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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 19. "Even as Christ."
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"Even as Christ."
Now, of course, it is true that there is a teaching of the meaning of conjugal love quite different from all this. It is quite commonly said that the love between the sexes that leads to the life union, is not such a high unselfish thing as this. It is supposed to be the love that desires to have the other for its own possession and advantage and enjoyment. And in common experience this usually means that he is the one who possesses, and follows the bent of his desires; and that she is the one who bends and yields to his desires. Here is a bit of that same thought of woman already spoken of that has kept her under the thumb of man's rule and desire and passion.
It is altogether likely that a good many won't agree with the way the thing is being put in these quiet talks, and will insist on so not agreeing. Yet will these friends kindly notice a thing that seems positively startling when put alongside of the common conception of the conjugal relation? It is something said by Paul. Aye, listen softly, it is something taught to Paul by the Spirit of his Master. Paul taught that a husband's love for his wife is to be the same as Christ's love for the Church. (Eph_5:25-27 <http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Eph+5:25-27>.) This is putting the relation between the two on the purest, highest, holiest ground imaginable. There can be none higher. Brought into the atmosphere of life as it actually is this is nothing short of startling. The purity and unselfishness of Jesus' love for man has never been questioned. It has become the standard by which all loves are judged. At the utmost cost of pain, and the intensest tenderness of devotion, and the keenest self-remembering unselfishness, he lived for others, and then gave His life out for them.
And mark very keenly why He did this, as Paul puts it here: that He might present this body of redeemed, purified men to Himself. Ah! His love was a possessory love after all. Yes; but He wanted to possess them as His own for their sakes. His whole thought was of those for whom He gave His life. His love was wholly concerned for the other. Utterly unselfish, putting itself to the severest pain and discipline, with no thought of anything but the other one, this was Jesus' love. And this, we are taught, is to be the husband's love, and by inference the love of each for the other. In all his thought of his wife, and all his life with her, the husband is to be swayed and controlled by the same self-remembering unselfish love that swayed Jesus in the Nazareth home, the woodworking shop, and as He walked out. of the Jerusalem gate toward the Calvary hill. This is His thought who planned this holy union of lives.