After posting last week, I thought I was finished with my discussion of what we hold to be sacred in our lives. It was my intent to move on to a new topic for this week’s post. However, after our message on Sunday a week ago, I realize I need to say just one more thing.
If you are striving to be a godly man, it is vital that you view your marriage relationship as sacred. For you who are single, you need to understand this truth before you decide to marry.
The reason this it is important to see our marriage as sacred is because God sees it as sacred. As I’ve stated before, marriage is the only human relationship God established before sin entered the world. Just as man and woman were created in sinless perfection, so was marriage. God views our marriages as holy institutions before him, and so must we.
Scripture is full of instructions, advice, and commands related to marriage and the importance of its protection. One of these passages always stands out to me as a man because of the high responsibility it reveals. In Ephesians chapter 5, the Apostle Paul, through the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, offers some very focused discussion. He is reviewing the relationship between Jesus Christ and those of us who have experienced salvation through an act of our faith in the grace of God. He calls us the “Bride” of Christ. This shows how important we are to him. In doing this, he compares the relationship Jesus has with his “Bride” with the relationship we should have with our wives. Ephesians 5:25-29, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church.”
The love for our wives must be sacrificial. Jesus loved us so much he gave his very life so we could have a relationship with him. This was not an emotional love based on how he felt at the moment, this was a love of action based on his ultimate purpose to glorify God through this relationship. In fact, Jesus agreed to sacrifice his life for us while we were ungodly. (Romans 5:6) Godly love for our wives is not situational and it is not transactional. We DO NOT love our wives only when they are easy to get along with. Nor do we love our wives only when we get something in return. Sacred love is a deep commitment to perform acts of sacrifice toward our wives as an offering of worship to God.
Sacred love is also redemptive. God depends on our proper relationship with our wives as a means of drawing them closer in their relationship to him. We can protect our wives and lead them in such a way that we can present them to Christ “without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”
This does not mean the eternal state of our wives hangs on our shoulders. They each must make their own decision to submit to Christ. However, it does call us to serve them in such a way that they are drawn to the love of Christ through our example. This is a sacred calling.