Love Self 2 ~ Love Others: Passion in Marriage

Marriage is the GOSPEL personified, the greatest earthly representation of the spiritual Union of Christ and His Church

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

Ephesians 5:31-33 NIV

SUBMIT TO CHRIST:

The Head and the Body

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Ephesians 5:21 NIV

Christ is our Head

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Ephesians 5:22-24 NIV

Christ is Our Example

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body.”

Ephesians 5:25-30 NIV

"Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean on emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have other people."

C.S. Lewis

"We never know whom we marry; we just think we do.... 

The primary problem is... Learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married."

Stanley Hauerwad

CELEBRATE THE DIFFERENCE:

Husband and Wife

““For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.””

Ephesians 5:31 NIV

Opposite attract : DESIRE

Opposite Annoy: DUTY

Opposire Affirmed DELIGHT

Agape: Servant

Philia: Friend

Storge: Sibling

Eros: Lover

SHOWCASE THE GOSPEL'S POWER: 

Christ and the Church

The first purpose in marriage -

Beyond happiness, sexual expression, the bearing of children, company's hip, mutual care and provision, or anything else - is to please God. 

The challenge, of course, is that it is utterly selfless living; rather than asking, " What will make me happy?" We are told that we must ask, " What will make God happy?" Gary Thomas

"If you understand what holiness is you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not the near side." Timothy Keller

The Spirit Power

The Sacred Promise 

" I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I love you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine.

Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them - it was that promise." Thornton Wilder

Marriage is your loudest Gospel message 

Peter Scazzero