Main Thought
Today’s world is all about “me.” Marriage is no different. People want to know what they will “get out of” marriage. This kind of self-centeredness will not provide a foundation for a long-lasting and happy marriage. Christians, on the other hand, have a responsibility to look beyond themselves when it comes to marriage. God created marriage to mirror His love toward us. Jesus laid down His life in order to put God and other people above Himself. Husbands and wives should seek to love each other with the same self-sacrificing love. When we commit ourselves to doing this well, our love stories can become a real-life picture of God’s love for the world.
Main Passages
21 …submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
- Ephesians 5:21-28
29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
- Ephesians 5:29-33
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
- John 3:16
Discussion Questions
What stands out to you in the Main Thought and Passages above and why?
If you’re married, what does being married mean to you? If you’re single, what does marriage mean to you?
Does the idea that Christian marriage is meant to be different from other marriages outside of Christianity sound strange to you? Do you agree or disagree?