#DailyDevotion Marriage Is An Image Of Christ & His Church

Eph. 5:28-33 ²⁸This is how husbands should love their wives, like their own bodies. A man who loves his wife is loving himself. ²⁹No one ever hated his own body. Everyone feeds it and treats it tenderly, as Christ does the church ³⁰because we are parts of His body. ³¹This is why a man will leave his father and mother and live with his wife, and the two will be one flesh. ³²There’s a great truth hidden here – I mean that of Christ and the church. ³³But every one of you, too, love your wife as you love yourself. And a wife should respect her husband.

Paul continues with instructing husbands on what it means to submit to them out of love for Christ. This submission is love, the love of Christ for the world, for his Church. So husbands should love their wives like their own bodies. No one hates their body, not normally. You take care of your body. To love you body is to love yourself. To love your wife is to love yourself. Paul says we men feed and treat our body tenderly. Well, I don’t know how tenderly we treat our bodies. I think we often push them to the limit but then we are trying to improve our body or show how good our bodies are. The point Paul is making is that Christ feeds and treats the Church tenderly because we are parts of His body.

So we see this spiritual reality which was revealed at the creation of man. A man and his wife is one flesh. Jesus speaks of this when asked to teach about marriage and Paul brings it up here as well. When a man and woman get married—to each other—they become one flesh. They are one. It is a oneness like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as God said in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image and likeness, male and female we will make them.” This is why God hates divorce, it destroys the image of God that he made for us in marriage. There is a unity in the Trinity and there is a unity in marriage.

The husband and wife unity is also an image of the unity between Christ and the Church. When a couple gets married everything that is the husband’s is now the wife’s. Everything that is the wife’s is now the husbands. So too with Christ and the Church. Christ Jesus gets all our sins, guilt, shame, trespasses, pain, suffering and death. We get Jesus’ glory, honor, righteousness, life, kingdom, authority, wisdom and the like. It’s a great deal for the Christian. Jesus, in his great love for us, thinks its a great deal for him as well. Well its not so much the getting all our bad stuff that is the deal but rather he gets us. He gets to be one with us. He gets to makes us his temple in which he dwells. He lives in communion with us, which apparently he highly values in his love for us, his love for you.

Paul finishes this up with a restatement of how husband and wives submit to one another out of love for Christ. Husbands love your wives as yourselves and wives respect your husbands. I don’t think the world knows anything about this. You certainly don’t see it on commercials, TV shows and movies. What do we see? Husbands loving themselves. What do we see? Wives disrespecting their husbands. Point these things out to your kids when are hearing or watching some entertainment. Let them know this is not how marriage is. Even greater, show them what marriage is in your own marriage so they can see the love of Christ for you in your marriage.

Merciful God and Father, grant us such faith that we who are married demonstrate the unity and love of the Trinity and Christ and the Church so no one who sees us will doubt your great love for us in Christ Jesus. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.