For God so loved the world..

Marriage is all about love. The Greek word used here in this verse is “agape” meaning unconditional love. A love that is not comprehendible with our limited human minds. It is very definitely a love that is beyond rational logic.
The world tells us that marriage is all about having your needs met. This selfish love is better described using the Greek word “eros”. This is more a self centered type of love. It is all about me, and what I can get out of this relationship. Agape is all about what I can give. What can I give, how can I serve my partner, my spouse. Agape is all about giving to another, without the possibility of receiving. Agape gives. Agape serves. Agape gets up in the morning with one question in mind. How can I serve you today?
Eros has one question too. How are you going to serve me today? How can I benefit from this relationship? What is in it for me?
God uses the word marriage to describe His relationship with man. It was as a result of the driving Agape that God was driven, by a uncompromising love to send Jesus to serve us. Jesus served us through his ultimate sacrifice at Calvary. He demonstrated this serving attitude when he washed the feet of His disciples. Jesus came to serve the ultimate way. This is the very definition of how a spouse should love.
If we are in a marriage relationship with Christ, (and the bible often refers to the church as the bride) then should we not be more demonstrative of that Agape and less like the world? Are we truly driven by an uncompromising love, are you driven by a need to serve your God? Are you in a marriage relationship with your God?
If we put this in a human context. We were told to be shining examples of Jesus Christ. Does your light shine bright in the midst of a self centered, self serving world? Are you waking up in the morning with a need to serve your spouse? I know, you are going to say :”I am nuts”, followed very closely by:”I have things to do”. Can you say “selfish”, driven by your needs?
Is this a hard message to comprehend? Unequivocally yes. Even the disciples had difficulty being served. Remember Peter’s objections to Christ washing his feet? We are not comfortable serving. When we are truly renewed in our thinking (Romans 12:2), our marriages resemble more of the Christ like example of a marriage and less like the world’s example of marriage. How did God serve His bride? He sent His Son to serve us!
The second aspect to a Christ like marriage is found in this text. Ephesians 5:26 we are told to wash with t he Word. In other words, we are NOT told to clean the fish, just catch the fish. The word of God will do the cleaning…if we will just concentrate on the catching! The same is true in marriages. The word of God will change your spouse – not you. God did not send Jesus to change us, just to teach us. It was the teaching, and His life example that changed us. In fact when He was confronted by the teachers of the law with the woman caught in adultery, He did not judge her. He said he who has no sin can cast the first stone. We are not told to judge, in fact we are specifically told not to judge! More than once we are instructed not to judge, especially in marriage. Now we can judge behavior (in other words, fruit) but not the person. In marriage we often as not try to change our spouse to fit our ‘models of expectation’. We try to change our partner to fit what we perceive as the ‘right fit’.
If we were to truly follow the Christ like example of marriage, an example of serving, and example of not judging the person, but rather washing with the word, the church would have the lowest rate of divorce rather than the highest! Makes me think that we are in need of studying:
Ephesians 4:17:” This I say in the Lord that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.”