I will make you mine

"And I will make you my wife forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy."

Hossia 2:19

Soon we expect to have an engagement celebration in our church. The couple are very young, but seemingly in love. We will be trying to make up the whole event in such a manner, that they would remember that this decision is not a temporary whim, but entering a door of new life forever. Nowadays, those who are somewhat business kind-of -thinking-people, are often afraid to commit forever. It seems to them like they haven't got the best deal in life if they don't have their door open for something possibly better. 

Thankfully God doesn't think this way. When He comes to us and makes a covenant with us in Jesus, He knows our state of mind, He knows our past, present and future wrongs, but He, without any second thoughts, commits to us. Some people worry if their partner would turn out not to be so good as s/he should be. God knows we would NOT be as good as we should be. Yet, He loves us and initiates the covenant of eternal relationship with us. He does so in righteousness and justice. The first (righteousness) is God's ideal will for His creation. The second (justice) is His particular will for us. What is the difference? The particular will is not always perfectly agreeable with His eternal will. The ideal will commands that all of us must be saved. The particular will says we deserve there just retribution for our sins. We don't deserve blessing.  So addressing the problem with sin particularly, God achieves His eternal will through something, which is against it in principle - the suffering and dead of His innocent Son. It is against God's righteousness because it is wrong for the innocent and let alone God himself to suffer. He does it though. That means personal sacrifice. God sacrifices part of what He is in order to get another part that He desires more - us. 

So if God is able to accept such a contradiction against Himself (Heb 12:3)  for the sake of love, we can be sure that He is fully and eternally committed to us and He can and will teach us to be that kind of people, who, motivated by love, accept the seemingly unjust and temporary in order to get what is righteous and eternal. He would teach us how to exercise "steadfast love and mercy". That would make us people who are easy to live with, partner with, work with. 

I hope that these young people would realise that the art of love is really an art of sowing and sacrifice in order to reap abundance and blessed life together. 

Prayer:

Dear loving Father,

You allowed so many contradictions and wrongs for the sake of love. You forgive them without compromising your righteousness but allowing your Son to suffer the just consequences of what is wrong for our sake. Please, help me be more into that kind of love, that sees the bigger picture and complies with your eternal will even though that would sometime mean being patiently enduring injustice, when that is the best thing to do, but winning out  like Christ nonetheless. 

In Jesus' Name! Amen!