Just as the image of Father and Son reveals God’s eternal, loving nature, so too the Bible gives us another intimate metaphor: Marriage.
Marriage is not a human invention—it’s a God-ordained image meant to reflect something greater. Our earthly marriages therefore are intended to give us a glimpse of the “profound mystery” of heaven–the eternal communion of love between God and His people, and even more deeply, within God Himself..
Marriage serves as an echo in two profound directions: it reflects both the love shared within the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—and the covenantal love between Christ and His people. In both cases, marriage reveals a love that is faithful, self-giving, and joyfully committed.
Marriage as a Reflection of the Trinity
And “[t]he two shall become one flesh” echoes the kind of deep union we see in the Godhead: not a loss of personhood, but a profound oneness. Marriage, like the Trinity, is a living picture of love that is self-giving, other-oriented, and committed. God creates Eve for Adam to provide intimacy, unity, and covenant. In a godly marriage, the husband and wife embody dimensions of the the relationship between the members of the trinity: love, service, honor, joyful submission, and mutual delight.
Theologians have long seen in this a faint echo of the perichoresis of the Trinity—the eternal dance of mutual indwelling and love between Father, Son, and Spirit. While our marriages are not a perfect image of this Trinitarian love, they are a lived parable of what love in its highest form looks like.
As Richard Coekin explained, marriage reflects the fact that “The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in a permanent, plural, equal, complementary, ordered, and loving union.”
Marriage as a Reflection of the Love of Christ
Likewise, marriage is a beautiful reflection of the deep intimacy and union that exists between Christ and his people– the Church.
The Apostle Paul hearkened back to Genesis when he explained this:
31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
It’s no coincidence that one of the most passionate and intimate books in the Bible—the Song of Songs—has been read by Christians for centuries as a metaphor for God’s covenant love. For instance, one beloved passage reads:
“Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the Lord.”
—Song of Songs 8:6 (ESV)
Solomon’s powerful words of desire and delight point us too the truth that God is not distant or abstract, but relational and joyful and filled with eternal delight. While some traditions, like Mormonism, struggle to find value in this book, the Christian tradition sees in it a vivid echo of divine love—a love that human marriage is meant to reflect and participate in.
The Bride of Christ
The Church of Christ is vividly portrayed as a bride being prepared for marriage to the Lamb of God.
The image of a bride reveals deep aspects of Christ’s love for his Church. Christ does not merely save individuals—He unites them into His body, the Church, whom He loves as a husband loves his bride (Ephesians 5:25–27). His love is sacrificial: He gives Himself up for her. His love is purifying: He washes her with the word. His love is covenantal: He is faithful even when His people are not.
When Paul says marriage is a “profound mystery,” he’s telling us that our marriages point beyond themselves to the day when the Church will stand before her Bridegroom, clothed in white, radiant in glory. This is truest love story of all.
This image of the bride also reveals the inner workings of the Trinity. God the Father prepares a people for the Son (John 6:37). The Holy Spirit sanctifies and beautifies the Church, preparing her for the marriage of the Lamb. The Son receives His bride in love and joy. This is not just the goal of redemption—it is the joy of the Trinity from before the foundation of the world.
Ultimately, all of creation will culminate in the wedding feast of the Lamb where we will be presented “as a radiant churfch, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless,” (Ephesians 5:25-27) and then we will dwell with Christ forever
Marriage as a Type and Shadow
The beautiful relationships God gives us—especially marriage—are not ends in themselves. They are signposts. They point us beyond themselves to contemplate the Triune God, whose love is the source of all true intimacy.
And when we glimpse that divine love, we begin to understand why earthly marriage, as good as it is, is only a shadow of the union to come—the perfect union between Christ and His bride.
Next I will talk about the closely related metaphor of the Church as the body of Christ.