“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1 ESV). St. Paul is the theologian of the body. How we use our the bodies our Maker gives us reflects our faith in Him whose image we bear. The old saying goes, “You are what you eat,” but the Psalmist would add, “You become who you worship.” See (Psalm 115:4-8). Worship involves the body – the mind, the heart, and the soul. It is not an internal exercise to be locked up in a room where one reads the Scripture alone. No, the faith once delivered is a faith to be practiced, to be tried, to be tested by, and to be refined within. Our faith is not a theological head exercise, after all Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, came to us in a body. For, “sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.” (Hebrews 10:5 ESV).
Christ took on humanity in a physical body, and we are called to worship Him with our bodies. Yet Jesus did not become man to equip individuals to worship, instead, He took on a body and engrafted us into His very own body. We are not individual bodies but belong to the one body. St. Paul tells us, “There is one body …” and not many. We are engrafted into the vine and we are the branches attached to the one life-giving vine. (John 15:5). Therefore, when we approach the faith we must approach it together with fellow sinners redeemed by the blood of the Lamb because He did not redeem individuals left alone to wander like lost sheep – no, He redeems and calls His sheep and the sheep know His voice and gather together into the one flock. (John 10:16, 27).
St. Paul teaches us that when Christ accomplished His victory, His exodus, and His triumph over sin, death, and Satan, the Father “put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22-23 ESV).
We need to take the Church more seriously. It is His body, after all. And His body is made not of individuals, but of members, “for we are members one another” (Ephesians 4:25 ESV) “for the body does not consist of one member but of many.” (1 Corinthians 12:14 ESV). Less we begin backbiting and looking down at those sitting in the pews around us, we need to recall that our knees cannot bend in prayer to the Almighty nor can our hands open to receive the Body and the Blood without being attached to our body, so too we cannot claim Christ without being engrafted into His body.
Why O Christian are you forsaking the gathering of the saints contrary to Hebrews 10:25? Return to the assembly, return to the gathering, return to worshipping in Spirit and in truth with your whole body and within the Body of Christ, the Church.
Perhaps you gather each Sunday (and feast day!) faithfully. You do well. Yet the Body of Christ extends from the gathering on Sunday and permeates throughout the week. God has started His eighth day of new creation on Easter morning and we provided us the down deposit through the Holy Ghost. Divine life indwells you. Even more so, when “two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:120 ESV). Therefore let us gather together as we gather the harvest. Should we assert our individualism, then let us recall we are individually re-made mobile temples of God’s Holy presence. (1 Corinthians 6:19). We are like the Ark of God on the move to pronounce, announce, and proclaim His victory – the Gospel. We are renewed images of God and as the Son reflects the Father, so too we now reflect the Son because we bear the Spirit. (Romans 8:16). We are renewed for a purpose and that purpose is bearing God’s image. This vocation begins within the home.
The Christian home should be the microcosm of the Church. It is a reflection of the greater gathering of the One Body on Sundays. Or as St. Paul explained to the Church in Ephesus, the hostility between Jew and Gentile has been torn down for He has reconciled us sinners “in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:16). Hostility unfortunately persists within the Church, even down to its smallest member, the family. We must kill the hostility by accepting the peace that Christ has given us, for though on Sunday we gather with strangers, we find “then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” (Ephesians 2:19 ESV).
Yet far too often, Christians are strangers to those in the pews and are hostile to the members of their very own household. Sin dies hard and it must be crucified daily. The hostility we experience far too often starts within the family itself. We often hurt, harm, and share hate-filled words to our own within the family. It does something far worse than hinder our Christian witness, it is a killing by words, by failures, and by failing to “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
It is no wonder that St. Paul turns his attention in Chapters 5 and 6 of his letter to the Ephesians towards the relationships we are impacted by the most, those within the home. St. Paul tells the Ephesians and is telling us, fellow husbands and wives, “be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2 ESV). For families are members of the Body of Christ, the Church. We are called to reflect the image of God, for we were made image-bearers. (Genesis 1:27). Though we are marred by sin, yet even as redeemed sinners, when the two are joined together “they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24 ESV). Therefore, how we live within this one body in marriage, should reflect how Christ has one body, His Church.
God calls us to worship Him with our whole bodies, every day of the week. Although we gather at a minimum on Sunday, we should praise and worship Him throughout the week. For those who are married, you are one body. It is good to have personal devotion, but it is Godly to be united as one body and pray, worship, and praise God together. It serves as a bond of union within the marriage and within the greater body of Christ. It reflects the image of Christ and His bride, the Church. And it is the strongest witness to one’s own children, who are being taught the faith and now can see it in action by how their father and mother serve the Lord. “Look carefully then how you walk,” warns St. Paul, for the time is short and life is but a mist so we must make “the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:15-16 ESV). Therefore, start small and fail small. Take up the habit of praying together and reading Scripture together, as the body of Christ. “[B]e filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.” (Ephesians 5:19 ESV). Let us sing with our children, so that someday we may sing with our grandchildren.
Furthermore, how we treat, love, and serve one another bears witness to our hearts. St. Paul does something fascinating in Ephesians 5. The world rejects the language St. Paul uses, especially when in verse 22 he says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22 ESV). I fear this colors even Christians distracted by the zeitgeist instead of allowing the Spirit to speak words of life. This section on Christian marriage is an anchor on what it looks like for all Christians, regardless of their marriage status, in how we are Christ’s Body, and should live as such.
For Paul anchors submission to everyone in the Church – both the married and unmarried, the young and the old – with this call to be “giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
The call to submission is for all in the Church. God the Father has put all things in subjection under Christ’s feet, including ourselves. (Ephesians 1:22, 1 Corinthians 15:27-28). Yet we live east of Eden and under the curse, and we share in the rebellion of our foreparents within our sinful hearts. “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16 ESV). This curse is due to our sin. A battle of disunited wills and battle over ruling, instead of a heart of serving. The two are one flesh and yet the two are against each other.
But thanks be to God, while we sojourn to the Promised Land, God has already gained the victory. The land is ours to be inhabited, for God has already taken it. Though we are sinners in this flesh, yet we dwell “In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.” (Ephesians 1:13-14 ESV). We are no longer empty sinners but are Spirit-filled believers in Christ. We were once “dead in our trespasses” “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us … made us alive together with Christ” who sits at the right hand of the Father and whom we are engrafted into as His body. (Ephesians 2:4-6 ESV). Therefore, St. Paul is urging us to rest in the Spirit who we have been gifted, and to walk in the Spirit in all our lives, starting within our marriages.
Further, St. Paul’s description of how husbands and wives are to treat one another echoes the call of Christ to His disciples to serve one another just as He, the Master serves us. Instead of lording authority over each other, we must die to ourselves daily and bear with love one another as models and examples of how Christ bears with us sinners. (Luke 22:24-27). St. Paul tells us “Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior.” (Ephesians 5:23 ESV). This is an incredible teaching, for it reveals that the greater Church belongs wholly and truly as His body. This is not a throw-away metaphor but speaks of a divine reality. Likewise, husbands are called to love their wives “as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25 ESV). Less we husbands merely count this as “done” because we vow to protect the life of our wife when she is endangered, we must read and apply what St. Paul is telling us about Christ and His bride, the Church. Christ died for the Church for a purpose, for a reason, namely “that He might sanctify her [that is, the Church], having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 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.” Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again to consummate the marriage between He and His bride, the Church. We shall not be left as we are, thanks be to God, but we are being sanctified in the faith to be presented as spotless as the spotless Lamb of God. St. Paul shifts from this deep theology to applying the practical hammer, “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies” for we are one body, one flesh, and one church within this household of faith. (Ephesians 5:28).
Do you love your spouse? Do you honor your spouse? Do you respect your spouse?
It takes dying to ourselves to do so, for we are great sinners who love and are married to fellow sinners. But “[h]e who loves his wife loves Himself” just as “the wife see that she respects her husband” because “no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body.” (Ephesians 5:28-30, 33).
“There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:4-6 ESV).
Fundamentally, our marriages are not about us. Instead, they are a reflection of God image and His gracious salvation. “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:32 ESV). As the marriage rite from the classic prayer book states, “I plight thee my troth,” or I pledge my fidelity, my loyalty, and my faithfulness to my spouse. We are one, therefore let us reflect the One true God who has engrafted us to the Son and pledged us as His bride.
Christians married to Christians fail to realize the beautiful grace they have together. Many of our brothers and sisters in Christ came to faith after their marriage and envy what we have. Yet we take it for granted far too often and present broken mirrors of sin instead of reflecting images of Christ. Fellow husbands and fellow sinners, if we desire respect, then let us respect, heed, and live out the call of Christ presented in the Spirit-inspired words of St. Paul. Let us lead like men, and therefore serve like Christ. Let us pray like men, and sweat like Christ in Gethsemane. Let us love like men, and sacrifice like Christ. It is not only our marriage, but the entire family called to follow our “one Lord” therefore we are called to teach the “one faith” and bring our children to the “one baptism” so they may be adopted as we were to the “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all in all.” (Ephesians 4:5-6 ESV). Should we wish to see respect from our children, as St. Paul admonishes in Ephesians 6, then let us remove stumbling blocks by speaking words of life to them and loving our spouse as Christ loves His Church. Let us lead by breaking bread and breaking open the Scriptures as we read them to our families. May our marriages, our families, and our local church be renewed by the life-giving Spirit starting with our heads bowed, our knees bent, and our mouths opened in humility to our King.
'Bearing the Image, Reflecting the Son' has no comments
Be the first to comment this post!