Wedding Sermon Ephesians 5 21 33

A Love That Looks Like Christ: A Wedding Sermon on Ephesians 5:21-33

There is something holy happening in this room today. Two people are about to make promises that will shape the rest of their lives, and everyone gathered here is a witness. That is worth pausing over. Marriage is not simply a social ceremony or a legal contract. According to the Scriptures, it is a covenant, and more than that, it is a living picture of something far greater than itself. The apostle Paul, writing to the church at Ephesus, pulls back the curtain on what God intends marriage to be, and what he shows us is breathtaking.

Let us read together from Ephesians 5, beginning at verse 21, in the Christian Standard Bible.

"Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, since we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband."

Notice where Paul begins. He does not begin with the husband. He does not begin with the wife. He begins with both of them together: "Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." That opening verse is the foundation of everything that follows. The entire passage is set inside a community of mutual, Christ-centered humility. Before Paul assigns any particular role, he establishes the posture that both spouses must carry into their marriage every single day, and that posture is one of self-giving, other-honoring love that flows from a genuine awe of Jesus Christ.

That means the Christian marriage is not a competition. It is not a negotiation over who gets more power or more comfort. It is two people who have both bowed the knee to the same Lord, and who now turn toward each other with the same spirit of grace they have received from him.

From that foundation, Paul speaks to each spouse. To wives, he calls for a willing, trusting orientation toward the husband's leadership. To husbands, he calls for something even more demanding. He does not say, "Husbands, be in charge." He says, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her." The standard Paul sets for husbands is the cross. Christ did not lead the church by demanding service. He led by pouring himself out, by washing feet, by going to Calvary. A husband who takes this passage seriously is not being handed a throne. He is being handed a towel.

The word Paul uses for love here is the Greek word agape, the kind of love that is not driven by what it receives but by what it freely gives. It is patient love. It is costly love. It is love that keeps showing up on ordinary Tuesday mornings when the romance has quieted down and the responsibilities have piled up. That is the love Paul is describing, and it is only possible for people who have first been loved that way by Christ himself.

Paul then reaches all the way back to Genesis, quoting the very first wedding in human history: "A man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." From the beginning, God designed marriage to be a covenant of leaving, cleaving, and becoming. You are leaving your previous chapter. You are cleaving to one another with a commitment that does not bend under pressure. And you are becoming something new, a union that neither of you is alone.

Then Paul says something remarkable. He calls this a profound mystery, and he reveals what it points to. Your marriage, this covenant you are making today, is designed by God to be a visible picture of the relationship between Jesus Christ and his church. Every time you choose to love when it is hard, every time you choose to honor when it is costly, every time you forgive and return and stay, you are telling the world a story about a Savior who never abandons his people.

To you, the two of you standing here today, hear this clearly. You are not simply building a life together. You are building a testimony. The love you show each other will either reflect or obscure the love of Christ to everyone watching, including your children, your neighbors, and every guest in this room today.

This is not a burden. It is a glory. And you do not have to carry it alone. The same Christ who is the model for your love is also the source of it. When you run dry, and every married couple does at some point, you can return to him. His grace is sufficient. His mercies are new every morning.

So here is your charge as you begin: love each other the way Christ has loved you. Give the way he gave. Forgive the way he forgives. Stay the way he stays. And let your marriage, from this day forward, be a living sermon about a love that never fails.

May God bless this covenant. May Christ be glorified in your home. And may the two of you grow in grace together all the days of your lives.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. Ephesians 5:21-33 and Genesis 2:24.

Clinton E. Arnold. Ephesians. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Zondervan, 2010.

F. F. Bruce. The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1984.

Peter T. O'Brien. The Letter to the Ephesians. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 1999.

Andrew T. Lincoln. Ephesians. Word Biblical Commentary. Word Books, 1990.