Monday, June 19, 2017

The Bride of Christ - Part 1


Ephesians 5:21-25 “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Beth Moore tells us that in God’s bigger story, we are a part of something that is beyond our comprehension. We are truly nothing except an example of God’s grace. Submission is not about inequality, but about God’s plan for a form of authority and order in the home. God holds men responsible for the thriving, flourishing and wellbeing of the united home and marriage.
Genesis 2:20b-24 But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

A man shall be united to his wife, and they become one flesh. The 1828 Webster’s dictionary defines that word “united” as: Joined; made to agree; cemented; mixed; attached by growth”. Beth Moore defines “united” as “adhered to’ or “glued to”. I heard Pastor Raul Ruiz describe the united in marriage union and unity as two pieces of wood glued together to where pulling them apart rips and splinter both causing great irreparable damage because the two are now one. Of all earthly representation that Father God has given us for His Son’s relationship to the body of Believers called the church, His bride in marriage is used. How could anything so fragile, so frail and imperfect as us represent anything so holy, glorious and divine?


2 Corinthians 11:2 “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.”


God is the only one who can overtake our thoughts. It is God’s business; not mine or yours. God has made it the responsibility of the man to wash his wife with the Word of God. God-designed marriage is not “where we want it to be daily”; no human relationship can be. But, it is “good”, and “good” is good. The 1828 Webster’s dictionary defines the word “good” as: “Having moral qualities best adapted to its design and use, or the qualities which God's law requires; virtuous; pious; religious; applied to persons, and opposed to bad, vicious, wicked, evil.” It’s not perfect, but can’t “good” be good? Does it have to be “fantastic”? 

Let's continue with my notes from the Beth Moore session of marriage, the Bride of Christ", on the next post.
In Christ, Brian

No comments: