Unholy

"He prefers His bride, He puts her joy, her safety, her success first, to the point of His own sacrifice."

MARRIAGE IS HOLY. We treat it unholy. The husband becomes the butt of ladies’ jokes and the wife of men’s. Adam’s comment about his sin is now something to laugh at and not a spiritual Truth. We preach sex in the pulpit which is not the place for it. In fact, there is no place for it in God’s preaching, teaching, or writing, and this is coming from a romance author. If we can’t treat it as holy and intimate and beautiful, then we must be silent.

God created the holy union of a man and wife. As He is holy, as He is sacred and just, our marriage union is to be the same. A minister, having visited heaven, made the remark that marriage is on another level there, and this has stuck with me because the more I hear church “advice”, the more I know we’ve fallen far short of His intent. Of His heart.

All that makes for the marriage union is His design, the human body, reproduction, our emotional needs, our communication. When God made Adam, He made him from the dust. But He made Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. She came from the very breath of God, formed not as a separate unit, but a part of him. Adam acknowledged this in his words. She was part of him. Together, they were WHOLE.

“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:23)

God Himself used the union of a husband and wife as an example of His love. He is our Father. This is said, too, in many places. Jesus surprised the religious leaders of His day by calling God “Father”, and they did not agree with it. But in Ephesians 5, Christ – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – are the husband cherishing His wife, so much that He would die for her. We must understand the depth of this. In everything Christ does, He prefers His bride, He puts her joy, her safety, her success first, to the point of His own sacrifice.

“And to the husbands, you are to demonstrate love for your wives with the same tender devotion that Christ demonstrated to us, his bride. For he died for us, sacrificing himself” (Ephesians 5:25 TPT)

We see this in the will of Jesus when He walked on earth. He did not do what “He wanted” but, as seen in the Old Covenant sacrifices, He made His will be to do the Father’s will. In everything, including His thinking, He was submitted to the Father through the Spirit. Even when it required physical pain and mental pressure. At those moments, the Spirit gave Him peace to endure, but Jesus’ human will, His human mind, never acted “me first.” He thought of the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2), which was us. Which was the complete defeat of Satan, and our freedom from sin, sickness, and death (1 John 3:8). And gave His all to be united with us.

He called Himself the bridegroom in the Gospels, when He was looking toward the cross. John the Baptizer echoed it (John 3:29). But in the apostle John’s Revelation, it’s the marriage supper of the Lamb. The sacrifice, not the Lion, weds the bride because she is all to Him. He was created FOR her. She was created FROM Him. Here is our image of marriage, and just as we would not stand in His face and make these cutting remarks, however well-meant, we cannot stand in His Presence and preach them either.

He should be our adoration, our every breath, and His hearing of our words what holds us in check. Even greater, who we love, we value, we pour ourselves out for. Who loves us, we willingly submit to. A marriage is healed by the healing of the individuals. Our job as servants (ministers) of the Gospel is to create hunger in people to lean more on God in their day-to-day lives. Our job is NOT to place intimate things in a public forum, nor to focus on correction minus LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Here, again, is Ephesians 5: “For the husband provides leadership for the wife, just as Christ provides leadership for his church, as the Savior and Reviver of the body (Verses 23 TPT).” This verse is, in part, marriage applied, but it is not an opening to talk that the Spirit will never endorse. If Jesus wouldn’t say it that way or if you wouldn’t say it to Jesus, then don’t say it. If you’d say it anyway, then I pray your eyes open, and these words grow within. He isn’t embarrassed by marriage talk, that isn’t the point. People matter, that is the point.

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)

“And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

Photo by Tiko Giorgadze on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com