Day 23: Just The Facts: One Flesh (Ruth 4:13)
Today’s Passage: Ruth 4:13
Depending on your age, you’re familiar with a television character named Joe Friday. He starred in a long running police show, Dragnet. He had a few tag lines. One of those taglines was, “Just the facts ma’am.”
When you are telling a story are you a “just the facts” person, or do you provide lots of “color” for vivid detail?
Consider all we’ve read. From Ruth laying at Boaz’s feet with the description of the garment, to a sandal being removed at the city gate. We now come to verse 13 and it feels a bit like “just the facts”.
Boaz and Ruth married. Boaz and Ruth consummated their marriage. Boaz and Ruth had a son.
Wow. What happened? Where’s the detail? Perhaps we are being invited to think deeply about these facts.
I am not referring to the wedding night, we know about those details. However, how do we understand this one-flesh idea?
Becoming one-flesh is more than moment. Marriage is a process of growing in relationship.
Consider how marriage is a reflection of the relationship of the Trinity. Consider how marriage is a reflection of God’s relationship with us. Jesus even discusses the church as His bride.
We often refer to the marriage covenant. God’s relationship with us is also covenantal. The idea of covenant is much more than the modern-day notion of a contractual relationship. The relationship of husband to wife, and wife to husband, is to be patterned after God’s faithful covenantal relationship to his creation.
In marriage there is the promise of committed love between husband and wife, and wife and husband. A man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife (Gen. 2:24). Jesus said to us, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”. Might Jesus had said, “for better or worse, in sickness, and health…” These words communicate a lifetime commitment, rather than a moment, or a contract with an end date.
In marriage the creation of the covenant is communal. The proclamation is public. The witnesses are doing much more than the witnessing of a contract. It is the nothing short of declaring that two have set themselves on a journey of becoming one. The public witnesses celebrate the fulfillment of God’s design, in which a new family is publicly created, and the family of God expands.
In marriage, the sexual union is much more than physical. It is emotional, relational, even spiritual. It is the deepest form of personal communion.
If you are not married, at times it is hard to read such high and vaulted language. I won’t ask you to not make it personal. Rather, I would ask you to, at a societal level, continue to esteem marriage. Today, people suggest little difference between co-habitation and marriage. Today, people confuse sex with love. Love between spouses involves sexual intimacy, but sex is not love.
Today’s “just the facts” verse stops me. It invites me to consider all God has provided elsewhere in the Scriptures. It stands against the cultural trend of our day. The verse invites us to consider God’s facts regarding marriage.