What God Has Joined Together
What God Has Joined Together
This is the great cross-over, where our most important spiritual choice meets our most important physical choice. Even that statement is too much an oversimplification of the subject, for our spiritual choice is not strictly spiritual, just as our physical choice is not purely physical. Both choices overlap into the other worlds because we are physical beings with spiritual promises and destinies.
What is marriage preparing us for? We are given a model, part of the map to becoming like Christ, something that the whole bible points to, yet we often fail to see it that way. We tend to view marriage as a way to propagate the human species and hopefully have some happiness, but we rarely see it as a way of seeing who God wants us to be. We certainly don’t usually look at it as a device to make us holy. If you want a long and happy marriage, and be assured that most of us do, find someone who is willing to grow as a person and as a Christian. In this alone is the opportunity for a semblance of happiness as a result of the union. No one is perfect. There are going to be flaws that both parties have to work on. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Happiness can be a result of a godly marriage, but it is not the purpose of marriage. Marriage is boot camp… for what? Marriage is boot camp for becoming sons and daughters of God. When we understand the marriage roles and how to treat our spouses as fellow heirs, as our brothers and sisters in Christ, then we can become who God wants us to be. Marriage teaches us how to honor and submit and value our fellow Christians in a way that we would be unable to fully grasp if marriage did not exist. This is why it is vital for single people also to learn and practice the principles of marriage, for they are the principles of a faithful Christian. They are the principles of learning how to guard our hearts and share them with another entity, just as we do with God.
Marriage can be considered the foundation of Christianity. A bold statement, but isn’t it true? That’s why humans were created in the first place, to be fruitful and multiply. Even more than this, they were created because God desires a family. Christ is the cornerstone, the guide of our faith and Christianity, make no mistake, but marriage is built upon that cornerstone as well, using it as the measuring rod and providing the foundation of our way of life. The whole Bible is a marriage manual, a marriage manual that tells us how to dwell with God and our fellow man. The connecting beam that carries this concept through the whole Bible are God’s Holy days which all point to the marriage of the Lamb. By learning how we are to dwell with God, we learn how to dwell with each other and behave in our physical marriages. We learn how to open our hearts and become better prepared to be part of the bride of Christ.
The best place to begin exploring the concept of marriage is, of course, at the end of the story. Once we know how it ends, we are provided with the why of it and how it begins. The end of the story is found in Revelation chapter twenty-two.
Rev 22:5 NKJV There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.
The first fruits of God end the story by reigning with Christ forever and ever as His bride. This is the purpose of everything we are going through right now, the purpose for our existence. Making it to this point is our goal, and this is what our physical marriages point to and prepare us for. They are the training ground for the real deal. This isn’t to belittle the importance of physical marriage at all; rather, it’s to point out that the blueprint for marriage can be found in the end design for which it was created.
Rev 19:7 NKJV "Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready."
When Christ marries the Church, His first fruits it is the culmination of six thousand years worth of human history and the end of the war. All of humankind’s spiritual walks have led to this moment. Beginning with our baptismal commitment and acceptance of His way of life and finishing, without straying from it, our change into spirit beings, we chose to be present at this moment in time, the moment we committed to Him. The moment Christ marries the Bride is the moment that the effects of Adam’s sin are finally erased from our hearts forever. That moment is still in the future. At this moment, we are still dealing with the after-effects of the betrayal of the first of our kind. The moment humans were created in the image of God, a war began. A war for our hearts, and Adam gave his in agreement to Satan.
A Giant Print Treasure Map
Why marriage? Why create a somewhat clunky union of two imperfect, sinful beings and require them to live together until death parts them? What purpose does this serve? When we examine how Christ loved the Church and continues to love her, we begin to see the brilliant purpose behind the institution of marriage. We are to become like Christ. We all know this deep down, but it doesn’t really register what this involves. We don’t understand how to do this because we don’t understand what becoming like Him involves. Obviously, it involves a tremendous amount of growth… into what exactly?
To construct a building, you need a blueprint. It’s no different when we seek to build ourselves into the image of Christ. We need a master builder to oversee the project for one thing, and that is Christ Himself, but we also need some instructions on how to proceed. The Bible is a big book with a lot of instructions on how to live, but as we’ll see in a moment, it is a manual with one ultimate purpose in mind. The whole Bible is about becoming like Christ, but the instructions are not always the clearest. So what is this blueprint that we are given? I’m sure you’ve already guessed, but it’s marriage. Marriage is the blueprint God gave us to grow ourselves into the image of Christ. Thus marriage is a holy institution. Certainly, physical marriage. Physical marriage is just a visible model of the spiritual, and we must understand the spiritual in order to understand the physical. We have to understand what it is that we are working towards so that we know how to prepare.
As physical people, we need physical symbols and reminders to picture and show us the spiritual. The holy days, God’s feasts, marriage, baptism, and raising families really all point to the same main event. God desires us all to be in His family, and He made His ways obvious. A giant print instruction manual pictured in everything He created. Marriage and the marriage roles aid in preparing a people - if we recognize what it’s preparing us for.
Marriage puts us on a path with another sinner to mold both parties more into the image of Christ. Forgiveness must be actively practiced, and God forbid we look down on another person because of their gender! In marriage, we learn that we all have equal value in God’s eyes; men are not more valuable than women, and vice versa. We all have inherent and learned strengths and weaknesses from which the other party can learn and grow. When we look at a congregation, we see a body of people who are all preparing for a wedding, whether they realize it or not. Many marriages form this body, and the way we treat our fellow Christians trains how we will treat our spouse. On the other side of the coin, we learn how to treat our brethren with respect and submission through marriage to our spouse. As singles, we are given valuable time to observe the married couples around us and learn from them. By learning from them, we can better prepare ourselves for marriage, whether in this life or the next. Preparing for marriage means learning how to be humble and how to forgive. It means we learn how to deal with other people and dwell together in unity. It means that we take on the mind of Christ.
Exhibit Numero Uno
We are given a perfect example of how to do this by Christ. In His time on earth, He demonstrated both the male and female marriage roles perfectly both by living them and in His teachings to His disciples. He loved and nurtured His disciples, and He taught them and led them with strength, just as the husband should in the marriage relationship. He submitted to the Father even against His own will, just as the wife does, and ultimately He loved His bride with all His life, sacrificing Himself for the redemption of His bride.
We are told to dwell with our wives with understanding, giving value to them as the weaker (physically) vessel (1 Peter 3:7). Why does this sound familiar? Christ has mercy and understanding toward us every single day. He forgives us as a perfect being. We are far weaker than Christ, yet He still places a value on us though there is nothing we can give other than our fallible love and obedience. We don’t have the luxury of being perfect, and it is our spouses and fellow Christians who suffer. When we give of ourselves, we are to give, expecting nothing in return. This sort of sacrificial love is very hard for our human minds to learn. Luckily, God gives us a person to practice on for the rest of our human lives. Or gives us to a person. Really, God gives us to each other. How we love each other, and our spouses shows our love for God. Let me repeat that. We show our love and honor for God in how we love our spouses and the brethren, and our spouse is also our spiritual brother or sister.
1Jo 4:20-21 NKJV If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God [must] love his brother also.
Our adventure together has taken us throughout the bible and through many different aspects relating to marriage, courtship, our calling, and baptism, and most essentially, it has taken us through the war that we face. At the end of the day, we are exhausted, and a bit overwhelmed. Who could possibly live up to the standards that God has for marriage and courtship? No one right off the bat. We all stumble and fall, learning a good many of our lessons the hard way. No one expects perfection immediately. That is a destination we are all headed towards. Thankfully, we have our treasure map and our helper to guide us on our way. Without the Spirit guiding us as we navigate the path, we would all certainly stumble into the darkness. God provided everything we need for success when He gave us His written word and His Spirit. Now that we have debunked the myth of Biblical dating, hopefully, we are free to pursue the life God wants for us. The one He has called us to. Don’t allow yourself to miss out on His wonderful blessings for you just because you think you know best in picking out a spouse. We really don’t know best. Not even close. May the grace of God dwell in you all richly, and may you always find the straight and narrow again. Amen.
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