Theologically stuck on something

Jamdoc

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Maybe you guys can help.
As we know, Male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27)
and He created marriage (Genesis 2:24), and Marriage, romantic love, is supposed to be an image of how Christ loves His "bride" (Ephesians 5 and Hosea 2 go into this analogy, Ephesians more or less saying it's a great mystery). It's the relationship we'll have forever, since there won't be marriage between men and women in eternity, only the marriage between Christ and His church.
For male Christians then, it's a male+male marriage relationship, which romantic love and even sex are to be an image of.
Yet that kind of relationship between 2 males is an abomination in the bible all over the place.
So how does this pan out? How is a romantic relationship between a man and a woman, how is sex, between a man and a woman, supposed to be an indicator and image of a relationship between what is ultimately 2 males?
I just get stuck on this hangup all the time.
I just imagine it's so much easier to deal with this relationship issue if you're a woman where you just know, Christ is your eternal husband and the perfect man, so there's no emasculating feelings or feeling of rejection because it's same sex.
 

Paidiske

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It seems to me you're taking something that pertains to the whole Church (being the "bride" of Christ), and making it individual to each person. I don't necessarily think that's a valid or helpful approach.

I certainly, as a woman, don't see Christ as my eternal husband, in that kind of personal sense.

It's an analogy - it's meant to help us understand Christ's love, fidelity, and so on, and how we, the Church, ought to also respond with love and fidelity - it's not meant to define everything about the relationship between Christ and the Church.
 
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athenken

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The church is referred to as Christ's bride, though this is really just a metaphor to make it easier for us to understand. The reason there is sex in this life is so husbands and wives are able to feel more connected to each other. The other purpose is to procreate. Once this world is gone there will be no more need for procreation, much less men and women to marry.
 
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Aussie Pete

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Maybe you guys can help.
As we know, Male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27)
and He created marriage (Genesis 2:24), and Marriage, romantic love, is supposed to be an image of how Christ loves His "bride" (Ephesians 5 and Hosea 2 go into this analogy, Ephesians more or less saying it's a great mystery). It's the relationship we'll have forever, since there won't be marriage between men and women in eternity, only the marriage between Christ and His church.
For male Christians then, it's a male+male marriage relationship, which romantic love and even sex are to be an image of.
Yet that kind of relationship between 2 males is an abomination in the bible all over the place.
So how does this pan out? How is a romantic relationship between a man and a woman, how is sex, between a man and a woman, supposed to be an indicator and image of a relationship between what is ultimately 2 males?
I just get stuck on this hangup all the time.
I just imagine it's so much easier to deal with this relationship issue if you're a woman where you just know, Christ is your eternal husband and the perfect man, so there's no emasculating feelings or feeling of rejection because it's same sex.
We will receive new bodies. The relationship we have with God is spiritual (they that worship God must do so in spirit and in truth). In heaven, male and female are meaningless. Sex does not enter into it.
 
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Jamdoc

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We will receive new bodies. The relationship we have with God is spiritual (they that worship God must do so in spirit and in truth). In heaven, male and female are meaningless. Sex does not enter into it.

Not sure if I can find it in scripture but I've often heard that sex itself is an image of the relationship with God.
 
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Aussie Pete

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Not sure if I can find it in scripture but I've often heard that sex itself is an image of the relationship with God.
God created sex. Some people take the "Song of Solomon", which is surprisingly raunchy, as an allegory of Christ and the church. It's allegorical. David and Jonathon were best of mates. It says that David loved Jonathon. So the homosexual lobbies say they were a number. That is a perversion of what it means to love someone. I love my kids, that does not make me a paedophile. I love Lord Jesus. He has made me His brother. That does not make me gay.
 
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icxn

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Your soul is the bride, your heart the womb and to borrow another metaphor, also the earth in which Christ sows His words, these are the seed. If you believe you conceive and when you persevere in reading, in prayer and good works you will give birth to virtues and knowledge of God, these are the souls' children. Nourish them with the milk (teaching) of His breasts, the two testaments and His image in you, will mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ.
 
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Jamdoc

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God created sex. Some people take the "Song of Solomon", which is surprisingly raunchy, as an allegory of Christ and the church. It's allegorical. David and Jonathon were best of mates. It says that David loved Jonathon. So the homosexual lobbies say they were a number. That is a perversion of what it means to love someone. I love my kids, that does not make me a paedophile. I love Lord Jesus. He has made me His brother. That does not make me gay.
and I agree with that, David and Jonathan were basically brothers, and I understand different types of love for different relationships. If it'd always been a father and child relationship love that was given in the bible as the relationship of God to His people it would be easy to understand and put into perspective. However the bible uses the marriage of a man and a woman as another way to describe the relationship between God and His people, and that's where it gets all kinds of weird for me, and now that you mention it, yes I think Song of Solomon is where people like John Piper actually get their concept that the relationship with God is somehow sexual in a way, which I get uncomfortable with.

Paul refers to it as a great mystery so at least I take that as that Paul didn't fully understand the nature of the relationship either.
 
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chevyontheriver

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Maybe you guys can help.
As we know, Male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27)
and He created marriage (Genesis 2:24), and Marriage, romantic love, is supposed to be an image of how Christ loves His "bride" (Ephesians 5 and Hosea 2 go into this analogy, Ephesians more or less saying it's a great mystery). It's the relationship we'll have forever, since there won't be marriage between men and women in eternity, only the marriage between Christ and His church.
For male Christians then, it's a male+male marriage relationship, which romantic love and even sex are to be an image of.
Yet that kind of relationship between 2 males is an abomination in the bible all over the place.
So how does this pan out? How is a romantic relationship between a man and a woman, how is sex, between a man and a woman, supposed to be an indicator and image of a relationship between what is ultimately 2 males?
I just get stuck on this hangup all the time.
I just imagine it's so much easier to deal with this relationship issue if you're a woman where you just know, Christ is your eternal husband and the perfect man, so there's no emasculating feelings or feeling of rejection because it's same sex.
No need to get stuck on it. The relationship is between Christ and His Church, one man and one woman, the groom and the bride, in a vowed permanent relationship. It's not a relationship between each of us and Christ but between all of us together in the Church with Jesus. There is an element of truth to the 'Jesus and me' thing but in this regard it is Jesus the husband and the Church (all of us) is the bride. Nothing untoward about it. You just have to see the relationship between Jesus and the Church as the principal relationship. Moreso than the relationship between you individually and Jesus. Yours is the relationship of brother to brother, adopted into the family of the Father
 
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coffee4u

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Maybe you guys can help.
As we know, Male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27)
and He created marriage (Genesis 2:24), and Marriage, romantic love, is supposed to be an image of how Christ loves His "bride" (Ephesians 5 and Hosea 2 go into this analogy, Ephesians more or less saying it's a great mystery). It's the relationship we'll have forever, since there won't be marriage between men and women in eternity, only the marriage between Christ and His church.
For male Christians then, it's a male+male marriage relationship, which romantic love and even sex are to be an image of.
Yet that kind of relationship between 2 males is an abomination in the bible all over the place.
So how does this pan out? How is a romantic relationship between a man and a woman, how is sex, between a man and a woman, supposed to be an indicator and image of a relationship between what is ultimately 2 males?
I just get stuck on this hangup all the time.
I just imagine it's so much easier to deal with this relationship issue if you're a woman where you just know, Christ is your eternal husband and the perfect man, so there's no emasculating feelings or feeling of rejection because it's same sex.

Christ's love and example has nothing to do with fleshly feelings of attraction and sex. It's to do with being a servant, of loving your spouse as Christ loved the church. Of being one in the spirit. You are to love your wife fully and purely. Jesus was celibate as a man and is now spirit, sex is only for flesh made creatures and man.
 
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Jamdoc

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Christ's love and example has nothing to do with fleshly feelings of attraction and sex. It's to do with being a servant, of loving your spouse as Christ loved the church. Of being one in the spirit. You are to love your wife fully and purely. Jesus was celibate as a man and is now spirit, sex is only for flesh made creatures and man.

When Christ was resurrected He was resurrected in a body of flesh. It has different properties, and can do things that our current bodies can't, but it's still flesh.
We're not gonna be bodiless spirits forever, we're going to have physical, material bodies.
The resurrected body of Jesus was still a man as well, so gender, as far as I can tell, still exists, unless all women are resurrected in male bodies as well and Jesus meant not only will we be immortal and not marry like the angels, but we'd all be male like the angels too in Matthew 22:30.
But as far as I know, men will be men, women will be women.
 
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topher694

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It seems to me you're taking something that pertains to the whole Church (being the "bride" of Christ), and making it individual to each person. I don't necessarily think that's a valid or helpful approach.

I certainly, as a woman, don't see Christ as my eternal husband, in that kind of personal sense.

It's an analogy - it's meant to help us understand Christ's love, fidelity, and so on, and how we, the Church, ought to also respond with love and fidelity - it's not meant to define everything about the relationship between Christ and the Church.
I completely agree.

This is worth reposting to emphasize truth of the statement. No need to make the whole bride/groom thing into something more that it actually is.
 
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St. Helens

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Amittai

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... where people like John Piper actually get their concept that the relationship with God is somehow sexual in a way, which I get uncomfortable with. ...

Also called Body Theology and came through JP II's mentors and proteges.
 
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Amittai

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For male Christians then, it's a male+male marriage relationship, which romantic love and even sex are to be an image of.
Yet that kind of relationship between 2 males is an abomination in the bible all over the place.
So how does this pan out? How is a romantic relationship between a man and a woman, how is sex, between a man and a woman, supposed to be an indicator and image of a relationship between what is ultimately 2 males?
I just get stuck on this hangup all the time.
I just imagine it's so much easier to deal with this relationship issue if you're a woman where you just know, Christ is your eternal husband and the perfect man, so there's no emasculating feelings or feeling of rejection because it's same sex.

Jamdoc, the whole point of analogy is that it is a part metaphor and the other part has no resemblance. An allegory of Mother Church on the other hand is in Prov 31:10-31.

In any event does Jesus not call us all (at one point) "daughters of Jerusalem"?
 
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JIMINZ

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In any event does Jesus not call us all (at one point) "daughters of Jerusalem"?

No, He does not.

Luke 23:27,28
27) And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.
28) But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.
 
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You are mixing spiritual and physical concepts, and applying them literally

Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
 
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Broken Fence

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Greetings,
I think you might be misunderstanding this mystery, so I will give you my interpretation. The Holy Spirit which indwells the believer is an intimate relationship with God the Father and God the Son. Intimate in the sense that God wants to know you through and through. Through the power of The Holy Spirit, God knows the most intimate things about you. For instance I tell God things I could never tell a person about the intimate matters of my mind, heart, soul, and spirit. God likes that He knows everything anyway, however when we confess our intimacy to God, He heals us.
 
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Maybe you guys can help.
As we know, Male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27)
and He created marriage (Genesis 2:24), and Marriage, romantic love, is supposed to be an image of how Christ loves His "bride" (Ephesians 5 and Hosea 2 go into this analogy, Ephesians more or less saying it's a great mystery). It's the relationship we'll have forever, since there won't be marriage between men and women in eternity, only the marriage between Christ and His church.
For male Christians then, it's a male+male marriage relationship,

Christ is "God" not male in heaven. God is an infinite order of being ... you are proposing a sexual relationship as it were - between a human and an ant.

You are way off the track.

Rev 21
2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. ...

I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. 7 He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.
...
The New Jerusalem
10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God. Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper. 12 It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. 13 There were three gates on the east and three gates on the north and three gates on the south and three gates on the west. 14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
 
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