Man was made in the image of God.
What does it mean to be made in the image of God? What is God like ?
The Bible says "God is a Spirit." What comes to mind when you think of a Spirit? You think of something not limited by physical restraints, something unseen, something greater than the physical. God made man in His image, He made a spiritual being covered by an earthly body. We all have the breath of God within us, we all have a spirit within us. The spirit within is the real person, the character.
With the spiritual nature we relate to God and with the earthly nature we relate to the earth. So let's break it down a little bit so we can understand . What are the things we find in the spiritual nature ?
In the spiritual nature we find love, patience, longsuffering, mercy etc.. The spiritual nature is all about relationships, that's the most important to the spiritual nature, its highest goal. Why do I say this ? Remember what we said in the beginning, "God is a spirit." As a spirit God has no needs, no physical needs, but He finds pleasure in relationships. The Godhead is a union of three eternal beings, Father, Son and Holy Ghost and relationships with each other are their highest goals. Loving each other is life itself. So the spiritual nature is entirely focused on relationships.
What about the earthly nature ? The earthly nature, the flesh allow us to live on this planet and enjoy it. What does the earthly nature consist of ? With the physical nature we are able to eat, drink, walk, take a swim, hold someone, have sexual relationships with our spouses. We are able to do things that makes us feel good and physically connected to the earth and earthly things.
The animals are able to do the same physical things we do. They swim, walk, eat, play, have sexual relations etc.. and enjoy themselves. With the earthly nature we relate to the earth and all its inhabitants . But the animals are unable to relate to God because they are not spiritual beings, meaning they don't have an invisible nature imbue with the divine qualities.
God doesn't eat, drink, sleep or any such things because He is a Spirit .
How does all these relate to the degradation of marriage ?
You see marriage is a spiritual institution and when I say that I am not saying spiritual in some mystical way, but marriage is an institution for spiritual beings, for the higher beings, for loving being. Marriage is more about an internal union than an external union. God is a Spirit and the Lord made man in His image . Marriage is all about a deep inner connection that bring about oneness .
But when man sinned, all that changed and marriage started to become difficult as degradation sets in. Why did sin have such impact on marriage ?
Sin you see is an exchange, an exchange of nature. Before sin, the spiritual controlled humanity, we were focused internally, our highest goals were loving God and one another, but sin was a downward turn. Adam and Eve ate a physical fruit and thinking that they can attain spiritual wisdom by a physical act. It was truly an act of madness. The essence of temptation and sin is to make us choose the physical more and more at the expense of the Spiritual nature and as we strengthen the physical nature, the spiritual nature and its higher qualities of love, mercy and patience dies out.
Marriage then becomes very difficult. The more physical our lives become, the more we are unable to maintain relationships with one another. Many of us look at marriage as something that will satisfy our sexual urges, or other fleshly gratification. But sexual urges are only an earthly connection and doesn't, cannot lead to lasting love. Many of us go into marriage thinking that I will at last be loved by someone, but even if someone was to love you it can be hard for me to discern because my life has been degraded to the physical.
The physical nature is all about sensual satisfaction. How you make me feel today. While the spiritual nature is all about lasting satisfaction, loving you in the long way. The flesh seek for temporary satisfaction, I'm hungry, I need food now. But the Spirit find satisfaction in loving, in uplifting, in enjoying others .
Satan is continually tempting us to live life in the flesh, to live life according to the world and this is the cause of the increase difficulty of maintaining a marriage. The more earthly we become, the less like God we become and the less we are able to love. Animals could care less about love, animals mainly care about survival. And the earthly person's main priority is survival. Emotional, physical survival and as such the earthly person is a stranger to love, self sacrifice and living for the benefit of another .
So you see friends, the problem of marriage is a deeply spiritual problem, meaning a problem of nature. We have fallen far from God, far from the spiritual nature, the internal nature. Most of us are focused on the external, how we look, how much money we have etc.. and less on the internal self , such as how loving, how merciful am I? We will do all to build up physical wealth and attraction and less when it comes to true wealth, spiritual wealth and attraction.
Life in the flesh make us choose a spouse based on external qualities such as wealth, beauty etc.. while ignoring the internal qualities such as love, patience, mercy , compassion and as a result we end up suffering later on because the spiritual nature was neglected in making our choice. The external is not the true person, the internal, the spiritual is the real person and in choosing a spouse we must be sober and vigilant and seek to learn about the internal, spiritual person. This will determine joy or misery for you .
In order to have successful relationships with God and others, we must rebuild our spiritual nature, we must seek to restore our internal nature and this can only be done by entering into a relationship with God. Remember God is a Spirit and the highest goal for God in life is to love and be loved. God has no need for food, drink, sleep etc..But God is love . We begin to be restored spiritually when we start to understand the highest goal of life is not how much money you have or how beautiful you are but how loving you are. As you enter into a relationship with God and you begin to develop the spiritual qualities that make life truly meaningful then your relationship with others will begin to change and our marriages will begin to be successful.
When the Bible speak of dying to self, it is talking about the destruction of the earthly nature's control over us and bringing it back under the control of the spiritual . The earthly nature was never meant to dominate us but was meant to be under the subjection of our higher self , the spiritual self . The earthly nature when exalted above the spiritual self become a massive hindrance to true life and all that make life meaningful .
We destroyed and subject that nature through prayer and by making effort to live as a spiritual being, by seeking to love others, having mercy on them, being longsuffering etc.. we destroy that earthly nature by seeking to live like God and making His Word more necessary than our food .
Practice makes perfect! By practicing the fruit of the Spirit in our daily lives ( love, joy, peace,patience , kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control), they become habits and these habits become our character.
God is a spirit and God made us in His image . Let us begin to live like spiritual beings, let us pursue after the fruit of the Spirit and practice them in our daily lives. This will bring meaning to our lives, fix our relationships and make our marriages a blessing to us and the world at large .
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