In Genesis chapter 2 the Bible says, "For this cause (marriage), a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and unashamed." This is a picture of complete transparency and intimacy. But how is it accomplished? It begins with unconditionally accepting your mate as God’s provision for your needs. To understand what I mean by this, read on…..
God’s plan is that we accept (not just receive) our mate from God. This is not easy. It means that we have to view our mate’s apparent weaknesses as qualities that God may be using to transform our own life. This means that we must unconditionally accept our spouse on the basis of who they are, not what they do. It’s a position-based relationship, not a performance-based relationship. It’s just like our relationship with our Savior Jesus. He accepts us because, out of His mercy and grace, He calls us His children (a position-based relationship) if we believe in Him, not because we do good things to earn our way to heaven (a performance-based relationship).
Therefore, we must accept our mate because they were designed by God, as a gift to us, to be the perfect fulfillment of all our needs - past, present, and future. God designed us, so He knows our needs better that we know ourselves. It makes sense then that he is a better designer of the fulfillment of our needs than we could ever be. So rather than change our mate to become someone we think they should be, we should be more concerned with accepting them for who they are - God’s provision for our needs.
This can be extremely tough! In fact, we can only accomplish this by the power of God’s Holy Spirit and by having faith in Him. So the basis for my unconditional acceptance of my mate is faith in God's character and trustworthiness to care for my needs. We are only able to fully accept our mate by coming to know God and trusting in His character.
A godly marriage then is not created by finding (or trying to make) a perfect flawless person. Rather, it is created by allowing God's perfect love and acceptance (and forgiveness) to flow through one imperfect person - you - toward another imperfect person - your mate.
Please comment below or email me directly at csonger@new-communitychurch.org
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ReplyDeletethis is GREAT! thank you. i have been learning this over the past couple years and you have put it all into words very clearly. one question i have is how do you think this relates to parenting? how do we teach and guide our children in a way that is less performance based while instilling the importance of obedience? thanks...
ReplyDeleteThere are performance based relationships and there are position based relationships. In a performance based relationship, love is earned and we perform well to get something (like another's love). In a position based relationship, love is unconditional and is given because of the position. We love God, because He is God. We should love our spouse because God made them our spouse. We have a responsibility to act in a certain way. It is not based on feelings, it is based on a commitment and a daily decision to honor that commitment.
ReplyDeleteWith children, we also have a positional relationship. We must love them unconditionally because God has made them our children. They may not always behave in a way that we appreciate. In fact we may actually hate the way they have behaved, but that must not change the way in which we love them unconditionally. They too, must learn to love others unconditionally if God has placed them in a positional relationship with that person (e.g., their parent). It is in this unconditionally loving parent-child relationship that we begin to see God the Father's love for us modeled. It is one of the very few places we learn how God loves us and how we are to love Him. The rest of society (including society's view of marriage) is very much based on performance.
In the beginning we must often teach our children to obey because there are consequences for their actions. Those consequences include rewards and punishment for obedience. But as their thought processes mature, we teach them to obey because of who God is. We love Him for who He is and what He has done for us. And our obedience is simply an active way in which we should our love for God.