Life Together - Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church is an LCMS church preaching Christ crucified for sinners. Located a half mile north of Disneyland at 1421 W. Ball Road in Anaheim, CA.
LCMS Lutheran Church, Prince of Peace Lutheran, Anaheim, Orange County
1998
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Life Together

“Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” (Ephesians 5:33)

“Wives, submit to your husbands…Husbands, love your wives.” Here we have the apostle Paul’s Holy Spirit inspired instruction for a God honoring Christ-centered marriage: submission and respect on the part of the wife and selfless sacrificial love on the part of the husband. This certainly isn’t the kind of picture drawn up in our current day and age of how relationships ought to work. Submissive wives and selfless husbands, the idea seems outdated and offensive. 

Yet isn’t this how Christ has loved us? Think about how Jesus demonstrated his love for us in his actions. He humbled himself by becoming a man – God taking on human flesh. He submitted himself to his Father’s will even to the point of dying on a cross. He loved selflessly and sacrificially by laying down his life for us, dying our death, taking our punishment upon himself, giving up all his rights so that we would have the right to become part of God’s family. 

It is out of this love of Jesus for us that we now are free to love one another; after all, this is the kind of love that the Holy Spirit is working in and through us. What does this kind of love look like? It submits to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21), not just wives to husbands but all of us to one another. As Christ loved us selflessly giving himself up for us (Ephesians 5:2), so too we live together in this kind of selfless love, not just husbands toward wives but this love marking all our relationships with each other. 

This kind of love is counterintuitive and most definitely countercultural, but isn’t that the nature of the Gospel? It offends our inclination to want to keep score and get what we deserve. Grace throws all of that out the window and frees us from focusing on ourselves and instead to look to others in love. This is how God has loved you. This is the kind of love God is working in us for others. This is the kind of love a God-given marriage is built upon and how husbands and wives love one another as Christ continues to love them.

May our Lord grant us the grace and working of His Spirit to love one another as Christ has loved us.

In this union I have joined you husband and wife. Now, my children, live together as heirs of life: Each the other’s gladness sharing, each the other’s burdens bearing. Now, my children, live together as heirs of lfie. (LSB:922.5)

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

-Pastor Darrin Sheek

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