Does Your Marriage Portray Christ’s Love?

© 2015 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)

Kathy is my dear wife.  Many years ago, I asked her to marry me.  Incredibly, she said “yes!”  I could hardly believe it.  We now have adult grandchildren.  Yet it still thrills me to call her my wife.  Her love for me fills me with amazement and gives me such incredible joy that I can’t even express it.

Scripture tells us that our love for our wives is an illustration to help us understand Christ’s love for His church.  The love of a wife for her husband is an illustration of the love that the redeemed of Christ’s church have for Him.

“For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.  This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.  Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband” (Ephesians 5:30-33).

Christ’s purpose to redeem people to Himself, from their fallen condition of sin, involved His horrendous blood sacrifice, at Calvary, as sin bearer.  As God the Son, He was the only one capable of setting us free from the sin and death that began in the Garden of Eden with the fall of Adam and Eve.  Yet, even with this costly payment looming before Him, He had joy in anticipating His bride.

“… let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Although marriage, when properly defined and honored, is a holy picture which draws men to Christ, perverse redefinitions of it lead to the opposite result.  Rejecting Christ, the bridegroom and only savior, leaves man with no hope.

“He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12).

Which alternative are you choosing?

 

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