#DailyDevotion The Unity Of God, & Christ & The Church Give Meaning To Marriage

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.

So apparently men need a little more instruction on what the LORD expects of them as husbands. Perhaps there is just more too it in being a husband. After all, the husband in a marriage is to be as the LORD Jesus is to the Church.

So Paul tells us husbands to love their wives like their own bodies. To love one’s wife is to love oneself. Any sort of abusive situation that some may think may happen because wifes should be submissive to their husbands should be completely dismissed as husbands are told to treat their wives as their own body, particularly Christian husbands. Sure there are men who abuse their own bodies but such men are not acting in faith in Jesus Christ. Generally, we feed and take care of our bodies. Our bodies are one of our favorite parts of ourselves. Men certainly think of their bodies being better than women thing of their own.

Now there is a reason husbands should love their wives like they do their own bodies. It’s because their wives’ bodies are one flesh with their bodies. Paul brings us all the way back to Genesis when the LORD brings the woman to the man. She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh and she will be called woman because she was taken from man. Husbands and wives are one flesh.

Now here is something to think about in Genesis 1 it is written, ²⁶”Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, like Ourselves,…’ ²⁷And God created man in His image, in God’s image He created him; He created them male and female.” There is a plurality and a union in God. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three distinct persons, one divine essence. Husband and wife are two distinct persons and one flesh. A husband and wife are part of the image and likeness of God. At least is seems that way to me. It really explains why God hates divorce. It ruins the image of God in the eyes of those who look at it.



Now also a husband and wife are the image of Christ and the Church as Paul plainly also says here. Now if a husband can hate and/or leave his wife, what does that say of Christ relationship with his Bride the Church? If a wife can hate and leave her husband, what does that say about the Church’s relationship with Christ? It is for this reason husbands and wives should do everything they can to preserve their marriages. It is why people outside the marriage should do everything they can do to support the marriages of people they know. An any case Paul says, “love your wife as you love yourself. And a wife should respect her husband.”

Heavenly Father, give us your Spirit that we may emulate in our marriages the image of the God-Head and Christ and the Church, loving and submitting to each other. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.