I believe that there has been a progression -- a series of covenants, a progressive revelation -- in the history of God's relationship with mankind. We are still in the most recent revelation, that of Christ: the New Covenant. God Himself has been the same all this time, although, while His dealings with mankind have in some ways remained the same, in other ways they have changed.
There are many references to Old Testament scripture in the New Testament, notably Jesus’ words and Paul’s. Jesus quotes it to show that He is the fulfillment of prophecies, and Paul refers to it to show Christ's fulfillment of prophecy and also how life in the New Covenant relates to life in the Old.
But John Piper, speaking of marriage, says that Paul used Scripture the way Jesus did – as prophetic:
Take the mystery of marriage. In Genesis 2:24, right after the account of how woman was created, Moses (the writer of Genesis) says, "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." Now when the apostle Paul quotes this verse in Ephesians 5:31, he says, "This is a great mystery, and I say it refers to Christ and the church." And, with that as his clue, he unfolds the meaning of marriage: it's a symbol of Christ's love for the church represented in the husband's loving headship toward his wife; and it's a symbol of the church's glad submission to Christ represented in the wife's relation to her husband.
He calls Genesis 2:24 a "mystery" because God did not reveal clearly all his purposes for the marriage of male and female in Genesis. There were hints and pointers in the Old Testament that marriage was like the relation of God and his people. But only when Christ came did the mystery of marriage get spelled out in detail. It is meant to be a portrait of Christ's covenant with his people, his commitment to the church.
Do you see, then, how God's creating man as male and female and then ordaining marriage as the relationship in which a male leaves mother and father and cleaves to his wife in covenant commitment—how this act of creation and this ordinance of marriage beg for the revelation of Christ and his church. They beg for Christianity as the revelation of the mystery.
I do not see that the institution of marriage begs for the revelation of Christ and His church as much as it mirrors the relationship of Christ and the church. I would paraphrase Ephesians 5:22- 33 this way:
Wives, be as subject in devotion, faithfulness, and service to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For your husband is your head, your provision, a gift – a sacrament of your salvation – as Christ is head of the church, being in truth the Savior of the church, His body. As the church is subject in utter devotion and gratitude to Christ, so also ought wives accept and honor their husbands in deep gratitude, in all the ways that a husband is a gift.
Husbands, love your wives as fully and completely as Christ loved the church and sacrificed Himself for her, for her absolute best good (sanctification, cleansing). He has the power to make her or break her in terms of holiness and glory, just as a husband has the power to cause his wife to either blossom gloriously or wither and fade.
Therefore, a husband must love his wife as his own self-interest; since husband and wife are one flesh, he compromises himself when he ignores, suppresses, or hurts her. No one acts outside of his own self-interests in terms of preservation of his flesh, but loves it and takes care of it. Christ has this same interest in the church, this same love that moves Him to nourish and cherish it as very dear to Him – because we are His own body.
So that he may nourish and cherish his wife, a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, that they may become one flesh as Christ is one flesh with His church through His sacrifice, nurture, and care. That a man and a wife become one flesh is a great mystery, but makes sense in light of Christ’s relationship with His church.
A husband nourishes and cherishes his wife as he's been nourished and cherished by Christ, his head.
It’s a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless, to say that marriage from the beginning has pointed to Christ’s relationship with His church, and to say that the one-flesh-ness of husband and wife reflects the oneness of Christ with His body, the church. If the Word was in the beginning with God and was God, and all things were made by Him, then the one-flesh-ness of marriage reflected Christ long before His appearance on earth and His atoning death on a cross and subsequent resurrection. He was the source of marriage from the beginning.
Likewise, I don’t believe that Paul in Ephesians 5 describes marriage as a symbol of Christ’s relationship with the church, but as a reflection, a mirror of that. Again, there’s a difference: a symbol is a mere mark, a representation of something, but it isn’t that something. I think marriage is much more than a symbol of Christ and the church; it’s an actual representation in that something of the same essence is present in both. This is the mystery. This is why marriage is a sacrament. Why sex is a sacrament.
Another fine point: Piper says that Paul refers to Genesis 2:24 as a great mystery because it was a great mystery in the time of Genesis, “because God did not reveal clearly all his purposes for the marriage of male and female in Genesis.” But I don’t think that’s the mystery Paul was referring to. I think Paul was saying that it is a great mystery now (or was at the time he wrote). He doesn’t say what Piper says; Paul doesn’t say, “This was a great mystery back in the time of Genesis.”
Piper goes on to say,
There were hints and pointers in the Old Testament that marriage was like the relation of God and his people.
Or, rather, that the relation of God and His people was like marriage. God is the source of marriage. There are many references to faithfulness and harlotry regarding Israel’s relationship to God; God had a marriage of sorts with His people from the beginning.
But only when Christ came did the mystery of marriage get spelled out in detail.
I'm not sure that marriage was necessarily made more understandable after Christ, because God spoke of fidelity from the beginning, and the Law was all about honoring and respecting one’s fellow man and woman as well as all of Creation. Perhaps the coming of Christ fulfilled the institution of marriage, as His coming fulfilled the Law. In other words, there wasn't so much a greater spelling-out as a fuller revelation. Picky and semantical, perhaps, but there’s a difference between revelation and spelling-out: it wasn’t a detail thing, it was an essence thing, a fullness thing.
It is meant to be a portrait of Christ's covenant with his people, his commitment to the church.
But it’s more than a portrait. To say that it’s a portrait is too limiting of what marriage really is. We might say that marriage is the picture of Christ and the church, but it’s not a pictorial representation -- a frozen thing, a frozen image, or a likeness made by someone -- it’s an actual reflection of a living thing, a mirror-image.
Piper goes on to talk about the final revelation and how that relates to marriage; I'll comment on that in the next installment.
(Note: I don't disagree with everything Piper says in the message, but I do believe that he makes marriage too dependent upon Christ in terms of chronology as well as the Trinity. Did the entire OT point to Christ? In some ways, yes, but not entirely in terms of time. A new-covenant chronological snobbery is not warranted, for it suggests that everyone who believed in times B. C. was somehow less realized than those who believed A. D. Yes, God revealed more of Himself A. D. than He did before, or, rather, drew mankind closer to His bosom, but I'm not sure that we can say that this imparts a superiority to this age. I don't know that superiority of the age matters in terms of Christ; it just is what it is. There were great godly men and women of old as well as of new, and all have fulfilled God's purposes and achieved salvation.)
One further comment: the message I am commenting on dates from 1989. When I read Piper's messages on marriage from this year, I was, frankly, astonished at the change. Despite my differences with the message from 1989 as noted above, I still find it much closer to (what seems to me to be) the true picture of what marriage is and means than what he is writing currently. More on that, perhaps, later.
