Ephesians 5:25-33 - Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.
Message: The Body of Christ
Time: At the end of his second missionary journey and 2 years into his third, Paul ministered at Ephesus. Many came to Christ during His time though Paul was not popular among the pagans. Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians sometime in AD 60–61, around the same time he wrote Colossians and Philemon, as he sent all three letters by the hand of Tychicus, accompanied by Onesimus. It was during this time that Paul sat in Rome undergoing his first Roman imprisonment, making Ephesians one of the four epistles commonly known as the Prison Epistles. The others are Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.
What the Lord is Saying:
Ecclesiology is the study of the doctrine of the church. As I now consider a study of the church and what is to be emphasized and practiced among church members, I think back to what church life looked like before the Reformation. My perception is that churchgoers showed up and listened to a sermon according to the church calendar. Attendees did not have a Bible for the Bible had not yet been translated into their language. Only the priests had the Bible. I recall several years ago speaking to a couple at the mall that mentioned they did not read their Bible, that only the priest read the Bible.
By 1525, Luther had finished translating the New Testament into German and by 1534, the entire Bible. Translations had occurred prior to this, but this was the first one from the original Greek and Hebrew. The King James Version into English came about in 1611.
[I've spent the past couple of days trying to find a little more information about church services prior to the Reformation and I haven't found much. I did read about the start of expository preaching by Huldrych Zwingli, an ordained catholic priest and pastor in Switzerland, who died in 1531 at the age of 47 from injuries in a war between Catholics and Protestants. He was an educated man thanks to the success of his father, a farmer and chief magistrate. He attended University of Vienna. He was interested in Erasmus and his thoughts and after Erasmus published the Greek New Testament in 1516 he became more of a student of the scriptures and copied by hand the entire Erasmus New Testament. He ended up with a different pastorate and in 1519 he started doing readings and observations through the Gospel of Matthew and continued this in his services through the New Testament. This was a departure from the Catholic Mass and preaching according to the calendar prevalent in the Catholic Church (not quite sure what this means). Zwingli questioned the practice of abstaining from meat during lent. In 1524, he published his 67 Theses in which he rejected many medieval beliefs, such as forced fasting, clerical celibacy, purgatory, the Mass, and priestly mediation and also the use of images in the church; and he married Anna Reinhard, a widow. In 1525, the break from Rome continued, as Scripture was read and preached in the language of the people, the entire congregation received bread and wine for communion, not just the clergy. No more focus on Mary and the saints, and prayers for the dead stopped. All this happened before Luther.]
What is clear is the moment the New Testament and Scripture got into the hand of people and they saw it in their own language, something changed. And chief among this was seeing scripture for what it was and starting to wonder why there were so many practices that were really non-scripture or not found in scripture. And so beginning in the early 1500s, many left the Catholic structure to what we now have as also a Protestant structure. The church hasn't been diminished any, as many have suggested, but rather upheld.
This passage from Ephesians 5 echoes this sentiment by showing a parallel between a man's love for his flesh, nourishing it and cherishing it, in order to show him the love that the man needs to have for his wife. But Paul also says this is the type of love relationship Christ has with the church. There is this idea of leave and cleave with the man and woman, and perhaps it is the same with the church, leaving the ways of the world and cleaving to Christ through the church. The focus of this passage is really about a man and his relationship to his wife, but there is a strong message about the church. Another application is we live and do things in this world by use of our bodies and so Christ works his ways through the church, His body.
Thus, the church is the body of Christ and Christ loves the church. As imitators of Christ (I Cor 11:1 - Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.) we are to love the church then also.
Summary - Christ is the body of Christ and Christ loves the church like the man his own flesh or body. So we are imitate Christ in loving the church and seeing that the church is how God carries out his purposes in the world.
Promise: We need to pay special heed to the elders, pastors, and leaders of the church. They have been placed in their positions for our good.
Prayer: O God, I've struggled over the years with leadership in the church and often thinking I have a better way. At our last church I was bothered that the church leaders I did not feel were guided by scripture. But I find myself wondering at times even in this new church or struggling at times. Lord, help me to submit to your body, the church, in all that it does and continue to support it. Thank you for the churches you have shown me and pastors in other parts of the world that need support as well to carry out your mission. Keep me sensitive to those needs. Thank you for your love for the church and showing me this.
Note: I follow the readings from the Tabletalk Magazine devotional, though I am now working through 2017 devotionals. 2017 is a study of key biblical doctrines celebrating the 500th year of the Reformation. The month of August is about the Body of the Lord - the Church recovered in the Reformation; July was the right use of God's Law; June was justification by faith alone; May about solus Christus - Christ Alone; April, salvation by grace alone; March, the sovereign providence of God; February, the doctrine of revelation, Scripture that sola Scriptura seeks to preserve; January, the doctrine of God.
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