Bride of Christ: Part One - The marriage connection

In these days of moral disintegration and the normalisation of casual sex, careless adultery, easy divorce and prenuptial contracts, it is hardly any wonder that the world has lost sight of the fact that marriage was God’s idea in the first place.

That that should be so in our largely secular materialist society is hardly rocket science, but rather to be expected. But what is altogether less excusable is that, by a combination of poor teaching and bad example, even many believers do not seem to know what marriage is about.

Even professing Christians co-habit nowadays - sometimes for many years - as they save up for ‘The Big Day’ - their wedding. And then there is the current clamour for the Church to recognise same-sex partnerships and perform homosexual marriages.

But if marriage was always God’s idea, what was it for?

In this short three part series we shall examine the scriptures in order to answer that question, beginning in Part One where we shall first of all clarify what marriage is and what marriage isn’t, and consider the Bible‘s revelation of what God intended marriage to be and why.

In Part Two we will focus on perhaps the most famous Scriptural passage describing the ideal wife, in Proverbs 31, verses 10 to 31, and look behind the surface text to the message God has preserved for his people.

In Part Three we shall take a look at the textual connection that appears to exist between the ‘Proverbs 31 wife’ the longest chapter in the Bible - Psalm 119. What connects these two scriptures, and what do they tells us when they are connected? We shall see when we get there, but let us first establish our foundational understanding now in Part One, as we move on to examine the whole question of marriage as seen by its Author - Almighty God.

Weddings are wonderful - or at least they should be. The Bride’s Big Day should be a glorious celebration of a marriage covenant made with the exchange of solemn and lasting vows made before God and man.

That’s why we call it a Wedding, which is the present participle of the verb ‘to wed’, which now means ‘to marry’ but originally meant to ‘pledge’.

As such, a wedding is both memorable and significant, but momentary and fleeting; like the placing of one’s signature on the deeds on a house, it is over in moments but with lasting effect.

Marriage, on the other hand, is that lasting effect. And because marriage is a covenant and not just a contract, that effect is supposed to last until the death of one or other of the covenanting parties.

Thus, any marriage entered into with the signing of prenuptial agreements is like a promise made with one’s fingers crossed behind one’s back - It is an absurdity that cannot be recognised by God.

Marriage is actually a lifelong commitment, not the wedding itself. Indeed, God recognises a man and woman as married by the nature of their relationship alone, and not by the ceremony itself. It’s rather like a believer being born again by believing in Christ, and then getting baptized as a public witness. No-one was ever saved by being baptized, but baptism is still expected as a solemn recognition of what Christ has already done for the believer.

And that’s why, if a man and woman have been living together in a sexual relationship of any duration, it is better that they formally marry.

But isn’t living together in a sexual relationship, ‘living in sin’?

The answer to that question is - Maybe!

But doesn’t the Bible call living together in that way, ‘fornication?

The answer to that question is - Sometimes!

A great deal of what we call marriage today is in fact social convention, while fornication is a concept that is often misunderstood by the modern Church, and refers to any form of sexual immorality, which basically means all sexual intercourse outside of the marriage relationship.

Here’s a good example of it expressed in Jesus’ own words:

Matthew 5:32

But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced commits adultery.

According to Jesus fornication is legitimate grounds for divorce. What is less well understood is what fornication actually involves.

The Greek word is πορνεία (porneia) and refers to all forms of illicit sexual defilement, including adultery, incest, homosexual practices, and even sex between humans and animals. And it most certainly includes casual sexual liaisons, such as one night stands.

What the Biblical idea of fornication doesn’t necessarily encompass, however, is a man and woman living together in an exclusive and committed sexual relationship without the formal legal recognition of a public wedding.

The reason for this is that we live in a society which is largely ignorant and contemptuous of social history in equal measure, in which modern people assume that the way things are done today is how they were always done.

In actual fact, the idea of a couple falling in love and then embarking on their married life together after a Church Wedding did not really catch on until as late as the Eighteenth Century. Hitherto, marriages were often arranged by the parents, during which time contracts would be exchanged, and following which solemn vows would be exchanged before witnesses. Only then would a Church ceremony be held to bless the marriage.

Even then, such arrangements were often restricted to the moneyed and property-owning classes, whereas it was considered quite sufficient to deem an ordinary couple married if they had simply exchanged their vows before witnesses. Indeed, such marriages were recognised by the Church.

And, as for the traditional White Wedding - that was a Victorian invention, prior to which a bride could wear whatever colour of dress she liked without attracting the least comment. Indeed, among Eighteenth Century brides, yellow was a much favoured colour of wedding dress.

So, to be blunt, the interpretation of ‘living in sin’ that has crept into the Church in more recent times (as referring to any state of sexual cohabitation between a man and a woman who have not been married in the manner that our wider society would consider traditional) is both legalistic and judgemental. It is simply not how God defines fornication because many of the elements of the modern marriage amount to little more than ancilary tradition that is foreign to Scripture.

There are many couples who went through a form of ceremony, wear the rings and fulfil every legal requirement, inasmuch as they have a marriage certificate and share a house and a joint bank account, but are nonetheless not married in the eyes of God.

On the other hand, there are others who have lived in an exclusive and faithful relationship for many years and have even brought up children together in a stable home without the benefit of any of those trappings. That God calls a marriage.

So, am I advocating that we simply let all hang out, and everyone should just ‘shack up together’? Not at all. Indeed, I would say that a couple’s reluctance or refusal to marry is generally unwise, short-sighted, and very often just plain selfish. However, stupidity of itself does not amount to fornication.

The benefits of the legal status conferred by a formally recognised marriage are many. For one thing a lawfully ratified marriage automatically confers certain legal rights of succession and inheritance to any legitimate offspring, and also safeguards the rights and privileges of a surviving spouse in the event of the death of their marriage partner.

Also, the legal ties of a formally recognised marriage can prove invaluable in times of friction, in that the very fact that they are legally married may provide the breathing space needed for tempers to cool when a couple fall out, thereby preventing one or other to act precipitately by simply walking away from the relationship in the heat of the moment.

So, I most certainly consider that binding a couple in the ties of matrimony in the eyes of the law are not only wise but to be preferred. But greater still are the benefits conferred on believers who seek God’s blessing on their union by openly declaring their love and commitment towards one another in spoken covenant before all men.

Yet, whilst ‘living in sin’, is not always so easy to define, the idea of homosexual marriage is an absurdity.

Such a relationship is called fornication because it is sex outwith the God-designed context of marriage. Indeed, its very same-sex context places any homosexual union beyond the scope of what God explicitly stipulated would define marriage any relationship, thereby making the very concept of a homosexual marriage a contradiction in terms and a theological impossibility.

Matthew 19:3-6

And the Pharisees came near to [Jesus], tempting him, and saying to him, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every reason?”

But answering, he said to them, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning created them male and female”?

And he said, “For this reason a man shall leave father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Of course, it is very popular for even some who call themselves Christians nowadays to brand God a fool, by disputing his clear instructions in this area.

But Jesus was very explicit in not only commending marriage as God‘s idea, but in specifying that it was a relationship between male and female, as we see right there where Jesus quotes from Genesis 1:27...

זכר ונקבה ברא אתם׃

(zachar uneqevah barah otam)

‘…created them male and female’

אתם is a modified form of the Aleph-Tav, grammatically expressed in a dual form to agree with the idea of there being two distinct sexes: Or, as we would say - a couple. In general, the Aleph-Tav is an unpronounced grammatical particle that is inserted into the Hebrew text to denote the accusative case (also known as the direct object) of a transitive verb.

Another thing about א (Aleph) and ת (Tav) is that they are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, thereby corresponding to Α (Alpha) and Ω (Omega) in Greek.

Revelation 22:13

I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.

Thus, many Messianic rabbis and Christian scholars have long identified the Aleph-Tav with Jesus Christ - a exegetical principle with even more wide-reaching ramification that we will be seeing more of as our series progresses.

Meanwhile, it is attached to a verb which in this instance happens to be ברא (bara) - meaning to create or form.

And what did God form? -

זכר ונקבה (zachar v'neqevah) - male and female.

Those familiar with my writings will be aware that zakar means remembered, which connotes the idea of a template, while neqevah is an anatomical reference to the female form which closely approximates to ‘one with a vulva’.

You show me any same-sex couple that fits those requirements, and I‘ll refer you to the nearest optician.

And that, says Jesus, is how I formed them right from the very Beginning- Bearing in mind that ראשׁית (Bereshith) ‘In-the-Beginning’ is the Hebrew name for the Book of Genesis.

So, there you go! Two sacred cows slaughtered in quick succession! One, the legalistic shibboleth of Living in sin. The other, that counterfeit absurdity of Homosexual marriage.

God’s Word is more than sufficient to deal with both.

God created marriage from the outset for a number of reasons, not least of which were the perpetuation of the human race, the establishment of the family and the pleasure of one another’s company.

But he did so from a pre-existing template, which the apostle Paul reveals to us when he sums up his teaching on marriage with these famous words:

Ephesians 5:31-33

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

This is not new, and I have taught on it many times. Marriage between a man and a woman is a reflection of Christ’s relationship with his Church.

Nor is it any secret that the Bible often uses a woman as a type and shadow to depict some aspect of God’s love towards his wife Israel, or to describe the dynamic between Christ and his Bride the Church. This is a parallel we see repeatedly represented throughout Scripture, and especially so in the Song of Songs.

However, I’ve written about the Song of Songs before, so we’re not going to go there this time. Rather, I want examine another well-known passage of Scripture and see if there are not some treasures that have lain hidden in it for far too long.

In Part Two we shall be looking more closely at Proverbs 31:10-31, when we will not only examine the text but consider its structure, which is an acrostic, the relevance of which will become clearer in due course, but suffice for now to say that it connects us to Jesus Christ in some unexpected ways.

The reason that any of this is significant lies in something that is hidden from us by our English translations, which is that Proverbs 31:10-31 and Psalm 119 are both acrostics.

According to Chambers, an acrostic is…

A poem or puzzle in which the first or last letters of each line spell out a word or sentence.

From the Greek akros - ‘extreme’, and stichos - ‘a line’.

In the Bible, however, the acrostic often takes the form of an alphabetically ordered section of scripture, the most obvious example of which is Psalm 119.

The longest chapter in the whole Bible, Psalm 119 consists of twenty-two eight-line stanzas, because there are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. And not only does each stanza of Psalm 119 begins with a consecutive letter of that alphabet, but each of the eight lines that make up each stanza begins with the same letter.

Thus, verses 1-8 all begin with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet - א (aleph); and verses 9-16 all begin with the second letter - ב (beth); while verses 17-24 begin with the third letter - ג (gimmel), and so on - right down to verses 169-176, which all begin with the twenty-second and last letter - ת (tav).

We shall be returning to Psalm 119 in Part Three, when we shall see how its acrostic form connects it to Proverbs 31:10-31, which we will be looking at first in Part Two.

As we discussed earlier the use of an acrostic form can connect us to Jesus, as we saw in this New Testament verse…

Revelation 22:13

I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.

As I said earlier, the Hebrew equivalent of the Alpha (Α) and the Omega (Ω) - the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet - are the Aleph (א) and Tav (ת) - the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

So, as the Aleph-Tav speaks of Jesus (The Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last) when the entire Hebrew alphabet is depicted in an acrostic we should take notice because, when we do, we often see God’s fingerprints all over it.

And that’s exactly what we find in Proverbs 31:10-31, which tells me that these verses directly relate to Jesus in some way or other, and that in turn way points us right back to something we read earlier that Jesus said…

Matthew 19:5-6

And he said, “For this reason a man shall leave father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

When God first created Adam, he created them male and female, because Adam is the generic name for all of mankind - and not just the gender-specific name of an individual male person.

Genesis 1:26

And God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him. He created them male and female.

Genesis 5:1-2

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them. And He called their name man in the day when they were created.

Here, English readers are at the mercy of the translators, because in these verses ‘Adam’ and ‘man’ are the same Hebrew word (Adam), and therefore completely interchangeable. In other words, I could just as easily translate Genesis 5:1 like this…

This is the book of the generations of Man. In the day that God created Adam, he made him in the likeness of God.

What so many believers do not realise is that prior to the Fall, Adam was the name of both the first man and of his wife. If I might borrow an analogy from our own culture (and this is not precise Hebrew) we might like to think of them simply as Mister and Missus Adam. Although, as a couple they would simply have known each other as

אישׁ (ish) and אשּׁה (ishshah) - Man and Woman. It was only after the Fall that Adam changed the woman’s name to חוּה (Chavvah) - Eve.

Genesis 3:20

And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

Thus, when Jesus said, ‘…they are no longer two, but one flesh,’ he wasn’t just speaking figuratively or alluding to sexual intercourse, he was actually revealing God’s perspective - which is of a married couple as a united entity.

And, just as both Adam and his wife were originally both known as Adam, we still see that unity recognised today - albeit in the somewhat tattered remnant of our social convention whereby it is still a widely accepted tradition that a wife to take her husband’s name.

So, if all that was merely an introduction, what has it all got to do with Proverbs 31:10-31?

It‘s quite simple: Once we see God’s close identification of husband and wife as one and link this understanding to the allusion found through the Bible between the relationship between a husband and wife, and the relationship between God and his people, we begin to recognise the wife that Solomon speaks of in Proverbs 31 as the Bride of her true husband, Jesus Christ.

And when that light goes on, the relevance of the acrostic form of this scripture becomes increasingly significant. And ultimately links it to Psalm 119.

For now, having established a foundation on which to build even greater understanding, we shall move on in Part Two to examine the whole section of Proverbs 31, one verse at a time - or as the prophet once put it…

Isaiah 28:9-10

To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast? For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.