LOVE’S DIVINE DESIGN: COMMITMENT

Yet you say, “For what reason?” because the LORD has been witness between you and the wide of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your COMPANION and your wife by COVENANT” – Malachi 2:14

The DIVINE DESIGN for MARRIAGE is built on the pedestal of COMMITMENT. Marriage is a Covenant of Commitment before God: “For the LORD God of Israel says that He hates divorce…” (Mal. 2:14a). Companionship and Commitment come through “leaving” and “cleaving”! For marriage to work out the fullness of divine purpose, God said, “a man shall LEAVE his father and mother and shall CLEAVE unto his wife…” (Gen.2:24, KJV). The Lord Jesus added, “Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mt.19:6b). Companionship and commitment require that marriage be an exclusive relationship. The text says, “To his wife” not “wives”! Although God tolerated polygamy in Old Testament times, it was not His original intention. He easily could have created many wives for Adam, but He did not. One man, one woman, for life was God’s original design.

Scriptures also affirm that marriage is basically between the two – a man and a woman. It is not a joining of a woman with an entire family of father, mother, sons and daughters. A man is not married to the wife’s family, or the woman to the husband’s! However great the family may be, at the point of matrimony, he or she is ‘lost’ to them into the spouse. The matrimony produces a brand new personality – from the two! To leave means “to let go”: to release his ideas, dreams, visions, and priorities; and go in search of freshness in his wife.  It also means “to forgo every right into his parents’ “pot of soup” and embrace a fresh aroma coming from another home where his wife had all her initial upbringing. The man’s focus, emotions, and considerations are to be redirected.

The new couple are to move away from the parents’ immediate authority and influence and re-establish a new authority line. Obedience and submission in the new relationship is that which cannot permit the external voice, except it is from God or if both mutually and willingly succumb to it as counselling. The parents can no longer lord it over either spouse, but can only stand by as counsellors and mere guides! If leaving father and mother is the climax of leaving, then no friend, brother, sister or cousin can be clung to, at the detriment of cleaving to the wife and becoming one flesh with her. Many marriages are in shambles because the man has not left. He is still the mother’s baby. His mother is still in the centre of his heart. He is waiting to ratify or cross check choices and double check decisions made privately with his wife with father and mother.

God’s instruction is clear! A home cannot take off the ground and fly to the height of fulfilment, without the commitment to leave! To cleave is to be joined, glued and interlocked together, in such a way that separation is impossible without a tearing a part of other. It is a uniting together that makes the two one entity henceforth. Nothing can return either party to their initial state! To make cleaving possible in marriage, God created a hole into the man’s life by taking out a rib, and used the same rib to make the woman. Once a man meets the right ‘bone of his bones,’ cleaving comes easily, because there is already a socket to plug into.

To cleave means to cling to as bone to skin; to be glued together. The marriage relationship must be built primarily on commitment, not on feelings of romantic love. Romantic love is essential, but the foundation of marriage is a commitment of the will. It is a covenant before God (Mal.2:14). Proverbs 2:17 also describes the seductress “who forsakes the companion of her youth, and forgets the COVENANT of her God.” These underline the importance of COMMITMENT to one’s COMPANION in the COVENANT of Marriage! Commitment is what will hold a couple together through the difficulties that invariably come in the course of the journey of marriage.