Hold Fast
There is something truly amazing about the way God uses the husband-and-wife relationship as a picture of Christ and the Church. Something about the unity experienced in the husband-and-wife relationship clicked inside me the last few weeks. God began to make it more clear about why it’s a picture of Christ and the Church.
Ephesians 5:22-33
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 (Christ does as well when He speaks in Mat 19:5 and Mark 10:8). Take a look at what he is being described here: “A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” When Paul writes that this mystery is profound he is actually showing us that this picture of husband-and-wife oneness is but a fraction of what God intends for us to experience with His son. We are to hold fast to Christ, no matter what. We are to become one flesh in the sense that our flesh is being put to death, so Christ is the One living through us. The place where we begin to experience oneness with Him is when we are submitted to Him. This life of surrender is completely connected to a life of faith.
Romans 1:16-17
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Barnhouse writes in Man’s Ruin Volume 1 on page 181: “When our text tells us that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God, it is saying that God must inevitably demand of man that which man can never furnish by himself.” Barnhouse is describing that God comes to us completely outside of any standards that we have. The standards He requires are completely impossible for us to meet. There was only one man that could satisfy those and that was and is Jesus. This is why it is so important for us to get to a place where Christ is not only Savior but also Lord. Why? The impossibility of God’s standards and the massive payment for sin was fully placed upon Christ and He satisfied God.
What do we say to God when we look at the cross and say “I believe in Christ” and then proceed to live the rest of our lives the way we see fit only utilizing the God of the universe when things from our point of view are “going bad?” We are no better than Israel wandering the desert before anyone could even step a foot into the promised land. We are living in as much unbelief as they did. Instead we must step aside to allow Christ to live through us so that He can meet God’s impossible standards through us right now.
This is why Paul writes that the just shall live by faith (Rom 1:17). Who are the just? They are actively putting on Christ each day. He is the only one that is righteous and by putting Him on He gives us strength to throw something off, our flesh. What is faith? Barnhouse states that “faith is simply acting upon the Word of God” (Man’s Ruin Vol 1, page 175). Paul puts it another way in Roman 4:3 “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
Romans 4:20-25
20 No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
We must ask God to put us in a place where we can continually give Christ the reward of His suffering. His deepest desire is to sanctify us (Eph 5:26) and He loves us so much that He furnishes something for us that we could never provide ourselves, that sanctification. He is the only one that satisfies the demands of God. We give Him His reward by positioning ourselves to give up our flesh so that He can transform us into His likeness more and more. Secondly, this Lordship relationship is His training for us now to prepare us for true unity with Him in the age to come, as the pure and spotless Bride.
This is why the picture of the husband-and-wife relationship is so powerful and why it doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the oneness He desires with His Church. Unity with Christ begins right now with holding fast to Him and quickly letting go of our flesh, denying it, crucifying it, and it ends in eternity as His Bride (Rev 21:2-4, 7).