N. T. Wright:
It is the fact of a new family that declares to Caesar that he doesn’t run the show any more, because Jesus Christ runs it instead.
It is the fact of a new, single, united family that tells the powers of the world that Israel’s God is God, that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not.
As long as we continue to collude with things that no Paulinist should ever collude with – fragmentation, petty squabbles, divisions over this or that small point of doctrine – the powers can fold their arms and watch us having our little fun while they still run the show. But when there actually is one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph 4), then the powers are called into account, and they will know it.
Something new has happened, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And there’s a cost, the cost of being different.
That’s why we have the challenge of marriage in Ephesians 5, in which the coming together of male and female – and what a challenge that always has been, and still is – symbolizes once more the coming together of Jew and Gentile, which symbolizes again the coming together of heaven and earth.
That is why it’s so important that in our generation we struggle again for the sanctity and vitality of marriage, not for the sake of maintaining a few outmoded ethical concepts and taboos, but because this is built deep into creation itself, now to be renewed in Christ and the Spirit.
from “Whence and Whither Pauline Studies in the Life of the Church?”
