Quote of the Day

 In other words, Jesus came not only to fulfill the law in his own work, he came to take his people to a radical understanding of the law and a radical obedience to the law that is not based on law but on himself, and therefore reflects the fullness of what God wills for us - and especially reflects the gospel, the covenant-keeping work of Christ at Calvary for his church.  Marriage among Christians is mainly meant to tell the truth about the gospel - that Christ died for his church who loves him and never breaks his covenant with his bride.

In essence, Jesus says, 'You have heard that it was said, 'You are permitted to divorce.'  But I say to you, 'I have come to conquer the hardness of your heart.  I have come to die for your sins.  I have come to count you as righteous.  I have come to show you the drama that marriage was meant to represent in my sacrificial, covenant-keeping love for my sinful bride.  I have come to give you the power to stay married, or to stay single, so that either way you keep your promises and show what my covenant is like and how sacred is the covenant bond of marriage.

 John Piper

Quote of the Day

Marriage is more than your love for each other. …In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind.  Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal - it is a status, and office.  Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is the marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Regarding salvation, dispensationalists believe that in every generation

men are saved by grace through faith, but they also recognize that the

content of their faith differs from dispensation to dispensation. Ryrie (p.

123) explains salvation in Dispensationalism as follows: "The basis of

salvation in every age is the death of Christ; the requirement for salvation

in every age is faith; the object of faith in every age is God; the content of

faith changes in the various dispensations. It is this last point, of course,

w h i c h d i s t i n g u i s h e s d i s p e n s a t i o n a l i s m from c o v e n a n t theology.” 

(Fruchtenbaum, I, p. 326)

Quote of the Day

Jesus does not enjoin his disciples to marry, but he does sanctify marriage according to the law by affirming its indissolubility and by prohibiting the innocent party from remarrying when the guilty partner has broken the marriage by adultery.  This prohibition liberates marriage from selfish, evil desire, and consecrates it to the service of love, which is possible only in a life of discipleship.  Jesus does not depreciate the body and its natural instincts, but he does condemn the unbelief which is so often latent in its desires…Even our bodies belong to Christ and have their part in the life of discipleship, for they are members of his Body.

  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

When Christ divorces we may....…if Christ ever abandons and discards his church, then a man may divorce his wife.  And if the blood-bought church, under the new covenant, ever ceases to be the bride of Christ, then a wife may legitimately divorce her husband.  But as long as Christ keeps his covenant with the church, and as long as the church, by the omnipotent grace of God, remains the chosen people of Christ, then the very meaning of marriage will include: What God has joined, only God can separate.

 

John Piper

Quote Of The Day

It is not enough to say, 'Serve one another.' That is true of Christ and his church - they serve each other.  But they do not serve each other in all the same ways.  Christ is Christ.  We are the church.  To confuse the distinctions would be doctrinally and spiritually devastating.  So also the man is the Christ-portraying husband, and the woman is the church portraying wife.  And to confuse these God-intended distinctions, or to abandon them, results in more disillusionment and more divorce and more devastation.  

One of the things that is crystal-clear in Ephesians 5 is that the roles of husband and wife in marriage are not arbitrarily assigned, and they are not reversible any more than the role of Christ and the church are reversible.  The roles of husband and wife are rooted in the distinctive roles of Christ and his church.  The revelation of this mystery is the recovery of the original intention of covenant marriage in the Garden of Eden. 

You can see this more clearly when you ponder what sin did to headship and submission and how Paul's teaching here in Ephesians 5 is so perfectly suited to remedy that corruption.  When sin entered the world, it ruined the harmony of marriage not because it brought headship and submission into existence, but because it twisted man's humble loving headship toward hostile domination in some men and lazy indifference in others.  And it twisted woman's intelligent, willing, happy, creative, articulate submission toward manipulative obsequiousness in some women and brazen insubordination in others.  Sin didn't create headship and submission; it ruined them and distorted them and made them ugly and destructive.

Now if this is true, then the redemption we anticipate with the coming of Christ is not the dismantling of the original, created order of loving headship and willing submission, but a recovery of it from the ravages of sin.  And that's exactly what we find in Ephesians 5:21-33, Wives, let your fallen submission be redeemed by modeling it after God's intention for the church!  Husbands, let your fallen headship be redeemed by modeling it after God's intention for Christ!

John Piper