It’s easy to consider God your heavenly Father. But can you consider Him a husband?
The notion of being the “Bride of Christ” is difficult for men—and I’m not sure women find the idea easy to grasp either.
Yet throughout both the Old and New Testaments, God uses marriage language to illustrate the way He loves His people. In fact, God loved us that way FIRST—and THEN He created human marriage to help us understand the intensity of His love. Marriage creates homes, nurtures children, and is the foundation on which society is built, but I believe in the beginning, at its core, marriage existed first in the mind of God as an illustration that would show us how deeply He loves us.
A good marriage is a picture of God’s passion FOR you and His eternal commitment TO you.
God used the prophet Hosea to point out how unfaithful Israel had been. Hosea’s marriage to an unfaithful bride became a symbol of God’s marriage to His people.
“Go and marry a promiscuous wife and have children of promiscuity, for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the Lord” Hosea 1:2.
“Go again, show love to a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the Israelites though they turn to other gods…” Hosea 3:1.
There are deep truths here. Sure, God is your Father. But a relationship with a bride is more intense and more personal than your relationship with your father. A groom longs for his bride with an energy that is difficult to control. It is a physical passion. A longing. A hunger. God longs for you like that.
And then there is the vulnerability that comes with nakedly sharing everything. (Imagine God being making Himself vulnerable–and of course He does; look at the cross.)
The Bible says no one can see the face of God and live. Do you know why? Because God will not remove the veil from His face until the marriage union of heaven. Like a groom, He longs to reveal Himself, to see and be seen, but He will not engage in any pre-marital revealing: it will not happen until the right time. We will see His face in heaven—and it will be amazing.
What spouses share is intense and PRIVATE—it is for the two alone, shutting the door to everyone else. This is another difference fom the father image. A relationship with a father includes brothers and sisters. But a relationship with a bride is for you alone. Marriage is not merely PRIVATE, but EXCLUSIVE, a one-on-one, totally exclusive relationship for a lifetime.
Marriage also includes the element of choice. Children cannot choose their fathers, and (except by adoption) fathers cannot choose their children. But you only enter a marriage because the two of you have VOLUNTARILY chosen each other.
Marriage is intense, passionate, private, exclusive, and voluntary.
So also, GOD’S LOVE FOR YOU IS INTENSE, PASSIONATE, PRIVATE, EXCLUSIVE, AND VOLUNTARY.
That kind of love is different than the love between a parent and a child. Both are amazing. But it is important to remember that God considers you His bride: He LONGS for you.
“You long for the creature your hands have made” Job 14:15.
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Household Words: 