Marriage — A Type of the Church
Text: Ephesians 5:22
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- Explain why the marriage relationship is not an illustration invented by human teachers but one Christ himself has honored by using it to describe his relationship to the church.
- State the structural parallel between one husband/one wife and one Christ/one church, including what the formation of Eve from Adam's side teaches about the formation of the church from Christ's suffering.
- Articulate why Christ recognizes the church by no other name than his own, and what practical implications that has for the names religious bodies wear.
- Define spiritual adultery in the New Testament sense and explain what it means to "give our affections to another institution."
- Identify what the marriage type requires of a person who is in a religious body other than the church Christ built.
Thesis
The marriage of one man to one woman is not incidental imagery — it is the relationship God uses to describe the bond between Christ and his church. One Christ; one church. Any affection given to a substitute institution is spiritual adultery.
Burden
Paul's instruction in Ephesians 5:22-33 is the governing passage, but it draws on a relationship that runs through the whole Bible: the people of God as the bride of God. Israel's unfaithfulness to Yahweh was described as adultery by every major prophet (Jer. 3:8; Ezek. 16; Hos. 1-3). The church is described as the bride of Christ (Rev. 19:7-8; 21:9). The parallel is not decorative — it is theological, with real implications for what it means to belong to the right body, bear the right name, and keep the right loyalty.
Introduction
"But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:3). Paul builds his extended treatment of the husband-wife relationship in Ephesians 5 on a theological foundation: the marriage relationship mirrors, and is governed by, the Christ-church relationship. He does not say the Christ-church relationship is like marriage; he says husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church (Eph. 5:25). The type moves in both directions: the marriage illuminates the church, and the church gives the marriage its highest meaning.
Christians "are married to Christ" — Paul says it directly in Romans 7:4: "you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God." The relationship is covenantal, exclusive, and permanent. The type is not abstract.
I. One Husband, One Wife; One Christ and One Church
The structural parallel is precise because it is intentional. God did not make two women for Adam or two Christs for the church. The exclusivity is built into the design.
The church is the bride of Christ (Rev. 21:9: "the bride, the wife of the Lamb"). The image appears at the end of Scripture as the consummation of what began in the garden: the Lamb has his bride; the marriage of the Lamb has come. The one who presented Eve to Adam (Gen. 2:22) is the one who will present the church to Christ — "a glorious church, having no spot or wrinkle" (Eph. 5:27).
One church, only one Christ (Rev. 19:7-8: "the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready"). The arithmetic of the type is the argument: if there is one Christ — and there is only one — there is one bride. A groom with multiple brides is not the type. A Christ with multiple churches is not the New Testament.
The parallel of origins deepens the argument. One man was created; one woman was made for him. The woman was taken from the side of man while he slept (Gen. 2:21-22). Christ suffered — "one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out" (John 19:34) — before the church could be formed. The church emerged from the death of Christ as Eve emerged from the side of Adam. The church could not be built until Christ was raised from the dead (Matt. 16:18, 20: "I will build My church… He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ" until after the resurrection). The suffering and resurrection are the condition for the bride.
II. Church Bears the Name of Christ
A wife honors her husband by wearing his name. He recognizes her by no other name. The relationship is identified by the name.
"The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch" (Acts 11:26). The name is not self-chosen — it is given by the relationship. Those who belong to Christ are called by his name. The church that belongs to Christ bears his name. Paul greets "the churches of Christ" (Rom. 16:16). Peter addresses Christians as those who belong to "Christ" (1 Pet. 4:16: "if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name").
Christ honors the church with his name. He does not honor a substitute with his name. The question for any religious body is not whether it uses Christian language but whether it is the body Christ built, governed by his word, constituted by the obedience he specified. A body that wears another name — or that wears his name while being something other than what he built — is not the bride. A wife who takes another man's name, or who refuses her husband's name for her own preferences, has altered the relationship the name was meant to identify.
The practical implication is not complicated: the church that is what Christ built will bear his name and submit to his word. The church that does not submit to his word is not the church he built, regardless of the name it wears.
III. Spiritual Adultery
The type demands exclusive loyalty. Adultery is the violation of exclusive loyalty. The spiritual adultery of the bride is the giving of affections to another institution.
Israel committed it. Jeremiah 3:8: "And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also." The metaphor is exact — Israel's worship of other gods was adultery against the covenant LORD who had taken her as his bride at Sinai. Every prophet who preached against idolatry was preaching against marital unfaithfulness to Yahweh.
Churches do it (Rev. 2:22). Christ's warning to Thyatira included "those who commit adultery with her" — the woman Jezebel, who taught the compromise of Christian worship with pagan practice. The adultery is not merely individual sexual sin; it is the corruption of the church's exclusive loyalty to Christ by the introduction of what he did not authorize.
Cannot give our affections to another institution. This is the sermon's most pointed application. A person who belongs to a human denomination — who gives their loyalty, their worship, their identity to an institution that is not the church Christ built — has given to that institution what belongs to the one who died for the bride. That is not harsh; it is the logic of the type. A wife who divides her affections between her husband and another man has not partially honored her vows; she has violated them. The exclusivity is the covenant.
The call is the same that Paul made in 2 Corinthians 6:17 (developed in Outline 91): come out and be separate. Return the loyalty to the one who earned it.
Application
Three applications from the three sections:
Is the community to which you give your loyalty the community Christ built? The test is not sincerity or familiarity — it is correspondence to what the New Testament describes as the church Christ built: its organization, its worship, its terms of membership, its governance by his word alone.
Does your religious community bear his name? Not as a marketing label, but as the expression of a genuine submission to his authority? The name means nothing if the submission is absent.
Are there divided affections? The spiritual adultery the prophets and apostles warned about is not always conscious. It can be the slow drift of loyalty from Christ's church to a substitute — a denomination, a tradition, a preference. Wherever the affections have been divided, they need to be recollected and returned.
Conclusion
"I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin" (2 Cor. 11:2). Paul's jealousy for the Corinthians' exclusive loyalty to Christ is the jealousy of the father of the bride — the concern that what was betrothed not be given to another. It is God's own jealousy, extended through the apostle.
The marriage type teaches that the church is not one of many legitimate expressions of Christianity. It is the bride — the one body for whom the one Christ gave himself. The exclusivity of the type is the exclusivity of the covenant. And the faithfulness it requires is the faithfulness of a wife to the husband who died for her.
Invitation
To enter the relationship the type describes requires the response that constitutes the marriage: the obedient union with Christ in the waters of baptism. "Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?" (Rom. 6:3). Baptism is the moment of union — the point at which the individual is joined to the body, incorporated into the bride.
Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God — the one who formed the church from his own suffering as Eve was formed from the side of Adam. Repent of every divided loyalty. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). And enter the only institution to which the promise has been made.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spiritual adultery | niphîm | unfaithfulness in a covenant relationship | the metaphor runs through the OT for idolatry and into the NT for divided loyalty in the church | the metaphor runs through the OT for idolatry and into the NT for divided loyalty in the church; it is not merely personal immorality but the violation of exclusive covenant loyalty | Rev. 2:22; Jer. 3:8 |
| Joined | genēsthai hetero | to be made to belong to | Paul uses the language of belonging | Paul uses the language of belonging; to be married to Christ is to belong to him in a way that precludes belonging to another | Rom. 7:4 |
| Type | — | an impression, a pattern | a concrete, historical reality that corresponds to and foreshadows a greater reality | a concrete, historical reality that corresponds to and foreshadows a greater reality; marriage is a typos of the Christ-church relationship, which is the antitypos (the reality the type pointed toward) | typos |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| Christians married to Christ; joined to him who was raised | Intro | Rom. 7:4 |
| The church, the bride, the wife of the Lamb | I | Rev. 21:9; 19:7-8 |
| One church, one Christ — the exclusive covenant | I | Rev. 19:7-8 |
| Woman formed from Adam's side — church from Christ's suffering | I | Gen. 2:21-22; John 19:34 |
| Church not built until Christ raised — suffering precedes the bride | I | Matt. 16:18, 20 |
| "The churches of Christ greet you" — bearing his name | II | Rom. 16:16 |
| "If anyone suffers as a Christian" — the name given by the relationship | II | 1 Pet. 4:16 |
| Israel's adultery — unfaithfulness to Yahweh the covenant type | III | Jer. 3:8 |
| Thyatira warned about committing adultery with the false teacher | III | Rev. 2:22 |
| "I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ" | Concl. | 2 Cor. 11:2 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 100. Primary text: Ephesians 5:22 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: line-break artifact "re: lat ion" corrected to "relation." Doctrinal audit: the one-church argument retained and developed from the marriage type without softening; "cannot give our affections to another institution" retained as Boles's application of the spiritual adultery concept; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38); no premillennial framing.
