“Mom, when I grow up I am going to be a woman. Then I can use a big toothbrush like you!”
For a stretch it seemed like we were talking about bodies and gender every day with our three-year-old. She is going through a phase of deep interest in her sexuality. Her questions and comments are a springboard to the Bible and God, so I love it. Fortunately my palms have not gotten too sweaty yet from alarming questions. My biggest concern is withholding laughs when she envies my toothbrush!
I, too, have questions about the privileges and responsibilities of being a woman. For one, is God really that interested in the quality or quantity of romance and sexual intimacy in my marriage as long as I am true to my one husband? My recent study on marriage and sexuality has surprised me (the good kind) by how central these themes are in Scripture and, yes, how much our Maker does care. As I summarize some of what I have learned in my reading I hope to direct you to the first and ultimate source for instruction in righteousness—God’s Word. In this first entry I want to solidify our understanding of the biblical foundation of marriage and sexuality on which all applications should be built. In the second entry I hope to encourage you with gems of wisdom and practical pointers from my reading that have helped me in my own marriage.
The Theological Foundation
I am sure all pastors’ wives can relate to the swamped feeling that can come with managing the important and urgent areas of need in the interwoven aspects of life. At times I am so focused on the immediate decisions of day-to-day management and execution it is difficult to evaluate my motives. The same challenge is present when I interact as a woman with God, my husband, friends, strangers, etc. I do not really think about my motives that often–I just do life. I know we are not capable (or expected) to evaluate our perspectives in every situation, but my own lack of awareness illuminates the immense significance and obligation I have to be steeped in the Truth of God’s perspective. There’s a phrase that goes, “right belief leads to right action” or “right orthodoxy leads to right orthopraxy.” That is what I am getting at. Our view of marriage and sex must be firmly grounded on the foundation of biblical realities in order for our heart and conduct to be increasingly Spirit-led and honouring to the Lord.
Ray Ortlund’s theological study called Marriage and The Mystery of the Gospel (2016, Crossway) clearly and beautifully addresses the biblical view of marriage. Ortlund traces the theme through Genesis, the Law, Wisdom, and Prophets, and the New Testament, calling marriage the “wraparound concept for the entire Bible” (16). Most of the Scripture passages he cites and explains like Genesis 1-3, Proverbs 5 (“Rejoice in the wife of your youth.“) and Isaiah 1 (“How the faithful city has become a whore.”) are not foreign to Christian ears. What resonated with me particularly was his chief objective of connecting the redemptive narrative throughout Scripture, highlighting that “marriage is not a human invention; it is a divine revelation” (11):
“The Bible has its eye primarily on the ultimate marriage between the Son of God and His redeemed bride. That eternal romance is the biblical view of marriage, offering both instruction and hope for our own marriages today” (11).
It is through the lens of biblical teaching that we gain instruction and hope for our marriage as a small-town or rural pastor’s wife. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Becoming one flesh in marriage is becoming “one mortal life fully shared between one man and one woman” (23). Ortlund expounds on the three times Genesis 2:24 is quoted and reinforced in the New Testament as God’s glorious and unchanging plan for marriage through all time (see Matt 19:3-10, 1 Cor 6:15-20, and Eph 5:22-24).
One of these points of instruction that helped me think about faithfulness as a (pastor’s) wife was the discussion around the temptation of Eve. Respect and submission are not natural for me. The first woman’s momentary impulse in the garden became a broader pattern of grasping for desire to which we can all relate! In humility, I am reminded again that the New Testament “offers no alternative design, no pattern of marital life that excludes the submission of a wife” (93). Ortlund writes, “Only the gospel of Jesus can free us from this endless power struggle and restore the romance, the beauty, the joy, the harmony God intended—manly initiative cherishing and defending the woman, womanly support affirming and empowering the man” (49). In hope I cling to God’s design, believing that my respect breathes life into my man and that joyfully receiving and affirming my “husband’s headship is nothing less than a sacred act of worship to God” (94).
Another short and helpful theological study (that Ray Ortlund also references) is Sam Allberry’s Is God Anti-Gay: And other questions about homosexuality, the Bible and same-sex attraction (2015, the Good Book Company). Allberry emphasizes marriage from a different approach but with the same source! When stressing consequences of multiple sexual relationships he reinforces that “sex is designed to irreversibly bind two people together” using Genesis 1-2 to illustrate that “God is for sex” and “sex is for marriage” (18). It is good to be reminded again why sex is for marriage and that God indeed loves sex!
I am so thankful for the privilege of marriage. At the fall of man we lost much of Eden when sin invaded our world. We see this very thing in our own lives, families, and churches. Yet God extends the gift of marriage to broken people—broken pastoral couples—in a broken world. What faithfulness and grace shown to us! There is hope for my marriage and your marriage when we consider that even “our imperfect marriages still bear witness to the glory God originally gave” (Ortlund, 31). Thanks be to God that our less than Edenic marriages are still true marriages and worthy of personal devotion and celebration. Knowing and bringing to mind the truth of God’s intent for marriage between husband and wife—and, ultimately Christ and His blood-bought Bride—restores our hopeful perseverance in marriage until God makes everything new again.
