The Transformation of Marriage

 

God's love is the only love that can bring the dead back to life.  It reaches down into the darkest, dirtiest depths and pulls out the most wretched of us and makes us into kings and queens.  God's love finds us in our tombs and moves us into paradise.  He reaches out to us when we are nothing more than broken vessels of clay and makes us into vessels of honor suitable to serve in his palace.

Last time we began to look at Ezekiel 16 where we find a beautiful parable in which God describes in vivid imagery his relationship with Israel.  God's intention is for our bodies and sexuality to be a symbol of his eternal covenantal love that he has with Israel and the church (see Ephesians 5).  As we look at Ezekiel, we are finding what this means in practical ways.  We looked at verses 3-6 in the last post, this time we will examine verses 6-10.

Ezekiel 16:6-10

"6. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.

7. I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare.

8. Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine.

9. Then washed I thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil. 

10. I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk."

The passage goes on to describe in detail how God adorned Israel with precious jewels, put a crown on her head, and arrayed her with gold and silver.  "Thou wast exceedingly beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom." (v.13)

God is a God of life.  In verse 6, he calls to a half-dead Israel and commands her to live.  If God had not stepped in, Israel would have perished.  When God speaks, and commands us to live, we must live.  One of the fundamental purposes God has for sexual relationships is to produce life.  It never came into God's mind for us to sterilize ourselves, much less for us to practice abortion and end a human life.  Our relationships should be life-giving and life-affirming.  We should receive new life, children, with gratitude and rejoicing.

Through God's love, Israel was transformed from a naked, unclean, outcast infant, into a mature, beautiful woman filled with dignity and glory.  (v.7)

At the appropriate time, God entered into covenant with her, and they became engaged, betrothed.  The primary way that God demonstrates his love is through covenants.  Love is not just a strong emotion for God, it is not a fluttery feeling that may or may not pass.  It is a promise, an eternal promise.  He manifests his love through an unbreakable vow.

It is through God's faultless love that Israel is transformed.  She is no longer an outcast, or a discarded infant doomed to die on the side of the road.  She is made into a mature, lovely woman clothed with dignity and glory.

God works in our lives in a similar fashion, he pulls us out of the cesspool of our sins and cleanses us with the blood of Christ and makes us into his children.  He clothes us with the righteousness of his own son and makes us joint heirs with Christ.  We are moved from shame and pain into glory and delight.

This is the message that God is wanting to communicate through our sexuality as well.  Marriage is meant to be a matrix for spiritual transformation and growth.  Husbands and wives come together and help each other become more and more like Christ.  We bear children and they help us learn to be less selfish and to sacrifice.  We grow in love and become more like Christ through our marriages.

Most families I see around me are very child-centered.  The center of gravity of the family is on the kids.  The majority of parents would never completely abandon or cut off their kids, but rather they make it a priority to care for them and provide for them.  But they treat their spouses differently.  A child makes mistakes, and is forgiven, he is given grace to learn and grow.  But if a husband or wife makes mistakes, they are divorced and cast aside.  I understand there are times when divorce is necessary, and Jesus himself allowed for it in certain circumstances.  But most divorces are not really necessary and cause far more harm than good to the parents and the children.

What I am seeing in this story in Ezekiel is that God deals with us not like husbands and wives normally deal with each other, but more like how a good parent deals with his children.  He forgives, teaches, and is patient.  He allows us room to learn and grow.  This should be the pattern in our relationships.  We should not be seeking perfection, but growth.  We do not try to fix our partners, but we allow God to fix us through them and vice versa.

God loves us with an unconditional, eternal, covenantal love and we should love our spouses in the same way.  Once we experience God's love, we are changed and transformed, every so gradually into the image of Christ.  Our relationships, then, are not about being changed by another person's love, or changing another person with our love, but allowing God's love to flow into us and transform us, each as individuals, and then coming together to help and encourage each other in that transformation process.  We should seek to be conduits of God's love, allowing his love to transform us, and as it transforms us, it will change our partners as well.

I am not a big fan of reality shows, but one I have enjoyed watching on a few occasions is "Gas Monkey Garage."  The premise is that a handful of characters buy old, rusted-out cars, take them into their garage, fix them up and then sell them.  It is fascinating to see.  They will find an old jalopy left to the elements in someone's back yard, the owner thinking it is little more than a pile of junk.  But they can see that there is still something of value there, it just needs some work.  So, they haul it into their garage, strip it down, tear out all the rust, and rebuild it from the ground up.  Finishing if off with a world-class paint job.  The car we see in the end is so magnificent, sometimes it is hard to tell it is even the same vehicle as the rusted shell we saw at the beginning of the show.

God wants to work a similar change in our lives, and in our marriages.  We are not the master mechanics, God is, but he we can witness his work in our lives and in the lives of those we love if we are willing to let him do it.