Day by Day by Day: Jesus & Marriage

Lately I have heard a couple of sermons taken from Ephesians 5:21-33, the passage on marriage with instructions for husbands and wives. This gets used a lot in weddings and it is certainly used a lot in marriage conferences and retreats.

As I listened to another sermon on this passage last Sunday (a good sermon, by the way), I found myself doing a little private Bible study on it. I decided to see how many verses were assigned to each person mentioned in the passage. It came out like this:

Wives - 2

Husbands - 6

Jesus - 11

I kind of lost track of the sermon at that point because I started wondering why I have never heard this passage preached on the basis of what it says about Jesus. I read it again in the light of that question and found that these verses emphasize the Lord, not people.

It begins by saying that all relationships among believers should be based in reverence for Christ. It goes on to name Him as our Head and Savior. Next it commends Him for loving us and sacrificing Himself for us. This is followed by a description of the work He is constantly doing to clean us up and perfect us and the lovely promise that His goal is to make us radiant, holy and blameless. He feeds and cares for us because we are members of His body.

Paul ends this chapter by saying,

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church."

How often we emphasize the familiar instructions to husbands and wives, and our voices taper off when we get to "I am talking about Christ and the church", yet that is the core of the passage. Actually, Christ is the core of the passage.

This little exercise reminds me again that it is only by focusing upon Jesus Christ that we will understand this life we are called to as believers. Everything is explained in Him. He is the head, the brain, the seat of all thought for believers. We are called to know Him above all else. We should look to see what every passage of scripture says about Him before we look at it in any other way---that is my humble opinion.