Idea & Model

Malachi 2:¹⁶ “‘I hate divorce,’ says the Lord. “To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife.” (emphasis added).

God says to divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty. God speaking to the man, says do not divorce your wife. Did you notice that God did not even say do not divorce your husband? He did not speak to the woman because it is unheard of in God’s design. That is why the Bible would say in Genesis 2:¹⁶ “This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife…”. The Bible does not say the woman would leave her father and mother. So, why would God only say that about the man that? It is simple. The man would leave his father and become his own self-determined entity. In other words, the man must achieve self-determination. He must move away from parental covering and start his own family.

That is why in most cultures, even when people get married in church, the typical church wedding that is, the father walks down the aisle with his daughter, and he hands his daughter over to the minister who then hands her over to the husband. What has happened there is a transference of fatherhood. Meaning, the husband becomes her father. The beauty of marriage is the man leaves his father, but the woman never leaves her father because she always has a father. That is why to divorce her is to overwhelm her with cruelty and God does not like that. Now imagine if it is the woman who divorces the man, that is cruelty to the power of a thousand. Marriage is God’s idea, not man’s idea.

Why GET married, STAY married, or RE-marry? The second thing is Marriage Is A Spiritual Model. A model is like a prototype. Marriage is like a spiritual prototype. God is saying, I am going to give you a physical example of a spiritual truth, a spiritual reality. The marriage between Christ and the church is likened to the marriage between the husband and the wife. It is beautiful. It is a mystery. It is a model. In architecture, for example, a model is like a smaller version of the bigger thing.  In the model of a bridge or a house, you will see how the house looks – the same colour and proportions, however smaller. The model has the proportions, colour, the look and feel of the real house.

In artificial intelligence or machine learning, if you are modelling an algorithm, you are training the algorithm to begin to behave and make proper decisions like a human being. So, marriage is a model, means that we are to be trained to be like God in marriage.

Prayer: Father, have Your way in my marriage, fashion it after Your Spiritual model. Help us guard our hearts, Lord, that there will be no root of cruelty, in Jesus Name. Amen!