Bride of Christ

English Standard Version Chapter 5

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives and Husbands

22 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.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 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. 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.

Getting back to thinking about church

Looked at some unhelpful ways that we might think about church:

Social club

fortress

business

democracy

dictatorship

But then we tried to align our thinking with how God sees His church by looking at Scriptural pictures of church:

Definition: Church is a group of Believers gathered together under the declaration that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God

Church is Temple

A dwelling place for the Spirit of God to reside

Church is a Body

The hands, the feet, the arms, the voice, the eyes, the ears of Jesus

Serving each other and the world around us

putting on flesh

Church is a family

Today, I just want to take some time and look at one more very important picture that the Bible gives us of how to think about church

That is, Church is the Bride of Christ

I gotta be honest with you.

For me, as a guy, this is a picture that makes me a little bit....

I don’t really like to think about being a bride as a guy

We think about brides being beautiful

Wearing jewelry and flowers and makeup

Things that I don’t want to wear as a guy

And this idea of being the bride of Christ, although I believe is a most important picture, is one that I struggle to understand

However, this way of understanding church is given to us and it is one of the most intimate and tender pictures that we have

In this picture, the Church is not

a flock of confused sheep

a body with all it’s aches and pains and ailments

not even a family with all it’s issues

But the church is a BRIDE, beautifully adorned, loved and cherished by her husband

Today in this passage from Ephesians, this is the picture that we are given

Paul says, Husbands, you are to love your wives, just like Christ loves His bride, The Church

In our human relationships, we have been given a visual and experiential picture of marriage, which is meant to give us a greater understanding the way Jesus Thinks about His Church

And how the Church should, in turn, respond to Jesus

The first thing that I want to draw attention to about this relationship is what he says in verse 32.

It is a great mystery

I’m talking about something that we just can’t understand fully

Yes, human marriage is wonderful and we are thankful for it, and we do our best as husbands and wives to love and respect each other,

And we acknowledge that our institution of marriage is supposed to help us understand more about Christ and the Church

But in the end, it is a mystery

What is it that attracts a man to a woman? What is it that attracts a woman to a man?

What is this creation of marriage?

How is it that Jesus loves His Church like this?

And not just any old run of the mill kind of mystery.

He says, in verse 32 “It is a profound mystery”. That Greek word means “severe” or “intense”

What does this word “profound” imply?

It’s not supposed to make us throw up our hands and say, “well, I guess I’ll never understand it, so I guess if the Bible says it’s a mystery, I’ll just accept that it is what it is.”

No!

The fact that is is a profound mystery means that it should be something that captures our imagination

To make us lean in and say, “I want to know more about this!”

“How is this possible that our marriages are a picture of how Christ loves the church?”

But on the other hand, the fact that it is a profound mystery this should keep us fascinated with it, searching to discover more and understand more about it

There are modern day mysteries which capture the attention of folks

One mystery that has fascinated me over the years is Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Over ten years ago now, this Boing 777 with 239 people on board just vanished somewhere over the remote southern Indian Ocean.

And for over 10 years, there have been very few answers. Lots of speculation, but very few concrete ideas about what happened to that airplane

To me, this is a profound mystery.

But it pales in comparison to the mystery that we find in marriage and in the relationship between Christ and His church

In a marriage, when a husband or a wife lose that sense of mystery

when marriage starts to become routine

it can become stale

And the same is true in that relationship between Christ and the church

as soon as we lose that sense of mystery

we stop marveling at how Christ would enter into this kind of relationship with us

Then we start to take Him for granted and our relationship with him becomes stale

But this relationship that we are talking about is a profound mystery

This picture of this marriage starts to come together as Paul focuses on Jesus

Jesus the Groom

He loved the Church vs. 25

Husbands are to love their wives

a marriage is to be built on love

We know this to be true, but the reality is that we struggle to know what true love is

and it’s not unusual to have a marriage that is built on something else other than true love, and when that happens, there are bound to be rough times ahead

We look at marriage like a 50/50 contract and expect that the other person will bring just as much effort into the relationship as I do

And when that doesn’t happen, disappointment sets in

We may build a marriage on physical attraction

and of course, our bodies change and get old and disappointment can set in

We may build a marriage on how the other person makes me feel

That lady respects me and thinks I’m manly. That makes me feel good

That man takes care of me and makes me feel safe. That makes me feel good

But then down the road, things begin to change. I don’t feel so manly anymore. She doesn’t feel so safe anymore

and disappointment sets in

and marriages begin to break down because we struggle to know what true love is

You might be aware that 25% of all divorces happen fairly late in life when couples reach the “empty nest” stage...after all the kids leave home

then reality sets in, and they look at the other person and think, “Why do I even need to stay married to him/her?”

and we live with this reality of struggling to know how to truly love our spouse

and so we might struggle with this picture of the Church being the Bride of Christ, and of

the church truly being loved by Him.

But it says that Jesus loves His bride

And we know that when the Bible talks about the kind of love that Jesus has, it is true covenant love

The very definition of who Jesus is, right?

His character is love

He cannot be wishy-washy about how He feels about the church

Although I believe that Jesus does indeed have emotion and that He feels very strongly about His church

He does not base how He will treat the church based on His emotions, as we human husbands tend to do

Jesus is the very definition of Love, and so everything that He does flows out of this character quality

His love is hesed. It is his covenant love that He has for His people

Lovingkindness

Mercy

It is this love which flows out of who He really is

He gave Himself

Out of His love, he gave Himself “up”. vs 25

He gave Himself up for His bride

Same word that is translated “Betray”

This word is used of Judas when he promised to betray, or deliver Jesus to the authorities

Jesus uses this word when He tells His followers that they will be delivered up to the councils and beaten for the message that they were preaching

Jesus uses this word of Himself when He says that the Son of Man will be “delivered” into the hands of evil men

in almost every instance when this word is used in the Bible, it is used in this “negative” way.

Betrayal! We don’t like betrayal

Yet, here it is used to describe the love that Jesus has for you and for me, His Church

how are we to think about that?

if we think about the person or object that is being “delivered up”, or “betrayed”

there is a force acting on this person, isn’t there?

this person being betrayed is being forced to do something that is against his will, or contrary to what he would want to do.

And Paul uses this word for what Jesus did for His church

Jesus wasn’t just “given up” by Judas.

But Jesus also gave Himself up.

In a sense He betrayed Himself

He betrayed what a person would really want to do:

self preservation

advancing own goals and agenda

This is what needs to happen in a marriage as well

husband and wife must give up or betray themselves on behalf of the other person

And this is what Jesus did

For you and me, His Church, Jesus gave Himself up

Why?

Jesus cleansed us

In a healthy human marriage, there is the desire by both bride and groom, that the other will enter the marriage pure

physically clean

morally clean

that is the goal. it doesn’t always happen

but at least there is the desire that if unfaithfulness does take place, that the person who was unfaithful will have at least confessed this to God and to the other person

But when we think about Jesus entering into a relationship with His people

He comes to a people who are not faithful, and not able to make themselves presentable to Him

His people are not able to cleanse themselves and be pure when they enter into a covenant marriage with Him

This message and this picture are given to us over and over again in the Bible

Hosea, ordered to marry an unfaithful woman

who ultimately left him

her inability to stay faithful to Hosea, even though she probably loved him was an example of God’s people

they loved God, but were unable to be faithful for very long

found herself being sold on the auction block

And it was Hosea who went out and bought her back and cleaned her up, sanctified her, as it were, and loved her as his wife once more

This is what it says here that Jesus did for His church.

The reason that Jesus loved us and gave Himself up for us was in order to sanctify the Church

to cleanse her by the washing of water with the word

We could talk for a while about what this means, but to boil it down, very simply

God’s desire for His people is, and always has been, that we be pure. Sinless. Spotless.

That was how it started in the Garden of Eden

Adam and Eve were created pure and sinless in a Garden that was perfect. Without flaw or blemish

And this is how it will end when we are in the presence of Jesus

But in between those times, God’s desire for His people never changed

His desire is for a pure church. One without blemish, spot or wrinkle

And in this relationship, Jesus as the husband, the Church as the bride

Jesus takes it upon Himself to cleanse the bride

There are different ways of looking at cleansing

First, initial cleansing

Jesus blood cleanses us from all sin (1John 1:7)

But the other way of looking at cleansing is in John 15:3 “3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.”

His Word, His instruction, His truth, is meant to have a cleansing effect on us

by exposing and cleansing our hearts

You know in a marriage relationship, husband and wife should both be working on cleansing each other

I’m not talking about cleaning each other physically

but there should be a spiritual and inward cleansing that takes place

My wife can see things about me that need to change...things that I can’t see in myself. And I would be wrong and blind not to receive that from her

And the same is true of her, receiving from me. Husbands and wives should be engaged in the work of mutual cleansing

challenging each other and helping to purify the hearts and motives of the other person

together living lives that are increasing in holiness and righteousness

And the same is true in the relationship with Christ and His church

No, we as His bride, certainly don’t challenge Jesus and try to purify Him!

But, it is certainly true that in His relationship toward us, not only is there the moment of inward cleansing

when we are made right before Him

but there should also be a daily and consistent inward cleansing

where Christ through His word and the ministry of the Holy Spirit

continues to cleanse us in order to make us holy and spotless and blameless before Him

The Church—the Bride

our role in this relationship is to submit to the Groom, that is, Jesus

Submission—a hard concept to preach in today’s world

It’s not popular. It’s controversial. Even in the church.

We aren’t sure what to make of this command for wives to submit

We are OK with the church submitting to Christ. That sounds right and as it should be

But, for wives to submit to their husbands just like the church submits to Christ is a hard teaching

And it’s not meant to be easy. Either to teach or to live out. Submission is not something that comes easily for anyone

But, I do believe that it is part of this profound mystery that Paul is talking about.

I will agree that this thing of submission is something that we will never quite understand and get figured out

But you know what? I’m OK with that. Because it is a profound mystery

But the fact that I will never quite understand this thing of submitting doesn’t mean that I should stop trying to understand

rather, it means that I should lean in even farther and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it to me

As the Church, our role is to submit to Christ

So, how do we think about submission to Christ?

First of all, we submit out of love for Christ.

John 14:15 “15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Submission

Submission to Jesus is the very definition of love

submitting what I want to what Jesus wants is the practical outworking of my love for Him

Submitting my will to the will of my spouse, or my brother or sister in Church is the heartbeat, the practical outworking of my love for them

Second, we submit because of the definition of church that we have already laid:

Church is a group of Believers gathered together under the declaration that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God

That is a kingly declaration

Colossians 1:18 “18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.”

So, we submit simply because He is King, and we are not

This creation of Church is His not ours. Not mine

I submit out of reverence for Him

Third, we submit to Christ because He takes the burden of this relationship upon Himself

He is the one who loves perfectly, unfailingly

He is the One who sacrificed Himself on our behalf

He is the One who continually works to purify us and make us holy

Our role is simply to receive His work in gratefulness and humility

submission should not be a chore

submission should not a joyless,

It should simply be loving Him and trusting that He loves me, and that what He has done for me is sufficient

This is the picture of the Church that we have here in Ephesians

Christ, the loving and self-sacrificing groom

The Church, the loving and submissive bride

Are you, we, receiving from Jesus His love and His continued purifying work in our lives?

English Standard Version Chapter 19

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!

For the Lord our God

the Almighty reigns.

7  Let us rejoice and exult

and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

8  it was granted her to clothe herself

with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”