THEREFORE SHALL A MAN LEAVE HIS FATHER AND HIS MOTHER

The Ephesian quotation reads, ‘For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother’ and this prompts the question, ‘for what cause?’ In days of promiscuity, infidelity, and moral laxity, it is imperative that we look for the answer, and it will be found eas­ily in both passages.

The marriage of one man to one woman is a divine institu­tion and the wedded union is a relationship more tender, and stronger, than that of parents to children. As the Genesis passage explains, the woman was taken out of man, for man, and as hus­band and wife they are viewed as one flesh. In the Hebrew tongue ‘man’ is ish and ‘woman’ is isha. This is intimacy indeed and in the very day that they were created God called their name Adam, Gen 5. 2. Two persons had become one flesh with one common name. They were one in a holy and happy union ordained of God. Adam said on that day, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh’, Gen 2. 23. The husband must cleave to his wife, united to her in bonds of love. Some four thou­sand years later, in controversy with the Pharisees, the Lord Jesus confirmed the permanent nature of the sacred institution of marriage, Matt. 19. 3-6. Divorce is not of God. There is, however, another most important reason for the preservation of the marriage union. The oneness of Adam and his wife Eve was intended in the purpose and design of God to be an inspired foreshadowing of the mystic union of Christ and His Bride. ‘We are’, writes Paul, ‘members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones’. Then, with reference back to the Genesis account he adds, ‘This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church’, Eph. 5. 30-32. What confirmation is this of the eternal security of every believer in the Lord Jesus! ‘Christ… loved the church, and gave himself for it’, Eph 5. 25. How could a member of the body of Christ ever be lost? What exhortation too is here, that as He has loved us so must men love their wives, and so should all those who love Him love each other, until that day when the heavenly Bridegroom and His Bride will be manifested together in glory.