The Lovable Bride of Christ

I’m making a lot of new friends in this season of my life. 

Suppose a couple came to me and said something like this, “Trent, we’ve enjoyed meeting you. We have loved the limited time we have spent together. We feel a deep connection to you. Your story has provoked our curiosity and we want to get to know you better. We would like to invite you to our home for dinner so we can grow our relationship.”

Then I replied by saying, “That is kind of you. I will check with Andrea and see when we are available.”

What if the couple then said, “Wait. We didn’t say anything about spending time with Andrea. In fact, the times we have been around her have not been enjoyable at all. Surely you have noticed her flaws, blemishes, and wrinkles. Honestly, she is quite ugly. We want a relationship with you but not your wife.” 

That conversation would reveal two things. One, they have never truly been around my Andrea. Two, they do not understand that loving me means loving my wife. You cannot develop a friendship with me while being cold, critical, and condemning toward my wife.    You cannot claim to love me while hating my wife. Developing a relationship with me means developing a relationship with Andrea. If you really love me, you are going to love the one I love most. Loving me requires loving my wife. 

I have often heard people say, “I can love Jesus without loving church. Jesus is cool, but church is lame. I like Jesus. It’s his people I can’t stand.” 

Really? Follow my logic. If you love Jesus, you will love what Jesus loves. Jesus loves his church. Therefore, those who love Jesus, love his church.

The most often used metaphor for the church in the New Testament is the Bride of Christ. Sam Alberry points out, “If you want to know how much Jesus loves his church consider the fact that Jesus didn’t just establish the church and promise to build the church, he marries it.” 

It’s important to be reminded that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. But it is equally important to realize Jesus doesn’t just love me individually, He loves me collectively along with every other person with whom he has established a covenant love relationship. Jesus doesn’t have many brides. He is not a polygamist. He has one bride whom he loves uniquely. If you are in a covenant love relationship with Christ, you are in a covenant love relationship with every other person in the covenant. 

As someone who has had a rather extensive ministry to marriages, I have used Ephesians 5:22-32 to encourage husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands hundreds of times. Yet, this week I asked the congregation at Parkview Church to ignore everything this passage teaches on marriage to focus exclusively on what this passage teaches about Christ’s love for the church. After all, the passage concludes by demystifying its meaning. “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Ultimately, this passage is not about marriage. All of it refers to Christ’s love for his bride, the church. By the way, I’m convinced that the only lasting motive for husband and wives to grow in their love for one another is being continually overwhelmed by how much Christ loves them as his bride. 

How does Christ love his church? 

Christ loves the church by leading his church.

Eph 5:23 says, “Christ is the head of the church.” With respect to our Roman Catholic friends, the head of the church didn’t have a funeral last week. Our head didn’t stay dead long enough to have a funeral. When we gather as the church, we come to submit to Christ’s loving leadership. Our relationship begins by accepting his invitation to “follow me”. And, we gather weekly to listen for more direction on which way he is leading us.

Christ loves the church by saving his church. 

Verse 23 also identifies Christ as “its Savior”. Those who love church do so because they never lose the sense of their need for salvation. There is a subtle danger for those who are most involved in church. The longer we go to church the more tempted we are to think of our salvation as something that happened in our past. If we are not careful our church involvement can actually become a way of avoiding Christ as Savior. 

Tim Keller says, “There are two ways, not one, to be your own Savior and Lord: you can break all the moral rules and chart your own course, or you can try keeping all the external moral rules and seek to earn heaven’s favor. Both are strategies for avoiding God. Apart from Jesus Christ, every person is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are just going about it in different ways.” 

We need to check our motives. Are we coming to church as a self-salvation project, trying to convince ourselves and others we are so good we don’t need a savior, or, are we coming to church as a weekly reminder of sin’s pull on us and our continual need to be saved from it. No matter how long we have been “saved”, we still need a Savior. If we ever stop relating to Christ as our savior we drift into self-righteousness. We gather weekly to be reminded that we are great sinners but Christ is a great savior. 

Christ loves his church by sacrificing for the church.

Verse 25 says, “Christ gave himself up for her.” A few weeks ago, my daughter, Leah came home with a very expensive piece of jewelry on her finger. It was a gift from a guy named Ben in exchange for her positive response to his proposal to love her unconditionally for the rest of his life. Ben gave up his savings account as an expression of his love for Leah. Yet, Christ gave up so much more for his bride. In order to secure the love of his bride he gave up his life in the morst excrutiatingly painful death possible – all for the love of his bride. 

Christ loves his church by beautifying his church. 

Verses 26-27 make it clear that his bride hygiene issues. When he found her, she was essentially dirty, dumb, and dead. But that didn’t stop him from loving her. He is actively cleansing her with the water of his word. He is removing her spots, ironing out her wrinkles, and healing her blemishes. And he is doing all of that in preparation to present her as a dignified, desirable, and delivered bride.

Christ loves his church by building his church.

Verses 28-30 tell us Christ nourishes and cherishes his bride’s body. He nourishes it by supplying every essential ingredient for its health and growth. He cherishes it by keeping her affections for him from growing cold. The original word for “cherish” literally means keep warm. The church gathers weekly as a way of stoking the flame of our love for Christ. Without it, we risk allowing our love for Christ to grow cold. 

Christ loves his church by sending his church.

In verse 31, Paul quotes God’s first words to the first man about the first marriage (Genesis 2;24). He tells us the prerequisite for a husband becoming one with his wife was to “leave his father”. But 32 reminds us this somehow “refers to Christ and the church.” How did Christ love his church? By first leaving the penultimate place of love, security, and comfort - at home with his Heavenly Father. And he didn’t just leave his Father. He was sent by his Father…to pursue a love relationship with his church. 

Christ is still pursuing his church, even churches who have yet to be born. How are churches born? By those who love their present church so much they are willing to leave them, being sent by them, to plant new churches. 

I’m grateful for the love of Christ for his church. I hope you sense how deeply loved you are as part of his church. And I hope you love the church too, maybe even enough to leave the one you love to multiply more churches who are loved by Christ.