Throughout scripture God presents Himself as a male figure, and there are reasons He does so. However, He is not male in the way we think of it. God is spirit (John 4:24) and spirits do not have a sex (Matthew 22:30). God made male and female (Genesis 1:27) and everything He has made He made from Himself. Thus, just as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit represent different aspects of God, male and female represent different aspects of God as well. God is neither male or female; He is both. The companion He is creating for Himself will be neither male or female either. God uses terms like her, wife, and bride when speaking of this companion because to do otherwise would have required a new language and explanation. He has not revealed this new relationship until now.

Sex, like time, is strictly physical. Spirits aren’t physical; they don’t have a sex and they don’t have arms or legs either. In truth, there are no streets of gold in heaven – in fact, no streets at all. All of these are attempts to give physical descriptions to spiritual things for which there are no physical parallels. We try to describe things for which there are no words – spiritual things that are hard to understand and even harder to explain.

So, when we speak of being in love with God, it is possible to conceive of this as a male/female relationship, but as a male/male relationship it just does not work. Also, God’s view of homosexual marriage as an abomination does not help our thinking on this subject. The only way out is to abandon male/female sexual roles or relationships with respect to God and God’s marriage.

We cannot and should not abandon them with respect to human relationships however. God created marriage as a model of the kind of relationship He desires, but it is only a model and not the entire picture. As humans we have God defined roles as husbands and wives, and that is definitely a sexual differentiation. But in the spirit, which includes spiritual rewards, relationships, and potential, this sexual differentiation does not apply.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28 NASB

This is a difficult subject to be comfortable with – possibly more so for men than women. God wants an intimate, meaningful, permanent relationship with a body He calls His bride. As humans we think of this in sexual terms, but God does not. The metaphors are powerful but incomplete. The truth of the relationship God is after is more complex and even deeper than any humans can develop. It does not involve sex, which is entirely physical and thus temporary. What God is creating is permanent, eternal, powerful, and meaningful in ways we just don’t fully understand or appreciate yet.

Think bigger, think whole, think love. Think God’s love –not mankind’s love – which is only a shadow of what is to be.