1) Marriage was designed by God to portray the covenant relationship between Christ and his church. It displays God's covenant keeping love through the death of Christ for his bride, the church. 2) Staying married is about keeping one's covenant commitments, not just staying in love. Breaking the marriage covenant misrepresents Christ's unbreakable covenant with his church. 3) Both husbands and wives have distinct roles rooted in Christ's relationship with the church. A husband's role is to lead, protect, and provide for his family in a Christ-like manner. A wife's role is to willingly submit to her husband's leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts.

1. Knowing Your Purpose in Life
Lesson #6 – Do Your Job
Background
Ephesians 5:31‐32 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and
the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the
church.”
How do you respond to this statement “God designed marriage to be a picture. That makes me ask
myself, how clear and well‐focused is the portrait of Jesus that our marriage is displaying?”
Introduction
There is no human marriage after death. The shadow of covenant‐keeping between husband and wife
gives way to the reality of covenant‐keeping between Christ and his glorified Church.
The meaning of marriage is the display of the covenant‐keeping love between Christ and his people.
This covenant‐keeping love reached its climax in the death of Christ for his church, his bride. That death
was the ultimate expression of grace, which is the ultimate expression of God’s glory, which is of infinite
value. Therefore, when Paul says that our great and final destiny is “the praise of God’s glorious grace”
(Eph 1:6), he elevates marriage beyond measure, for here, uniquely, God displays the apex of the glory
of his grace: “Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her. (Eph 5:25)”
Staying Married is Not Mainly About Staying in Love
Genesis 2:18‐25
My own sin and selfishness and cultural bondage makes it almost impossible for me to feel the wonder
of God’s purpose for marriage. The greatness and glory of marriage is beyond our ability to think or feel
without divine revelation and without the illuminating and awakening work of the Holy Spirit. The world
cannot know what marriage is without learning it from God.
The ultimate thing to see from the Bible about marriage is that it is God’s doing. And the ultimate thing
to see from the Bible about marriage is that it is for God’s glory. Most foundationally, marriage is the
doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God.
Marriage is God’s Doing
Marriage was God’s Design (Gen 1:27‐28). God said it was not good for man to be alone (Gen 2:18) and
God is the one who sets out to take care of that problem. God created animals and paraded them
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Summarized from “Momentary Marriage” By John Piper

2. before Adam so he could see if any of them would be adequate for completing him. Marriage was
God’s design in creating man and woman.
God gave away the first bride (Gen 2:22). God made the woman and then brought her to Adam in order
to participate in a new kind of relationship, called marriage, unlike every other relationship in the world.
God spoke the design of marriage into existence (Gen 2:24).
God performs the one‐flesh union (Gen 2:24). The UNION is at the heart of marriage. God creates that
union, not man, and as a result, it is not in man’s power to destroy that. See Mark 10:8‐9.
Marriage is for God’s Glory
Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God, and most ultimately, marriage is the display of God.
It is designed by God to display his glory in a way that no other event or institution does.
How do you respond to that statement?
Gen 2:24 “hold fast to his wife” and the words “they shall become one flesh” point to marriage as a
sacred covenant rooted in covenant commitments that stand against every storm “as long as both shall
live.”
Eph 5:31‐32 “that it refers to Christ and the church” points to the fact that marriage is patterned after
Christ’s covenant commitment to his church.
Christ thought of himself as the bridegroom coming for his bride, the true people of God. (2 Cor 11:2)
Christ knew he would have to pay for his bride with his own blood. He called this relationship the new
covenant. Christ obtained the church by his blood and formed a new covenant with her, an unbreakable
“marriage.”
The highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of
Christ and his church on display. How does this relate to all the other purposes of life we have discussed
in this class?
Christ will never leave his wife
Staying married is not about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant. What makes divorce and
remarriage so horrific in God’s eyes is not merely that it involves covenant‐breaking to the spouse, but
that it involves misrepresenting Christ and his covenant.
The most important implication of this conclusion is that keeping covenant with our spouse is as
important as telling the truth about God’s covenant with us in Jesus Christ. Marriage is mainly about
telling the truth with our lives. It’s about portraying something true about Jesus Christ and the way he
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Summarized from “Momentary Marriage” By John Piper

3. relates to his people. It is about showing in real life the glory of the gospel. This is why all married
people are married, even when they don’t know or embrace this gospel.
Naked and Not Ashamed
The reason we need the Spirit’s help is that the wonder of marriage is woven into the wonder of the
gospel of the cross of Christ, and the message of the cross is foolishness to the natural man, and so the
meaning of marriage is foolishness to the natural man. (I Cor 2:14)
The way to be shame free in marriage is based on the gracious nature of covenant love. There is no
shame because covenant love covers a multitude of flaws (I Peter 4:8 and I Cor 13:6). Since marriage
was designed from the beginning to display the covenant between Christ and the church we know that
the very essence of this new covenant is that Christ passes over the sins of his bride. The bride, the
church, has no fear that her lover will condemn her or shame because of her sin. Christ has taken care
of the bride’s flaws.
Covenant Keeping Grace
Christ’s new covenant is created by and sustained by blood‐bought grace. In marriage you live hour by
hour in glad dependence on God’s forgiveness and justification and promised future grace, and you
bend it out toward your spouse hour by hour as an extension of God’s forgiveness and justification and
promised help.
Col 2:13‐14
God took the record of all your sins that made you a debtor to wrath and instead of holding them up in
front of your face and using them as the warrant to send you to hell, God put them in the palm of his
Son’s hand and drove a spike through them into the cross. He cancelled the record of your debt . . .
nailing it to the cross. (Col 2:14)
God gets the glory when two very different and very imperfect people unified by marriage forge a life of
faithfulness in the furnace of affliction by relying on Christ.
Human marriage will vanish
Human marriage is temporary. It points to something eternal, namely, Christ and the church, but when
this age is over, it will vanish into the superior reality to which it pertains. (Matt 22:30)
Roles in Marriage
Lionhearted and Lamblike – Husbands and Headship
Eph 5:23
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Summarized from “Momentary Marriage” By John Piper

4. The roles in marriage are not arbitrarily designed, and they are not reversible. The role of husband and
wife are rooted in the distinctive roles of Christ and the church.
Headship in husbands is the responsibility to love like Christ in leading and protecting and providing for
wives and families. Submission is not slavish or coerced or cowering. That’s not the way Christ wants
the church to respond to his leadership and protection and provision. He wants the submission of the
church to be free and willing and glad and refining and strengthening.
Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christ‐like servant
leadership, protection, and provision in the home. Eph 5:25‐27 says Christ gave himself up for the
church, allowing himself to be sacrificed for the church’s sin, saving her from God’s wrath. When God
calls a husband to lead his wife he means, protect her at all costs, even if he has to give himself up to do
so. Eph 5:28‐29 says that the husband who leads like Christ takes the initiative to see to it that the
needs of his wife and children are met in a tender and compassionate manner. When a man joyfully
bears the primary God‐given responsibility for Christ‐like, servant leadership and provision and
protection in the home – for the spiritual well‐being of the family, for the discipline and education of the
children, for the stewardship of the money, for the holding of a steady job, for the healing of discord,
God is glorified.
Beautiful fearless submission
Only women with unshakeable biblical roots in the sovereignty of God are able to see biblical
submission as a good thing. A Christian woman does not fear submitting to a human husband because
she does not put her hope in her husband. She puts her hope in the promises and design of God.
Submission is the divine calling of the wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry
it through according to her gifts.
Based on I Peter 3:6. . . Submission is not agreeing with everything your husband says, leaving your brain
or your will at the wedding altar, doesn’t mean avoiding every effort to change the husband, not putting
the will of the husband before the will of Christ, not getting personal spiritual strength primarily through
her husband, or acting out of fear. Submission does not follow a husband into sin.
Sex – Pleasure in Oneness and Procreation
Sex is also used as a tool to help us understand the larger picture of our union with Christ, just as
marriage is designed to help us see the larger picture of the relationship between Christ and the church.
As intense as the pleasures of sex are in this world they point to ecstasies that are infinitely greater to
come. Sex like human marriage is a temporary part of the plan. Someday sex will not be a part of the
picture. The shadow will be gone and we will have an intimate understanding of the truth it pointed to.
Gen 1:27‐28 clearly commands that the husband and wife multiply and fill the earth with children who
would be able to be in relationship with God. Based on the new covenant in the relationship with Christ,
individuals are multiplied into God’s family through faith and regeneration and adoption. Sex was a
means of procreation. However, marriage is for making babies . . . but not just the physical kind.
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Summarized from “Momentary Marriage” By John Piper

5. 5
Summarized from “Momentary Marriage” By John Piper
Everything about marriage should help increase the number of followers of Christ on this planet. This
can happen whether physical babies are ever conceived or not. God’s purpose in making marriage the
place to have children was never merely to fill the earth with people, but to fill the earth with
worshippers of the one true God.
Singleness
God promises those who remain single in Christ blessings that are better than the blessings of marriage
and children, and he calls you to display, by the Christ – exalting devotion of your singleness, the truths
about Christ and his kingdom that shine more clearly through singleness than through marriage and
child‐rearing.
1. The truth that the family of God grows not by propagation through sexual intercourse, but by
regeneration through faith in Christ.
2. The truth that relationships in Christ are more permanent, and more precious, than
relationships in families
3. The truth that marriage is temporary and finally gives way to the relationship to which it was
pointing all along – Christ and the church – the way a picture is no longer needed when you see
face to face.
4. The truth that faithfulness to Christ defines the value of life; all other relationships get their final
significance from this. Not family relationship is ultimate; relationship to Christ is.
Application Questions
Would people surmise by watching you fulfill your role (marriage or singleness) that God is great and
magnificent?
Would they see, through your role in life (marriage or singleness), the covenant kind of love of Christ
and the church?
By you living out your role in life has the glory of the gospel been made clear?
Review
1. Glorify God by being an image and likeness
2. Fight idolatry and worship the one true God
3. Rule and have dominion
4. Be a good steward
5. Know who you are (male / female)
6. Do your job (husband / wife / single)