In Part 3 of Christ, His Church, & Marriage we will focus on Christ as the Divine Example. If you are feeling froggy you can jump on back and read Part 1 & Part 2. As we continue to plow through our Memory and Meditation Verses for February (Ephesians 5:22-33), hiding God’s Word in our hearts little by little, we come to contemplate verses 28-30 this week.
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body.
Natural Love Reflects the Divine Example
Here we see how natural love reflects the Divine. When Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for their “trophy-wifing”* in the ancient world he said this to them: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate (Matthew 19:4-6).”
Paul builds on the “one flesh” theme a little further here in Ephesians 5. He points out a very natural phenomenon that he has observed at work in the world. His observation is that everyone but small children and the mentally ill kept up their appearance and took care of their bodies. They also don’t get near fire or provoke junk yard dogs or live among bears. Everyone protects their body. They cherish it. Humans also tend to want to feed their bodies every day, and give them plenty of water too. People with rightly ordered loves have an appropriate natural love for their bodies. The body is a gift to be washed, nourished, and cherished.
Between Vanity & Schizophrenia Lives Truth
We should not love them too much. It is an evil pride that boasts in beauty or strength. However, we should not love our bodies too little either. When we sit in the dark as judges of ourselves, hating ourselves, and neglecting ourselves, there we find an evil pride too. People who neglect or harm themselves as I said are, or at least they used to be seen as, mentally ill and in need of help. When Paul says here, “For no one ever hated his own flesh” you should hear, “no one in his right mind any way.”
Jesus: The Divine Example
Jesus loves His Bride, His Body, and so of course He gives Himself up for Her. He washes Her, and makes Her into the best she can possibly be. He glorifies Her. Jesus is perfection personified. It was by keeping Himself pure and holy that He was able to make Her pure and holy too. What do we learn from the Divine example then?
Christian Husbands Follow Jesus as the Example
First, to see his wife become who she has the potential to be, her husband must first take the Lincoln Logs out of his own eyes, and become, as a man, the man that Christ calls him to be. Pushing our wives to holiness and subjection is not leading them to it. Modeling it is our call. It is when we live in subjection to the Divine ideal and pursue holiness ourselves that Christ can most use us to renew our wives after the image of Him who created her (Colossians 3:10). Dirty hands cannot scrub white clothes clean. “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded (James 4:8).”
Following Jesus Is Paul’s Point
Second, Paul stresses in verse 32 very cleary that what he is saying, he is saying about Christ and His Church. But he emphasizes it here too. “In the same way” in verse 28 is a reference to Christ washing His Bride with the water of the Word (vs 26). “Just as Christ does the church” in verse 29 is in reference to Christ’s nourishing and cherishing the Church. We are to draw our ideal of marriage from Christ and the Church. We are not to foist our own ideal onto Christ and the Church based on our understanding of marriage. It is our natural love that is to properly reflect the Divine love. We as men are to look to Christ as our example.
A Sign of Spiritual Mental Illness
“He who loves his wife loves himself.” Remember our example in the beginning. A disheveled man, or perpetually dirty man, or a man that needlessly flung himself into danger did not properly love himself. The neglect of his body showed a defect in his thinking. The principle according to Paul transcends to the spiritual too. A man that does not love his wife does not love himself just as surely as a man that loves his wife appropriately does. The husbands neglect of his wife is a spiritual symptom of a deeper problem and should serve as an alarm bell to wake him up to the fact that he has wandered far from the Lord. “ If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 John 4:20-21).” How much more, Men, can this be said of she that is so near you are not two but one?
Three Words Summarize the Divine Example
There are three words for men to take away from our Memory & Meditation verses so far. They are Wash-Nourish-Cherish. If I get a chance this week I may throw a little extra devotional out just particularly for you fellas on these three words. Until then…
May the Lord richly bless you all. Go in peace to love and serve Him,
Pastor Jeremy
Blessings!
Pastor Jeremy
Previous Articles on Marriage
Praying for Marriage and Children Part 1 & Part 2
* The Pharisees were doing the same things then that men of power and influence do in the modern era when they get older and richer… they trade in their first wife for a newer model. They were committing the sin of Malachi 2:13-15, covering the altar of God with tears for forsaking the wife of their youth. Wickedness then. Wickedness now.
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