God made marriage to reflect the holy, eternal, loving, intimate, joyful, and sacrificial love He has always cherished among the members of the Godhead. In that sense, marriage is not about you but is certainly for you. God has invited you to participate in and imitate His triune love. Perhaps this is why Scripture calls marriage the “mystery of the Gospel” because, unlike any other human relationship or institution, it most clearly and most beautifully pictures the divine. 

Recently I remembered why I had stopped noticing the sounds of war during my deployment in Operation Iraqi Freedom. When we first entered the country, every cell in my body was on heightened alert. My adrenaline was constantly pumping. Every staccatoed rat-tat-tat from a distant AK-47 was enough to make my hair stand on end. Every civilian standing in the crowd could be a suicide bomber. Every vehicle could deliver the IED that would send me home looking forever like Lieutenant Dan. And with every mortar round fired, the reality of going home in a box and my mother receiving a triangle-folded American flag pressed upon my mind. Yet, as the deployment wore on, these sounds melded into a strange kind of normalcy for me.
For instance, every morning around 3 AM, the reverberating rumbles of incoming mortar rounds would agitate the little mud brick house we lived in. Those first nights in theater, I awoke in a great alarm from every blast, alert and ready for combat, frantically putting on my equipment for readiness and protection. But, once I realized that Iraqis with Mortar rounds could not hit the proverbial sand when falling off the fictional camel, I eventually learned to sleep right through the explosions as if nothing strange was happening around me.
The thunderous eruptions, once jarring to me, became the ethereal drum tap in the desert’s lullaby. Time, like an ancient spell, wove its enchantment upon my senses, leaving me unconscious of my surroundings, which is what I believe has happened to the modern church.
In his timeless malice, Satan has assailed the sacred bond of marriage for so long that the sounds and signs of warfare upon her have faded into the cacophony of noises we have become accustomed to. While we have grown numb to the relentless onslaught at the devil’s hand, divorce, infidelity, and broken homes have become the tapestry woven into the threads of our society.
For this reason, it is incumbent upon us to wake from our slumber, recognize the war, and cling to the weapons of warfare our compassionate General has assigned us. For all who call themselves Christians, it is time to rekindle our love for the hallowed Word. As followers of Christ, we must valiantly thwart the adversary’s advances on marriage in general, and our marriages in particular, by embracing God’s designs for us, our marriages, our children, and our homes that are revealed in Holy Scripture.
Today, we begin our series on marriage by traveling back to the genesis of it, seeking solace in the profound wisdom spoken by our God in His Word. In this collection of essays on the topic of marriage, we will lean into what Scripture teaches and glean from our Maker’s timeless intention for marriage that will ever illuminate our path. Today, we begin by speaking about the design of marriage from the first Biblical text on marriage found in Genesis 1:26-28.
The Text

26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” – Genesis 1:26-28

The Trinitarian Design of Marriage
The Bible describes the creation of man in marital language. For instance, God did not merely create two distinctly gendered individuals, calling them “very good” in their disconnectedness, but a pair of people who would become one flesh together. In the same way that shoes come in twos and socks come in pairs, God made man as a male and female unit that would join together to become one very glorious thing, which of course, was the “very good” part.
In this, we must also notice that the creation of man was a trinitarian event. God does not create the first domestic community without blueprints. Instead, he patterns it off the divine community that has existed forever. At the height of the creation enterprise, God speaks, saying, “Let Us make mankind in Our image” When God does this, it not only serves as proof for the triunity within the Godhead but the kind of intimacy God intends to be present in the marriage.
The Trinitarian Community
For all eternity, members of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in perfect harmony and self-giving love, an exquisite dance of divine affection. This celestial community lives in exquisite blissful intimacy, lavishly pouring out fragrant love upon one another, heralding each other’s praises in melodious harmonies that echoed across the unformed realms, holding nothing back from one another across eons of affectionate fellowship.
In the embrace of the Father, love emanates as an eternal wellspring, an outpouring of perfect affection towards the Son and the Spirit. The Father’s love, boundless and unchanging, encapsulates the essence of nurturing care and tender compassion. It is a love that delights in the Son’s obedience and wholeheartedly affirms His eternal Sonship, a love that seeks to glorify and honor the Son above all.
The Son, in response, reciprocates this love with perfect devotion and filial obedience. His passion for the Father is marked by complete surrender and an unwavering desire to fulfill the Father’s will. It is a love that willingly steps into the realm of humanity, taking upon Himself the weight of the world’s sin, offering Himself as the perfect sacrifice—a demonstration of love that knows no bounds.
The Holy Spirit, the breath and life within the Trinity, embodies the love that flows between the Father and the Son. It is a love that unites, empowers, and guides. The Spirit’s love is like a gentle wind, constantly moving and animating the divine dance. It is a love that testifies to the unity and oneness of the Godhead, bringing forth the fruit of love in the hearts of believers.
Together, the love within the Trinity is a symphony of self-giving, perfect love. It is a love that transcends time and space, existing in timeless eternity. It is a love that invites us to behold the divine dance and participate in its harmonious rhythms. Through the love of the Trinity, we catch a glimpse of the infinite depth of love and are invited to enter into a transformative relationship with the Triune God, where we, too, can experience the boundless love that unites Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This, of course, is best pictured in human marriage.
As many scholars and authors attest, when our triune God patterned man according to His image, He was undoubtedly creating individuals with a rational and creative capacity to think, feel, love, and do.
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As Job is beginning to understand, God may indeed have a purpose in his suffering which does not fit with Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar’s insufficient grasp of the situation. As the dialogue progresses, Job’s heart is now stirred and moves him to confess his faith in a coming redeemer, even through tears of pain, doubt, and fear! Job knows that his redeemer lives! Job knows his redeemer will one day stand upon the earth. And Job knows that he will see that redeemer with the eyes of a resurrected body! In the midst of his terrible circumstances, the suffering prophet nevertheless confesses “for I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.”

Job’s Faith Is Re-Kindled
Despite all appearances to the contrary, and despite the cruel counsel coming from his friends (most recently Eliphaz), Job still expects vindication. Job knows that God is good, keeps his promises, and that some how and in some way, his ordeal will end and it will be clear to all that Job is not hiding some secret sin.
As the dialogue between Job and his friends continues to unfold, in Job 16:18-17:3, the glowing embers of Job’s faith reappear. With this hope arises, as Job calls out his erst-while friends for their cruel and self-righteous counsel. He calls them “mockers.”

O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place. Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor. For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return. `My spirit is broken; my days are extinct; the graveyard is ready for me. Surely there are mockers about me, and my eye dwells on their provocation. Lay down a pledge for me with you; who is there who will put up security for me?’

Job now realizes that the answer to the “why?” question (which he has asked of YHWH), along with his personal vindication before his friends, might not come until after his own death. But yes, Job will get his answer. He will be vindicated—if not in this life, then certainly in the next. His friends do not understand nor, apparently, do they care to.
Because of this glimmer of hope and because Job still has faith in the God of the promise (however, weak that faith may be under the circumstances), Job knows his friends cannot help him. He sees their efforts are futile, if not cruel. There is nowhere else to go. Job’s only hope is in God. Yet, his mood still swings wildly, bringing him right up to the point of despair. But in the balance of Job 17, Job possess enough of his prior faith to continue to call out his friends for their faithless response.

My spirit is broken; my days are extinct; the graveyard is ready for me. Surely there are mockers about me, and my eye dwells on their provocation. `Lay down a pledge for me with you; who is there who will put up security for me? Since you have closed their hearts to understanding, therefore you will not let them triumph. He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property— the eyes of his children will fail. `He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom men spit. My eye has grown dim from vexation, and all my members are like a shadow. The upright are appalled at this, and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless. Yet the righteous holds to his way, and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger. But you, come on again, all of you, and I shall not find a wise man among you. My days are past; my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart. They make night into day: ‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’ If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I make my bed in darkness, if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’ where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?

Not only is Job giving back as good as he is getting from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, but only a man who has done nothing wrong will fight so hard to be vindicated–as Job is now doing.
Bildad’s Second Speech—More “Belly Wind”
As Bildad makes his second speech one thing is becoming clear–Job, the suffering prophet, is longing to probe deeper into the mysteries of God’s providence, while Job’s friends focus entirely on the their distorted views regarding the suffering of the wicked. Bildad is clearly resentful of Job’s low estimate of his three friends’ theological abilities.[1] Whereas Eliphaz tried to moderate his second speech, Bildad is much more cantankerous. In verses 1-4 of Job 18, Bildad responds to Job with words which reflect the former’s growing frustration and anger. “Then Bildad the Shuhite answered [Job] and said: `How long will you hunt for words? Consider, and then we will speak. Why are we counted as cattle? Why are we stupid in your sight? You who tear yourself in your anger, shall the earth be forsaken for you, or the rock be removed out of its place?” Bildad’s challenge is that if the law of divine retribution is immutable (God must punish wrong-doing), and if Job refuses to repent, he will foolishly continue to throw himself against the fixed law that God must punish all sin.[2] How dare Job think that he is above the fixed laws of YHWH’s sovereign will!
As Bildad sees it, the moral order of the universe is set in stone. Since God will punish the wicked for their sins, in the balance of the chapter, Bildad recites a catalogue of the troubles of the wicked, all designed to appeal to Job’s conscience so that he is convicted of sins. The problem with Bildad’s speech is that Job’s conscience is clean. Says Bildad,

Indeed, the light of the wicked is put out, and the flame of his fire does not shine. The light is dark in his tent, and his lamp above him is put out. His strong steps are shortened, and his own schemes throw him down. For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks on its mesh. A trap seizes him by the heel; a snare lays hold of him. A rope is hidden for him in the ground, a trap for him in the path. Terrors frighten him on every side, and chase him at his heels. His strength is famished, and calamity is ready for his stumbling. It consumes the parts of his skin; the firstborn of death consumes his limbs. He is torn from the tent in which he trusted and is brought to the king of terrors. In his tent dwells that which is none of his; sulfur is scattered over his habitation. His roots dry up beneath, and his branches wither above. His memory perishes from the earth, and he has no name in the street. He is thrust from light into darkness, and driven out of the world. He has no posterity or progeny among his people, and no survivor where he used to live. They of the west are appalled at his day, and horror seizes them of the east.

Job’s Speech — He Knows His Redeemer Lives
With that, we come to one of the most remarkable speeches in all the Bible (Job 19:25-27). Job’s words inspired Handel when writing the Messiah, and they continue to profoundly move all who read them. Job’s speech is so profound because it is not as though Bildad’s words contain no truth. Yes, God will punish the wicked. But Bildad’s cold and formulaic “canned” answer does not fit the facts at hand. This may be true of the wicked when they suffer. But what about the righteous? They suffer too. Thus the issue is not what fixed moral law Job has broken. For Job, the issue is “why has God turned his back on him?”
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Some may not be used to thinking of God as an unmoved mover.  Yet is not the first cause of all things God?  If God is anything He is that.  But many more attributes may be derived from the unmoved mover being pure act, which will show that we are dealing with God. This is not accidental.  Just as the attributes of a thing derive from its kind of existence, so if God’s existence or being may be established and that it is of itself, or from itself (aseity), its absoluteness, indpendence and primacy being herein established, many of its attributes may be drawn out from this. 

Can God be Proven?
Can God be proven to exist?¹  The Bible says God is “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3) and “in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)  If this be true, as Christians believe, then it should be for all created things that their existence and continuance has no adequate or sufficient explanation or grounding in the things themselves, that is, in their own nature, but only because God wills them to exist.
¹ Francis Turretin (d. 1687), a pillar of Reformed Orthodoxy said, speaking for the Reformed: “Can the existence of God be irrefutably demonstrated against atheists?  We affirm.” Institutes, vol. 1, 3rd topic, question 1, p. 169.
If this be the case: (1) this should be able to be seen from examining the nature of things themselves and how they are caused, that is, by the light of nature (without Scripture), and, (2) from the characteristics of nature or its laws, God must be the only sufficient explanation, both in the orders of knowing and being,† for the existence and continuance at every moment for all created things.
† That is with respect to epistemology and ontology (or metaphysics).
This must be qualified just a little.  One would not expect from only certain properties of nature to be able to derive everything about God.  However, if such necessary derivations can be made, that which will be known of God will be distinctive to Him, showing that it is God one is considering.  This is what Rom. 1:20 says: “the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.”  It is also what the Westminster Confession (1646) teaches.¹
¹ WCF ch. 21.1, “The light of nature showeth that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all; is good, and doeth good unto all;”ch. 1.1, “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable…”
About this Proof
No originality is claimed for the substance of this proof.  The general tenor of it derives from Aristotle, through Aquinas and most lately through Edward Feser.²  I have adapted it in my own style.  The Dutch reformed theolgian Peter van Mastricht (d. 1706) used a very similar proof.³
² Feser (b. 1968) is a professor of philosophy and an analytical Thomist.  Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God  Pre  (Ignatius Press, 2017), ch. 1, ‘The Aristotelian Proof’, pp. 17-68³ Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology (RHB, 2019), vol. 2, bk. 2, ch. 2,sect. 2, pp. 45-46.
You can call it “The Aristotelian Proof from Change,” though, it does not hang on Aristotle, Aquinas, Mastricht, Feser or myself.  It derives from nature itself, necessarily, and is able to be understood by any rational creature in any place at any time.  It is a universal testimony to God’s existence. (Ps. 19:1-4)
The proof proceeds by the way of causality, one of the three ways the Christian tradition has taught God may be generally known by.º  It does not start with things more fundamental and absolute in their being than God, and then derive from these God, who must be consequently lesser.  Rather, it starts with things less absolute and fundamental than God and works backwards, so to speak, by their necessary connection to Him, to show that an absolute God must be.  That is, the way of knowing need not always follow the priority or ultimacy of being.
º See ‘On the Three General Ways God is Known: Way of Causality, Negation & Eminence’.
It ought not to be thought this proof is the only way God’s existence may be demonstrated, as other aspects of being and creation, by their distinctive traits, may be expected to show further things about the character of our God.
First, 1. Preliminaries to the proof will be given, then 2. the proof will be proven, then 3. it will be shown that many more attributes of God may be derived from what has been proved, showing that it is God we are dealing with.  4. Two objections will be resolved, and lastly, 5. we will close.
1. Preliminaries to the Proof
1.1 Change
Change occurs.  Besides that we acknowledge and assume this in our daily actions (such as in reading this proof), and couldn’t live without doing so, to rationally deny change occurs, one would have to think of a reason for this, possibly another, and conclude that change does not occur.  This involves change.  That change occurs is undeniable; therefore it is true.
Change necessarily involves the actualization of a potential, that something has a potential for something, and that potential thing comes into being or is made actual.  That is, change cannot be sufficiently explained or justified apart from potentiality and actuality.  Potentiality and actuality must lie beneath all change, though they are metaphysical concepts which cannot of themselves be seen.
Change occurs, therefore potentiality and actuality exist, functioning in relation to each other.
1.2 Train Cars
A flatbed train car has much potential.  Given its axes and wheels it can roll down the railway.  It can also hold many heavy things on it off the ground.  Yet there are many things a train car has no potential for.  If you see bunny rabbits hopping around the car and hear violin music, you would look around for their cause because you know train cars can’t, by their nature, turn into bunnies or produce bunnies or violin music.  A metal train car doesn’t have those potentials, due to its unique nature in being a train car.
One may think perhaps: the train car could be melted down and turned into a metalic violin with metalic strings and produce violin music.  Perhaps it may, but then it wouldn’t be a train car (and you wouldn’t be seeing a flatbed and hear violin music at the same time).  If something is a train car, it can’t produce things beyond what its nature has the potential for.
If the car sits on a flat railway, how long will it sit there till it moves down the railroad?  Of course not until something else comes and pulls it along.  The flatbed has no ability or potential to move itself or to activate its own potentials.  Something else has to do that.
1.3 The Law of Causality
Say two train cars sit on the railroad next to each other.  Both have the potential to move.  Yet the potential of the one never moves the other.  Why?  Because the one flatbed’s potential to move is not actual; it is not actually moving, and that is what it would take to move the second flatbed, to activate its potential to move.
That one thing must be moved by another is not only a common observation all around us, it must be true for everything that has potential, precisely because something not actual cannot do anything.  A possibility does not exist as anything but a possibility.  These thngs must be true by the distinct natures of what potentiality and actuality must be.  The principle is called the Law of Causality:
Something potential can only be made actual by something actual.
This is not only universally true by empirical experience, but it must be true by definition from the laws that constitute nature, given change.  If change occurs, it must be done by something actual.  Something must bump into or pull the train car before it will move, because it has no nature or potential to move itself.
1.4 Ordered Series of Dependent Causes
In a train of many cars going down the railroad there is an ordered series of dependent causes: each car’s potential is being activated to move by the actual car in front of it in a series where one car is dependent on all those in front of it.  The train engine at the front is pulling all the cars after it; it is doing all the work in one respect, through the nature of those cars and their causal relations.
Of course we are not actually interested in train cars.  Each car stands for something that changes, namely any and everything we see around us.  Ordered series of various causes surround us, and we are part of them.
The issue we are getting to is not dependent on time, nor concerns change through time.  Take the series of train cars in a moment of time.  Each one still depends by way of causation and dependence on those in front.
Take a case where there is no movement or change through time: You may be sitting on a chair, which is keeping you off the floor.  The chair is being held up by the floor, the floor by the building supports, which are resting on the foundation, which is being held up by the ground.  The ground has more ground underneath it, and further factors are causing that ground to be the way it is, such as gravity and various forces science is concerned with.  Go as far along in that series as you can.  Here is a hierarchical series of ordered causes, always existing in our universe.
2. The Proof
2.1 The Problem
You see a clearing in the trees with flatbed train cars rushing through.  Seeing as a flatbed has no ability by its nature to move itself, what is moving each one?  You might say, “Well, the train car in front of it is pulling it.”  Well that is true, but that flatbed also has no power to move itself; what is pulling that one?
You look a little more around the edge of the trees and see several more train cars ahead in the line.  What is pulling those?  Each further car activating the potential of the one behind it still needs its own potential activated by another.¹
¹ If you don’t agree, try denying the Law of Causality above and see how that works out in daily life.  See Feser defend the principle in Five Proofs, ch. 1, ‘Common Misunderstandings’, pp. 38-68.
Clearly no finite number of flatbeds in the series is going to resolve the issue.  If there are 100 flatbeds, you will then need 101, then 102, 103, 104, etc.  You may think, “If no finite number of flatbeds will help, there must be an infinite number in this series, each further flatbed pulling the other.”  Yet if no flatbed by its nature has inbuilt power to move itself, neither does an infinite number or series of flatbeds.
Some may claim this commits the fallacy of composition, that the qualities of parts are not necessarily those of the combined whole: if each lego piece weighs one ounce, a wall of them does not weigh the same.  Yet not every composition of qualities functions the same.  If each lego is red, the whole wall of them is red.  What’s the only color of an infinite wall of red legos?
What kind quality and composition then are we concerned with?  If each flatbed has potential and therefore can’t move itself, and an infinite line of them is moving and changing, and thus has potential, it can’t move itself either.
Well, perhaps the infinite series of train cars is going in a circle.  That’s not going to work, for the same reasons.  The conglomerate of an infinite number of things that cannot move themselves still does not have a nature to be able to move itself, even in a circle.  So the flatbeds’ moving is left unexplained, as their natures, even strung together infinitely in whatever shape you desire, cannot account for it.º
º Turretin in addressing that a thing cannot be the cause for its own existence, which we will get to: “such a circle is impossible; for suppose it were true, it would follow that the same thing was made by itself and was the cause (mediately at least) of itself.” Institutes 1:170
But perhaps it’s a whirlpool, like the whirpool of secondary causes all around us.  What moves the infinite, whirpool of dependent causes (grant its existence for the sake of argument), if the whirlpool has nothing in it able to move itself and, as the whirlpool’s potential (which it must have, as it changes) must be activated by something outside itself?  Adding another whirpool, universe, dimension, finding of science, etc. is not going to help.
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