Why Didn’t Jesus Marry?
You know you’ve wondered about this.
Most people want to get married. Why didn’t Jesus?
I know it’s easy to speculate but in this instance, Jesus tells us. Our problem is we just don’t believe him, at least not at first.
Jesus didn’t marry while on earth because before the earth was made he was engaged.
We see marriage here as the greatest union possible, that we would become one flesh with another who is the apple of our eye. And yet marriage here is but a shadow of a greater and more profound reality than our minds can imagine.
If you have the time listen to the wonderful sermon below by one of the greatest preachers who ever lived, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Step back in time and find a seat in the church he pastored for thirty-eight years, the New Park Street Church in London. The year was 1887 and the day he delivered it was August 21. The passage for his sermon was Revelation 19:9.
And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”
Revelation 19:9 (ESV)
The Marriage Supper of the Lamb is scheduled to take place and you are invited, not to witness it as a spectator, but to experience it as a participant. I know for us who are male, to be a part of Christ’s Bride, seems a little weird, but as Spurgeon says, sometimes words and metaphors interfere with the deeper truth God intends for us to understand.
This marriage is an eternal union in a sinless place and we will have been transformed into immortality. Weddings and marriages in this age are but shadows of what is intended for those prepared for that day. Also we will be united with the one who truly loved us enough to become the Lamb of God who, as John the Baptist declared, “takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29)
Finally, if you truly understand the significance of this marriage supper it has the powerful potential to transform you here and now. You can become for your spouse, the gentle lamb who gives sacrificially to your beloved.
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.