Dear
Raja and Rani,
Congratulations!
What superb news that you are going to get married next month! I am so glad to hear that you are excitedly
making arrangements and wedding plans. This is a wonderful time, and I know
that you are savouring every moment. And believe me, contrary to what the
movies portray, things can get even better once you get married!
You
have asked me to pen my thoughts on what a Christian marriage should look like.
That is a great question, but a huge task! I could write volumes, but (you can
breathe again!) let me instead limit myself, in this first letter, to trying to
give you a glimpse of the glorious plans God must have had when He arranged the
First Marriage, and began this institution of marriage.
Timothy
and Kathy Keller, in their excellent book, “The Meaning of Marriage” (you must
try and get your hands on this book) write that the Bible begins with a
marriage and ends with a wedding!
We
read in the first two chapters of the Bible about the first marriage. God had been creating
night and day, sun, moon, stars, plants and animals, when suddenly there seems
to be a pause. For the first time, we are given a picture of the Trinity talking
and planning together, “Let Us make man in Our own image”.... and, we read,
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and
female He created them.” We are given more details in Genesis 2, about how Adam
was lonely, and God made Eve out of his rib, woke him up from his sleep, and
brought her to him, and about how Adam sang for joy in a burst of creativity,
“Here, at last, Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh!” I’m sure Adam’s song resonates in your own
hearts at this time.
We
get a sense of the common origins and destiny of man and woman, and the mandate
given to both: To display God’s image, and to be stewards of all of creation,
acting as God’s representatives on earth. We are given a sense that both men
and women, with all our similarities and differences, are needed to display
God’s beautiful image accurately and accomplish His task.
And
then, in the last two chapter’s of the Bible we read about the great Wedding
feast of Jesus and His Bride.
From
the Biblical account of these two weddings, we get some important clues to
God’s great design for marriage. I think there are really two great purposes
for marriage:
1. I
think God intended from the beginning that marriage should be a depiction of
the beauty of the Trinity, with husband and wife mutually exalting and mutually
submitting to each other, just as Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate to each
other.
2. I
think God wishes marriage to display the wonder of Christ’s love for the
church, and to remind us of the marriage we are invited to be part of, at the
marriage feast of Jesus and His Bride.
These
ideas are explained further in other parts of the Bible. For example, we read
about marriage displaying the Trinity in 1 Cor 11:3 (“Christ is the head of
every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ”) and
about marriage displaying the relation between Christ and His Bride in Eph 5:
17-33 (the difficult passage in which men are encouraged to love their wives as
Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for it, and wives are encouraged to
submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ).
Another
truth that emerges when all these passages are put together is that Jesus
is the example for both husbands and wives.
Picture
a marriage in which the husband imitates Jesus, as he is instructed to in Eph
5. (“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave
Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the
washing of water with the word, that
He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or
wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So
husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves
his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes
and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are
members of His body.”)
Imagine
a husband loving his wife as Jesus loves His church. What would such love look
like?! Imagine the husband giving himself up daily for his wife. Imagine him
taking steps to love first and unconditionally, and to love until the end,
forgiving first, taking the first steps to resolve conflict, and truly
displaying servant leadership, just as Jesus, his example. Imagine him
satisfying her, nourishing and cherishing her, meeting her every need,
providing for her, giving her the desires of her heart and leading her higher
just as Christ does for the church.
Imagine
the wife playing the Jesus-role as she is instructed to do in 1 Cor 11:3. What
would such submission look like?! Imagine a wife joyfully submitting to her
husband, exalting him, seeking to please him and serve him just as Jesus, her
example, who “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but
emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant and being made in the
likeness of men”. Imagine the husband responding by exalting the wife,
glorifying her and setting her above himself!
What
a glorious marriage that would be!
We
bristle at words like ‘submission’ and ‘leadership’ because we do not see that
the Jesus-like love of the husband towards his wife demonstrates itself in very similar ways to
the Jesus-like submission of the wife towards the husband! Both are continually asking the question, "How can I serve you better?"
As
Kathy Keller says, “We, the Church, submit to Christ in everything, and the
parallel of the wife submitting everything to the husband is no longer
daunting, since we know what kind of behaviour the husband has been called to
imitate.” A wife could joyfully and fearlessly submit to such a man.
Unfortunately,
one of the effects of the Fall is that this high view of the purpose of
marriage has become corrupted. Starting in Genesis 3, men and women have begun
selfishly begun trying to blame each other, attempting to dominate, exploit and
use each other for their own purposes.
I
pray that you will have caught a glimpse of God’s high calling for your
marriage, and that you will give yourself to your spouse, just as Jesus gave
Himself for you. Your marriage will then display to the world around the beauty
of the Dance of the Trinity, and be a glorious reminder of the coming Wedding
Supper of the Lamb.
With
you in seeking God’s purposes,
Many women find themselves trapped in unwanted marriages. Matrimony severely curtails a woman's freedom, and husbands can be unreasonably demanding. A woman in such a situation is vulnerable. She sees only one way out, and so she makes the difficult decision to kill her husband.
