Day 8: Marriage Made New

Bill Powell

I love discovering the deeper meaning in the words when reading scripture. The New Testament was written in Greek, while most of the Old Testament was written in ancient Hebrew. When translating to English, translators had to balance readability and maintaining word-for-word accuracy. Sometimes we may lose some of the deeper meaning of the text through translation. 

I like to discover how God introduces a subject, like marriage, to see how it fits into His picture, rather than starting from how I’ve grown to understand marriage through the world over time. 

God’s plan for Marriage

What we’ve learned about marriage may come from our friends, parents or TV and movies. God’s idea of marriage is first shown in Genesis 1 and 2. Jesus also affirms this in the New Testament when confronted by the Pharisees with the question about divorce in Matthew 19:4-6.

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Here, God’s plan is clear—He joins together two people, a male and a female, to become one.

Later in scripture this two-becoming-one is given the word “marriage” with the ancient Hebrew word ‘baal’. Baal  means: to marry, rule over or lord over. It’s interesting that this is the same name of a Canaanite god, but more importantly it’s presented as ‘ruling over’ or ‘lording over’. 

The Old Testament shows us how sin affected God’s goodness of marriage. First in the garden when Adam blamed Eve and even through the polygamy of kings and patriarchs—even Moses allowing divorce because of the hardness of hearts (Matthew 19:8).

Lord over with the Holy Spirit looks very different than without. 

‘Lord over’ in the old covenant referred to  kings and rulers established to lead and rule over. In the new covenant Jesus came to redefine what ‘lord over’ looks like. We read this in Ephesians 5:21-27.

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

So here we have Jesus, single and unmarried, modeling what marriage should be. Lording over looks like Jesus. Submitting, loving, yielding, unwavering in His identity—giving up His life. What would your marriage look like if you treated your spouse the way Jesus treated His bride—the church? 

Submission means to yield. It’s not coerced, but given over to. Marriage in essence is a willful stalemate into who will submit or yield to the other more. 

I have a wonderful and patient wife of almost 24 years. I want to learn more every day what submission looks like. I struggle, like many of us do, with a stubborn selfishness that creeps into this relationship. 

Lord, help us each learn more and more what selfless submission looks like not only in intent, but also in action. Help us learn to yield more to the Holy Spirit so we can also become fully one with our spouse and live out the identity of your plan for our marriage. Forgive us for when we are stubborn and unyielding and with your Holy Spirit guide us into making our marriage more like Jesus.