The Glorious Church Series

Jesus Christ loved the church before He brought the church into existence. The use of a past tense form of loved to some might suggest Christ’s love of the church at one time but not later. Yet, He chose and loved His own even “before the foundation of the world” (1:4), because God’s love is eternally present, having no past and no future (Bratcher, R. G., & Nida, E. A. (1993). A handbook on Paul's letter to the Ephesians. UBS handbook series; Helps for translators (141). New York: United Bible Societies).

Christ loves the Church with a a) Sacrificial (5:25b) b) Purifying (5:26–27) c) Caring (5:28–30) and d) Unbreakable Love (5:31) that tells us how far he went in showing His love for "The Glorious Church". This picture of this love is applied in Ephesians 5:25–31 to show husbands how they likewise must love their wives.

Christ first shows a:

a) Sacrificial Love (5:25b)

Ephesians 5:25b [25] (Husbands, love your wives, as) Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, (ESV)

The world’s love is always object–oriented. A person is loved because of physical attractiveness, personality, wit, prestige, or some other such positive characteristic. In other words, the world loves those whom it deems worthy of love. Such love is necessarily fickle. As soon as a person loses a positive characteristic—or that characteristic is no longer appealing—the love based on the characteristic also disappears. It is because so many husbands and wives have only that kind of fickle love for each that their marriages fall apart. As soon as a partner loses his or her appeal, love is gone, because the basis for the love is gone. God’s love is not of that sort:

Romans 5:7-8 [7]For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-- [8]but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (ESV)

In Ephesians 5:25, the verb ‘gave’, together with the reflexive pronoun ‘himself’, stresses the fact that Christ took the initiative in handing himself over to death (5:1, 2). He went to the cross as the willing victim, and this action on behalf of his people was the supreme demonstration of his love for them. Such self-sacrificing love provided the earlier warrant for calling all believers to serve one another in love as they imitate God (vv 1, 2). Now it furnishes the basis for the exhortation to husbands to sacrifice their own interests for the welfare of their wives. Their love, which is modelled on Christ’s love for the church, means they will be willing to make even the ultimate sacrifice of life itself (O'Brien, P. T. (1999). The letter to the Ephesians. The Pillar New Testament commentary (419–420). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.).

• To follow this analogy in the action tenses provided, means that as Men, we take initiative to self-sacrificially give of our selves. Not slothfully, or in distraction waiting to be nagged, but first looking to the welfare or others.