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Since the idea of marriage as a reflection of deeper christian truths seems to have garnered interest – here is a longer exposition of it:
(From Here)

Ephemeral Reflections of Eternal Truths

Eph 5:22-24 ~ “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” [ESV]

We human beings are made for marriage, made for ultimate intimacy. We all want it; we all need it. We are made for a relationship in which we are completely known, through our deepest faults and loved despite them. A love so deep and so cleansing that it removes them from us at the cost to our Beloved. This is the Christian idea of marriage.

Many feel disappointed in their marriage. It does not satisfy the need for intimacy, spoken or unspoken, which aches within us. The husband may be overbearing, the wife shrewish; and we long for a union of love and charity. But in fact never in human history has their been a marriage of a man and woman that completely satisfied this need. But that is the point, we must not forget the end of this passage!

“This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

Human marriage could never live up to our need for our need was made to be satisfied in God, for a Marriage eternal and unfading. But rather Paul teaches us that human marriage is a shadow of a deeper truth. And that is the key – to understand the distinction between image, shadow and reflection versus reality; and to understand the point and purpose of the reflections at all.

Now in the reflection there is a danger. It is the common practice of the human heart to make idols, and reflections of what we really seek often make the best idols of all. Sometimes because we become confused, often we are impatient. If we seek to fulfill our need for intimacy in marriage we are destined to be left empty, unsatisfied and consumed for a need which cannot be met as we have sought it. The shadow is not the reality. The aroma of the finest dish is not food itself and a picture of our beloved is not their presence.

But why then the reflection at all? The Law is another example of a shadow given to us by God. The Law spoke of righteousness, but it could never make us righteous. And in the Law the Pharisees substituted the shadow for the reality of Christ. And in Galatians we are given a clear answer as to the purpose of the shadows. They are meant to instruct us, to tutor us about about a reality which we do not yet fully experience. (Gal 3:21-25)

Just as an aroma gives us a foretaste of the dish (though it does not fulfill our hunger for it) and as a picture reminds us of the object of affections even as we miss their presence. The very world we live in passing away; yet we, the immortals, live in it and often times find it so distracting. But within this ephemeral life God has provided us shadows of His eternal realities. That we might recognize the important and learn.

In discussion of biblical ideas of gender roles, egalitarians will often denounce complimentarian thought as elevating men to a “god-like” position in relation to women, that the husband is substituted for Christ.

This misses the point entirely, of course the husband is not Christ. The reflection is not reality. But marriage is a God-given shadow of an eternal truth, it is to teach us about the reality yet to come. Remember your lessons in school; we learned in two ways: through observation and through practice. A teacher’s lecture or watching a Christ-honoring marriage can teach us a great deal. But most often, a great deal of our learning came through practice. Just as the endless arithmetic problems that most of us didn’t enjoy but that drilled those truths into our heads anyways; living in a marriage provides a practical instruction to us on the nature of an eternal truth. Now just as with the arithmetic problems we can do it wrong, but this fault is introduced by us, the student, not the shadow God has provided us.

Therefore let us recognize this truth, about these fleeting reflections we are given of the everlasting. But let us also recognize the dangers in reflections; the best husband in the world is not Christ. And to forget this, even in the tiniest is to elevate the shadow into an idolatry following an illusion which will only leave us empty. Let us not condemn them for not being the reality; and be edified by them as they were meant for us. When we recognize that human marriage is not the eternal marriage then it is liberated of our disappointment and elevated to our benefit and God’s glory.