NEW TESTAMENT READING PLAN: Acts 5-7
SCRIPTURE READING: Read: Eph 5:22-33
Believers in Christ are the body of Christ—we are the organism through which He manifests
His life and in which His Spirit dwells. Knowing this about the relationship between Christ and
the church, Paul sees a parallel here with marriage. He sees that husband and wife become
one flesh and that Christ and the church become one body. Paul uses the relationship of
human marriage to describe and explain the relationship between Christ and the church. God
didn’t create the union of Christ and the church after the pattern of human marriage; just the
reverse, He created human marriage based on the pattern of Christ’s relation to the church.
Everything God does has purpose and meaning. When God created man and woman and
ordained the union of marriage, He didn’t roll dice or draw straws or flip a coin. He patterned
marriage very purposefully after the relationship between His Son and the church, which
He planned from eternity. And therefore marriage is a mystery—it contains and conceals a
meaning far greater than what we see on the outside. As a society, we don’t take marriage
as seriously as we once did. More and more people are choosing to live together instead of
getting married and many people, instead of fighting for their marriage, give up and succumb
to divorce. It’s safe to assume that God wants the church to be full of healthy marriages
because it is a reflection of the relationship between His Son and the Church.
PRAYER and MEDITATION
1. Spend some time praying about the marriages in our church. Pray that God would
strengthen the marriages and that broken marriages would become whole again. Pray that
couples who are struggling in their marriage would be willing to get personal ministry. Pray
that believers would see the importance of working on their marriages and not leaving them
to chance.
2. If you are married, ask the Lord to reveal to you how you can tangibly show love to your
spouse this week. Ask the Lord to strengthen your marriage as you take these steps of
obedience.
3. Spend some time confessing that as a society, we don’t take marriage seriously enough.
Confess the sins of fornication and adultery on behalf of our church, region and nation and
ask for God’s mercy.
