Rebuild the true picture of marriage

Marriage is one of the two institutions brought down to us from the original Creation—the Sabbath is the other one. There are good reasons for Christians to uphold marriage as God originally intended it. Namely, it illustrates the following Biblical truths:

• It illustrates the Christian’s relationship to the Law. According to Romans 7:1-6: "Or do you not know, brothers--for I am speaking to those who know the law--that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit."
• It illustrates Christ’s relationship to the Church. According to Ephesians 5:23-32: "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…"
• It illustrates God’s relationship with Israel. According to Isaiah 62:5: "As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons [or Builder] marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you." And, in Jeremiah 2:2: "Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem: I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown."
• It illustrates God’s redemptive plan. (See Matthew 25:1-13; John 14:2-3; Revelation 19:7; 21:9) The Jewish wedding in Jesus’ day was highly illustrative of Christ’s redemptive work. (See here. There are at least ten analogies of the Jewish wedding to the redemptive work of Christ.)
  

When we come to understand that the entire plan of redemption is precisely illustrated by the Jewish wedding, we will clearly see that there is no place for divorce after marriage. Its parallel in redemption would mean that God could send us back from Heaven once we got there.

Thus, a Christian will seek to rebuild the true picture of marriage that was in the mind of Christ. It was intended to be an object lesson of several divine relationships. To change the standard would alter the truth taught by the object lesson.