I was a college freshman when I first heard the idea that marriage is a picture of the Gospel. It felt like a strange concept, but Paul’s words couldn’t be clearer: marriage is a profound mystery that refers to Christ and the church (Eph 5:32).
I was intrigued.
I immediately began studying the biblical view of marriage with a view to answering a question that for me remained unresolved: “How exactly does marriage mysteriously ‘refer’ to Christ and the church?”
Most of the resources I consulted returned similar answers. Marriage, they said, “refers” to Christ and the church by way of the specific roles God has designed for spouses to exercise. In view of Christ’s work, husbands exercise self-sacrificial headship. In view of the church’s obedient faith, wives render intelligent, glad-hearted submission (Eph 5:22–27). In other words, sacrificial love and marital submission depict the Gospel, according to this line of argument.
In his article, “The Mystery of Christian Marriage”, Nathan Hoff represents the view of most evangelicals I’ve come across:
Christian marriage is intended to serve as a picture that proclaims the relationship between Christ and his church. It was an institution designed to make the unseen seen. If a child were to ask, “Dad, how does Christ love the church?” The father should be able to point to his own marriage and say, “Son, do you see how I love your mother? Christ’s love for the church is like that, but it is so much better.” If a child were to ask, “Mom, how does the church relate to Christ?” The mother should be able to point to her own marriage and say, “Son, do you see how I embrace your father’s leadership? That is the way the church relates to Christ.”
Understood this way, what constitutes marriage as a profound mystery—what makes “the unseen seen”—is properly practiced headship and submission. Thus, the mystery is fundamentally performative and subjective. Marriage has the potential to refer to Christ and the church. Spouses are responsible for creating and constantly maintaining that phenomenon.
And yet, while Paul obviously commands headship and submission, it felt odd to say that the “profound mystery” of marriage was no more objective or stable than the faithfulness of spouses to perform their roles.
If spouses fail to practice headship and submission, does their marriage no longer “refer to Christ and the church”? What about terrible Christian marriages or even non-Christian marriages? Are they profound mysteries?
Whose marriage refers to Christ and the church?
Answering these questions requires carefully following Paul’s argumentation in Ephesians 5:29–32.
While spousal roles contoured after Christ’s death and the church’s obedient faith are prescribed in Ephesians 5:22–27, that is not what makes marriage refer to Christ and the church. Rather, Paul describes the typological character of marriage (i.e., the “thing” that makes marriage refer to Christ and the church) in verses 29–32 where he quotes Genesis 2:24:
“29For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:29–32).
Keep in mind that “therefore” (vs. 31) means “for this reason”, which is why it’s often translated that way (NIV, NASB, CSB). Thus, Paul’s argumentation in Ephesians 5:29–32 amounts to “Men and women join together in one-flesh conjugal union for this reason … we are cherished members of Christ’s body. This is why marriage is a profound mystery: it’s a reference to Christ’s reciprocal union with his church.”
Ray Ortlund observes that “Christ’s union with the church as his body is the reason why a man should become one flesh with his wife. It is the heavenly marriage that warrants and dignifies an earthly marriage. In Paul’s reasoning, human marriage is not the reality for which Christ and the church provide a sermonic illustration, but the reverse. Human marriage is the earthly type pointing towards the spiritual reality.”
Thus, in connecting one-flesh conjugal union with Christ and the church, Paul offers far more than a puzzle box top for how a healthy marriage ought to function. Rather, he goes to the very core of what constitutes marriage as a profound mystery: from the beginning, God designed the reciprocal one-flesh union of husband and wife—an objective reality—to dramatize and translate into the visible his eternal plan to unite image bearers to Jesus.
That’s what makes marriage a profound, objective mystery.
If a couple asked you, “Is our marriage a profound mystery that refers to Christ and the church?” how would you respond?
If you believe the mystery of marriage is subjective and constituted by spouses embracing gendered roles, you’ll be forced to respond with something like, “Well, I can’t really know. I’d need to see what your headship and submission dynamic looks like.”
But “profound mystery” and “refers to Christ and the church” aren’t descriptions of what one-flesh conjugal union (Gen 2:24) has the potential to be. They describe what marriage is.
With this understanding, you can offer a more concrete answer: “Have you left father and mother and held fast to each other, becoming one flesh? Then ‘Yes.’ Marriage is a profound mystery because it makes visible God’s eternal plan to join Christ to his bride in reciprocal union.”
But what about headship and submission? Does rooting marriage’s typological nature in reciprocal union render them obsolete? Not at all. It simply means they are subjective expressions (i.e., expressed in varying degrees of faithfulness) of the objective mystery they represent. Headship and submission are mystery testifying, not mystery making.
Imagine that a serious violinist inherits an authentic Stradivarius made by Antonio Stradivari himself. Does he diligently tune, maintain, and protect the violin because it has the potential to become a Stradivarius? Of course not. It is a Stradivarius! He does these things so that when he plays the instrument, it resonates with a beauty that is true to its iconic name. His meticulous care (subjective) for the instrument flows from his keen awareness of its (objective) value. He knows what he has.
In a similar way, spouses don’t practice headship and submission in an effort to make their marriage a profound mystery, but precisely because they’re convinced that it already is. They know what they have! And their effort to show Gospel-contoured love in their marriage (i.e., headship and submission) flows from an obedient desire for it to resonate with the melody of the Bigger Story it makes visible—the eternal plan of God to unite us to Christ.
It’s undeniable that headship and submission can and have been abused. While we should grieve these distortions of God’s design for marriage, it’s a mistake to think that redesigning marriage is the way forward. Moreover, recognizing the “mystery” of marriage as an objective reality can help to preempt the angst often caused by asking too much of gender roles. Marriage “refers to Christ and the church” because of what it actually is, not what it has the potential to be if spouses perform their roles well enough.
Will some marriages offer a more faithful public display of the Christ-church relationship they objectively signify? Of course. But we must guard against the temptation to stress the importance of headship and submission by making them the ontological grounds of marriage’s profound mystery.
In the past, I’ve counseled married couples along the lines of, “Do you want your marriage to refer to Christ and the church? Then you’d better embrace and diligently practice your unique roles.” I’ve realized this is mistaken.
As an objective reality constituted by one-flesh conjugal union, a marriage that refers to Christ and the church isn’t a bar to live up to. It is a reality to live in to.
For this reason, I now help couples put headship and submission in its place by explaining how their marriage is in fact a profound mystery that refers to Christ and the church. Then, I help them see how these roles are the celebratory (and mandatory) overflow of that mysterious reality. As couples sense the value of what they have, they’re further compelled to embrace their unique roles with a joy and intentionality that honors the Lord and the gift he’s given them in marriage.