For the majority of my life in Christ, I have always heard of the woman’s role as a “helper” in the context of an earthly marriage. Over time, I just assumed that until I was married, I would never fully know the joy of being in a life-long covenant with a partner, and I would never know the joy of fulfilling my role as “a helper fit for him.” Even while studying Women’s Ministry in college, when the topic of singleness would come up, I never fully understood how I could be a “helpmate” outside of earthly marriage.
Over the years, God has truly used my singleness to shape and solidify my devotion to Him. Don’t get me wrong- I’ve made plenty of weepy phone calls to my mom worrying about when or if I’ll ever get married. But that’s the problem: I was worried. Worried that my life would be incomplete. Worried that I’d be missing out. Worried that I’d be alone forever.
Man…those are LIESSS if I’ve ever heard them. Do any of those concerns sound like God? To give me a life where I lack any good thing? To give me a life where I miss His perfect will for my life? To give me a life where I am left alone? Heck no…and I have Truth to prove it:
Psalm 34:10 says that those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.
Philippians 3:15 says that anyone who thinks outside of God’s will, He will reveal it.
Matthew 28:20 Jesus said “I will be with you always…even to the end.”
I think when there are still parts of us that aren’t walking in what we were created for, we feel lack. Its just how we were created- to be filled by God alone, and to feel the absence when we’re not. Regardless of what we think can fill us- until it comes from God alone, we will always be searching. So for years I longed for a husband to fill the lack if felt in the role of a “helpmate,” until I learned that I was always created to be a helpmate, and it had nothing to do with an earthly marriage.
If you do a study on the Hebrew word for Helper, you’ll find that the original word for “helper,” is “ezer” which means “strong,” and “fully equipped,” and the original word for “suitable,” is “neged” which means “before your face, in your view or purpose.” So the full phrase “a helper suitable” literally means a woman who is strong and fully equipped to stand face to face with her partner.
When Paul talks about marriage in the New Testament, he says that what he is teaching is actually about the relationship between the Bride of Christ and the Lord, but that it also applies to earthly marriage (Ephesians 5:32-33). So as he teaches about marriage, he is moreso talking about our relationship with Christ and His Bride, than he is focusing on earthly marriage. Yet it is this example of Christ’s relationship with His Bride, that makes it relevant to the context of earthly marriage.
So, if I am the Bride of Christ, and I am created in the image of God, and the same Spirit of God which searches the depths of God is also the Spirit within me, (1 Corinthians 2:10-12), then I am convinced to believe that my Spirit was designed to stand face to face in covenant relationship with my creator- not as an equal to an eternal God, but as a Bride (and therefore, helpmate) to an eternal companion.
The truth is, God’s ultimate purpose for creation was that He wanted a family for Himself. He’s not just a King and a creator- He is a Father, and He wanted His Son to have a Bride; an eternal companion that would love Him with all of her heart….a mutual giving of all.
To fully understand what this mutual giving of all looks like for our lives today, we must understand what the marriage proposal of Christ actually meant. Below is an excerpt from a teaching on covenant marriage with Jesus that one of our racers on Gap V did a few weeks ago and I believe it is the best explanation of our covenant with Christ:
“In first century Jewish culture, when a man loves a woman, there is a tradition he has to follow in order to ask for her hand in marriage. First, the son and his father go to the house of the woman he desires to marry. The father of the bride and the father of the groom then meet to discuss the cost of receiving the bride’s hand in marriage. How much is the father of the groom going to pay for his son to have his bride? If an agreement can be made, then a ceremony takes place that will mark the legitimacy of their engagement. At this ceremony, the father of the groom will pour his son a glass of wine, and give it to him. The young man would bring the glass to his lips and take a drink. Turning to the woman he desires, he then offers her the cup, and says “this cup is the covenant of my blood, which I offer you.” He’s saying to her, “I’m giving you my life. Will you give me yours?”
The young woman is perfectly able to deny the man’s request. If the young woman receives the cup, takes it to her lips and drinks of the wine, she is saying, “yes. I’ll take your life and I’ll give you mine.” After she said yes, the groom says to his bride, “I will not yet take another drink of this cup until we are reunited. I go now to prepare a place for you in my father’s house.” And so he wouldn’t take another drink from that cup of wine.
This part of the ceremony is called the cup of the covenant, or cup of betrothal.
In Luke 22:20, Jesus is sitting at a table with his disciples, celebrating Passover. At this meal that we now know as the last supper, Jesus raised a glass of wine to His disciples, and He said to them “this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant of my blood.” Jesus is really saying to them, “I love you. I want life-long relationship with you. I’m giving you my life, will you give me yours?” The disciples would have recognized this ceremony, even if they didn’t get all that it meant for them yet. The disciples did take of the cup and drink. They were saying back to Jesus, “I love you, too. I want life-long relationship with you. I agree to the offer of your new covenant.” After the disciples drank of the cup, in Matthew 26:29 Jesus says, “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” And in John 14:2-3, Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms, it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, you, may be also.”
The Last supper is a marriage proposal. The Last supper is more than a comparison to the Jewish wedding tradition, it is the wedding tradition. It is an authentic proposal of a covenant relationship. Jesus is the groom who laid down His life for us and He asked us for ours. The purpose of the Last supper is to establish that we are in a binding covenant with Christ. We are married to Christ.
When you said yes, you laid down your life and took up His. It is now Christ’s life that lives inside of you.
After the disciples drank the wine, Jesus told them he was going to prepare a place for them at His father’s house. That’s exactly what a groom would have said to his bride after she drank of the cup of the covenant. He would tell her that he would return for her when he was ready, and that he would be faithful to her until he did. The significance of the groom not drinking of the wine after the bride does, is that the groom is saying, “I will be faithful to you until I see you again.” Jesus is faithful to us. He received our covenant relationship. He is preparing our places for us in Heaven to be with Him as His bride forever.
The Father poured the cup of wine for His Son. Jesus knew the cup His Father had poured for Him was a marriage proposal to His church, it was the cup of the covenant. The Father had accepted the terms of the marriage. He knew the price, sending his one and only son to reclaim us as the Beloved. In the garden, Luke 22:42 Jesus verbally acknowledges the cup his father had poured for Him, and He feels the weight of what marrying us is going to cost Him. But He still pays it for us. He remains faithful to the promise of our betrothal to Him.
So. You are married to Christ. What does that mean? Well, in a marriage, there’s a spiritual transaction that occurs, in that what was once yours, is now theirs. And what was once theirs, is now yours. And so we can apply that to our covenant relationship with Christ Jesus. What did belong to Jesus, is now yours. Wholeness. Righteousness. Peace in relationship to the Father. What belonged to you, was given to Jesus. Sin. Shame. Brokenness. Separation. But because of who Jesus is, those things could not stay on Him. And so He defeated sin, shame, brokenness, and separation. When Jesus said yes to marrying you, He received all of your brokenness, and He became broken for you on the cross. On the cross is where Jesus defeated everything that would come against our covenant relationship. Isaiah 53 says that Jesus being broken for us is how we have been healed. The chastisement that was upon Him is what brought us peace. Jesus is raised to life, and His victorious life is what we said yes to when we married him. We said yes to wholeness, righteousness, peace, and reconciliation.
You have to know what you got when you married Jesus.
Brokenness is gone. Wholeness is here.”
-Gap V Racer, 2019
I used to judge and shame the girls who said “I’m married to Jesus.” Today I am so thankful that He was never ashamed of His commitment to me even when I thought being “married to Jesus” was weird and lame, and “something single girls say to make themselves feel better.” I couldn’t have been further from the most beautiful, fulfilling truth.
