BECOMING ONE “A man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become ‘one flesh’. Eph 5:31 EHP {In natural marriage, husband and wife combine the elements of one perfect human being: the one being incomplete without the other. The husband shall be glued or cemented to his wife; and, as a well-glued board will sooner break in the whole wood than in the glued joint, so death alone can part the husband and wife; and nothing but death should dissolve their affection. This verse denotes a most intimate union between husband and wife.} It is unlikely that most married people will understand it. The marriage of two separate and incomplete persons and the merging of their interests, likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, goals and faith and the subsequent growth they both experience is a phenomenon that is wondrous to behold. In a good marriage, if not at the beginning then as the years go by, eventually it becomes a case of “two hearts beating as one”. And that, says the Bible, is what God intended. In one sense it is a miracle as well as a mystery. It comes about when two people willingly “submit” to each other by voluntarily making their own wishes and desires subservient to the other person’s. “Jesus Christ demonstrates rather than loses His dignity by His subordination to the Father. When a person is voluntarily amenable to another, gives way to him, and places himself at his service, he shows greater dignity and freedom than an individual who cannot bear to be a helper and partner to anyone but himself. Ephesians 5 supports anything but blind obedience or the breaking of the wife’s will. Rather, this chapter shows that in the realm of the crucified Servant-Messiah, the subjects respect an order of freedom and equality in which one person assists another - seemingly by renouncing rights possessed, actually in exercising the right to imitate the Messiah himself ... A greater, wiser, and more positive description of marriage has not yet been found in Christian literature” (M. Barth, quoted in J. Stott, The Message of Ephesians, p233). PRAYER THOUGHT Lord, thank You for the wisdom and insight of the Bible.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:52:36 +0000