Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel E-Book

Ray Ortlund

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Short Studies in Biblical Theology
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 187

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

"This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church."  —Ephesians 5:32 Marriage reveals something of eternal significance. From the beginning, God designed marriage to convey a greater reality—the passionate, unfailing, redeeming love of God for sinners, the eternal romance between Christ and his bride. In this volume, Ray Ortlund traces marriage throughout Scripture—from the first marriage in the garden of Eden to the ultimate marriage in the book of Revelation—laying out a transcendent vision of marriage that dignifies our own imperfect unions as a display of the gospel. This book offers insight and hope to every married person today. Part of the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series.

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“In this movement through Scripture, Ray gave me more reason to love and nurture my wife, and I will borrow some of his words as I speak with her. He also let me gaze at even bigger matters. He took my marital story and revealed how it is by Jesus, for him, and to him.”

Ed Welch, counselor and faculty, Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation

“Captivating, alluring, and tearfully rendered, Ray Ortlund’s Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel displays the blood-bought gift of biblical marriage amidst the splendor of the whole biblical landscape. No polemics here—just the love of God poured out to conquer hell itself. Each page shows the biblical worldview in its aesthetic loveliness and disarming power. And don’t let the title fool you. This is not just another book on marriage. Readers will drink in a tour de force of biblical majesty on display on each and every page.”

Rosaria Butterfield, author, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert

“Ray Ortlund brilliantly enables you to carefully examine your marriage through the lenses of creation, fall, law, and gospel. In so doing, he helps us deepen our understanding of marriage, know why it is a struggle for us all, diagnose the marriage confusion in our culture, be clear where marriage help is to be found, and fall in love all over again with our God of amazing love, wisdom, and grace.”

Paul David Tripp, President, Paul Tripp Ministries; author, What Did You Expect?

“Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel lifts our eyes above the contemporary debates over complementarianism and egalitarianism, feminism and patriarchy, same-sex unions, and divorce and remarriage. Ortlund places our focus on the glory of the cosmic love story and the joy-filled hope this story offers for finding true romantic love in a fallen world. This is biblical theology at its best.”

Eric C. Redmond, Assistant Professor of Bible, Moody Bible Institute

“There is no one alive I would rather read than Ray Ortlund. This book will show you why. It shows us how marriage is a metaphor for the gospel itself, the one-flesh union of Christ to his church. This book will help you see both the gospel and marriage in a clearer light, in the light of an unveiled mystery.”

Russell Moore, President, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

“Robert Wolgemuth and I asked Ray Ortlund to preach on marriage as a picture of redemption at our wedding. We know him to be a pastor with a scholar’s head and a lover’s heart. And we admire his marriage as a beautiful picture of the passionate, tender love relationship between Christ and his church. For the same reasons, I commend to you this book. It will deepen your understanding of the divine mystery of marriage and why it matters, and it will inflame your heart to pursue greater love and oneness with Christ and with your mate.”

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author; Radio Host, Revive Our Hearts

Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

Other books in the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series

The Son of God and the New Creation, Graeme Goldsworthy (2015)

Work and Our Labor in the Lord, James M. Hamilton Jr. (2017)

Marriage

and the Mystery of the Gospel

Ray Ortlund

Dane C. Ortlund and Miles Van Pelt, series editors

Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

Copyright © 2016 by Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Pedro Oyarbide

First printing 2016

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked REB are from The Revised English Bible. Copyright ©1989, 2002 by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. Published by Oxford University Press.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-4687-7ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-4690-7PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-4688-4Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-4689-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ortlund, Raymond C., Jr., author.

Title: Marriage and the mystery of the Gospel / Ray Ortlund.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2016. | Series: Short studies in biblical theology series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016019913 (print) | LCCN 2016023839 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433546877 (tp) | ISBN 9781433546884 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433546891 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433546907 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Marriage—Biblical teaching. | Marriage—Religious aspects—Christianity.

Classification: LCC BS680.M35 O78 2016 (print) | LCC BS680.M35 (ebook) | DDC 261.8/3581—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019913

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-03-03 03:33:35 PM

For my wife

Contents

Preface

 1  Marriage in Genesis

 2  Marriage in the Law, Wisdom, and Prophets

 3  Marriage in the New Testament

 4  Marriage in the World Today

For Further Reading

General Index

Scripture Index

Preface

Marriage is not a human invention; it is a divine revelation. Its design never was our own made-up arrangement of infinite malleability. It was given to us, at the beginning of all things, as a brightly shining fixity of eternal significance. We might not always live up to its true grandeur. None of us does so perfectly. But we have no right to redefine it, and we have every reason to revere it.

Only the Bible imparts to us a vision of marriage so transcendent and glorious, far beyond human variation and even human failure. Marriage is of God and reveals a wonderful truth about God. And we have no right to change the face of God in the world. All we can rightly do is receive what God has revealed with gladness and humility.

This is a book about the biblical view of marriage. But that does not mean this book limits its interest to the roles of husbands and wives. That is a valid consideration, and many books have been written about it. But what I mean by “the biblical view of marriage” lifts our thoughts far above even urgently important questions being debated today. The Bible has its eye primarily on the ultimate marriage between the Son of God and his redeemed bride. That eternal romance is the biblical view of marriage, offering both instruction and hope for our own marriages today.

The classical Christian understanding of human marriage was long accepted throughout Western civilization. The traditional wedding service of the Book of Common Prayer, for example, begins:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted of God, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee, and is commended of Saint Paul to be honorable among all men; and therefore is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God.

But now we are told that this God-centered vision of marriage is mistaken, and worse than mistaken, even oppressive. Now we are told that we will never be a free and just society unless everyone, arranging their sexuality however they wish, may demand formal validation from the state and therefore from us all. Overlook the fact that no class or group has been denied marriage, as it has been understood within the long-held consensus—one man with one woman. That was not withheld, so no one was being discriminated against. But now our collective better future requires civil rights status for the infinite spin-off redefinitions of marriage as baseline civility expected of us all, and failure to comply with the new order is a punishable bigotry.

Clearly we all have the freedom to do what we choose with our own God-given humanity. But we do not have the freedom to escape the consequences of our choices, nor may we rightly demand that others support our choices. As our society departs increasingly from the ways of God, more misery will deeply injure and depress human experience. May the Christian church be ready always to care for sinners and sufferers without a self-righteous “I told you so.” May we who follow Christ receive all penitents with tenderness and practical helps. But we need more than an emergency room for people wounded by the sexual revolution. We also need a widespread return to the ancient wisdom we all have foolishly disobeyed.

I wrote this book with two yearnings in my heart. First, I yearn for a recovery of joyful confidence in marriage as God originally gave it to us. This requires a humble, thoughtful return to biblical teachings. We will never see human sexuality restored without a rediscovery of Scripture as the consensus of our culture. Second, I yearn for more men and women to experience enduring marital romance. We will never live in the human richness we all desire without our hearts strengthened by divine grace. So I am sending this book into the world as one more effort in my lifelong desire for reformation and revival in our generation. Reformation is the recovery of biblical truth in its redemptive claim on the whole of life. Revival is the renewal of human flourishing by the Holy Spirit according to the gospel. Marriage is one of the primary flashpoints of controversy where we most need both reformation and revival in our times.

My pledge to you, the reader, is that I will try to stay true to the Bible throughout this book. I want to lead you on a brief journey of discovery from the beginning of the Bible to its end, because the Bible is a love story. It is not a hodgepodge of religious thoughts. The Bible unfolds as a complex but coherent narrative of God gathering a bride for his Son—and he found her on the wrong side of town, too. What a story!

My request of you, the reader, is simply that you will stay open to the surprising things the Bible says about marriage. Our willingness to moderate our personal reactions long enough to keep tracking with the Bible until the story is fully told will be rewarded with satisfying new insights. So why not listen to the story as if for the first time?

Finally, I thank Dane Ortlund and Miles Van Pelt for the privilege of contributing this volume to their series, Short Studies in Biblical Theology. I thank my friends at Crossway for their expert assistance. I thank the elders and members of Immanuel Church, Nashville, for their prayers and partnership. And I thank my wife, Jani, for her sacrificial patience and support while I wrote this book.

May the Lamb receive the reward of his suffering!

1

Marriage in Genesis

If the Bible is telling us the truth about reality, then we have a way to account for the whole of our human experience—both our grandeur and our squalor. The Bible explains both at a radical level. All our personal stories, with both our glory and our shame, began in the garden of Eden. We are all rooted that deeply. The book of Genesis gives us the categories we need if we are going to understand how we went so wrong and whether we have any future worth living for. I agree with Francis Schaeffer:

In some ways these chapters [in Genesis] are the most important ones in the Bible, for they put man in his cosmic setting and show him his peculiar uniqueness. They explain man’s wonder and yet his flaw.1

We have good reason, therefore, to consider carefully the early insights of Genesis into ourselves in general and marriage in particular.

Genesis 1

The biblical love story begins on a grand scale: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). The story ends on an even grander scale: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Rev. 21:1). The first cosmos was created as the home of a young couple named Adam and Eve. The new cosmos will be created as the eternal home of the Son and his bride. It is not as though marriage is just one theme among others in the Bible. Instead, marriage is the wraparound concept for the entire Bible, within which the other themes find their places. And if the Bible is telling a story of married romance, no wonder that the demonic powers would forbid marriage (1 Tim. 4:1–5). Every happy marriage whispers their doom and proclaims Christ’s triumph.

Grandeur sets the tone of the first creation in Genesis 1. God speaks, and light springs into existence out of nothing but vast darkness. God speaks into reality, into shape and fullness and color and life, both heaven and earth, lands and seas, plants and animals. As the creation account concludes, a new universe sparkles through God’s creative word. But the whole would have been incomplete without this climactic act of divine goodness:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:26–28)

The Genesis account of human origins dignifies us all. In the ancient Babylonian creation story, man is degraded. The god Marduk addresses his father Ea:

Blood I will mass and cause bones to be,

I will establish a savage, “man” shall be his name.

Verily, savage-man I will create.

He shall be charged with the service of the gods

That they might be at ease!2

As the lackey of minor gods who are discontented with their lot, man exists to perform their menial tasks for them “that they might be at ease.” But in the biblical vision, man is lifted into both royal activity (Gen. 1:26–28) and Sabbath rest (Gen. 2:1–3; Ex. 20:8–11).

Genesis 1:26–28 makes three assertions about humanity. First, God created man as uniquely qualified to rule over his creation. In verse 26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” means that God made us for the exalted purpose of representing him. We are images of God—but not in a literal, physical way, as little statues of God. God is spirit, not limited by a body (Deut. 4:12; John 4:24). So God has no edges, no bulk. But we do image God in that we were created to stand for God and to advance his purposes here in his world:

Just as powerful earthly kings, to indicate their claim to dominion, erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire where they do not personally appear, so man is placed upon earth in God’s image as God’s sovereign emblem.3

The animals are to be identified “according to their kinds” (Gen. 1:21, 24–25). But mankind, and mankind alone, stands tall as royalty “in the image of God.” We find our identity not downward in relation to the creation but upward in relation to God. And the glory of the divine image extends to every one of us: “In ancient Near Eastern texts only the king is in the image of God. But in the Hebrew perspective this is democratized to all humanity.”4 All mankind, equally together, was created for the high and holy purpose of bringing the glorious rule of God into the world.

Second, God created man in the dual modality of male and female. Verse 27 is the first poetry in the Bible, rhapsodizing on God’s creation of mankind. And the verse’s joy comes to a focal point here: “male and female he created them.” Nowhere else does the creation account of Genesis 1 refer explicitly to sexuality. Animal reproduction is assumed, but human sexuality is celebrated, though its deeper meaning is not yet explained. The Babylonian version of creation does not even mention the creation of the two sexes, but the Genesis account glories in “male and female he created them.” To Genesis and to Jesus, it was highly meaningful that “he who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4). The rest of the Bible will explain that meaning with increasing clarity, taking us into the very heart of the story.

Third, God created man under divine blessing, actively promoting man’s glorious destiny. The introductory “And God blessed them,” heading verse 28, covers all that God declares in the rest of the verse about humanity fruitfully multiplying and universally ruling. In verse 22, God spoke blessing out over the lower creation: “And God blessed them, saying . . .” But here in verse 28, God speaks his blessing to us personally and directly: “And God blessed them. And God said to them . . . ,” authorizing both male and female to rule, to develop successful human cultures, to leave a mark on the world for the glory of God, all under the smile of God’s blessing.

To sum up: Genesis 1 presents the newly fashioned world in its pristine beauty, with mankind as male and female, robed in royal dignity, together stewarding God’s wondrous creation for the display of his glory. The Old Testament asserts the greatness of the trust we received: “The earth he has given to the children of man” (Ps. 115:16). The first claim of the Bible, then, setting the stage for marriage, is that manhood and womanhood are not our own cultural constructs. Human concepts are too small and artificial a context for the glory of our sexuality. Manhood and womanhood find their true meaning in the context of nothing less than the heavens and the earth, the cosmos, the universe, the entire creation. That is the first claim of the biblical love story.

Now, if we were reading the Bible for the first time, what question might we ask, as Genesis 1 concludes? Turning the page to chapter 2, we might wonder what kind of sequel could match or exceed the glories of the first chapter. But, in fact, what happens next in the biblical story? After the heavens and the earth come together in the first creation, a man and a woman come together in the first marriage. Surprisingly, the Bible moves from cosmic majesty in Genesis 1 to a common everyday reality in Genesis 2: a young couple falling in love. So we might wonder if marriage is out of its depth here alongside the creation of the universe. Or could it be that the Bible sees in marriage more than we typically do? For now, we will put that question on hold, as we attend first to what Genesis 2:15–25 clearly teaches about marriage.

Genesis 2

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:15–17)

Now the Bible’s range of vision narrows to a localized focal point: the garden of Eden, where the “male and female” of Genesis 1:27 appear as Adam and Eve.5 As for Adam, on the one hand, we can see here that he was not a caveman. Verses 15–17 show that his world was not crude and primitive. God put him in an environment rich with potential, available for enjoyment and worthy of his thoughtful effort. God’s first commandment, emphatically stated, was strikingly open and generous, in keeping with Adam’s royal status over the lower creation: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden.” But on the other hand, Adam was not a god. God defined him as responsible to his Creator. Adam was charged by God to develop the garden—“to work it,” presumably until the entire world would grow to become an Edenic kingdom of God’s glory. Moreover, Adam was to guard the garden from all evil: “. . . and keep it.” That Hebrew verb reappears in Genesis 3:24: “. . . to guard the way to the tree of life.” God did not explain what kind of threats evil and death are. Rather, the divine warning stands in verse 15 “like a door whose name announces only what lies beyond it,”6 so that Adam had to obey God’s command as a matter of trust. Adam’s role was to assert and enjoy his sovereignty under God, cultivating the garden into an expanding paradise and protecting it from all harm.

But, surprisingly, in this Eden of rich resources and splendid potential, in this paradise unharmed by evil and death, God puts his finger on something that is wrong:

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord