GREATER LOVE

“Therefore just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for…”
This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the Church are one.
– Eph 5:25-32

For the first time I get this whole women must submit and men must love thing. It has nothing to do with any of the two species or their personality differences or genetic make-up but everything to do with Christ (God).
All of mankind is the body of Christ (at least those who belong to God) and we have been prepared as the bride of Christ and Christ is the groom. To enable us have a little peak into the love that He (Christ) has for us, God instituted the marriage union. When God wanted the prophet Hosea to understand His love for His children, He sent the prophet off to marry a prostitute. And as much as the wife prostituted herself with a whole lot of men, the prophet still loved her and was always ready to forgive her. He loved her in spite of herself. And this is how God admonished men to love their wives (in spite of themselves); not because men have no heart and so must learn to love but because men are playing the role of Christ in marriage. Women were also to submit to their husbands because, that is the role of the church, to submit to God’s authority (men plus women (included) make up the Church)

Eph 5:1 says that we should be “imitators of God as dear children…” so we must all step up to the challenge and take on our respective roles and perform them efficiently.

I was beginning to sense a bit of unfairness in this whole thing because men have to do twice what women were asked to do. Thus men are asked to submit to Christ (because men also form part of the body of Christ) and then again they are asked to love their wives; but women are only asked to submit. Want to know why? God gave me an answer; men are to do twice as much work because Christ is greater than the Church. And the greater you are the more responsibility you have especially in caring for the weaker and not so great ones. Also, men are given the unique task of loving because love is the greatest gift of all (1 Cor 13:13) and with greatness comes Great gifts.

So men really are superior (in responsibility) to women because God is superior to the Church. That is just the way God made it! It is not because men are special or superior (in essence) to women. But it is because Christ himself (God) has given them that great privilege to be his imitators. You know how we are always saying that we women do not realize how powerful we are, I believe also that men do not know who God has really made them to be and how much authority and power he has given to them. With this whole “whatever a man can do women can also do better”, men are fighting back for their position as heads of the family, the Church and even the co-operate world. But what men need to realize is that God has bestowed greatness on them already. God meant for them to be in control.

John 15:13 says that, “…greater love has no man than this, to lay down one’s life for his friends”.

For the men: if all this greatness thing is beginning to get into your head just know that the greatest form of love is submission – losing one’s self for the cause of another. Greatness is therefore in store for everyone (man or woman) who is ready to lose themselves for the cause of Christ and also for others.

For the women: So women, we can also be great when we truly learn to submit.
AMEN!


....Karen