Does God promise you a spouse in the Bible?
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..that was the question that Rob Eagar over at thelife.com proposed recently. His post tried to answer this question in the affirmative. Many evangelicals through the years have often painted a picture that God promises a spouse to all believers. Except there is one problem, no where in scripture does God make this promise.
Eagar said:
Does God promise us a spouse? The Bible says “yes” by describing Christians as the spiritual bride of Christ. Our true spouse is Jesus. Yet, many of us say, “I’m glad to be spiritually married to Christ, but I can’t feel Him. Wouldn’t it be better if I could enjoy God’s love with someone else? I want Jesus with skin on.” So, we pray for God to bring us an earthly mate.
This type of theology has created a generation of frustrated Christian singles. No where in scripture does God promise a wife or husband to a believer on the sole basis that they are a Christian. Christians are not the spiritual bride of Christ. The spiritual bride of Christ is the Church (ecclesia). Some would say Christians make up the church, thus Christ is our bride. Maybe (that is pretty loose theology), but not in the erotic sense. However, scripture is clear where we get this “bridal theology” from, such as Ephesians 5:25:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Here, Paul speaks about the love that exists between a husband and wife and mirrors that love in non-erotic language (Paul uses agapate to describe this love) to describe the relationship between the Church and Jesus. Agnieszka Tennant, writing for CT, posted this article about the over use of love language with Christ. Her most telling quote reveals the trouble with the over use of the love language of God:
for us into Christianity.” – is the comment that I heard from a wedding I once officiated. Over the years, I have been conflicted by couples who come into my office asking me to officiate their wedding. Normally, I have no problem doing a wedding for a church member or Christians who do not have a church home. What has been a growing trend for a number of pastors, including myself, is what to do with non-Christian weddings?
