Welcome to Praying with the Bible as a couple: Marriage in the Bible, a new series provided by Marriage in Christ.
This study is not a search for every time the word "marriage" or "family" is used in the Bible. Like all our Scripture offerings, the Marriage in the Bible reflections are designed to help you sustain habits of praying each day with your spouse. What is different is that these reflections will focus specifically on what the Bible has to say about marriage.
Marriage is a great sign of God’s love for his people and Christ’s love for his bride, the Church. The marriage covenant is analogous to the covenant that God makes with Israel. Adultery and divorce become analogies for idolatry and exile. And in the beginning Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God. Not only individuals, but also married couples are living icons of a God who reveals himself as a community of persons: Father, Son, and Spirit of love.
The Bible is full of families, births, love stories, and family crises. Families, from the call of Abraham and his family to the Holy Family of Nazareth, provide the vehicles through which God works out his rescue of the whole human race. At the center of those families we see a father and mother, a couple with their personal story of love. Our stories are part of this great big story of salvation.
The Pattern
Each month we will provide an overall introduction to the 5–7 Scripture passages and meditations on marriage for that month. The introduction will provide historical background, as well as theological and literary context, for the passages we will offer for your prayer together.
We will also offer conversation starters and suggested loving actions.
By reading, praying over, and talking about key marriage passages in the Bible, we will come to delight more in God’s vision for this wonderful state in life. The 21st–century way of life and approach to marriage is no more Christian than was the pagan culture of the first-century Roman Empire or the pagan world that Israel struggled with for all of its history. The authors of the Scriptures challenged the first Christians to live as if the new creation was actually bursting out in Rome, Corinth, Jerusalem, and other places in the ancient Mediterranean world. So, too, the new creation is bursting out today in cities and homes all over the world—and it is a challenge to what the modern world has to offer.
When we read and pray with the Scriptures, we also encounter Jesus as a couple. Let the Scriptures find you, heal you, challenge you, teach you. In all humility, let them show you a new way to live human life—in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the heart of the body of Christ.
Enjoy!
Bill Wacker
Director Emeritus
