Christ and the Church, or, marriage

When Christians talk about marriage, they know that when people are joined together in marriage, it only weakly represents what is a more real truth, the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Church. Christ and the Church is the thing that marriage is supposed to point towards, that the union of marriage between people on earth is symbolic, a fallible (but tangible) representation of a great day to come, when the church (the bride) will come to meet with Jesus again (the bridegroom) in heaven, at which point there's lots of imagery in the bible to do with wedding feasts and joy and invitations to the banquet - what we have in metaphors can only show the smallest glimpse of heaven.

The BBC's article mentioning that "Church does not own marriage" really annoyed me, but the headline is absolutely correct. No one party in marriage can have ownership of marriage, so the Church, the bride in this case, cannot singly be the owner of marriage without the bridegroom, Jesus. Without Jesus, the heavenly marriage is impossible. After all, no single women can say all by themselves "I am married". So the same with Christ and the church - if that is the glorious truth behind marriage, and the physical union of two people the symbolism of that, then the Church by itself can never own marriage. And that is how the world would want it too - a church without Jesus Christ in it becomes one where you see supposed "christians" doing things that you were pretty sure they weren't supposed to be doing. A church without Christ is a divorced church and those on the outside looking in suffer disillusionment about God as a result.

I was fully prepared to let the BBC article be, and just let the people who like arguing about this kind of thing argue about this kind of thing without me - I see no need to rile non-christians on the subject of marriage. Few outside of Christianity desire marriage these days so I wouldn't want to discourage. As it is, there are few left who desire to spend their lifetime with someone else, less still who realise what that will mean for their life. I won't fully until I live it out.

It just seems the less important we make Godly values in marriages and relationships, the harder we find relating to each other. After all, without the notion of forgiveness, where can relationships go except down? And if we cannot reconcile ourselves to God, how difficult does that make reconciling ourselves with other people? And if husbands do not live a life of sacrifice for their wives, just as Jesus' bond to the church was through crucifixion, then how can we make good husbands?

The spirit is in us

I've always thought 'walking in the spirit' was a worse and clumsier term than 'walking with the spirit', but now I feel that the former statement holds more powerful imagery. With people, one person being 'in' someone else suggests an intimacy that comes with sexual union, whereas being 'with' someone suggests a space, however big or small, between the one person and the next. The spirit is with us, for sure, but saying the spirit is in us is a better demonstration of gods passion for us and his wanting to be as near to us as he possibly can. It also shows the degree of inseparability of God from the ones he loves. If it were just that God is with us, we could bite back and say 'yeah, from a distance', but the Holy Spirit being in us gives us no room for such doubts, for He is where we are.