God blessed his creation and blessed humanity in Genesis 1 given them a mandate to fill and subdue the world. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel (28:19ff), Jesus blesses his followers, the church and gives them a mandate to go and make disciples. Those disciples are to be baptised and taught to obey Jesus. This might be seen as another form of subduing and fulfilling.
This gives us another dimension to marriage. The reason for marriage is heightened, not diminished in the New Testament. In Ephesians 5:21-32, as he tells wives to submit to their husbands and husbands to sacrificially love their wives, Paul sets his instruction in the context of the mysterious union between Christ and his church. Wives submit to husbands as the church submits to Jesus whilst husbands love their wives as Christ loves the church.
Marriage has a part to play in the Great Commission, just as it did in the Creation Mandate. As well as being the place where the call to fill and subdue the earth is fulfilled, Christian marriage becomes a picture, pointing us to how God relates to us in Christ. If human marriage is the place where children are born, nurtured, fed, protected and taught, then it is the context of Christ’s union with the church that spiritual children are nurtured, protected, fed, taught.
Once again, we see union between Christ and the church, between husband and wife so that one flesh language appears again. Once more, we see distinction, there is an otherness, Christ is different to the church. On a side note, given that elsewhere the imagery used is of Christ as head and church as body, we should perhaps pay more attention to that in our discussion of headship/kephale language.
That oneness and distinctiveness language reinforces the point that marriage is about the union of one man and one woman in a faithful covenant. Other relationships and sexual encounters including same-sex relationships are ruled out.
Faithroots 