Weddings are beautiful. The music, the flowers, the food, the dress. The joy on the faces of the bride and bridegroom. The joyful anticipation of many happy days together. The beginning of a new life together is worth a good celebration. Marriage can also be beautiful. The mutual delight of the spouses in each other. The new avenues of service they can find together. The pitter-patter of little feet that have been brought into the world through this couple. Marriage is a picture of the love which Christ has for his church and is worth celebrating.

So, what happens when the music fades, the flowers wither, the food gets burned, and the dress no longer fits? What happens when the joy between spouses turns to angry arguments? What happens when life begins to feel like a big pity party? The wedding day holds many dreams of happiness and hope for the future, but what happens when the husband looks less like Christ and a lot more like a sinful man, and what happens when the wife looks less like a bride and a lot more like a crabby mama who is best avoided most of the time? What happened to happily ever after?

A Picture, But Only a Picture

The Bible tells us that marriage is a relationship that God ordained, a relationship that is meant to picture the love that Christ has for the church. Husbands are to love their wives as themselves, and wives are to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ (Eph. 5:24). This picture of Christ and the church makes marriage sound beautiful and wonderful, which it often is. However, I want to challenge your expectations of marriage. Have you put your hope in the picture instead of in the reality?

In the beginning, God created man and woman to enjoy perfect fellowship with him and with each other. Sin broke that fellowship, and part of the curse is that both the marriage relationship and mankind’s relationship to God are no longer perfect. Another part of the curse on Eve is, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16, New King James Version). This phrase, “Your desire shall be for your husband,” shows how women, especially, idolize marriage and desire it more than is good and proper. Yes, God designed marriage as being good; yes, it is a beautiful picture of his relationship to his people; but no, marriage is not meant to replace our relationship with God. One of the themes throughout the Bible is the theme of God making us his people and of him being our God. In fact, we see God making covenant commitments to his people, pursuing them, and working to restore their relationship with him. The message of the Bible is never, “Get married to solve your problems”; rather, it is, “Worship God as your God, and rejoice in his presence.”

God’s Covenant Promises

Notice some of the language that God uses when making a covenant. He talks about God being our God and us being his people. In the covenant with Abraham, God says, “And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you . . . and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:7–8). In reference to the New Covenant, God says, “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jer. 31:33). When Jesus is born, we finally reach the earthly fulfillment of God’s covenant promises: “So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us’” (Matt. 1:22–23). We are now the temple of God, and we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us permanently (1 Cor. 3:16).

With each successive covenant, God reveals more of himself to his people, and the way we approach God changes along with the expanding revelation. The Old Testament is filled with requirements to enter into God’s presence. Animal sacrifices, blood everywhere, the stench of burning flesh: the removal of sin often involved elaborate and repeated rituals. One such ritual was laying hands on a goat, which was then sent into the wilderness as a sign of sin being removed from the Israelites’ lives. But it didn’t end there; the person who accompanied the goat then had to wash his clothes, bathe with water, and only then could he come back into the camp. Rituals involved repeated washings, removal of contaminated objects, and separating the clean from the unclean, and touched every aspect of life in ancient Israel.

Already, But Not Yet

We live in the New Covenant and are no longer required to keep the ceremonial law or perform animal sacrifices. We can now approach God without an earthly mediator. Jesus came to be Immanuel, God with us. And he came to redeem our lives, our marriages, and our brokenness. Are you looking for a spouse who will build you up spiritually? Jesus builds his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Are you looking for a good spiritual leader? You already have a perfect Husband who cares more about your spiritual life than you do. Are you looking for someone who will pray for you every day? Jesus has direct access to the Father, and he always lives to make intercession for us. Are you lonely? Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. Whatever you think you are missing by not being married, or by being married to this particular person, you already have it in Jesus Christ.

We already have the perfect spouse in Jesus Christ, but we live in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” “Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Cor. 13:12). We already have a perfect spiritual leader in Christ, but he calls us to submit to lesser, imperfect leaders. We already have Christ praying for us every day, but we don’t stand directly in God’s presence. We already have God with us at all times, but we can’t see him face to face. We’re the bride of Christ, but the wedding day hasn’t arrived. We long for the day when all those “not yet” aspects of life here will completely, and finally, be fulfilled in perfection. Meanwhile, we stay close to our Lord each day by reading Scripture, staying active in daily Bible study and prayer, and praying with our families and church friends.

Getting Married!

The wedding will be beautiful. The music of the voices of ten thousand times ten thousand people will reverberate throughout the city (Rev. 5:11). The food will be delicious. The tree of life will produce twelve different fruits, each in its season, for the enjoyment of those invited and attending (Rev. 22:2). The dress will be the most perfect and glorious wedding dress we have ever seen—for the bride will be clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ, and she will be glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without blemish (Rev. 21:2; Eph. 5:27). Who is that most blessed bride? When is that happiest of all weddings? We, the people of God, are the bride, when God finally fulfills all his covenant promises to us. We shall dwell with him and be his people, and he shall dwell with us and be our God. And then we shall finally, and truly, be happily married. Forever after.

Vanessa Le is a wife and mom to four children age six and under. She enjoys reading, playing the piano, studying theology, and generally being Mommy. She is a member of Orlando Reformed Presbyterian Church in Orlando, FL.