God and Communion: Marriage as Sacrament in the New Testament

Abstract

The last chapter ended its survey of marriage and family in the Old Testament in the company of the prophets of Israel. It is they who through their use of marriage as metaphor for the covenant relationship between the Lord and Israel deepened the appreciation of marriage itself. Now we arrive at the great moment of expectancy, the dawn of the promised new and everlasting covenant. While we must affirm the profound continuity of God's purpose between the series of covenants in the Old Testament, and their culmination in the covenant of the New Testament, we must also affirm a new beginning. As St. Paul asserts, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation" (2 Cor 5:17). The first words of the Fourth Gospel are intentionally identical to those with which the Septuagint Bible opens the book of Genesis: ... "in the beginning." But St. John also declares a new beginning and a new creation in Christ, the re-generation of the human race, when he speaks of the Word who "became flesh and dwelt among us ... full of grace and truth," enabling all who receive him "to become children of God, born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God" (John 1:14, 12-13).