Exodus 21:9 And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.

Earlier I had said that God would not ask anything of you that He would not perform Himself. Here in the Old Testament is a prescribed treatment for those who He has betrothed to His Son Jesus Christ. The issues of adoption into the family of God is centered on this prescribed treatment. Once the hostilities have ended, we are no long entreated as the enemy but as daughters.

Can we see in this prescribed treatment how God entreats us now that our relationship has changed? As a man I had a hard time seeing how this applied to our relationship because I wanted to maintain my fleshly understanding of manhood and all that my earthly father had taught me. I missed the deeper meaning of this prescribed treatment.

The daughter earns nothing, everything is given to her. She is loved without expectation. She is nurtured and protected because she is innocent and pure in the eyes of the father. She has no rights to an inheritance which comes solely by means of her husband.

We as the bride of Christ, His betrothed, are given gifts we did not earn. We are loved with a perfect love not because of what we have done or will do, but because of who He is in quality and personality. We are nurtured and protected even if we do not see the protective covering. Our innocence and purity is in His eyes because we are in Christ and not because of our past. Everything in heaven and earth has been given over to the Son because of His faithfulness to do the will of the Father and became the sacrifice that made this all possible.

I never saw this until I learned to look at things through God’s eyes.

Ephesians 2:14-16 (ESV) For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

I cannot tell you how long it took me to realize that I was at war with God. I didn’t feel hostile towards God but then again, not knowing Him I had no idea how He felt about my life without Him. Coming to Christ didn’t feel like a surrender, not for a long time. My first thought was to come to know this God. I knew He loved me according to the Word but how He felt about me before that day escaped my attention.

Perhaps that is His design, that those first days of relationship are unburdened by negative thoughts about who we were without Christ. A fresh start just like the first birth with no recollection of life in the womb. It did not occur to me for a long time that just as my mother suffered pain in child birth that God might suffer pain getting me delivered in His Kingdom. If you are not there yet, do not hurry into these thoughts yet. Hold His hand and feel the warmth of His love as long as you can.

If you are there and want to explore this side of God then allow me to point out one thing that is consistent in all the translations of Ephesians 2:16 and that is how the hostility ended. Killing, death, a permanent end with no chance of rekindling those hostilities. It was not enough to say the war ended for earthly wars occur over and over by reigniting hostilities. Not so with God.