The Metaphor of Marriage

While there is a sense in which our marriage to Christ is not yet completed, biblical writers use the marriage metaphor to depict the legal, deeply personal, two-sided nature of the believer's relationship to God. It is the relationship God initiates and in which we participate.

--Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, How People Change (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2006), 48.