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My readings in Ephesians started with chapter 5, verse 22 to verse 33. A very popular portion of this epistle. Not!
As Paul addresses issues and problems facing the church in Ephesus, he gets to the question of marriage and some of the realities sometimes encountered in it. The church has always had in it either a very active, church-going and God-Believing wife with a non-active, nonbeliever husband; and a husband who was also very involved in the life of the church, but married to a nonbeliever, non-churchgoer. Paul seeks to encourage those with the view he believes is best in those cases, and best for the work of Christ: A shared ministry view, if possible, between the two for the good of Christ's work. Love should be key, as well as respect, where the issues and challenges of the marriage be seen as central to their spiritual lives. Paul wanted the church to be a model of service where Christ is the head of the body of believers. Wives are urged to respect and support the work and role of the husband, and vice-versa. In some homes, the reality is that the wife is the head of the home in spiritual matters, and husbands should respect that.
Husbands were urged to love their wives. The kind of love important for this relationship is the love that builds up and cleanses each in the marriage. The man who marries should of his wife in a positive, caring way; attending to his wife's needs, seeing that she is deprived of nothing. Christ, Paul reminds us, cares and provides for the church. And Paul shares a reminder from Genesis 2:24, where Adam takes Eve as his wife, and ends the passage with these words: "This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."
EAT-TO-YOUR-FILL PRAYER: Loving God, for the institution of marriage, we are thankful and blessed. We pray for healthy, strong marriages, and we lift up those marriages where struggle and discord are realities; bless them, too, Loving God. Those those marriages found within the church we pray they be ones that glorify You. May each one in the marriage love, honor, and cherish the other, as You, Loving God, do the church. We pray that You make love real, genuine, and spirit-filled so that in each problem and challenge faced by these marriages be done in a way that give You honor and praise. May each home truly be a worship center and mission site; where all who reside there might be involved in worship, study, and service to You and Yours. In Christ Jesus we pray, amen.
