A Special Agent For Change

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

–Genesis 1:27–28, 31

There was a day—or at least a few hours—when marriage was pure, undefiled, free from sin and selfishness. In fact, the whole world was that way. God had looked on his creation and it was good—complete, flawless, rich, and filled with life (Gen. 1:31). And a central part of that truly utopian world was marriage—a man and a woman joined together as one in a God-ordained, God-filled, and God-glorifying union (Gen. 1:27).

Marriage wasn’t an optional, incidental arrangement in God’s agenda. It was right there at the center, tying together the two most significant characters in this new and epic story. For sure, sin has broken and marred what was good and pure about that first marriage. But Paul says, quoting Genesis 2, that from the very beginning, the mystery of marriage is that it’s meant to represent Jesus’s relationship with the church (Eph. 5:31–32). This means sin wasn’t a surprise in God’s design for marriage. Rather, it tragically, but beautifully, served to fulfill God’s good design.

Marriages today, though flawed, are still carrying out, though imperfectly, the glorious purposes God gave them in the garden—purposes like our sanctification. If you put two God-fearing, Jesus-following, but sinful people in such close proximity, with a covenant to keep them from running away, there will be tension, conflict, and hopefully change.

Perhaps the greatest means God has given us, under the Holy Spirit, for making us more like himself are the people in our lives who love us enough to confront our patterns of selfishness, unhealthiness, and sin. Marriage places that loving person with us in the same family, the same house, the same budget, and the same covenant promise. If God is unfailingly faithful to his promises, and the Spirit really is more powerful than our weaknesses, and we both truly want more of God, he’ll be using us to eradicate sin and cultivate righteousness in one another.

TALK ABOUT IT

Discuss how sin coming into the world has fundamentally changed the everyday experience of marriage. How would your marriage be different without sin?

In God’s wise and mysterious plan, what opportunities does the reality of sin present to your marriage?