The foundation of marriage (3) - You can build healthy marital relationships and family by freeing yourself from negative thoughts about marriage.

                It is hard to find healthy couples and family models in our age.  If we look at each of our families and see our parents arguing and fighting a lot, then it is obvious that we cannot have a lot of positive thought about marriage but have lots of negative thoughts.  Too many young Christian singles are also suffering from negative thoughts about marriage.  Although they should get marry or want to get marry, they may have fear of marriage because of their parents’ unhealthy marital relationship.  Why do we have negative thoughts about marriage?  This is because the curse of Adam and Eve, the first couple of mankind in Genesis, brought curses to all human kind.  The curse is also applied to the family, which has led to many negative thoughts about marriage.  Despite being a paradigmatic couple, Adam and Eve brought about the destruction of the family by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil which was against the God's commandment.  This is referred to as the "Old Covenant" in terms of covenant theology.  In other words, the Old Testament Genesis model of Adam and Eve is old.  But we Christian couples are no longer under their model and curse anymore.  We are under the blessing of the second or the last Adam, Jesus.  We are looking for the model of Jesus and are following Him.  This is our blessing in the "New Covenant" era.

We can see God's blessings to us in the New Covenant era starting from Ephesians 5:22.  This scripture, which describes the marriage of Jesus, the Groom and the church, the bride, talks about our beautiful marriage that God intended through Adam and Eve before the fall.  We must look for and pursue this model of the marriage of Jesus and the church.  But I think too many Christian singles and couples still seem to be following the models of the Old Covenant model of Adam and Eve.  We are still looking at the old model in the old instinct.  Despite the better and more complete model of Jesus and the church, it seems that we are stuck with the old model.  Although we do not want to and we do not like it, we are tasting the depth of the sinfulness of the first model Adam and Eve and we are not tasting the depth of love of the last model Jesus and the church.  Therefore, I am worried that we are married without positive thoughts and abundant blessings and mysterious secrets or treasures of God but with negative thoughts, fear, worry and anxiety.

                There is a challenge to the marriage given to us by Jesus as the last Adam in this era when the marriage is broken and the family is collapsing.  It is' to build the model of couples and of families who receive Jesus as the Lord and have the kingdom of God’s perspective in this era where the families are collapsing and lack of family and couple model.  Therefore, we must build our marriage and family as a community of witnesses who communicate the powerful and effective gospel of God for His glory alone.