COV LIFE BLOG

Mark 10:1-10 – God’s Good Design for Marriage

God doesn’t want us to just have good marriage. It’s more than just “Focus on the Family” or “The Art of Marriage.” For God wants us to see this covenant of companionship as a display of His eternal and gracious covenant relationship with us, through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. God desires that we experience our temporal and earthly marriage from the perspective of the His heavenly and supernatural covenant with us. You see, God’s ultimate purpose in marriage is to display the covenant-keeping love between Jesus and His people. See Ephesians 5:31-32 “ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’.” This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.”
 
As John Piper puts it: The most fundamental thing about marriage is that it is the doing of God. And the ultimate thing about marriage is that it is the display of God.
 
The oneness that a husband and wife enjoy in marriage is a display of the greater unity that a believer experiences with Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 6:16-17).
 
When we keep that big picture in view, then we stand in awe of the joys of marriage even more! For example, God has designed us as man and woman that in the safety and security of a covenant marriage, the husband and wife may enjoy the most intense pleasures possible, heightened by the truth that you love giving that pleasure to your spouse!
 
Yet at the same time, such pleasure should point you to the eternal and incredible pleasures that we will know when we see God face to face and begin to enjoy Him forever! (Psalm 16:8-11)
 
But this principle holds true in the hardships and pains of marriage. For it is God’s love for us and His covenant of love with us in Jesus that provides the example and the grace for two sinners in marriage to learn to love unselfishly, to forgive and forbear, to look out for the good of the other person above yourself, and to learn to be supportive and caring when your wife or husband goes through difficult time of suffering, or faces death. We realize that what God is calling us to do as a husband or wife is pretty much what He is doing for us, when we are struggling, suffering, and facing our own death.
 
God designed marriage to display His amazing love and grace to all mankind. He wants the world to see the glorious truth of the Good News of Jesus Christ exhibited in the covenant relationship between one man and one woman.
 
God’s Son is our holy creator, while you and I are sinful creatures. We are very much opposites. But when God’s Son became a man at the incarnation, He became “Like us,” taking on our flesh and blood. Why?  So that at the cross, Christ, the sacrificial bridegroom, embraced us as His “Like- Opposite” bride.  That’s the wonder of the Gospel!

Louis Prontnicki

---

SCRIPTURES FOR THIS SUNDAY
Read Mark 10:1-10 and consider God’s good design for marriage. Regardless of your marital status, how does this passage help you to understand marriage and how that institution helps to picture the gospel?

SONG FOR THIS WEEK
Hallelujah, What A Savior by Aaron Ivey