Sep 11, 2023

Jesus, his Bride, and the Doctrine of Marriage – The Rev. Dr. Jeff Boldt

Institution: St. Athanasius Provincial Seminary

Language: English

Post Format: Video

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Jesus, his Bride, and the Doctrine of Marriage
	The Book of Common Prayer begins its wedding service by defining marriage as “an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church.” It goes on to list the three traditional reasons that God designed marriage.  The second and third reasons for marriage are uncontroversial. Namely,  
… It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body.
And,
… It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. 
These are self-explanatory.  But, given the controversy over the redefinition of marriage in some countries, it is the first reason, that of “the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord,” which is the controversial claim these days because it is explicitly heterosexual. I therefore want to look at the organic connection between the mystery of Christ and the Church and the procreative purpose of marriage.  For, as Malachi 2 says, God designed marriage so that we will have “godly offspring.”  The people of God carries the gospel across time through families.  This is rather obvious, except that our families are bound over to death, which is where Jesus comes in.  
	It's been more than a decade now since the pop-fiction novel, The DaVinci Code, proposed the idea that Jesus was married.  This is supposedly scandalous since the Gospels portray Jesus as celibate to the day he died.  And yet after Jesus' Resurrection, in Revelation we see Jesus getting married. He's getting married to the Church.
	This isn't a new idea.  In the Old Testament God is Israel's husband.  The idea is in almost every book.  Ezekiel 16 even interpreted Sinai as a marriage.  And later prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea all get into this rocky relationship between God and his wife that resulted in divorce when Israel fornicates with foreign gods.   
	Furthermore, you could probably line up every woman in the Bible to show how she's a symbol for God's people one way or another.
	Let's take one obvious example. Paul says that Abraham's wife, Sarah, is an image of "The Jerusalem that is above … [who] is our mother" (Gal 4:26).  Now what made Sarah into a likeness of the Church?  It is the fact that Sarah was infertile.  And yet Paul says that God chose to resurrect Sarah's womb when she conceived Isaac (Rom 4:19).  
	In the same way, the Church is a single people –– Jew and Gentile –– who were barren, but who are now fertile.  
	Here's what barrenness means. It's the kind of death that infects families.  Spiritual death entered the world when Adam and Eve rebelled against God.  As a consequence, we experience physical death in two ways.  We die.  Our families die.  Death infects families in many ways.  Think of Eve.  Her firstborn son murders her second born.  Think of Naomi in the book of Ruth.  She outlives her husband and two sons. Or Hannah in 1 Samuel who can't conceive.  The list of women could go on and on up to the present day.  Indeed, up until recently one in four women used to die in childbirth!  
	History moves on and on because people keep being born.  But every single baby that's born –– every one of us no matter how long we live –– ultimately dies.  "A generation comes, and a generation goes…"  as Ecclesiastes says.  Doesn't death make it all meaningless?
	It would be, except Christ came to reverse death by becoming barren like us.  This is why he was celibate.  Early Jewish commentators subtly mocked Jesus for being celibate — something totally alien to Judaism, which takes the command to increase and multiply as the most important. For it was obvious to them that the Messiah could not be childless.  yet Isaiah’s prophecy was that the Messiah would die childless: “And who can speak of his descendents? For he was cut off from the land of the living” (Isa. 53:8, NIV 1983). But then speaking of the Resurrection, Isaiah continues, “and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days” (v. 10). And who are those offspring? Jews and Gentiles.  So, the fact that Jesus was unmarried was in fulfillment of Scripture.  It also confirmed to contemporary Jews that Jesus was an imposter and not the Messiah, because barrenness is a curse.  
	Yet we've already seen that the wise women in the Old Testament were subject to barrenness, and not a few wise men never married (Jeremiah), were widowers (Ezekiel), or were cheated on (Hosea). We can all relate.  We all lose parents or children or spouses.  If the Son of God hasn't identified with these problems of literal barrenness, if we can't meet Jesus in them, then these losses are meaningless.  
	Because, however, Jesus was raised from the dead, we also are raised from the dead.  That's what we believe happens at Christ's return.  Souls and bodies are reunited, families are reunited, and Christ reunites with his Bride, the Church.  
	Think as literally about this as you can.  Scripture tells us that when a husband and wife marry, the two become one flesh.  This is literally true when their two sets of genes come together to make a baby.  
	It is no less literal with Jesus' marriage to the Church.  In a natural marriage children are born.  In Christ's marriage all the children who have died (you and me) are literally being born again from the grave.  One way of summing up the Gospel is to say that Jesus came to bring babies back to life. The resurrection thereby fulfills procreation by turning the tomb into a womb.
	So let me sum this up.  The Church is the Bride of Christ.  Like Eve, the Church only bore children who would die.  Christ died without children, but because he rose again we are resurrected too.  His resurrection fulfills the purpose of procreation, which is that children will be born and gain eternal life.  His Bride, the Church, bears those children through the waters of baptism.  
Each of our marriages participates in this purpose when we raise godly children.  Some couples, however, aren’t able to have children, but Jesus came to share their burden.  Like Jesus, their struggle with barrenness will gain an eternal inheritance.  Other people choose to remain celibate like Jesus.  Jesus also shares these people’s burden so that their celibacy isn’t a curse, but a blessing for others.  They too will gain an eternal inheritance.  So, even though there are some couples who cannot have children, and there are some people who remain celibate, neither of these cases changes the fact that marriage is designed by God for the purpose of procreation.  Sex that is neither in the confines of marriage, nor intrinsically open to procreation, has always been considered immoral because it has nothing to do with Christ and the Church.

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Jesus, his Bride, and the Doctrine of Marriage – The Rev. Dr. Jeff Boldt

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