the divine spiritual level.  The greatest reality in life is God. We must come to view how things ought to be seen through His eyes!

End of Part 9