April 18, 2011

• Marriage Reflects Christ's love for the Church

  Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

  Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Eph 5:21-33)

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  The above passage is perhaps the most difficult passage for the secular world to swallow, not only because of the infiltration of the demonic doctrines of equality that has so grappled our Western society, but also because, especially in American, we have a history of having fought so hard for civil rights, among them the right for African Americans to be free, the right for women to vote, and the right for African Americans not be segregated among other rights.  The idea that the wife should submit to the husband is very difficult for us as a society to imagine and/or comprehend because of our history and because we certainly believe in individual freedoms, the rights to expression, and the American way.  What I find surprising about this passage is that most Christians I know emphasize how the wife needs to be submissive to husband, but fail to emphasize that the husband needs to love as Christ loves to the church.  In conclusion, I would say that it is more difficult for me, as the husband to love my wife as Christ loves His church.  Christ's love means unconditional love, sacrificial love, and giving up everything for my wife.

  Jesus Christ gave up His rights as God, became a servant, and did not consider equality with God something to be grasp, though He Himself is God.  It is this humbling of myself to my wife, giving up the authority that God has given to me, suspending it even, so that I could love her that is a mystery to me.  Sure, I could take up my rights as a husband and enforce some rules in the household (liken to how Jesus could enforce the law when He was on earth) and have my wife submit to me, but what will that achieve?  Where is the love and/or joy from submission that is for its own sake?

  Rather, I have learned firsthand and personally from my relationship with Jesus that submission must from my heart.  It must come from my freewill in that I choose to submit to Jesus because He loves me unconditionally, having died on the cross for my sins, and rose again on the third day.  He, having paid that ultimate price, so that I, through faith in Him as Savior, could have eternal life.  It is that love that compels me to submit to my Savior as it is because He loved me first.  As a husband, I am called to reflect Christ's love to the church to my wife, I am called to love my wife the same way, giving up myself for her and being ready to die for her if it comes to it.  For this is my calling as a husband, to love her as Jesus has love me.  To love her in the way that He shows me how to love her.  And, this love for her can only come about through a personal relationship with Jesus, through bowing at His feet learning more about Him, about His love, and letting that love flow into our marriage so that the picture of Christ and His church can be reflected through the marriage.

  My wife submits to me because she loves me.  She submits to me out her freewill and choice, not because she has to, but because she loves me and responds to the unconditional love that I have expressed and given to her through the supernatural power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  Because the word of God dwells in us, the Holy Spirit guides us in our marriage.  God speaks to us and guides us, provides us direction, and tells us the next steps.  We both love God and He has been in the center of lives before our marriage and He is the center of our lives now.

  So husbands, remember to love your wives as Christ loves the church.  Remember to give up everything for your wife, to cherish her, to love her unconditionally without limits (that such love can only come through a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ and an access to His love by way of His shed blood by faith in His Son's as Savior), and to do it as to the Lord putting Jesus Christ first.  And, out of reverence for Christ and the Lord, she will submit to you and this is wonderful indeed because it reflects your relationship with Jesus three times!  Once through you, once through your wife, and another through your marriage.  How awesome is that!  You get to evangelize about Jesus three times!  That's exciting to me!

  Copyright 2011 by Christenstein

  • 12:09 pm
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