A Word in Season: Christ's Beloved Church (Ephesians 5:25)

Christ’s Love for the Church in Ephesians 5:25

It is good for the Church of Jesus Christ to remember and to consider just how much our Lord Jesus loves his people. In Ephesians chapter 5 the Apostle Paul is exhorting Christian husbands to love their wives, but that exhortation doesn't just sit in a vacuum.

It comes with a standard, with an example, with a parallel that beggars us, that exposes just how far short we fall of the glory of God. We are to aspire and to pursue a love for our wives that is just like that of Christ who loved the Church and gave himself for her.

Those statements have an absoluteness to them. Christ loved his Church and the demonstration of that love was in laying down his life for his beloved people. Christ did not love in word only. He does tell us repeatedly throughout the Scriptures of his love for us, but he also loves in deed and in truth.

He laid down his life, he gave himself. Everything that he had, all that he was, was put down on behalf of the Church. It's the great sacrifice for sins, it's the great manifestation of the love of the Divine Heart for those upon whom God has set his love.

Christ’s Sanctifying Purpose for His Bride

But even though you've got this one great demonstration, it is not the only demonstration. It's the purchase of his bride, it's the act of love by which he makes her his own, but it also has purpose, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

Christ's love for his Church is not a one-off, although it does have one unique and supreme demonstration. His act of love in giving himself for the Church is in order that he might sanctify and cleanse his people with the washing of water by the word.

And whatever that difficult phrase means, you've got this intent here to bring a people to himself and continually to form and to fashion them, to nourish and to care for them so that they become more and more beautiful and glorious, with the ultimate aim that he might present that people to himself a glorious Church, with not spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but rather entirely holy and without blemish.

Christ’s Ongoing Affection and Final Presentation of the Church

So while the love of God in Christ toward us has this great and crowning demonstration in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus for his people at the cross, it is in itself an opening declaration of love, out of which flow successive demonstrations of faithful affection.

Christ never ceases to regard his Church with the utmost of affection. Christ never stops loving his people, never stops acting towards us, never stops showing and demonstrating just his regard for us, so that ultimately we might come to be with.

Him.

And when the day of judgment dawns and that last great redemptive act is finally consummated, the Church will stand before Christ and there will be nothing any longer to mar her beauty and her holiness, and then the Lord Christ will receive her to himself.

Having loved her, having loved her to the end, having loved her through life and into death and beyond death, having never ceased to love her despite whatever she may have done, any failings, any follies, Christ never stops loving, never stops working, never stops giving in order that we might become what he designs us to be.

It's good then for us to remember that there Paul is speaking primarily about Christ and his Church. That is what love looks like. Christ loved his Church and he showed it by giving himself for her and he continues to give and to give and to give out of his heart of love.