Marriage As a Living Picture 

Do you realize that a Christian marriage is a testimony —a living picture of Christ’s love for His church? It displays an important biblical message.

“The relationship between a husband and wife in marriage models the gospel. When explaining a Christ-centered marriage, Paul says inEphesians 5:32, ‘This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.‘ The role of husband and the wife in a Christ-centered marriage is ultimately to point our hearts to the gospel of Christ” (Rick Pidcock, from internet article, “Having a Christ-centered Marriage”).

You can see this throughout the Bible where marriage is referred to as a living picture, a living example displayed through those who are married, of Christ’s love for the church. Christ is the bridegroom (a man who marries is to be a living example of Christ the bridegroom), and the church (His people) are the bride of Christ (a woman who marries is to be a living example of the bride of Christ).

Jesus Christ takes very good care of His bride —to the point that He sacrificed His life on earth for her. He showed us through His example how to sacrificially love. When we enter into marriage we become models of God’s love in how we treat each other for the world to witness.

The bridegroom (a married man) is to respond to his bride as Christ does for His church. He is to sacrificially love her in his words and his actions. He is to be faithful as Christ is faithful. Christ is then given the opportunity to display His loving nature through this man by how he treats his wife.

The bride (a married woman) is to show her loving respect to God through how she interacts with her husband. This is all a part of being in a covenant relationship with God and her marriage partner. She is to be faithful to her husband as “unto the Lord.”

Think about it, it’s got to break the heart of God when we distort His picture of marriage by mistreating each other. As author Charlie Shedd pointed out, “God wrapped His words around the relationship of marriage to describe God’s love and relationship with the world.” What does it say to the world of God’s promises to the Church of His love, faithfulness and devotion for them when we hurt each other as husband and wife?

And what example, what message are we giving out to others of the “transforming power” that God can perform in lives and marriages, when we as God’s living examples, don’t even utilize that power? It’s a sad testimony that so many Christian marriages today are so weak and unhealthy!

We’ve personally known so many people who have expressed a disinterest in knowing Christ because of the nasty ways Christians treat each other and those around them by living unfaithful, dishonest, and dishonoring lives. If we, as people who claim to know Jesus Christ in a personal way can’t act extraordinarily loving and gracious towards our marital partner, what makes others who don’t know Christ think He will change their lives and marriages for the better in any way?

As believers in Christ, we’re God’s representatives —His Love “with skin on” demonstrating through our marriages that God, Whose very name means LOVE, can take two self-centered individuals and help us to love beyond ourselves to the glory of God.

“A good marriage is a canvas on which God can paint a picture of how he’s able to bring harmony. It’s so God can unite two hearts so that somebody somewhere can look at that marriage and say, ‘Whoa, look at the work God did there.’ And that includes a whole lot of forgiveness and grace” (Dr Max Lucado).

In other words marriage models the gospel message. It makes visible the “gospel reality of Christ’s love for the church and the church’s love for Christ”(Michael Lawrence).

The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 3, that as followers of Christ we’re a “letter, written on hearts, known and read by everybody.” We’re “to show” that we’re “a letter from Christ” …”written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.“

What kind of letter are you writing in how you treat your spouse that others, including your spouse, can read? Are you writing a love story that shows God’s transforming power or a war story of fighting, contentiousness, and self-centeredness?

For further reflection read the following Bible verses: Proverbs 5:21; Romans 12:9-19; 1 Corinthians 10:31; 1 Corinthians 13;2 Corinthians 3:2-3; Ephesians 5:1-2;Ephesians 5:25-33; 1 John 3:11; 1 John 3:16; 1 John 4:7-12 and 1 Peter 2:12. Ask the Lord to speak truth to you as you study His Word.

Our prayer for you is that we will show love to our spouse in such a way that the world “will know that we are Christians by our LOVE” and that God will be glorified in how we live our lives.

Cindy and Steve Wright