You Have a New Husband Now

Have you ever been in a really bad relationship? Maybe you know that if you commit your life to this person it will destroy you, but you love them, or you feel trapped, or you think no one else would want you anyway, so you are torn. If you did make it out, and you found someone that loves you and makes you feel safe, someone that’s easy, and comfortable, and gives you great joy, then you know how tremendously thankful you are for them. There is no comparison to your new life and your old, and you are so relieved that you escaped.

While you have this in your mind, I want you to consider your relationship with Jesus and what your old life was like without Him.

You, also, have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another – to Him who was raised form the dead, that you should bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the letter of the law.

Romans 7:4-6

He Rescued You

As a believer, you are no longer joined to your sin or to the law. In that marriage, no matter how hard you tried, you were never good enough. Even when you did succeed in doing the right thing, you were only doing it out of fear or duty. Because you were not acting out of love, the relationship was totally devoid of passion. It was an unhealthy union that only brought struggle, pain, condemnation, shame & apathy. You might have thought you loved it, but that relationship was leading you nowhere good and it would have eventually destroyed you.

But then you met Jesus and you fell in love. He offered you a way out and you took it. You poured all the baggage of that old relationship out on Him and it wasn’t too much for Him. He didn’t run away. He actually said He already knew about it and He still wanted you. As a matter of fact, He was thinking about it many years ago when He suffered at the hand of those who were also supposed to love Him. It brought Him joy in the midst of His pain, because He knew there would come a day when you would leave that destructive relationship and join yourself to Him.

He Gave You a New Life

He took it all with Him to the grave. That old relationship is dead and buried.

Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised Him from the dead. You, who were dead in your trespasses and uncircumcision of you flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Colossians 2:12-14

You have a new Husband now and this One loves you! Uniting with Him brings joy and peace. When you fail to live up to His standards, He is still kind and understanding, accepting and approachable. You can freely tell Him of your failures and He will always meet you with love and forgiveness. There is no force or manipulation. He just makes you want to be a better person. You don’t do things for Him because you’re supposed to or because you’re scared of His reaction if you don’t. You do things for Him just because you love Him and you want to make Him happy.

He has done so many wonderful things for you and you just want to return the favor in any way you can. You know you will never be able to repay Him, but you still don’t ever want to hurt Him. You want to be the best bride you can be, because He is the best Husband you could ever have! Your thankfulness towards Him is greater than you can ever express, but you want to live your life trying.

Bearing Fruit

Children are one of the great blessings of marriage. A husband and wife join together, give a piece of each of themselves, and create another human being. This sweet child shares the characteristics of each one of them.

When you were joined to the law, no matter how hard you worked, you could produce nothing good. In that unhappy marriage there was only unfaithfulness, anger, division, opposition, and selfishness.

The works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

Galatians 5:19-21

But now that you have joined yourself with Jesus, He does all the heavy lifting. Your burden, duty, and fear are replaced with love. This love naturally produces all you’ve ever wanted and could never attain, no matter how hard you tried.

But the fruit of the Spirit is  But the fruit (produce/child) of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

You don’t have to try so hard anymore because you’re uniting with Someone who already is all that you strive to be. That oneness begins to manifest itself in someone who is made in His image. The longer you are “married”, the more your identity is wrapped up in Him. You are called by His name and there’s less hypocrisy in it, because you look more and more like Him every day.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Galatians 5:24-25

Excerpt from Episode 108 “Fall in Love with Jesus” on Podcast and YouTube

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