If you can answer YES to these three questions, then you are definitely in LOVE!!

During devotions this morning as I was reading in Eph. 5:22-33, I began to think about marriage and how serious a commitment it really is and Jesus tells us how we can know if we really love each other. He says if we really love each other we will do at least these three things:

Are you willing to leave your father and mother?

First, we will leave our father and mother. This is not just a physical leaving but also an emotional and familial leaving! Our relationship with our parents will be changed from the point of marriage forward. We will leave behind, as our primary relationship, our parent/child relationship and enter into our primary relationship as husband and wife. In Gen. 2:24, Matt. 19:5 & Mark 10:7, “leave” has the connotation of abandonment; the parents in regard to the child and the child in regards to the parent. It is a cutting off of a relationship of one type and the beginning of a new relationship of another type. Instead of the parents taking care of the child, protecting & providing for them, they relinquish that over to the couple. (Now, of course, we understand that only God can really do that through Jesus Christ; but as far as our human relationships are concerned, that is the purpose of parents.) They also have to relinquish their own personal desires they have for their child over to the couple’s desires. They are to give them independence, not from God, but to each other under God! The husband/wife responsibility, therefore, is to be abandoned to each other and become one new family unit as they go to begin a new life together. The parent’s responsibility is to allow this to happen.

Are you prepared to be glued to each other?

Second, we will cleave to each other. Marriage is not an addition to our parent’s family but a brand new family unit. It is not 3 becoming 4 or 5 becoming 6 etc. but two becoming one! This word “cleave” simply means “glued” to each other or “glued” together. The couple is now concerned with what is best for each other, and this guides every decision that is made. Now when problems come, and they will, the two will work it out together! No running home to mommy to fix the problem, but abandoned & glued together they are one! They have no choice but to reconcile themselves to each other as that is who they are!

Will you submit to Jesus Christ as your life?

Third, we will submit to each other. The wife will submit to Christ by showing respect to her husband, valuing him and honoring him as her authority. The husband will lay down his life for her by submitting to Christ’s authority as his authority and so in reality Christ is his wife’s authority. He will allow Christ to live in him to protect her and provide for her needs. (Financial needs, Emotional needs, Intimacy needs, Spiritual leadership, etc.)

Conclusion:

If we don’t allow Christ’s love to flow through us in this way, then what marriage becomes is not love for each other; but a way for each of us to use each other for our own selfish desires, and we will become slaves to each other’s selfish desires as well.