Christ at the Center

My senior year in Christian College I took a course called "Family Life Ministry" and a major part of the grade was based around a paper each student had to write. The paper was to be called, “A Theology of Family.” I don’t need to tell what it was supposed to be about.
I won’t get into the whole of what I learned but one thing I noticed is something I wanted to share in light of the weekend I have had. When studying the Bible towards my Theology of Family, I was constantly confronted with the Scriptural notion that the family relationship, the marriage relationship was meant to serve as a powerfully moving analogy of God’s relationship with His people and Christ’s relationship with his church. That previous summer, in teaching on the jealousy of God, I noticed this language in the Old Testament as well. More than once the Old Testament refers to Israel’s sin and rebellion against God as adultery. The whole nature of how we relate to one another, in friendship, in love, in family and in marriage began to take on new meaning in my eyes.
The reason I mention this little academic anecdote is because, this weekend I witnessed a wedding, officiated by a Pastor with a firm grip on this concept – that is a Scriptural truth regarding marriage.
Pastor Chris Gorman spoke from Ephesians 5:22-33. For those of you who don’t know, it’s that pesky little passage about wives submitting to their husbands and husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. I suppose any one could have used this passage and allowed the bride, the groom, and any scripturally uninitiated attendants create their own, socially conscious meaning, but, thankfully, God has taught Pastor Chris a few things over the years and not only did we get to hear a consistent and thoughtful exegesis of Ephesians 5 on Sunday morning, but we got to see the very illustration that Paul uses to talk about Christ and His Church – we got to see a wedding. That’s right, the introduction for the sermon led straight into a wedding that a lot of the congregation had no idea was supposed to happen. My Grandmother says this is how they did it in the old days, but this was new to me.
The thing I latched onto during the service was the verse about the husband loving his wife as Christ loves the church, and how, if you were to characterize Christ’s ministry and attitude toward those he loves, that is the Church, it could be characterized by service and sacrifice. Something that, as a man, I felt like I needed to hold onto for the future and something most men probably still need to hear.
But beyond that, what I was excited to see was a church which so enthusiastically embraced a wedding ceremony with Christ truly at the center. I think this idea - the idea that our relationships with others, our marriages are to be living examples to Christ's love for His people goes to the heart of true Evangelism and it was nice to be there for it.