To Be Fully Known
I believe that a marriage between a male and a female is designed by God. Genesis 2:24 says Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
The concept that a man and a woman leave their parents to become one flesh is later reaffirmed in the New Testament. Speaking as the Son of God born from a human mother, coming from on high, Jesus said ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:5
Those who were the “keepers of the church” at the time Jesus lived were legalists of their own making. Pharisees ask Jesus: “Why then, did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Matthew 19:7
Jesus tells them that this is not the way it was in the beginning. If you marry another you commit adultery. Even His closest disciples were full of Jewish notions. They thought that the privilege of divorcing a wife when there was a quarrelsome disposition, or anything else that rendered the marriage unhappy, was a great privilege; and that in such cases to be always bound to live with a wife was a great calamity. They said, therefore, that if such was the case – such the condition on which people married – it was better not to marry.
One of the greatest English writers has taken the same line of thought in dealing with the question. Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and the treatises that followed it, are I agreement with the words of the disciples, “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.”
But such is not what Jesus means. Until marriage, a person’s core family loyalty is to their parents. Marriage creates a new, primary covenant where the husband and wife prioritize each other above all other familial and social relationships.
How do you explain to each other what prioritizing means in marriage? It has to do with the subtleties of sin which takes priority over planning a wedding, buying a house, or having children. It’s about being known by the other despite theirs and your subtleties of sin. This captures the exact tensions that exist in human concealment; it explores the quiet, hidden ways people protect themselves from each other. It includes self-justification, withholding affection or subtle manipulations.
It is the fear of exposure, which sin does to us. The fear of being fully seen can be terrifying because of the sins one barely wants to admit even to themselves because of the carefully built defenses.
Prioritizing happens when the other person sees the masks, recognizes the flaws and refuses to walk away. Being known without being abandoned is what builds intimacy in a marriage. Being fully known and truly loved is the core foundation of deep emotional intimacy in marriage. Paul writes that husbands should love their wives as their own bodies, noting that “no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it”. Ephesians 5:29.
That a man and a woman leave their parents and become “one flesh” Paul called a profound mystery. It mirrors the sacrificial union between Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:31-32
In 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 Paul tells us that we don’t have authority over our own bodies in the same glorious tone as we are being fully known and belonging to each other. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Dorothy Francis Blomfield Gurney wrote the hymn, Oh Perfect Love in 1883. It took her about 15 minutes. A soloist sang it at our wedding that took place in 1954. It was a prayer for our marriage asking God to bless us with unselfish love, peace and joy. Still after these seventy two years the word “perfect” still speaks to us.
I think our minds, are biologically hardwired to seek what is “perfect” in a complex and confusing world marred by constant discord. Could it be that our own imperfections long for perfection? Of course they do, as one longs to be fully known. This is the essence of a Christian marriage.
