Christ Loves His Bride

[This is my Faith Post for September 2024. It is a bit longer than normal because it is adapted from a sermon I preached at Grace on 8/25/2024. The text for the day was Ephesians 5:22-33 and it touches upon the all-important topic of marriage.]

Here is some good news for you: “Christ loves the church.” What wonder of wonders to hear and to inwardly digest such a thought. Now consider: "how do you know Christ loves the church?” Can you list in your mind the various things that Jesus has done, and still continues to do, to show how He loves the church?

The obvious answer is the cross. Jesus Himself calls this act "greater love" (Jn 15:13) when He lays down His life for us. It would be impossible to imagine love greater than that. Jesus has shown the ultimate self-sacrifice for His beloved.

But what else can we point to to show how Jesus loves His beloved, the church? How about His mercy? He continuously shows His willingness and His desire to be merciful to His beloved. When we have wronged Him it never changes His mind or His heart about us. Think how He prayed for all who had tormented Him and punished Him leading up to the cross: “Father, forgive them.” Think how He shows mercy to all of us in our Baptism by not treating us as the sinners we are but instead loving us and welcoming us as family.

And how about we consider the ways Jesus shows grace to His beloved as part of His amazing love for His bride the church. When Peter had denied Jesus three times, Jesus doesn’t disown Him, He gives Him grace, He reminds Peter how much He loves him. When Saul/Paul had persecuted Jesus bride the church, Jesus came to Him, drew Him close, and gave Him grace, continuing grace, reminding him, “my grace is sufficient for you.” (2 Cor. 12:9)

We could read all the Holy Word of God from start to finish to see the whole story of how Christ loves the church but I think for now, you get the idea.

So with this mindset of how wonderfully Christ loves His bride the church, let’s shift our thought to marriage in our world and how we love one another. Does this translate into our own marriages? Does this translate into our own individual lives, married or not. How do we as the Church respond to the love of Christ?

To put it bluntly: we make for a pretty poor Bride. We are not a faithful Bride to Christ. We are not a respectful or submitting Bride to Christ. This has always been true of God’s people, it is not new to us in our own age. It was true in the days of the apostles. It was true in the days of the Old Testament patriarchs. It is why the Scriptures have not only called God’s people idolatrous, it has also called us adulterous, for we have betrayed and been unfaithful to our Bridegroom in Christ.

This is further reflected in how we join our world in looking specifically at marriage. Not only are we unfaithful to our lover in Christ, we are unfaithful to one another. We cast blame. We lack respect. We lack honor. We lack love. We lack faithfulness. Where Christ has shown nothing but self-sacrifice towards us we and our sinful nature are filled with selfishness and we live in self-serving ways.

In fact, if I were to ask you what the biggest problems facing marriage in our world today would be: I think the answers would be in the realm of things like divorce or same-sex relationships or cohabitation. But I don’t believe any of those are truly the #1 issue. They are critical to be sure, but I believe the core problem of marriage is our tendency to self-serving and selfish in marriage and how we think about it.

We are daily inundated with the temptation to think first of ourselves. We make decisions based first on our own self interests. We are survivalists seeking to preserve our own. And hey, let’s face it, we learned this from our first father. Adam, after helping bring sin and death into creation, then proceeds with his next act to be self preservation and he casts the blame for his sin upon his wife and upon God. Not a great start for mankind.

In writing this, I wanted to get you thinking about Christ loving the Church because that is the foundation for all things. It is the foundation for how we as Christians need to continue the conversation about marriage. It is the foundation for how we as Christians need to look at our every daily lives of faith. It is the foundation for our work as the Church and so on. Everything that motivates and drives us starts with what Christ has first done for us. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19)

Using Christ, then, to talk and to think about marriage let's turn to His word in Ephesians 5:21. It reads like this: “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Paul shares these words before he digs deep into the question of husbands and wives and how they reflect Christ and the Church. I think these words “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” sets the tone well for all our Christian relationships because it turns us immediately to Christ. It describes something that is the very opposite of self-serving and selfish living. I cannot be self-serving if I am instead submitting to my neighbor or to my spouse. If I am giving and sacrificing my wants and desires for another this glorifies God.

Paul then goes on to describe how husbands and wives can submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. To wives he says “submit to your own husbands as to the Lord” and again “as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” I want to give you another similar word to understand what the Scriptures are getting at here. The word is self-surrender. Wives self-surrender in all things to their husbands. They choose to give up some of their freedom out of love and respect for their husbands. But they don’t do this in vain, they don’t do this in a vacuum. They do this in response to how their husbands are submitting to them. And that is where Paul takes us next.

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” For husbands I would offer up the word “self-sacrifice”. Husbands love for and respect and care for their wives, even submit to their wives by self-sacrifice. This indeed the kind of love that Jesus demonstrated and gave for each and all of us.

So together we hear the Scriptures say that wives self-surrender and husbands self-sacrifice, in this way we love one another, we glorify Christ and we honor the relationships the good Lord has called us into.

And this isn’t just for those individuals who are married. For again we are talking about Christ and the Church first and foremost. The idea of self-surrender in our relationship with our Bridegroom in Christ is something the apostles spoke of. In 1 Corinthians 9 St. Paul talks of the self-surrender we as Christians take on for the sake of following Jesus. “Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. (1 Cor. 9:12)” And St. Peter talks similarly in 1 Peter 5:6 “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.”

There is one more example to consider. You might think of it as a first and last example. Comparing the first Adam with the last Adam.

The first husband, the first father, the first human, period was Adam. Do you remember how Adam handled things when the serpent came with temptation to both he and his wife? He failed. He failed dramatically. He stands by his wife as she is tempted and eats. Then he himself eats. He then tries to hide her shame with fig leaves. He tires to conceal her sin by leading them to hide. Then when God finally confronts them, he blames his wife for their sin. This Adam did anything self-sacrifice for his wife. He certainly did not love her as Christ loves the church. He did not give himself up for her.

But now let us see what Jesus has done in place of the first Adam. Jesus died for His bride. He sanctifies His bride with His own righteousness insteading of hiding her shame. Instead of accusing us, Jesus takes our sin upon Himself and suffers and dies for our guilt, our shame, our sin. Christ takes our sin and removes it that we might be holy and without blemish. What Jesus does for us is a reminder of one of the all-time great hymn verses from “My Song is Love Unknown”, “Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.” This is what our Bridegroom does for us. He loves us. He sacrifices for us. He makes us righteous and holy. He makes us lovely. And for all this we self-surrender to Him trusting that He will provide, He will protect, He will love us always.

To God be the glory, Amen.

Mark
mark@wildernesswanderings.net