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.

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6 total comments, leave your comment.
  1. Ben
    Sep 25th 2006

    Inter­est­ing. I can see that appli­ca­tion. Thanks for shar­ing that.

  2. Perry
    Sep 27th 2006

    Chris,

    Whereas I am usu­ally in agree­ment with your posts I must take oppo­si­tion here. I think you might be patch­ing together a com­plex of scrip­tures to make an argu­ment that scrip­ture itself does not make.

    Yes, true, we are dead in our tres­passes before God awak­ens our hearts and makes us able to seek after Him. True, with­out grace we could never love the Lord and yes, the phys­i­cal mar­riage on earth pic­tures the spir­i­tual mar­riage between Christ and His church.

    I take issue, though, when you make the con­nec­tion that we are to pursue a wife as Christ pur­sued His. We are to love our wives as Christ loves the church in that we are to sac­ri­fice all for her but the nature of that love has key dif­fer­ences. Christ “made” us love Him, not out of an act of brute force but out of an act of love so that we could better know and enjoy His glory. In phys­i­cal rela­tion­ships though love cannot be forced. The capa­bil­ity exists for a man to love a woman and vice verse whereas it isn’t within out abil­ity to love God on our own merit.

    While the anaol­ogy of Christ’s love for the church makes it clear that there is a par­al­lel love between the Lord and His church and the love hus­bands have for their wives, the nature of the love and how it is sought is unique to each. The dif­fer­ence is that one can pursue another, say a man pur­su­ing a woman, but that man can never make the woman love him as Christ “makes”, or even better “enables”, us to love Him. In the pur­suit of another person there comes a point where, if love dosen’t exist, it cannot be force nor should it for the health of the pur­suer and espe­cially the pur­suee.

    Praise the Lord that He has enabled us to love Him and praise the Lord that He, out of His love, has given us women to engage in rela­tion­ships on this earth to mirror His love for us to another. I pray that the Lord would give us patience as we seek for that person on this earth and that our pur­suits would be edi­fy­ing to His glory for the pur­pose that He insti­tuted mar­riage.

    P.S. Poteet

  3. Chris
    Sep 27th 2006

    You’re right Perry. Great stuff! I was just making an implicit obser­va­tion. You’re right tha we can’t pursue as Christ did the Church, because I don’t have pre­ve­nient grace (stated above).

    I think though there is lesson to be learned, but you’re right that they are not com­pletely one in the same.

  4. Ashley Keen
    Sep 27th 2006

    Good Stuff, Perry!

    That and I don’t think I’d be too open to some guy walk­ing up and ran­domly saying “Follow me.” ;)

  5. Chris
    Sep 27th 2006

    Could thing you didn’t live over 2,000 years ago in Pales­tine!

  6. Ashley Keen
    Sep 27th 2006

    I think God must have known that about me when he sov­er­eignly chose to put my birth in 1985 rather than AD 5. ;)

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