Oneness not just faithfulness

What’s the goal of marriage?  I wonder how you answer that? 

Is it procreation?  Well in Genesis 1 Adam and Eve are told to fill the earth and subdue it.  But in the New Testament the focus seems to be more on making disciples, having spiritual offspring than physical offspring.

Is it happiness?  God is a giver of good gifts and so we ought to expect marriage to bring happiness.   But it’s not the goal of marriage, no matter what society tells us. Though marriage ought to be a relationship from which community is created and other are blessed.

I wonder if we often miss a key phrase in the Genesis 2 account about marriage.  A verse that is picked up repeatedly in the New Testament and seems to be the foundation text on which Jesus and the early churches view of marriage is based.

“Therefore a man shall lead his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”  Genesis 2v24

It’s a text that is cited in Matthew 19v5, Mark 10v7, 1 Corinthians 6v16 and Ephesians 5v31.  It’s vital.

The goal of marriage isn’t faithfulness – that’s to reduce it down to the bare minimum – the goal of marriage in oneness.  It’s two people becoming knit together, not just physically, though giving of each other bodily in sexual intercourse is part of it.  But it’s a oneness in everything, it is a being united together.

That word hold fast emphasises the oneness, in Isaiah 41v7 it’s used of soldering 2 bits of metal together into one.   What was two becomes on at every level.

Marriage is about oneness.  And that matters because marriage points of the mystery of the gospel, that in Christ we are united to him, made one with him, and that everything that happens to him happens to us.  It points us to the marriage feast of the lamb when the Lamb and his bride, the church, are one.

That has huge implications for the way we approach marriage.

If marriage is about oneness we need to cultivate honesty and openness and vulnerability with one another in our marriage that is counter the worlds mantra of independence.  It means investing the time it takes to do that.  It means working hard to be vulnerable and treating with care and compassion those moments when the other shares their vulnerability with us.  It means having a united sense of purpose and working hard to maintain that in light of the gospel and seeking God’s kingdom.

It is about far more than a date night.  Far more than celebrating anniversaries, ticking off the years.  It goes far deeper but is also far richer than faithfulness, though faithfulness and covenant love are the bedrocks on which oneness rests.

Photo by Zoriana Stakhniv on Unsplash