“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Ephesians 5:31-33 NKJV)
This is where my understanding of sexuality begins. I do not start in Genesis, in Eden, as so many others do, because we are not hoping to go back to Eden. We are called forward: “And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17 NKJV). When we establish the foundation of marriage in Genesis with the creation of man and woman, we imply that Christ came later and discovered that marriage was a useful allegory of the love of God for his people. But this perspective ignores how and why men and women came to be originally: by the hand of Christ.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:15-18 NKJV)
In saying that “by Him all things were created […] all things were created through Him and for Him,” Paul shows that the design of man and woman as two separate genders does not predate Jesus Christ. If we accept that one God created everything just as he willed through divine fiat, it is clear from the variety in creation that God did not have to provide for bisexual reproduction of the human race. There are other ways to continue a species. But through Jesus God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4 NKJV)–chose us who are the church, the body, the bride. God had our redemption in mind before the Fall, before creation, and planned from the beginning to end in the great Wedding of the Lamb. To teach us about this ultimate wedding God first made us man and woman, as Paul wrote concerning Christ and the church.
The Wedding of the Lamb of course transcends any earthly marriage and thus defies a complete and tidy equivalence to a simple human union. The whole host of the people of God, known in this life as male and female, will all together marry Christ – and he is a lamb? It is nonsense when pursued as a rigid, literal template of human marriage. And because the loving union between Christ and his bride transcends any earthly love, the other loves are also used to describe the greatest. We are called brothers and sisters of Christ. He spoke to Jerusalem as a mother hen (Matthew 23:37)! The bride to bridegroom relationship is not adequate to speak to all the aspects of Christ’s love for his people, so we cannot assume that everything true of Christ’s relationship with the church is true of a husband’s relationship with his wife.
But we can say that the very existence of a relationship between a husband and a wife does speak of Christ, positively or negatively. Even when unbelievers marry, that marriage still testifies of Christ (positively or negatively). If it is true that “All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist […] that in all things He may have the preeminence,” this does not exclude those dark things we see wrought by evil – Christ’s own crucifixion prominent among them. An abusive relationship declares the lack of Christ’s love just as loudly as a sweet relationship declares the reality of his love. The abuses of the marriage relationship by sin and sin-bent humans does not nullify the purpose for which marriage (or, if you like, the potential for marriage) was created.
The purpose of marriage as a witness of the great Wedding to come also explains the difference between New Covenant and Old Covenant marriage – which is fundamentally nothing. We may now better understand the pattern we strive to follow, but Jesus did not shift marriage from being somehow “based on Law” to somehow “based on grace.” It was and is and will always be modeled on the love that God has for his people. When Paul says to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:38-29 NKJV), he is not abolishing the actual difference between male and female any more than he is abolishing the actual difference between slave and free. Slavery did not end when Paul wrote that letter, not even among the (obedient) church. The color of a person’s skin and their genetic lineage and the language and culture they understood did not change. To be sure, Paul called upon his audience to view and react to those differences in an unusual manner, not according to the custom of the day; but Paul does not make what we have “in Christ” to be what we live day by day, any more than we can live day by day in a world untouched by sin. The promises are sure, and thus have real value now, and real meaning, but they still look forward toward when “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30 NKJV) as Jesus said.
The discontinuance of sexual relationships in the resurrection life does inform our lives now, but it does not replace our lives now. Paul explains the relationship between the temporal and the eternal to the Corinthians this way:
Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For ‘the two,’ He says, ‘shall become one flesh.’ But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. (1 Corinthians 6:13-17 NKJV)
The preface that Paul uses to frame this discussion is important. It is right and proper to put food in the stomach even though food and stomachs are not eternal and will pass away. On a literal and physical level the same is true of sexual relationships. They are not eternal, just as Jesus declared to the Sadducees, and the body will perish and pass away with all creation. In one sense, then, it does not matter what is done with the body sexually. It is in this sense that victims of sexual violence or believers struggling with sexual sin can take hope. Sexual sin is not some kind of dark magic that overpowers the redemption of God. But the very purpose of the sexual relationship is to represent the relationship between Christ and the believer. To misrepresent that relationship is always a sin and contrary to everything a Christian is called to do and to be. Paul can hardly distinguish a discussion of marriage from a discussion of the union between Christ and the church.
The ultimate state of the believer, promised and revealed in Christ Jesus, is neither male nor female, neither slave nor free (for we will all be bondservants of Jesus Christ), neither Jew nor Gentile. Thus any ultimate statement about a believer’s value, worth, or quality cannot be limited or conditioned by gender. This Paul who said that in Christ “there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female” also said “those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved. Teach and exhort these things” (1 Timothy 6:2 NKJV). Paul does adjure masters to treat their slaves well, “giving up threatening, knowing that your own Master also is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him” (Ephesians 6:9 NKJV), but he noticeably does not say “free all your slaves.” For this omission some today will never forgive him. But whatever we may think of it, Paul can no more be abolishing the difference between male and female in his letter to the Galatians than he is abolishing bondservice.
If Paul’s acceptance of slavery (or bondservice) vexes some contemporary readers, so too does his frequent linking of bondservice with marriage. Beyond any dispute, Paul certainly mentions marital relationships in close proximity to indentured service in many cases. The significance of this proximity, however, is hotly debated. I have struggled a long time to understand what Paul could mean, refusing to accept that he endorses slavery and still less that he makes any kind of comparison between slavery and marriage. I have realized that I was struggling (and still struggle) with how Paul thinks about governmental authority in general, and particularly how he sees that governmental authority resting with individuals (which we in the contemporary USA would not consider governmental). To our modern sensibilities, any connection between marriage and slavery sounds like linking good and evil. Beyond question, slavery has been host to great evil. History also shows just as unrelentingly that marriage has been host to great evil. But for Paul, neither bondservice nor marriage legitimizes rape and physical abuse, even though he is aware that both occur within both institutions. We will never understand what the New Testament says about marriage until we come to terms with Paul’s understanding of bondservice and authority (and we distinguish governmental from spiritual authority).
This concludes Part I of Christ and the Church. At this point I realized I needed to write a lot more on authority before I could conclude my thoughts on this subject. Part II will pick up from the end of this post, but it may be helpful to follow my sub-series on Authority before continuing to Part II (not yet written).