October 12 – LD 41, Day 5: Marriage with Love

Ephesians 5:25 - "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it.”

In marriage, the husband represents Christ Himself as the head, not only leading and guiding, but also loving his wife, even as Christ the Church. The husband seeks his wife’s spiritual growth and blessing, nourishing and cherishing her, even as Christ sanctifies His Bride, “That He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:27).The wife, on the other hand, lives in submission to her husband, serving him, assisting him, reverencing him, living unto him. These things belong to the positive requirement of the seventh commandment. These things mark a sanctified marriage.

In that fellowship of love, the husband and wife also enjoy the physical intimacy of marriage, the sexual union expressive of the intimate love that is theirs as part of that mystery, reflecting the love bond between Christ and the Church. It is an act of intimacy that God has given strictly to that holy union between husband and wife, and from which He is also pleased, in the years of our youth, to gather a holy seed, covenant children, showing Himself faithful to His promise to establish His covenant with believers and their seed. What a wonder of God’s grace is the sanctified bond of holy marriage! Love is the fulfillment of the law!

So highly does God hold the standard with respect to marriage that we are told in I Cor 6:9-10, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, not abusers of themselves with mankind...shall inherit the kingdom of God.” We read the same in Eph 5. The only deliverance from this sin is through the death of Jesus Christ, and through repentance and faith in His name. The apostle immediately goes on in 1 Cor 6:11 to speak those blessed words, “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”