The Marriage Covenant-Part III

By Rev. Jeffrey J. Meyers

(Continued from The Marriage Covenant-Part II)

After the fall of man, every covenant God makes with man is a gracious covenant, even more so than the first creation covenant. This is so because every covenant God establishes after the fall involves God’s merciful intervention in spite of man’s deserving condemnation and rejection. Second, this means that the initial establishment of the covenant, God’s transcendent separation of the new from the old will always involve a death and resurrection. The separations are now very traumatic. Sin must be dealt with, which means that someone must die. Each time God separates out for Himself a people, He must both atone for their sin, which is why every post-fall covenant is founded upon sacrifice, and he must tear them from their old life. I cannot call attention to this in each and every covenant, but the reader should not fail to notice these new aspects of every post-fall covenant.

First, consider the Noahic covenant in Genesis chapters 6-9.

1) God graciously takes hold of Noah and his family and separates them out from the old, dead world that is under judgment. There is a death and resurrection. The old word dies under the judgment of God while Noah and his family pass through the waters and enter a new creation.
2) Noah then emerges as a new Adam, with a slightly different hierarchical arrangement in this new society than before. All commentators will note the emphasis now on human government in dealing with mankind’s proclivity for murderous violence.
3) God speaks to Noah and gives him a new word fit for his new situation. Under the Noahic covenant, there is a slightly altered, new way of life.
4) There are new signs and seals of this new covenant: first, a sacrificial system that involves the use of every clean animal (Gen. 8:20), and second, a rainbow to remind God of His covenant (Gen. 9:8-17).
5) God sets up an arrangement for the succession of this covenant when He makes a promise that He will never again flood the earth (Gen. 8:21-22) and establishes a priestly nation (the Shemites) to minister to the 70 nations of the world (Gen. 10).

Next, we have the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 12, 15, 17, 22).

1) Abram is graciously separated from his old country and his old family (Gen. 12). There is a death to the old world and a “new creation.”
2) He is united with a new land (Canaan) and given a new name (Abraham). The people of God are now called “Hebrews” (from Abraham’s ancestor Eber, Gen. 11:16). God reveals Himself by a new name: El Shaddai, or “God Almighty.” As a result, there are new lines of authority (revealed when Abraham must conquer the existing “lords” of the land in Gen. 14).
3) God speaks to Abraham, granting him new, more detailed promises (a seed that will bless all the nations and the possession of the land, for example). One of the most important new ways in which Abraham is to be faithful has to do with his waiting patiently for God’s promise of a child.
4) There is a new sign and seal of the covenant: circumcision (Gen. 17). Blessings and curses are associated with this covenantal sacrament.
5) And, of course, the perpetuation of the covenant will be insured by God’s act of providing Abraham with a son. To this end Abraham has been chosen by God “so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of Yahweh by doing what is right and just so that Yahweh will bring about for Abraham what He has promised” (Gen. 18:19).

After the Abrahamic covenant comes the Mosaic covenant (Exodus).

1) The people of God are graciously torn from Egypt, separated from the death of slavery to Pharaoh, and cross the Red Sea as a new creation.
2) They are bound together into a new entity – a nation with a new name. They are called Israelites. God reveals Himself with a new name: Yahweh (Exod. 3:15). And just so, there is now a new authority structure for the new nation: Moses, Aaron, priests, levites, and elders.
3) God speaks to the people, graciously providing them a new word from Him fit for their new estate – the Ten Commandments and what is called “the law of the covenant” (Exodus 21-23).
4) Not only does God utter the Ten Words from Mt. Sinai, but He also provides them with new signs and seals of His covenant: the tabernacle, the priesthood, and the sacrificial system. Not surprisingly, associated with these sacramental tokens of His presence are all sorts of blessings when they are faithfully performed and curses when they are faithlessly violated.
5) Finally, the entire book of Deuteronomy renews the covenant with the second generation of Israelites in the wilderness just before they cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. The whole book is concerned with the maintenance of the Mosaic covenant under the leadership of Joshua (see especially Deut. 32-34).

I could make similar observations about the form of the Davidic Covenant and what has been called the Restoration Covenant (after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon) but I resist the temptation. I think you can see the pattern. Finally, we move to the New Testament and consider the New Covenant in Christ.

1) In Christ we have the fulfillment of all the typological death and resurrection events in the Old Testament. Jesus and His people united to Him die to the old Adamic world and rise again as a new creation. God’s people are mercifully separated out from the old world into union with Christ. This is also a marriage: the Husband leaves His family to secure for Himself a bride, and the church is separated out from the old world to be united to her new covenant Lord.
2) The people of God are now united to Christ and become a new creation in Him. We become the church, the body of Christ, a new reality. Furthermore, we are baptized into the newly revealed name of God: Name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The people of God now are given new names: Christians. All of this means that there is a new hierarchy, new lines of authority: Jesus is Lord and as Head over His church has instituted a government which represents Him on earth: pastors, elders, and deacons (Eph. 4).
3) God speaks anew to His people, now through his Son (Heb. 1:1ff.). There’s a “new” way of life for those in covenant with God through Christ – the way of love and sacrificial living. This is all laid out for us in the new covenantal documents which we call the “New Testament [Covenant].”
4) The public face of the covenant has changed too. Gone are circumcision and the animal sacrifices. New, non-bloody signs and seals of the covenant are instituted – the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. These are now the memorials of God’s new covenant.
5) Finally, provision is made for the succession of the covenant with the ordination of ministers, elders, and deacons and Christ’s charge to them to make disciples by baptizing and teaching the nations.

The Covenant of Marriage Outlined

You should now have in your mind a basic outline of God’s way of covenanting with His people. Of course, there’s a great deal that I have not covered about God’s covenants. One thing that comes to mind is how each covenant develops and transforms previous covenants. God takes His people from glory to glory, the new covenant being the most glorious of all. But we need to get back to marriage. What we have to do now is go back to Genesis 2 (and even Genesis 1) to see how God ordains the marital union as a covenant. We should already expect to see the covenantal sequence in the inauguration of the marriage covenant. After all, the various administrations of the covenant of grace, from Moses to Christ, have explicitly described God’s relationship with His people as that of a Husband with His bride (see especially the entire book of Hosea, Ezekiel 16 & Eph. 5:22ff.). After all of this, we return to Genesis 2:22-24. The original ordeal of Genesis 2:21-24 clearly manifests a covenantal form and order.

1) Yahweh God causes Adam to fall into a deep sleep – a sleep like unto death. Adam dies to his old existence, his aloneness. While he is sleeping Yahweh separates out of part of Adam’s side (his flesh and bones). Thus there is a separation, a movement from the old to the new. Then, that which has been separated is built up, transfigured into something new and glorious, and brought to Adam by Yahweh to be united with him.
2) Adam then speaks to his new bride. He gives her a new name (woman; Heb. 'ishah). In fact, he himself now becomes something of a new man in some profound sense because of this new relationship with her. They are “one flesh.” There is a new authority structure. The man has the role of being the “head” or “leader” of the new family.
3) God then tells us (Gen. 2:24) what all this means. There is a new mandate, a new torah (way of life) established by God. Men will leave their old life and be united to form a new family unit. They will cleave to a wife and become one flesh with her. Here we have the ethical requirements of marriage in a nutshell.
4) The “sacrament,” if you will, or physical memorial of this marriage covenant is the sexual union between a man and his wife (“they were both naked and not ashamed,” v. 25). This becomes the physical sign and seal of the marital covenant.
5) Finally, God has made provision for the perpetuation of the covenant. This is implicit in the narrator’s comments in v. 24. There will be other men and women who will come together in marriage. Where will they come from? Genesis 1:26-28 tells us. The man and the woman will have children. In this way the covenant of marriage perpetuates not only the marital covenant but also the covenant between God and mankind, insuring that other humans will also come into existence and experience Yahweh’s covenantal grace.

Think briefly about how every marriage relationship is covenantal. When the man and woman walk down the aisle, they are not in a covenantal relationship. They are friends, lovers, etc. As yet their relations are informal and non-binding. Once they go through the marriage ceremony (which is itself structured according to the basic contours of the covenant!), they are in covenant with one another. What does that mean?

1) Every man and woman who come together for marriage must first be separated from their old life. They are to unite together as a sort of new creation. At the marriage ceremony, for example, the father of the bride “gives her away” and she must agree to leave that old family and be joined to her new husband. The man must make the same separation. They both must “forsake all others” and come together as a new family.
2) They come together as equals in a new union: with a new name. That new name is the husband’s last name. The husband is the head and leader in the new family. By coming together in the marital covenant, the man and woman now have new roles, a new hierarchical order to structure their lives.
3) In the new marriage covenant there are new ethical demands placed upon them both. As husband and wife, they must be faithful to one another in everything. The couple listens to their first sermon together during the wedding ceremony. Many more will follow, for they must learn what it now means to be united in holy covenant of marriage. They must learn to faithfully fulfill their distinct roles as husband and wife, and (all things considered) eventually father and mother.
4) The marriage ceremony is inaugurated with powerful words. Solemn oaths are taken. If faithful to these vows, the man and woman will experience God’s blessing, but if they break covenant, they will be cursed. Then, too, though the marriage itself must be maintained primarily with words, there must also be physical contact, the most intimate of which being sexual in nature.
5) The covenantal love shared between husband and wife will then naturally (all things considered) produce children. They will then grow up, leave their father and mother, and so on.

There then we have the basic contours of the marriage covenant. In closing, I’ll leave you with this statement: when there are problems in our marriages, they will always be related to a failure in one or more of these dimensions of the covenant of marriage.