At His ascension, Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, was exalted into heavenly glory where John saw Him “having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth.” At Pentecost, which we celebrate in a little over a week, Jesus poured out this sevenfold Spirit on the church. The Holy Spirit is the coronation gift from the Son to His bride, a sign that He has taken His heavenly throne and that she will share it with Him.
But the Spirit is more than a mere sign of Christ’s kingship. The Spirit effects His kingship.
Through the Spirit, Jesus asserts His authority in the world, drives back the kingdom of Satan, and takes dominion over all creation. In Hebrew, the word for “spring” is the same as the word for “eye,” so the Lamb’s seven eyes which are seven lights and seven Spirits are also seven springs. At Pentecost, Jesus established springs of the Spirit on earth, which well up to water a fallen creation
Through Isaiah (44:3), Yahweh promised to pour out water on the land of Israel and His Spirit upon Israel’s seed. Jesus tells Nicodemus that Israel must be born again of water and the Spirit, and John tells us that the witnesses to Jesus are the “Spirit, the water and the blood” (1 John 5). When the Spirit is poured out like water, he turns desolate places to fruitfulness, transforms the dry land into a grove, transfigures the withered leaf into a green (Isaiah 32:15; Ezekiel 39:29; Joel 2:29; Zechariah 12:10; Acts 2:17-18, 33; 10:45). In fulfillment of all these promises, the Holy Spirit comes as divine water flowing from the spring of the Father and Son to bring life to the world.
And to bring life to marriage. It’s often pointed out that Paul begins his instructions on marriage with the exhortation to mutual submission: “be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” That’s true, but it doesn’t go far enough. To see the full context of Paul’s instructions, we have to step back further, to Paul’s exhortation to wisdom and his teaching about the Spirit. For Paul, godly marriage is a Pentecostal reality.
What does a Spirit-filled marriage look like? We should ask what it sounds like. For the first thing Paul says is that the Spirit makes us noisy. “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,” he says. Though he condemns drunkenness, Paul implies that the result of being filled with the Spirit is quite like the result of being filled with spirits. “They are filled with new wine,” said the skeptical Jews about the babbling disciples at Pentecost. It was a plausible mistake.
For Paul, the Spirit doesn’t make us placid and mild, quiet and retiring. When we’re filled with the Spirit, we cannot not speak, and our speech breaks out in boisterous Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Being filled with the Spirit means being filled with music, in our mouths and in our hearts. A marriage filled with the Spirit is full of noise, harmonious and melodious noise, joyful noise. When the Spirit is poured out on us, we become like our God, whose thunderous voice is like the sound of many waters.
By the Spirit, we’re tuned to the harmonies and rhythms of God, prepared to join a heavenly chorus, where we will not only make music but be made into music. Through the Spirit of Pentecost, diverse languages were harmonized to proclaim a single gospel. The Spirit must do the same in marriage. You come to marriage speaking different languages – one of you talks male, the other female. If you don’t already realize you were multilingual, you soon will. Only through the Spirit can your voices be united in a single polyphonic song of praise.
By harmonizing marriage, the Spirit also beautifies. It’s only through the Spirit that marriage can manifest the glory and beauty of the God who is Beauty and Glory. Jonathan Edwards wrote, “It was made especially the Holy Spirit’s work to bring the world to its beauty and perfection out of chaos; for the beauty of the world is a communication of God’s beauty. The Holy Spirit is the harmony and excellence and beauty of the deity . . . Therefore, ‘twas His work to communicate beauty and harmony to the world, and so we read that it was He that moved upon the face of the waters.”
According to Paul, the song of the Spirit is a song of thanksgiving. When the Father fills us with the Spirit of song and the song of the Spirit, He tunes us to give thanks for all things in the name of the Lord Jesus. Our joyful song, Paul says, should be a hymn of universal thanksgiving, thanksgiving universal in time – at all times – and universal in circumstance – for all things.
When we’ve all that straight, then we can begin to talk about headship and submission. When we talk about headship and submission outside that context, we are in danger of turning Paul’s instructions into an excuse for domination and control on the one side, and for abject, cowering submission on the other. But in this context, marriage is not so much a hierarchy as a harmony; Paul doesn’t instruct us in a method so much as teach us a melody. Marital union, fulfilled in the Spirit, is not a rigid hierarchy, a top-town tyranny. It’s a dance; it’s music, the embodied music of the seven-stringed Spirit, who first tunes us and then breathes through us so that we resonate with thanks.
In Eastern Orthodox wedding celebrations, the bride and groom wear crowns for part of the service. The crowns are royal crowns, since the husband is a new Adam and the wife a new Eve, king and queen of creation. They are martyr’s crowns, calling both husband and wife to self-sacrifice for one another and for others. They give a foretaste of a future crown of glory; at the end of the Orthodox service, the priest removes the crowns to remind the couple that they have not yet won the crown of life that they shall receive in the life to come.
Above all, the crowns are signs of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Because of the Spirit, we’re already crowned with glory, crowned as martyrs, crowned as rulers. Through the Spirit, we’re able to receive everything from the Lord’s hand – plenty or want, joy or sorrow, sickness or health – with triumphant thanksgiving. Not with indifference, not with endurance, not with equanimity; but with gratitude and joy. The Spirit is the love that binds the Father and Son, and He is the conquering love that transfigures every moment into a moment of grace, every cross into a threshold to renewal.
Israel stood in awe when Moses struck the Rock that followed them and saw the water burst forth. As the Lord marches through the dry wilderness of this world, He makes it flow with rivers of water. He changes a dry land into a pool (Psalm 107). We have seen greater things than this. When God struck Jesus, our crucified Rock, water flowed from Him to renew the earth.
But we’ve seen greater things even than this: It’s not surprising that when Yahweh walks through the wilderness, refreshing waters spring up. We expect the incarnate Son to be a well of eternal life. What’s surprising is that the same happens to us. Not only Yahweh, but also those whose strength is in Him make the barren valley fruitful (Psalm 84). And we flow with living water the same way the Rock in the wilderness did, the same way Christ did. We’re of the earth earthy; but when God fills us we become fountains of the Spirit. We’re dust and ashes, but when the Lord strikes, the water of the Spirit wells up and flows out. When struck, we become springs of the seven Spirits which are seven eyes. When struck, we are the seven strings of the Spirit’s lyre, resoun ding wi th Psalms and hymns and Spiritual songs.
The Holy Spirit is the creative Alpha Spirit of the first day, the one who begins to form the stuff of the creation into beauty. He is the re-creative Omega Spirit of the Sabbath who brings everything to completion. In marriage, the Spirit unites man and wife as one flesh, shapes two lives into one, and impels this dual to be completed. All that you wish for and hope for and yearn for in your marriage, from its beginning to its end – enduring love, fullness of joy, flourishing life, children, a long life of unity, ministry, a role in the redemption of the nations – all of it is a gift of the Spirit. All of it springs from the Spirit, the sevenfold Holy Spirit who flows from the Father and Son.
So, from this day, and throughout your marriage, drink deeply from this well, drink until you are filled, drink until you overflow. And then drink again.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let us Pray.
Almighty God, our Father, we pray that by Your grace their marriage would flourish and produce abundant fruit. Teach Gabriel to lead and Kristen to follow; teach them the dance of initiation and response, the melody of love and returned love. May they not shrink back when You strike; may they know that You strike to make them fountains of living water. Above and before all, fill them with Your Spirit, the sevenfold Spirit of Your Risen Son, that they may keep in step with the Spirit, walk in the Spirit, pray in the Spirit, sing in the Spirit, speak in the Spirit. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.