Throughout the Old Testament, Yahweh refers to himself as the husband of the nation of Israel.
She is the wife of the Jehovah, and all her idolatrous acts are synonymous to Him with adultery.
In the New Testament, the church is referred to as the Bride of Christ.
He is our Bridegroom who is preparing a place for us and will return to carry us away with Him to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
There are quite a few human relationship analogies that God could have used to describe His relationship with us:
a father to a daughter or son;
a king to a subject;
a teacher to a student.
And though sometimes those descriptions are used to show us the type of relationship He has with us, the predominant picture scripture gives us of His relationship to His people is that of marriage:
The God of the universe longs to be married to the people He created.
When Jesus prayed for His church – us – before He left this earth, He asked His Father:
“that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” (John 17:21 NASB)
Now that’s intimacy:
As Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus,
so we are in Jesus and the Father.
Our Lord and Savior doesn’t want us to know Him from a distance,
He wants us in Him and Him in us –
He wants intimacy.
What that means to the believer is that when we come to Him, He puts His Holy Spirit inside us and lives in us and through us. He loves us purely and intimately and consistently from the place where He dwells inside us; knowing all our thoughts, our deepest feelings, our desires and how to delight us with His plans for us that are the best we could have and are the most fulfilling to us.
He longs for us to experience daily
– moment by moment –
His unfailing, unconditional, always-attentive love for us –
the kind that moves His heart to compassion and mercy and grace towards us, never to wrath.
And when we stray, it’s that same love that nudges us – or more forcefully coerces us if necessary – back onto the path He has laid out for us – the one of safety and the one that keeps us close to His heart.
Sometimes we have a skewed view of Our Creator and Savior and how He cares for us.
But it’s important that we know that
He doesn’t just tolerate us,
He doesn’t just feel it’s “okay” if we come close to Him,
He is passionate about having intimacy with us
– just like a husband is to a wife He adores.
