A Mystery Resolved

"The mystery (Eph. 5:32) is this: God did not create the union of Christ and the church after the pattern of human marriage--just the reverse! He created human marrige on the pattern of Christ's relation to the church.

The mystery of Genesis 2:24 is tha the marriage it describes is a parable or symbol of Christ's relation to His people. There was more going on in the creation of woman than meets the eye. God doesn't do thing willy-nilly. Everything has a purpose and meaning. When God engaged to create man and woman and to ordain the union of marriage, He didn't roll the dice or draw straws or flip a coin as to how they might be related to each other. He patterned marriage very purposefully after the relationship between His Son and the church, which he had planned from all eternity.
Therefore, marriage is a mystery--it contains an conceals a meaning far greater than what we see on the outside. God created man male and female and ordained marriage so that the eternal covenant relationship between Christ and His church would be imaged forth in the marriage in the image of his own eternal marriage with his people." (John Piper in Desiring God, p. 213)

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