Gerald Hiestand has been writing a short series of posts on gender roles, and it’s really rather good! This paragraph from the third post I think is particularly wonderful:
Human marriage is not about us alone. It’s not about finding a soul-mate, or staving of loneliness. It’s more than God’s way of reproducing the humans species. God ordained human marriage as a living, visible witness of the indescribable, life-changing relationship that Christ has with his church. It is necessary, therefore, that we live out our marriage relationships in a way that reflect and point toward this ultimate higher reality. Human marriage, at its core, is about imaging forth the glory of the gospel.