I'm God's jilted lover - or rather he is my jilted lover.
We're worse than a teenage romance from Neighbours in terms of being on-off on-off relationship.
And so is the experience of mankind - since Adam had intimacy with God - it was "good" says Genesis - good being a far sight better than 'good' means for us these days; yet still it wasn't perfect. God knew that even then, Man had to travel a journey of being lost and being found before his perfect relationship could finally be realised in true honesty. Without experiencing separation from God how could Adam truly realise perfect communion with YHWH. (The Bible says the law was added so that grace could increase - how can we know forgiveness and purity if we don't know boundaries and sin?)
So God instituted marriage, not only to bide 'Adam' over until the new heaven and earth when he could finally be one with God, but to give Adam a clearer picture of what it will be like. Adam and Eve were a clear message from God to us all to look forward to congruent spiritual oneness with the lover of our souls, the heavenly Father. Yes that's right, I'm saying that marriage, in all its closeness of friendship, communication, fellowship, experience, emotion, tension and love is a picture of what we hope for, long for and will one day inherit in perfection. But not only that - SEX, which to us is, well, sexual - is a picture of, in some strangely platonic but even more intimate way, the closeness and oneness and togetherness and pure passion we will enjoy with God in heaven. We won't have sex with God, dummy!
But God's understanding of sex is pure and about all the right things; two becoming one. Its not sordid, biased, impure or wrong, it's not selfish, not mere gratification, nor lustful or earthly. If you disengage yourself from our worldly way of thinking about sex, could you see it as an amazing, incredible, astounding, impossibly hope-ful picture of our destiny in harmony with our creator after the banishment of sin, evil, illness and wrong from our world??!? But it doesn't stop there. This idea that God wants to be close to us, his children, continues through the Bible (but don't equate that image with the previous one! God is neither sexually active, nor a paedophile! It's just that he uses lots of different images to help us understand how he feels about us - children, sheep, lost coins, lovers...). In Song Of Solomon there is a parallel - an allegory - of romantic love between a man and his girlfriend - and the intimate emotions between God and ourselves. Paul refers to to Christ's love for the Church as a mirrored image of a husband's love for his wife. And in Revelation we read a heartbreaking challenge to the Church is Ephesus,
We're worse than a teenage romance from Neighbours in terms of being on-off on-off relationship.
And so is the experience of mankind - since Adam had intimacy with God - it was "good" says Genesis - good being a far sight better than 'good' means for us these days; yet still it wasn't perfect. God knew that even then, Man had to travel a journey of being lost and being found before his perfect relationship could finally be realised in true honesty. Without experiencing separation from God how could Adam truly realise perfect communion with YHWH. (The Bible says the law was added so that grace could increase - how can we know forgiveness and purity if we don't know boundaries and sin?)
So God instituted marriage, not only to bide 'Adam' over until the new heaven and earth when he could finally be one with God, but to give Adam a clearer picture of what it will be like. Adam and Eve were a clear message from God to us all to look forward to congruent spiritual oneness with the lover of our souls, the heavenly Father. Yes that's right, I'm saying that marriage, in all its closeness of friendship, communication, fellowship, experience, emotion, tension and love is a picture of what we hope for, long for and will one day inherit in perfection. But not only that - SEX, which to us is, well, sexual - is a picture of, in some strangely platonic but even more intimate way, the closeness and oneness and togetherness and pure passion we will enjoy with God in heaven. We won't have sex with God, dummy!
But God's understanding of sex is pure and about all the right things; two becoming one. Its not sordid, biased, impure or wrong, it's not selfish, not mere gratification, nor lustful or earthly. If you disengage yourself from our worldly way of thinking about sex, could you see it as an amazing, incredible, astounding, impossibly hope-ful picture of our destiny in harmony with our creator after the banishment of sin, evil, illness and wrong from our world??!? But it doesn't stop there. This idea that God wants to be close to us, his children, continues through the Bible (but don't equate that image with the previous one! God is neither sexually active, nor a paedophile! It's just that he uses lots of different images to help us understand how he feels about us - children, sheep, lost coins, lovers...). In Song Of Solomon there is a parallel - an allegory - of romantic love between a man and his girlfriend - and the intimate emotions between God and ourselves. Paul refers to to Christ's love for the Church as a mirrored image of a husband's love for his wife. And in Revelation we read a heartbreaking challenge to the Church is Ephesus,
"I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverence...
you have persevered and endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love."
you have persevered and endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love."
How cutting, how tragic, how painful: how me. Is this not excruciatingly close to the current state of so many of us? We work hard for the LORD, we persevere - it seems an easier love language than spending time with Him - we even suffer; workaholism in ministry, prejudice at work, abuse at school, grief at home for DOING too much. 'But it's for God!?!' Yes, but you have forsaken your first love; I have forsaken my love affair that bowled me over when I found Jesus. He found me - he loved me, he forgave me all my sin. He picked me up, clothed me in crowns I don't deserve, called me Righteous, called me an heir with Him, called me friend of God, and I was humbled, broken, heartbroken with love and gratitude. My emotions boiled, my soul cried out, I thirsted for more, I chatted about him to all I could, I was insatiable for more of Him and loved just being in his presence - in places and with people where he was. And I forsake Him. I turn my back on Him. And so back to the analogy of marriage.
As with the last blog, I'm not saying necessarily that God installs events in our lives that cause us pain, but in his infinite wisdom he uses such things to communicate timeless truths that we should hear. When he instituted marriage he knew every experience, every joy - and every pain we who marry would travel through.
Every time I have a lustful thought about a woman who is not my wife, am I worshipping a false God, like the Israelites worshipped a golden calf - I mean if marriage is a picture of God and Man - every time I have unfaithful thoughts am I embodying the endless selfishness and faithlessness Mankind continues to unleash on God under the title "Christian faith?"Perhaps if I observe the highs and lows of my own marriage I might learn something spiritual about myself and God. Every time I see myself failing to honour, cherish and be captivated by my wife, I can't help be reminded that it mirrors the way I sometimes fail to honour, cherish and be captivated by my God and Saviour.
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