Ephesians 5.25-33
Once again we are looking at Jesus' advent, His coming. We do this with the same goal in mind as last week's sermon, to find out why. Why did Jesus come? It's important that we do this because the great need of the day is a Church that is mature in the ways of God. Paul writes, 'Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.' If we are going to change the world with the Gospel, we need to understand that Gospel well. And so we ask questions like, 'Why did Jesus come?', and then we look for good answers. And the Bible is filled with words and pictures that answer that question.
So, we see that Jesus came as the holy warrior to bind the satanic strong man and thus free those who had been enslaved to do his will. Jesus came as the true Joseph who suffered the depths only to be exalted to the heights, and thus, as Lord over the nations, to rescue all from the famine that destroys souls. Jesus came as the Good Shepherd who leads the flock through the valley of the shadow of death so that it may dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Jesus came to be the propitiation for our sins, completely absorbing in Himself the wrath of God which we so justly deserve so that we might enjoy the Father, walk with the Son and be filled with the Spirit, now and forever. And Jesus came as the gentle and lowly Lord to offer rest to weary souls. The Bible is filled with different ways to answer the question, 'Why did Jesus come?' None of the answers it gives are superfluous. Each one fills in, for our sake, the picture of the Gospel. And all of them help us to enjoy Jesus more. We need to grasp as much of the picture of the Gospel as we can so that we can touch the lives of the many around us who are being crushed by sin and Satan and death. Not everyone is going to be gripped by a quotation of John 3.16. Some, however, will be moved by the image of a holy warrior doing battle for the sake of their souls. For these and other reasons, we do well to search out and work at understanding all of the different answers - all the words and the pictures - the Bible provides for our question. We will not complete this task any time soon. But that's okay. We have an eternity to do that. And I suspect that it will take us that long to finish the task.
This morning's text is simply another of the answers that the Bible gives to our question. And the heart of the answer is a picture. Jesus has come for His bride, the Church. Paul's using Jesus' relationship to the Church as a pattern for husbands make sense because Jesus really is a husband and the Church really is His bride. This fits in with an important theme of the Scriptures. It's a theme that begins in the Garden of Eden. Even in our text, Paul reminds us that the relationship of Adam and Eve was a picture of Christ and His Church. Then there is the Song of Solomon where the King relishes the beauty of his bride. And all of this looks to the future, the goal of it all. From the book of Revelation - and as you read this, think 'bridal processional': 'And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.' Jesus has come for the sake of His bride, the Church.
But the picture I've described thus far is incomplete. The bride that Jesus has come for is not a pure woman. Quite the opposite. His Church is filled with sinners. And that is not a little thing. How could a holy man marry and live with an immoral woman? Remember that Joseph, whom the Scriptures label a righteous man, was going to end his engagement to Mary when he learned that she was pregnant. That the Church is, in fact, an immoral woman should end all talk of a wedding day. But not for Jesus. Having come for His bride, He will not be deterred. Jesus deals with the immorality. In our text Paul tells us that Jesus is in the process of restoring the beauty of holiness to His betrothed so that there would be no 'spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish'. The Bible reveals Jesus as the impassioned husband-to-be, loving His intended bride, the Church, and cleansing her so that she might be ready for the great wedding day. So, that picture from Revelation of the bridal procession from heaven is a picture of a once-foul but now purified bride finally ready to be joined to her husband. Because of His love for her, Jesus is busy creating a glorious Church, a beautiful Church, to present to Himself as His bride.
This simple picture explains a lot. For one thing, it explains sin. If you were asked, 'What is sin?' you could say that sin is breaking God's law. And in the right situation, that would be the perfect thing to say. John does exactly that in his first epistle. But, because of our text, you could also say that sin is whatever makes you ugly. It is a blemish, something that mars the beauty of a person. Thursday I cooked the main course for our dinner group. In the process I splattered myself with some spaghetti sauce. I'm hoping that some stain remover will deal with it. Fortunately, it was just a plain everyday shirt. But what if it wasn't some everyday shirt? What if you had on something special, something that you really liked, something you used only at certain occasions? And one evening, after going out for a very nice dinner, you notice the stain. And instead of plain cotton like my shirt, it's made of some material that stains just cling to. However dim the stain may get, you'll always know that it's there. This special something is now blemished. It may be usable, but it's not the same. It's ruined. It s beauty has been marred. Sin. It's a blemish, a stain on your soul. Instead of that pure beauty God intended for you, there is now this bit of ugly. And just as some decide that this once special item is beyond restoring, only worthy of the trash, there are those who think of their lives as beyond restoring, only worthy of the trash. But Jesus has come. And He has come to take blemished sinners and make them into a beautiful Church. He has come to remove every spot and every stain. He has come to restore to original beauty. Some are not moved by the language of lawbreaking and forgiveness. They just don't get that. But the image of ugly stains being removed until all that is left is beauty is something that can speak in a powerful way to many. Jesus has come to beautify His Church.
Paul goes on to describe how He does this. Jesus will '...cleanse her with the washing of water by the word...' How does Jesus make a beautiful Church? By word and sacrament. Jesus applies the Word of the Gospel to hearts by preaching and by the sacraments of baptism - 'the washing of water' - and communion. It is in this way that His bride is changed. This helps us to understand what we are doing on Sundays. We gather, in part, so that Jesus can continue the process of removing the stains of our sin. He is, at this moment, in the process of making us beautiful. It's not just us here, getting together for our weekly meeting. Jesus is here, by His Spirit, and He is busy. On Sundays, and other times when we gather for worship, Jesus deals with His Church in a special way. This gives a little context for our expectations of Sunday worship. Last week I told you that each Sunday Jesus calls to us so that we might enjoy more of His rest. My point today is that Jesus is meeting with us, here, in this place, to make us beautiful. That, after all, is one reason that He has come.
All of this also has something to say about how we should understand ourselves. For one thing, this is intended to humble us all. Jesus has come because we are all blemished with sin. In fact, before He converted us, there was almost no beauty at all. In this way, every sinner is the same. There is much ugliness to be dealt with in each of us. I've been a Christian for more than forty years, but there is a long way to go before I will enjoy the full beauty Jesus intends for me. So, it's a good thing that Jesus comes weekly to continue His work. I know that I need it.
There is, also, the flip side to this. And this is so encouraging. Because of what we have seen in this text, we can all say, 'As blemished as I am, Jesus still loves me. He sees the ugliness better than anyone, but He still likes me.' Amazing! I think it's fair to say that a great desire of every person is to know that he or she is loved. But who loves what is ugly? That's why we hide from others. What if they knew the ugliness? Jesus knows the ugliness - and He still loves us. That's the Gospel - and it is almost too good to be true.
On top of this, there is hope. We can all say, 'Jesus is making me beautiful. He's busy right now doing that. And He won't stop until He's done.' Jesus is the knight-errant determined to rescue the fair maiden. Nothing, not the ancient dragon, not even death itself, will be able to stop Him. He will win His bride. He won't stop until He makes you into a true beauty, ready for marriage. So, when your sin seems especially ugly or especially difficult, remember that Jesus is determined to change that. And He will change it. He promises that.
One last thought, and this is quite significant. For whom is Jesus doing all that I've described? What does our text say? 'Jesus loved the Church ...' Paul looks at what Jesus is doing very differently in Galatians where he writes, '... the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' There, Paul emphasizes the individual. 'Jesus loved me!' But in our text, he tells us that Jesus loved the Church. Here, the emphasis is not on the individual but on the group. And that makes sense in this context. So much of Paul's letter to the Ephesians is about the Church. It's here that Paul talks about the unity of the Church and how each part of the Church needs to fulfill its role and how Jesus is the cornerstone of the Church and more. Jesus loves His Church. One thing that this means is that this 'being made beautiful' is something that we do together. Jesus is dealing with us as a church, as Faith Reformed Church. There are times when the emphasis needs to be on the individual. But there are times when it needs to be on the group. Which happens when is, at times, difficult to discern. The balance is not easy to achieve. But this much is clear. The one side of the coin cannot exist without the other. It's not one or the other but both together. So here's a good question to ask, though I'm not going to pursue it today. What does it look like when a church is becoming beautiful together?
Jesus has come, advent. He has come because He loves His Church. He has come because He loves Faith Reformed Church. And because of that love He will make His Church beautiful.
Once again we are looking at Jesus' advent, His coming. We do this with the same goal in mind as last week's sermon, to find out why. Why did Jesus come? It's important that we do this because the great need of the day is a Church that is mature in the ways of God. Paul writes, 'Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.' If we are going to change the world with the Gospel, we need to understand that Gospel well. And so we ask questions like, 'Why did Jesus come?', and then we look for good answers. And the Bible is filled with words and pictures that answer that question.
So, we see that Jesus came as the holy warrior to bind the satanic strong man and thus free those who had been enslaved to do his will. Jesus came as the true Joseph who suffered the depths only to be exalted to the heights, and thus, as Lord over the nations, to rescue all from the famine that destroys souls. Jesus came as the Good Shepherd who leads the flock through the valley of the shadow of death so that it may dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Jesus came to be the propitiation for our sins, completely absorbing in Himself the wrath of God which we so justly deserve so that we might enjoy the Father, walk with the Son and be filled with the Spirit, now and forever. And Jesus came as the gentle and lowly Lord to offer rest to weary souls. The Bible is filled with different ways to answer the question, 'Why did Jesus come?' None of the answers it gives are superfluous. Each one fills in, for our sake, the picture of the Gospel. And all of them help us to enjoy Jesus more. We need to grasp as much of the picture of the Gospel as we can so that we can touch the lives of the many around us who are being crushed by sin and Satan and death. Not everyone is going to be gripped by a quotation of John 3.16. Some, however, will be moved by the image of a holy warrior doing battle for the sake of their souls. For these and other reasons, we do well to search out and work at understanding all of the different answers - all the words and the pictures - the Bible provides for our question. We will not complete this task any time soon. But that's okay. We have an eternity to do that. And I suspect that it will take us that long to finish the task.
This morning's text is simply another of the answers that the Bible gives to our question. And the heart of the answer is a picture. Jesus has come for His bride, the Church. Paul's using Jesus' relationship to the Church as a pattern for husbands make sense because Jesus really is a husband and the Church really is His bride. This fits in with an important theme of the Scriptures. It's a theme that begins in the Garden of Eden. Even in our text, Paul reminds us that the relationship of Adam and Eve was a picture of Christ and His Church. Then there is the Song of Solomon where the King relishes the beauty of his bride. And all of this looks to the future, the goal of it all. From the book of Revelation - and as you read this, think 'bridal processional': 'And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.' Jesus has come for the sake of His bride, the Church.
But the picture I've described thus far is incomplete. The bride that Jesus has come for is not a pure woman. Quite the opposite. His Church is filled with sinners. And that is not a little thing. How could a holy man marry and live with an immoral woman? Remember that Joseph, whom the Scriptures label a righteous man, was going to end his engagement to Mary when he learned that she was pregnant. That the Church is, in fact, an immoral woman should end all talk of a wedding day. But not for Jesus. Having come for His bride, He will not be deterred. Jesus deals with the immorality. In our text Paul tells us that Jesus is in the process of restoring the beauty of holiness to His betrothed so that there would be no 'spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish'. The Bible reveals Jesus as the impassioned husband-to-be, loving His intended bride, the Church, and cleansing her so that she might be ready for the great wedding day. So, that picture from Revelation of the bridal procession from heaven is a picture of a once-foul but now purified bride finally ready to be joined to her husband. Because of His love for her, Jesus is busy creating a glorious Church, a beautiful Church, to present to Himself as His bride.
This simple picture explains a lot. For one thing, it explains sin. If you were asked, 'What is sin?' you could say that sin is breaking God's law. And in the right situation, that would be the perfect thing to say. John does exactly that in his first epistle. But, because of our text, you could also say that sin is whatever makes you ugly. It is a blemish, something that mars the beauty of a person. Thursday I cooked the main course for our dinner group. In the process I splattered myself with some spaghetti sauce. I'm hoping that some stain remover will deal with it. Fortunately, it was just a plain everyday shirt. But what if it wasn't some everyday shirt? What if you had on something special, something that you really liked, something you used only at certain occasions? And one evening, after going out for a very nice dinner, you notice the stain. And instead of plain cotton like my shirt, it's made of some material that stains just cling to. However dim the stain may get, you'll always know that it's there. This special something is now blemished. It may be usable, but it's not the same. It's ruined. It s beauty has been marred. Sin. It's a blemish, a stain on your soul. Instead of that pure beauty God intended for you, there is now this bit of ugly. And just as some decide that this once special item is beyond restoring, only worthy of the trash, there are those who think of their lives as beyond restoring, only worthy of the trash. But Jesus has come. And He has come to take blemished sinners and make them into a beautiful Church. He has come to remove every spot and every stain. He has come to restore to original beauty. Some are not moved by the language of lawbreaking and forgiveness. They just don't get that. But the image of ugly stains being removed until all that is left is beauty is something that can speak in a powerful way to many. Jesus has come to beautify His Church.
Paul goes on to describe how He does this. Jesus will '...cleanse her with the washing of water by the word...' How does Jesus make a beautiful Church? By word and sacrament. Jesus applies the Word of the Gospel to hearts by preaching and by the sacraments of baptism - 'the washing of water' - and communion. It is in this way that His bride is changed. This helps us to understand what we are doing on Sundays. We gather, in part, so that Jesus can continue the process of removing the stains of our sin. He is, at this moment, in the process of making us beautiful. It's not just us here, getting together for our weekly meeting. Jesus is here, by His Spirit, and He is busy. On Sundays, and other times when we gather for worship, Jesus deals with His Church in a special way. This gives a little context for our expectations of Sunday worship. Last week I told you that each Sunday Jesus calls to us so that we might enjoy more of His rest. My point today is that Jesus is meeting with us, here, in this place, to make us beautiful. That, after all, is one reason that He has come.
All of this also has something to say about how we should understand ourselves. For one thing, this is intended to humble us all. Jesus has come because we are all blemished with sin. In fact, before He converted us, there was almost no beauty at all. In this way, every sinner is the same. There is much ugliness to be dealt with in each of us. I've been a Christian for more than forty years, but there is a long way to go before I will enjoy the full beauty Jesus intends for me. So, it's a good thing that Jesus comes weekly to continue His work. I know that I need it.
There is, also, the flip side to this. And this is so encouraging. Because of what we have seen in this text, we can all say, 'As blemished as I am, Jesus still loves me. He sees the ugliness better than anyone, but He still likes me.' Amazing! I think it's fair to say that a great desire of every person is to know that he or she is loved. But who loves what is ugly? That's why we hide from others. What if they knew the ugliness? Jesus knows the ugliness - and He still loves us. That's the Gospel - and it is almost too good to be true.
On top of this, there is hope. We can all say, 'Jesus is making me beautiful. He's busy right now doing that. And He won't stop until He's done.' Jesus is the knight-errant determined to rescue the fair maiden. Nothing, not the ancient dragon, not even death itself, will be able to stop Him. He will win His bride. He won't stop until He makes you into a true beauty, ready for marriage. So, when your sin seems especially ugly or especially difficult, remember that Jesus is determined to change that. And He will change it. He promises that.
One last thought, and this is quite significant. For whom is Jesus doing all that I've described? What does our text say? 'Jesus loved the Church ...' Paul looks at what Jesus is doing very differently in Galatians where he writes, '... the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' There, Paul emphasizes the individual. 'Jesus loved me!' But in our text, he tells us that Jesus loved the Church. Here, the emphasis is not on the individual but on the group. And that makes sense in this context. So much of Paul's letter to the Ephesians is about the Church. It's here that Paul talks about the unity of the Church and how each part of the Church needs to fulfill its role and how Jesus is the cornerstone of the Church and more. Jesus loves His Church. One thing that this means is that this 'being made beautiful' is something that we do together. Jesus is dealing with us as a church, as Faith Reformed Church. There are times when the emphasis needs to be on the individual. But there are times when it needs to be on the group. Which happens when is, at times, difficult to discern. The balance is not easy to achieve. But this much is clear. The one side of the coin cannot exist without the other. It's not one or the other but both together. So here's a good question to ask, though I'm not going to pursue it today. What does it look like when a church is becoming beautiful together?
Jesus has come, advent. He has come because He loves His Church. He has come because He loves Faith Reformed Church. And because of that love He will make His Church beautiful.
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