Jesus is our perfect husband.  He loves us more than himself, he chooses us before His own comfort.  On the cross, He chose us over His own life.

In Genesis, Adam is the first husband ever.  Adam had heard the word of God, the warning about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:17).  Yet, when Eve, who had not heard the word directly from the Lord, offered him the fruit he took it, because it was appealing to the flesh. 

Similarly, Abraham, the husband of Sarah had heard the word of the Lord saying that Abraham would have a son by his wife Sarah.  Yet, when Sarah impatiently offered him a young woman, Hagar, who appealed to his flesh, he too received the elicit fruit from his wife and satisfied his own flesh. 

In both cases, the wife offers something fleshly to her husband. In both cases, the husband does not say, “That’s not what God said.”  Neither husband corrected his wife, nor did either one deny himself.  Instead, both husbands received the fruit of the wrong tree with big consequences for themselves, their wives and their generations.  

As an aside, perhaps a big role of wives as helpmate is to demonstrate denying ourselves to our husbands in order to help them to do the same?

So I have expressed this idea about Adam & Abraham being examples of husbands who did not deny their own flesh and maintain the word of the Lord, but submitted to their flesh instead.  

Sometime later, (Exodus 4:24-26) Moses, the friend of God, had disobeyed the Lord and not circumcised his son as the Lord had commanded. The Lord was actually going to kill Moses!  So Zipporah, his wife, grabbed a knife and did the deed to save her husband’s life.  Then she said, “You are a husband of blood to me now.” There are many questions about her statement, but it is important to understand that circumcision was a blood covenant with God. It represented obedience to the word of the Lord and the, literal, denial of the flesh. Apparently, the covenant and Moses and his generations being under it, was important to God!

Jesus is our perfect husband.  He too was tempted by the flesh.  After fasting for 40 days, the first temptation the enemy brought to him was against His flesh, “If you are the son of God, why don’t you make these rocks into bread.”  But Jesus did not.  Jesus denied the desire of His flesh for food and spoke the true word of God instead.

Whereas these other husbands, rather than deny themselves, took the fleshly thing that they wanted and brought consequences upon themselves and their wives; Jesus denied himself and spoke the word of God instead.  He brought a covenant of blessing upon us instead.

Adam and Abraham were husbands under the covenant of the flesh.  The broken hymen making the two one flesh and creating a lifelong blood covenant of marriage.  But Jesus is a husband of the New Covenant.  The new and eternal covenant.  He sacrificed His life’s blood for us.  He sacrificed His flesh.  He sacrificed to remain holy, so that we too could live holy lives.

I believe this is the role of fasting in the Kingdom of God; to accustom us to denying our flesh in favor of following the Word of God.  We are to get accustomed to choosing life in the spirit over life in the flesh.  As Kingdom people, this helps us make all of our decisions with clarity that can be muddled through feeding our flesh in abundance.

In this season, my family and I take communion together on most days. The intimacy of communion is much like intimacy in marriage. In the physical intimacy of marriage, we offer our beloved our body. It can be a vulnerable moment. Jesus said, “This is my body, given for you.” I hear Jesus’ vulnerability and courage in His words.

He offered His blood for us freely.  He poured it out, not trickled it out. “This is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”  In His words I hear His confidence and excitement about the New Covenant He is about to create.  His anticipation that we will be free of the old covenant of burden and empowered by the new covenant of His love.

To paraphrase Paul in Romans 7, our old husband, with his demanding to-do list, was about to die.  Jesus knew we would be free from the law. Under the new covenant (or marriage to Jesus) we have “died to the power of the law, when you died with Christ.  And now you are united with the One who was raised from the dead.” (Romans 7:4)

Next time you take communion, know that your spiritual husband, Jesus, sacrificed His all for you. He chose you over His own life so that you can be in eternal covenant with Him.

He is our perfect husband and has set us free.  “And because you belong to Him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.” (Romans 8:2) Our perfect husband chose to provide the blood of the covenant, so we can have the consequence of blessings.  Choose Him in return.  Live in your blessings.  Know your husband and all His glories fully.  It will mean a lifetime of exploration and wonder as you behold your beloved.

It’s never too early to wish you a wonderful resurrection day!