21 "And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."
I just used this passage in the wedding I performed two weeks ago. While it is stereotypical, I absolutely love the illustration that Paul presents here. While you can go on for a long time talking about this section of Scripture, I want to focus on verse 32, because I see this as the capstone of Paul's teaching on relationships between husband and wife. According to Paul, the wife serves as a representation of the Church while the husband serves as a representation of Jesus Himself. I absolutely love this imagery, especially today when marriage is cheapened! In other words, a marriage is a physical representation here on earth of the relationship between Jesus and the Church, His bride! This also means that the way we view marriages should be deepened. Our very marriages serve as a physical representation of the Gospel, and could very well be the only time some people see/hear/experience the Gospel! To me this makes me think twice about everything that I do in my marriage, because I don't want people to see me do something or hear me say something that might give them the wrong impression of how Jesus is, turning them away from one day talking about Him. Anyway, this is one of the biggest things that I get out of this section. What about you guys? =)
"Father I pray that You would strengthen me to be the best husband that I can be. I pray that in everything I say and do, I would represent Christ the best that I possibly can! I pray for each of the girls and guys in CSF, that You would prepare them even now so that if/when they one day marry, they would also represent Jesus and His Bride well. Father I love You so much, and thank You so much for everything You do! It's in Jesus' name that I pray, amen!"
I have found more recently that in preparing myself to be the head of a household, and closer to the wedding, I want to change more of my behaviors and actions to act in a manner pleasing to God. I know it's always the easiest excuse to say at school I didn't have the time, or whatever the case may have been. But in these last two weeks of working and living in my house/our future house I have been more in the word then any time before. My routines have changed, my methods have been tweaked, and I prepare myself to marry my bride and be that example. Sometimes it's cliche to quote the verse, but I look at Joshua 24:15 often. In the representation you use of our marriage being the same unity of Christ and the church, I need to be better. With Bible study in the morning, and reading this at night I'm already finding myself calmer, and my relationships with people have improved.
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