One Flesh: Notes on Ephesians 5:29-33

After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body.  "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."  This is a profound mystery but I am talking about the church.  However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.Ephesians 5:29-33

It's fascinating to me how God uses everything he created to point back to His Design and the reason He did it that way in the first place.

He created the heavens and the earth and the animals on it out of nothing. He makes a point of describing man as coming from dust or clay with His breath infusing him to give him life... and then He makes woman from the core of man, from his own flesh.

He could have just made us all from nothing just like he did everything else. But the fact that he didn't means he was trying to make a point about relationships and intimacy. Paul picks up the conversation and shows us how the fractal pattern of his design fits into all the bigger relationships.

Follow this: God is not alone but lives in community within the triad of the trinity. They are all equally God, but there is also a design of order within them, where Jesus submits to to the Father.

Then He creates man from his own breath... the echo of Spirit from His own Body and contained in his lungs (near the rib?) where presumably the wind of heaven (Holy Spirit) resides.

When he makes woman he takes a rib from Adam pointing back to his own creation telling the man that in the same way I have shared and care for you so you should care and love her.

Paul puts the pattern in the next larger context of community saying that collectively WE are the body of God since through creation, marriage and family - then in community as the body of Christ we are intimately HIS.

Even through those intimate relationships (the Godhead, man and woman, and then in the body of Christ)  there is mutual submission with a clear sense of order.

I don't pretend to understand all the complexities contained within this structure of intimacy, but rather, I am like the child who sees the kaleidoscope fractal patterns and says, "ohhh pretty!  What does it mean?"

He Who Separates Himself Seeks His Own Desire

He who separates himself seeks his own desire, He quarrels against all sound wisdom.A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.
PROVERBS 18:1-2 NASB

This is how pride takes over and self delusion and self destruction begins. The word says that the enemy prowls around like a hungry lion. Lions hunt herd animals by singling them out of the crowd; targeting those who are weak, hungry, lonely, tired... alone. If we are isolated it's easier to wear us down, feed us lies, and convince us that no one else understands what we are going through.

It's why we are commanded to live our life in community, so that we can admonish and correct and love and support one another. It's why we are supposed to confess our sins to one another, so that we can live in the truth with one another instead of the complicated justifications we make to avoid our own sin and culpability.

I grieve for those who have withdrawn from fellowship with believers and now follow what is right in their own eyes. The reasons and the stories vary but ultimately, they don't want to be told that the thing they are doing, that is meeting their core needs, is wrong. They don't want to give up this thing that God calls sin ...and they call precious.

The enemy encourages this by telling them they are smart, enlightened, empowered. And by this time, many have burnt relational bridges behind them and used scorched-earth tactics to avoid the guilt and shame of their behavior.

I know and care about many who have fallen away some pick fights with me because they fear that I will preach at them or judge them. I guess it's true, I judge that they have made some terrible choices. Those decisions have consequences. I will and I do preach the good news. I have to. In my mind right now I am listing them by name, I do this every time I pray for them. They are in my prayer list, and there are enough of them that they are their own line item for prayer, all grouped together and mentioned by name every time I pray for them. I haven't given up.

Why?

*Because their lack of belief doesn't make God un-true.
*Because HE knows them by name.
*Because HE loves them even more than me and he is faithful and just.
*Because I take refuge in His judgments instead of my own, I must keep praying for them like one does CPR. I cannot write them off and out of my life until death.
*Because He is the great physician, and they aren't dead until they are dead, I will continue to pray until He notes the time in His book of life.

What I haven't done is written them off. I grieve for them. Pray for me to have the right words to draw them back!

What about you? If you have stuck with me on this journey I am on, I will assume that you too have a list of people that used to believe and now do not. Let me encourage you to write their names down. Pray for them regularly and often. The bible says that there is no where we can go that He cannot reach. The Prodigal Son found his way into a pig pen, at rock bottom and penniless . King David committed murder by proxy to keep another woman through adultery. Where are your friends and family that have fallen away? Their story isn't finished yet. HIStory, is still being written and there is still time. Because God can reach them even where they are.

I pray also for you, that you do not give up doing good. Hold the hope for them for a while if they have lost their own. Hope is a powerful thing, and one of the three that remain (1Cor. 13:13). My prayer for you, dear friend, is that the Holy Spirit stoke your hope. May the breath of God breathe new life into your hope and make it burn bright.

I pray it light the way home for those lost in the dark and alone.

Amen.

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