The Pursuit and Christ’s Love for the Church

I have always used Eph­esians 5:25: “Hus­bands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Him­self up for her” as either a proof text for lim­ited atone­ment or seen it as a cliche used in wed­dings. A life expe­ri­ence recently has helped me to see this pas­sage in a new light. I think Paul has an argu­ment in this verse that is implicit.

The Pur­suit

Paul also tells us that “we also once were fool­ish our­selves, dis­obe­di­ent, deceived, enslaved to var­i­ous lusts and plea­sures, spend­ing our life in mal­ice and envy, hate­ful, hat­ing one another” (Tit 3:3), “dead in your tres­passes and sins” (Eph 2:1), and that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). This describes our spir­i­tual con­di­tion before we entered Christ’s Body the church (Col 1:18). Because of this spir­i­tual con­di­tion Christ had to pur­sue after us in order for us to have a desire for Him. In this is a lesson.

If a hus­band is to love his wife in the man­ner that Christ loved the Church than that means our pur­suit should be for a woman that might not have the desire for us. Now, that doesn’t mean that we push the issue to where she is uncom­fort­able; but it does mean that the man is respon­si­ble for the whole pur­suit. That pur­suit also shouldn’t stop at mar­riage, because Paul talks about mar­riage in this exam­ple. Mar­riage is a life­time of pursuit.

I don’t have irre­sistible grace on my side (although the jury is still out whether I’m irre­sistible), but I know that a God-led pur­suit of a woman should mir­ror the pur­suit that Christ did for each mem­ber of the Church.