An Arranged Marriage

I was going to do this in comments, but I think it's important enough to make an entry out of it.

As you can imagine, my recent post affirming the biblical perspective on God and Sex Slaves (where I denied that Scripture favored sex slaves and tried to show that it was marriage that was carried out, not sexual slavery) didn't really receive a lot of warm responses. The posted comments weren't bad, but you didn't get to see the emails I got. They also were outraged by my accusation in the comments that the objections were "a 21st century value overlaid on a BC culture." It is, you see, not acceptable to suggest that anywhere or any time it might have been a good thing that marriages were arranged rather than our "enlightened" version of today -- "for love". The fact that arranged marriages far outweigh marriages of choice in the history of mankind and the fact that our modern marriages for love have not been so successful (We're at ... what ... a 50-60% divorce rate as opposed to less than 10% for arranged marriages?) is not something I should be mentioning. Clearly our modern method is superior and no one should suggest otherwise. But I'd like to point out that it isn't merely a trivial concept. It is, in fact, a key biblical concept.

Up until fairly recent times, the Jewish concept of marriage had very little to do with love. Not that love was not included, but it was not basis (one of the reasons why it was commanded in Eph 5). Here was the normal process¹. Parents arranged marriages, sometimes before birth. The selection was binding, except that generally the bride had the right of refusal. At some point, the bride price was paid. At this point, the two were "betrothed" which was much closer to "married" than our modern version of "engaged". The only way to break this betrothal was an actual divorce (see Matt 1:19). So now the groom-to-be would begin the preparations for a place for the couple to live. When the preparations were complete, he would return with his entourage, often accompanied with a shout and a trumpet, to gather his bride to himself and take her to be with him.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. You see, a commonly understood description of the Church is "the Bride of Christ". Note all the parallels. "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world" (Eph 1:4), before you or I was born. We were promised by the Father to His Son before time began (Titus 1:1-3). At the proper time, the Son came and paid the price for His bride. Then, as He told His disciples, "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:2-3). We know that "the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God" (John 14:7), just like the parable of the ten virgins (Matt 25:1-13). And we know that once we are with Him we will enjoy the marriage feast of the Lamb in heaven (Rev 19:6-9). Now does it sound familiar?

You see, we who are in Christ are the subject of an arranged marriage. We were selected by the Father. We were purchased by the Son. We will be joined with Him forever. If the notion of an arranged marriage sounds like slavery to you, then you're in the wrong relationship with Christ. Further, if you recall the reason that Moses didn't make it to the Promised Land, it was because he messed up a picture that God was making of the Rock that was struck once and then spoken to afterwards. The cost of messing up that picture was that he never made it to Canaan. God thinks His pictures are important. If you find it repugnant that a price would be paid for a bride, then you might want to reevaluate whether you want to be part of the Bride of Christ, because that is exactly the marriage God has in mind, and when we mess with that image God has built, we do so at our own peril.