Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel | Reformed Theological Seminary

Marriage reveals something of eternal significance. From the beginning, God designed marriage to convey a greater reality―the passionate, unfailing, redeeming love of God for sinners, the eternal romance between Christ and his bride.

In this volume, Ray Ortlund traces marriage throughout Scripture―from the first marriage in the garden of Eden to the ultimate marriage in the book of Revelation―laying out a transcendent vision of marriage that dignifies our own imperfect unions as a display of the gospel. This book offers insight and hope to every married person today.

There is no one alive I would rather read than Ray Ortlund. This book will show you why. It shows us how marriage is a metaphor for the gospel itself, the one-flesh union of Christ to his church. This book will help you see the gospel and marriage both in a clearer light―in the light of an unveiled mystery.

Russell D. Moore
President, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

Captivating, alluring, and tearfully rendered, Ray Ortlund’s Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel displays the blood-bought gift of biblical marriage amidst the splendor of the whole biblical landscape. No polemics here―just the love of God poured out to conquer hell itself. Each page shows the biblical worldview in its aesthetic loveliness and disarming power. And don’t let the title fool you. This is not just another book on marriage. Readers will drink in a tour de force of biblical majesty on display on each and every page.

Rosaria Butterfield
Author, The Gospel Comes with a House Key

Ray Ortlund brilliantly enables you to carefully examine your marriage through the lenses of creation, fall, law, and gospel. In so doing, he helps us deepen our understanding of marriage, know why it is a struggle for us all, diagnose the marriage confusion in our culture, be clear where marriage help is to be found, and fall in love all over again with our God of amazing love, wisdom, and grace.

Paul David Tripp
President, Paul Tripp Ministries

My husband and I asked Ray Ortlund to preach on marriage as a picture of redemption at our wedding. We knew him to be a pastor with a scholar’s head and a lover’s heart. And we admired his and Jani’s marriage as a beautiful picture of the passionate, tender, loving relationship between Christ and his church. For the same reasons, I commend this book to you. It will deepen your understanding of the divine mystery of marriage and why it matters, and will inflame your heart to pursue greater love and oneness with Christ and with your mate.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth
Teacher and Host, Revive Our Hearts

The widespread tendency to treat the Bible as if it has been dropped straight down from heaven into the hands of the individual believer significantly inhibits the life and hampers the mission of the church. This series of Short Studies in Biblical Theology holds important promise of helping to remedy this situation with its goal of providing pastors and their congregations with studies of key biblical themes that will foster a growing understanding and appreciation of the redemptive-historical flow and Christ-centered focus of Scripture as a whole. I look forward with anticipation to the appearance of these volumes.

Richard B. Gaffin Jr.
Emeritus Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary

Reformed Theological Seminary is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other Resources