It’s All About Love

This excerpt explores the beauty of God’s design for marriage, showing how Scripture reflects His relentless, sacrificial love for His people. From Genesis to the Gospels, we see that it’s all about love—a love meant not only to redeem us, but also to shape how we live and love within marriage. Through God’s Word and Spirit, we learn how to reflect His covenant love in our most intimate relationships.

“God has set the type of marriage everywhere throughout the creation. Every creature seeks its perfection in another. The very heavens and earth picture it to us.”
– Martin Luther

Did you know that the Bible is a love story, starring our Heavenly Father and YOU? Maybe you haven’t thought of it that way before, but it’s true. God’s Word is a story of His unfailing love for His lost and imperfect people.

It’s a story about His pursuit of us. His nurturing. His wooing. Throughout the Bible’s pages, we find God revealing His love to us, always seeking to draw us near. Jeremiah 31:3 says it this way: “The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: ‘Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.’”

Look at the Old Testament, and you’ll get a sense of the love relationship between God and the Israelites—a love in which the Father is committed and determined to win back the affection of His sinful children. Time and time again, we see the love of God pursuing His stubborn, rebellious, unfaithful people … continually reminding them that they are His chosen people (Jeremiah 32:39-41; Malachi 3:17).

In the New Testament, we see God in the form of Jesus willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to bring us back into His eternal Kingdom: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The love of God sacrificed everything to restore a relationship with you and me (Romans 5:8; John 15:13).

That is the type of love our marriages need.

Every place we turn in the Bible, we see God displaying His perfect love so that we can learn what it is and how we build it into our marriages. With the help of the Word and Holy Spirit (Galatians 3:5), we can gain foundational truths on which to shape our understanding of God’s covenant love. He wants nothing less but for us to fully understand His purpose of marriage as the ultimate way we can experience love, reflect His glory, and offer Him worship and praise.

God’s Plan Is Good

If we want to understand what God originally designed marriage to be, then our best bet is to start in Genesis with the first few chapters of creation. These verses will help us grasp how and why God ordained the sacred union of marriage.

Man and woman were God’s idea for His distinct purposes. God spoke all other creation into being, but humanity was a hands-on, God-breathed, God-patterned project declared “very good” by our Heavenly Father (Genesis 1:31). Though the world wants you to believe we’re just a higher order animal, the Bible reveals a different story. People are special to God.

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:27-28 NIV).

Here is obviously a fundamental truth of God’s design—that God made male and female and gave them responsibilities in line with His good purposes. He has a plan and purpose for your life—for every life.

While men and women have similar natures, each has distinct characteristics that testify to the divine attributes of our Creator. God’s breath brought His spark of divinity into the very essence of man (Genesis 1:26), but man alone was an incomplete expression of the Creator. God then breathed life into the woman to make her the perfect complement to His creation. God uses the intricate uniqueness of both male and female to reveal Himself to us, to help us better grasp the complexities of His divine nature.

Think how lifeless, how colorless our world would be if we only had male or only female. Who would want to live in a world in which there was only one sex? Or for that matter, in a world in which the two genders were not fully appreciated or rejoiced in. God’s goodness is reflected in the design of both men and women—and the union of the two reflects a divine mystery (Matthew 19:4-5).

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Excerpt taken from Simple Steps to a Happy Marriage by Inspiration Ministries

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