Well, each of us needs to change something about ourselves, and many of us want to change

something about ourselves.

So how do we break free from the patterns and ruts of life?

What hope is there for personal change in our lives when we seem to be stuck?

The answer comes in a marriage sermon on a glorious text in Ephesians 5-22-33, and

a 2007 sermon, here's what John Piper said.

Marriage in its deepest meaning is a copy of Christ and His Church.

If you want to understand God's meaning for marriage, you have to grasp that we're dealing

with a copy.

Marriage isn't an end in itself.

This is why marriage doesn't exist in the resurrection.

It's a copy.

Copies aren't needed anymore.

Then the reality is fullest on its display.

Here, they're needed.

The world is filled with a need for this very kind of marriage.

It won't be needed in the end.

It's a copy, and what it's copying is an original, a reality of truth.

So it's a copy of a greater original.

It's a metaphor of a greater reality.

It's a parable of a greater truth, and the original, the reality and the truth is God's marriage

to His people or Christ's marriage to His Church.

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