Love and Obedience

The Bible speaks of the church as the Bride of Christ. We in the church, both male and female, are part of the Bride of Christ. The church is feminine; Christ is masculine. A bride’s love for her husband is a responsive love. The love of a man for a woman is an originating love. She loves because he first loved her. The more he loves her, the more she loves him. The less he loves, the less she loves.
Let’s look at 1 John 4:19 (KJV):

We love Him, because He first loved us.

Make a study from the Bible on how much God loved, and how much He loved and loves us. Keep this study going. You will find your love for Him growing. You will find obedience growing too.

God’s love for us is sacrificial. Our responsive love for Him is obedience.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:22-24 NIV)

These are unconditional imperatives to wives and husbands. We could get hung up on the imperatives. If so, we miss the model, the example.

The examples are 1) “as the church submits to Christ,” and 2) “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleaning her by the washing with water through the word and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

This love the bride responds to.

Dwell on it.

(An excerpt from On Being a Christian by Jim Wilson)

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