Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Our poet sang of the joy that comes with reading Ephesians on our knees:
"O the pure delight of a single hour
That before Thy throne I spend,
When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God,
I commune as friend with friend!"
--Frances Crosby
It's a two-way conversation, not a one-way "gimme" monologue. You listen as well as talk! You soon discover that Paul's central idea is agape, a love "all loves excelling" (see 1:4, 6, 15; 2:4; 3:17-19; 4;2, 15). When you discover what agape is, your heart-response is what is called "faith" (1:15; 6:23; Col. 1:4, etc). Then eternal life has begun for you! That special love is revealed in Christ's self-emptying that led Him all the way to hell in order to find us. When you "comprehend" even a teensy bit of it, your spine tingles.
But you soon run into what some think is a roadblock: this heavenly agape is also revealed in the sexual love that binds husbands and wives together: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church" (5:25). And that verb "love" is agapao! Shocking! Paul is either (1) degrading agape or (2) immeasurably uplifting conjugal love. You are stunned. Have we been trampling something sacred under foot? Has God been preaching a voiceless sermon to us that we've been too deaf to hear? How can sexual love be so sacred that it is mentioned in the same breath as "even as Christ also loved the church"? The questions start rolling in like high tide.
Well, it'll take an encyclopedia to begin to understand, but let's try a tiny bit: (1) Jokes about sex are totally inappropriate for anyone who has caught even a fleeting glimpse of the cross of Jesus. (2) What holds a marriage together is not the "chemistry" of mutual sexual pleasure, but "Because God made thee mine, I'll cherish thee, ... through all time to come, and pray His love may make our love divine, Because ... " (3) Jesus the Son of God is "in love" with someone He longs to claim as His Bride; yes, there's something sacred here. And human love has always been intended by its divine Author to become an avenue leading to the gala Wedding Banquet of "the Lamb" (Rev. 19:7, 8). (3) Beyond words? Sure! (4) Meanwhile, let husband and wife kneel and read Ephesians 5 together.* All the way through. And no need now to say another word here.
____________
*Engaged couples, too.
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 22, 2010.
Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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