The Bible Begins and Ends with a Marriage!

Last updated on: August 26, 2021 at 5:43 pm by Fr. Charles Erlandson

The Bible Begins and Ends with a Marriage! 2021-08-26T17:43:03-05:00 Fr. Charles Erlandson

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Here’s another excerpt of my book: Love Me, Love My Wife: 10 Reasons Every Christian Should Join a Local Church (available on Amazon)

The Bible begins and ends with a wedding!

In the beginning (Genesis 1), the first wedding is that of God and man. But there’s also a human marriage at the beginning of the Bible: the marriage of Adam and Eve. When God created Adam, he said of Adam: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” And so, God created Eve for Adam.

Moses, the divinely inspired author of Genesis, says: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

In other words, from the beginning, God created men and women to come together and become one flesh. Two people become one person, or relationship, in marriage. A husband and his wife are no longer to live for themselves but for the other: they do this through self-giving love.

Maleness and femaleness in general, and a husband and wife in particular, picture who God is for us. Who is God? He is three Persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – but one God.

For this reason, it is men and women together, and especially husbands and wives, who picture God for us. God has imprinted His very nature on our bodies!

St. Paul explains the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Church in terms of a marriage. In Ephesians 5, Paul writes about how the husband is the head of the wife in the same way that Jesus is the head of the Church. Women are to submit to their husbands, and husbands are to love their wives. Husbands and wives are to love each other as they love their own bodies.

But it turns out that Paul is talking about more than husbands and wives. He says He’s talking about Christ and the Church! In verses 31-32 he says, “’For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

I told you that the Bible also ends with a marriage, which we find in Revelation 21:1-3, where St. John refers to the Church as the New Jerusalem. He says:

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.”

This is where eternal life is going: to a marriage between Jesus Christ and His Bride, the Church.

John also refers to this as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9).

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