Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. . . . This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Eph. 5:24–25, 32)
As we have already seen, marriage is a significant motif in the Bible—in the Old Testament, God speaks of himself as Israel’s husband and Israel as his faithless bride. Expanding on that idea, Jesus is referred to as “the bridegroom” and the church as his bride (see 2 Cor. 11:2).
As you contemplate your soon-to-be marriage, consider this: which came first—God’s love or the institution of marriage? Do you think God looked around for something that would serve as a helpful metaphor for his intimate love for his people and decided that marriage was his best choice? Or do you think that the very reason he created marriage in the first place was so that it could serve as a display of his love?
Paul’s words in Ephesians 5 make it clear that the latter is the case. God designed marriage for the express purpose of displaying his character and love. A husband is not supposed to merely love his wife in a vague, sentimental sense. He is supposed to love her in a specific way that follows a specific pattern—to love her “as Christ loved the church” (v. 25). And a wife is to respond to her husband’s love in the same way that the church responds to the love of Christ (see v. 24).
The problem is that we tend to view marriage very differently from this. Most of us naturally think of marriage as a way for us to get our needs met while we meet our spouses’ needs. So even in our choice of whom to marry, we might instinctively look for the “best catch” we can possibly get. We want someone who is pretty enough, smart enough, funny enough, and financially secure—and all those things are fine. But the Bible rarely talks about marriage in terms of how much we enjoy it or what we get out of it. Instead, God’s Word focuses on the obligations that we have in our marriages—namely, to show love to our spouses.
Hopefully your marriage will be marked by joy, pleasure, fun, and excitement. But those things are not the final goal. The goal of your marriage is for you and your spouse to reflect the love of God in the way that you love each other. Think about how that might look:
• When you tell your children about the gracious, generous, forgiving, intimate love of God for his people, you want them to think to themselves, “I’ve seen that kind of love before. That’s how Mom and Dad love each other.”
• When your unbelieving friends see your marriage, they should observe a kind of care, honor, and sacrifice that surprises them. When they comment on it, you can tell them that such love comes from Jesus, who loved his people to the point of death on a cross.
—Mike McKinley, Engagement: Preparing for Marriage
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