Last week, we witnessed Jesus remind us of the creational vision for marriage. God’s creation of man as male and female reveals the very nature of God – the creation of man as male and female is one of the vestigia Trinitatis – traces, marks, hints of the Trinity found in creation. “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…so God created man in His image.” The unity and diversity in the Trinity – one God in three Persons – is imaged in the marriage union in which two distinct people, male & female, become joined together by covenant as one new person in a richer, fuller, deeper sense.
Our task today is to flesh out in more detail what it means that marriage is to reflect the life of the Triune God. What does this mean? What should our marriages look like?
Some of you may be asking, “Why go here? Why not just go immediately to the next couple verses and take up the issue of divorce?” Here’s the reason: it is only as we meditate upon what God is doing in our marriages that the hardness of heart which precipitates divorce will be overcome. The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to mollify, to soften our hearts. The better grasp we get of what this thing called marriage is, the more equipped we shall be to avoid divorce. Divorce, after all, is precipitated by a breakdown of vision, a breakdown of relationship; it is the legal and official termination of a relationship that has been dying existentially for months or, usually, years. Divorce doesn’t just happen – it is the end result of numerous actions, choices, and attitudes that have undermined the relationship.