Lesser Men?

Does this mean that the other men women are in love with are always lesser men than Jesus? What form does the love for Jesus take compared with the love for the other man?


Of course they will always be 'lesser men', Jesus is God so its kind of hard to beat that! However, it goes both ways. Where husbands are meant to love their wives as Christ loves the church, and that's a big ask, wives are called, in Genesis, to be an ezer kenegdo, often translated helpmate (stupid translation) to their husbands. This is a big ask for women, the only other times the word ezer, meaning sustainer, is used in the bible is to describe God. We are asked to be a sustainer beside our husbands as God is a sustainer to His people; we are guranteed to fail because we are not God and we are not perfect. So husbands and wives are called to fulfill roles to each other that God has first filled, and both cannot live up to the original.

Our love and relationship with God comes first, for both men and women. Both husbands and wives need to look to God, not their partners, to meet their needs first and foremost. We then enter our relationship with our partner as a whole and satisfied person, we don't rely on our spouses for our emotional fulfillment or our self-esteem because they will let us down and ultimately they won't be able to handle the pressure and the marriage will break down. Just because the relationship and love we have for God is mirrored in our relationship with our husbands does not lessen or cheapen our marriage, rather it strengthens it. We also have a relationship with God that is mirrored in our parents, that doesn't make them any less our parents, in fact it means we can forgive them and give them grace when they fail because we have God to be the perfect parent to us.

(The information regarding women as ezer kenegdo was sourced from 'Captivating' by John and Stasi Eldridge.)