Malachi 2:15 Didn’t the LORD make you one with your wife? In body and spirit you are his. And what does he want? Godly children from your union. So guard yourself; remain loyal to the wife of your youth.
Somebody To Love Me
Many people marry so that they can have someone to love or to be loved by someone. The truth of the matter is that God designed marriage in order to serve a purpose that was much bigger than the man and the woman. Most people approach marriage with love as the goal but love was never to be viewed as the goal of marriage. Love is the active obedience to the law of God along with the solid commitment of the two individuals to become one for the purpose of producing an offspring that would continue to seek God and find Him when they seek him with all their heart.
Malachi posses the question about marriage, “Didn’t the LORD make you one with your wife?” The prophet assumes that we realize that taking someone to be your wedding partner ‘as we call it’ is a process that has an affect upon the two persons who come together. God makes them one as the married couple one in body; the consummation of the marriage union is one of the traumatic, life changing, experiential events of one’s life. Just the closeness of two people in certain proximity alters the thoughts of one’s mind and gives stimulation of a persons emotions. Each human being is put together in such a way that we detect the life flowing in another person’s body. You could call it a resonating of the bodies in just coming close. The event of two people coming together in spirit creates a bonding of the two in another real and experiential way. What about the spiritual binding of two people? God intended for the marriage covenant to bring about an effect that would alter the life of man and woman. Not only in living together but also in creating another human being, who lives and breaths and has dreams and a personality. God intended that His image be reflected in this new person who did not exist before the two people came together.
As a prophet of God Malachi informs his readers that we are God’s possession. Both body and spirit are His, created by Him and reflecting the image of the creator of all mankind. It is the image of God within that transcends our person, place, culture and geographic location. Malachi admonishes us in these words, it is not what you want that is the main issue. It is what God wants that we must concern ourselves with. God looks for godly children from the union. This, of course is a general statement because we could question the prophet with the question about women who cannot have children? That would be another discussion for another time, that has the will of God over and above our own preference and experience. But I would ask the expected question, what about most people who look forward to having children. Many more than those who don’t desire at least one child.
It seems to me that God has not forgotten his mandate for mankind to be fruitful and multiply. God did not just want an obedient creation, he also wanted a creation that would reproduce itself and fill the earth. So guarding yourself is an important issue, from what? From yourself. You must remember that the propensity to break our commitment to one another, refusing to be loyal is a fallacy within our human condition since “The Fall”. But we have the call to be loyal to God first, then to the wife or husband of which we have joined ourselves. In order to bring about the godly offspring we have to guard ourselves from the pressure of the flesh to disobey God and run to our sinful inclination. Guard yourself from the sinful pull. Honor God, give yourself to the call of the Spirit of Truth. Be loyal and receive the blessings of God, just because you followed HIS truth rather than giving in to your own.
~ Pastor Horace