Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel Quotes

“It is not as though marriage is just one theme among others in the Bible. Instead, marriage is the wraparound concept for the entire Bible, within which the other themes find their places. And if the Bible is telling a story of married”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The Lord’s second insight goes deeper than the obvious. Indeed, it is amazing. Jesus read the perhaps ambiguous word “become” in “they shall become one flesh,” and he saw something there that we might never have thought of. Behind the word “become” Jesus sees a personal power at work. He sees no one less than God: “What therefore God has joined together . . .” (v. 6). A husband and wife, when they marry, do not become one flesh by their own wills or by the pastor’s pronouncement or by some mysterious process. God joins them together (Mal. 2:14–15).”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“Even so, a man’s wife will not be ideal in every way. But she is still his wife, one flesh with him, wonderfully bound to him as a dear part of his very self. How could he neglect or despise her, even in her imperfections? No, he will care for her all the more, nourishing and cherishing her toward her destined glory. After all, every one of us gives the Lord plenty of reasons to give up and walk away. But his heart finds in our very offenses only more reasons to stay tenderly involved with us, all the way to our eternal magnificence.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“So when a woman is married to a lovingly Christlike man who cherishes her, she feels warmth in her heart at being valued by her husband and held dear above all others, second only to Christ himself. Her husband doesn’t compare her with others or find fault with her or treat her as a loser he is stuck with. That would break her heart. Instead, her husband delights in her and prizes her, and she feels it deep inside with a heartwarming glow. That is cherishing one’s wife.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“Therefore, a loving Christian husband cares so deeply about his wife that he makes sure that her life is moving in a desirable direction, even as Christ nourishes us all.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“But if we humbly bend to the sorrows and buffetings of this life, trusting God, we will be surprised to discover beauty where God has hidden it—not in our fantasies but in his realities. God’s”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“To be married to a selfish man who, in effect, creates one more child in the house—for any wife, that is hard to bear. But a Christlike husband makes her burden lighter. He enjoys serving her as her lover and her provider and her defender, like Christ with his church. But even more deeply, beneath the Christlike behavior, biblical headship flows out of the mind of Christ. Our Savior’s own mentality becomes visible in a Christian husband cheerfully taking responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect his wife.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“the gospel fills a husband’s heart with a sense of his wife’s greatness and potential, the glorious woman she is destined to become, and he learns to love her accordingly:”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“When a husband does not appreciate how sweetly his wife keeps looking for ways to make things work, God does see, and he does appreciate her. She is always very precious to him.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“If you are married, even if your marriage in some ways disappoints you, still, God was the one who joined you two together. Your imperfect marriage in the world of today is as sacred in the sight of God as was the perfect marriage between Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Your marriage is a grace from above. Your marriage is a miracle. Your marriage came to you with the touch of God upon it, and it remains dear to him. Your marriage has the potential, by his grace, to bring redemption into the broken world we all live in now. Your imperfect marriage is, therefore, worth celebrating. Jesus thought so.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The wife acting as the head, but not a wise head, and the husband acting as the helper, but not a wise helper—it was the breakdown of marriage that broke everything.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“As Matthew Henry commented centuries ago, the woman was “not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The only arrangement for sex and marriage that has any chance of working today is that which moves toward restoring our Edenic origins. If we modern Western egalitarians can hold our emotional horses long enough to imagine how a woman might be dignified by helping a worthy man who loves her sacrificially, as both the man and the woman humbly pursue the glory of God together, the profile of man and woman that blessed us in Eden will start looking more plausible as an approach to human happiness today. On”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“Headship did not come down to us historically as an artifact of oppressive patriarchy; it began in heaven and came down into this world creationally as a pathway to human flourishing.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The first claim of the Bible, then, setting the stage for marriage, is that manhood and womanhood are not our own cultural constructs. Human concepts are too small and artificial a context for the glory of our sexuality. Manhood and womanhood find their true meaning in the context of nothing less than the heavens and the earth, the cosmos, the universe, the entire creation. That is the first claim of the biblical love story.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“Reformation is the recovery of biblical truth in its redemptive claim on the whole of life. Revival is the renewal of human flourishing by the Holy Spirit according to the gospel. Marriage is one of the primary flashpoints of controversy where we most need both reformation and revival in our times.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“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.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“Marriage is not a human invention; it is a divine revelation. Its design never was our own made-up arrangement of infinite malleability. It was given to us, at the beginning of all things, as a brightly shining fixity of eternal significance. We might not always live up to its true grandeur. None of us does so perfectly. But we have no right to redefine it, and we have every reason to revere it.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“How does a husband do that? Not by browbeating his wife—God doesn’t treat us that way—but by encouraging her:”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“Naturally, such men were mostly husbands or husbands-to-be. We men need to know that a wife does not often grow to this level of magnificence on her own. A great wife usually has a great husband. After all, what does the word husband mean? We have the related English word husbandry, that is, “cultivation.” And when the English word husband is used as a verb, it means “to cultivate.” So here is a husband’s privilege and responsibility: to cultivate and nurture his wife. A wise husband’s lifetime impact on his wife is that she is enabled to become the magnificent woman, the “excellent wife,” God made her to be.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.” But she is not using her strengths and abilities to compete with her husband. She is not driven by an identity crisis or treating her marriage as a matter of sexual politics. She is too mature for that. She is giving herself away to her husband, her family, and her community with wholehearted selflessness. A woman of this quality is rare: “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“(Prov. 31:10–11) This woman is a role model. She is a high-capacity woman, very capable as “a helper fit for him.” In fact, the phrase “an excellent wife” in verse 10 can be translated more literally “a woman of strength.” The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, even renders the phrase as “a manly woman.” This iconic woman is strong. How so? This poem goes on to say that she works hard, she makes money, she is kind to the poor, she is fearless about the future, she enhances her husband’s reputation, she speaks with wisdom, plus more. Verse 17 sums it up: “She”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“There is a humanitarian ethos in Israelite penal law, which is acknowledged by all who have compared it with contemporary ancient Near Eastern collections of law.”29”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“So then, the striking thing about the laws of the Old Testament is not that some of them are beneath the modern conscience but that they are above the other law codes of the ancient world. As”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The most remarkable thing about marriage today is not that it can be troubled but that we still have this privilege at all. When God justly expelled us from the garden of Eden, he did not take this gift back. He let us keep his priceless gift, though we sometimes misuse it. But what every married couple needs to know is that their marriage is a remnant of Eden. This is why every marriage is worth working at, worth fighting for. A marriage filled with hope in God is nothing less than an afterglow of the garden of Eden, radiant with hope until perfection is finally restored.”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“But whatever we may suffer as we await the renewal of all things, the promises of God can outperform the amusements and even the therapies of this world in keeping our souls and our marriages alive. The key to a lasting romance is not endless sex but believing hearts. God has given us a wonderful promise of restoration by his grace. We most certainly will get back to the garden someday, led by one who through his suffering opened the way for Adam and Eve and us and millions more (Rev. 22:1–5).”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“if we strive to re-create reality more to our liking, we will trend not toward freedom and hope but toward disgusting and impious degradations, and there is no depth to which we will not fall even further. But”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“And in this world, Cain’s purpose succeeds. The rest of the Bible tells the story of the offspring of the Serpent dominating human affairs, as insecure fugitives gather together, convinced that this world they control is all that matters. They”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“The confinement she feels is spreading, becoming intolerable, because in a hostile mind limitations grow to a maddening degree. Moreover, God had strongly warned, “You shall surely die.” But the woman now softens it to “. . . lest you die.” Now that her view of the consequences is less alarming, Satan springs on that very point:”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel

“So Genesis 1 and 2 honor marriage as nothing less than the crowning glory of the creation of the universe. For us modern people who may see marriage as a product of human preference driving social evolution, that is a stunning claim. Moreover,”
― Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel