Who's love story is this?

Ephesians 5: 22-32

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Wow, I think I have heard and read this passage more than any other in the whole Bible. Mostly because every woman's book, bible study, or conference seems to focus here for at least a time. With good reason, this and the couple of verses in Titus 2 are two of the very few passages that give direct commands to women specifically. However, I have found in my own marriage that if I focus too much on this command and not enough on the context of it, my marriage gets worse not better. Or it gets better on the surface, but God is not necessarily glorified. Maybe that's why Paul acts like marriage is the secondary issue in what he is saying here.

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. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Everything that is said in these verses is referring to Christ and the church first and foremost. That is the greatest reality, that is what is going to last forever. That is the Great Romance. Our marriages are serving this greater reality of Christ and the church. So much so that at the end of it, Paul has to remind us (v. 33 "however") that it is a good idea that husbands love and wives respect. He has to do that because right before it he basically says, I'm not really talking about your marriage, only so far as it is a picture of who Christ is and how he relates to his church.

How many times have you heard this passage talked about or preached about with the main idea being the wonderful romance between Christ and His bride? Usually that is only talked about as a way to show us how we should submit and how we should love in our own marriages. What a therapeutic culture we live in. In reality it is the other way around. We should submit and love and have good marriages so that people can see the greater beautiful picture of Christ and His church. God did not make marriage the main issue and then use Christ and the church as an illustration. He always makes Christ the main issue. Everything else on this earth is just an illustration!

How easy it is to put all of our focus on this world, this life, this vapor, when preachers, and teachers, and authors, and leaders are trying to use the bible to make our marriages happier, and our kids better, and our jobs more fulfilling, and our lives more successful. When actually, God intends to use all of these things to exalt Christ, not use Christ to exalt us. Now, when Christ is exalted, the happiness of his people is inevitable. When our lives are laid down, he exalts us. He wants us to seek happiness with our whole hearts, through him. But if we are looking for happiness directly from our marriages by submitting and respecting our husbands and thinking that is going to make everything perfect, we WILL be disappointed.

I'm stepping down off of my soapbox now!

Father, help me to see YOU when I read the scriptures. Help me to keep you and your kingdom at the center of my universe. Give me grace to submit to my husband and give the church grace to submit to you. Help my marriage be as accurate a picture of Christ and His church as two sinners could make it. Thank you for showing me your unending, unchanging, unbreakable love through the tenacious love of my husband that seems to cover all of my sin and shortcomings. Thank you most of all for giving yourself up for your bride. I cannot imagine the day when we are presented to you in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish to be your bride through all eternity. What a love story!