It is in this context that we must return to Matthew Chapter 19, because the lord Jesus - Yeshua wants to tell us: when we are giving our best, what does he really expect us to give? Many times, we want to give our best, but we don’t know what the best is; we don’t know what we are supposed to give. Hence, we live in ignorance.
The lord Jesus - Yeshua doesn’t want us to be ignorant. He wants us to know exactly what your relationship ought to be with the person sitting next to you, what that relationship is meant to be to one another.
He tells us that in God’s-Yehovah’s plan, this relationship is meant to be spiritually as close as a husband is to his wife.
We are to become a group of people in whom God’s grace is so effective in our lives that we are truly committed to one another, open to one another, genuine and transparent in relation to one another.
If this experience is not happening in your congregation, then your congregation becomes simply a social gathering, a formal “congregation” of people who come in and out, having a vague relationship with one another as fellow Christians, and that is it!
That is not the way the lord Jesus - Yeshua meant us to be.
Will anyone coming into the church looking at the way we conduct ourselves in relation to one another really say, “Ah! These are disciples of Jesus! Now I have seen the love of God before my eyes!” If they don’t see this? Why? It is because we have not come to the commitment to one another that the lord Jesus - Yeshua is speaking about.
Divorce is forbidden because it is the annulment of commitment
Why is divorce forbidden? It’s because it is the annulment of a commitment, and commitment is something deeply spiritual – you give your whole person to the other. And it is precisely here that we dare not give ourselves to the other person for fear that in giving myself, I expose myself to the other person. I might be abused, mishandled, taken advantage of. I dare not give myself, and so we dare not trust each other. We don’t have faith in each other; hence we cannot have love for one another.
We must strive towards this goal that the lord Jesus - Yeshua sets before us: the vision of the called-out Assembly as it was meant to be. Most called-out Assemblies have a long way to go, but that is no reason why we cannot strive to become more like the Messiah Jesus – Yeshua.
Let us turn to Ephesians 5:21-27:
…submitting to one another out of reverence for the Messiah. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as the Messiah is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the called-out Assemblies submit to the Messiah, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as the Messiah loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her [set her apart], having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word [the message about the Kingdom of God], so that he might present the called-out Assembly to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Notice that as Paul is talking about the spiritual nature of this commitment in marriage, “as to the lord”, he is coming in and out of the subject all the time, one moment talking about marriage, the next moment talking about the relationships within the called-out Assembly, moving from one to the other and back to the one. For him, he has seen that marriage is meant to portray the spiritual reality of what the relationship of the Messiah to the called-out Assembly should be, and what the members of the called-out Assembly should have in relationship to one another. This is easy to follow because we have just seen that we are to deal with one another in the way that God deals with us, His called-out Assembly in the Messiah. We understand that the one follows the other automatically when you understand these principles.
Let us go on to verses 28-33:
In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Messiah does the called-out Assembly, because we are members of his body. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to the Messiah and the called-out Assembly. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Paul is talking about wives and husbands, which is a very deep mystery. Let me draw three points immediately from here which show you just how our relationship to one another in the called-out Assembly is meant to be modeled on the relationship of husband and wife.
1. Love your neighbor: fellow Christians in your called-out Assembly
First, you are very familiar with the saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18 quoted in Matthew 19:19, 22:39, etc.). I am sure if you have ever thought deeply on Scripture at all, you would have often scratched your head and thought to yourself, “How can I love my neighbor as myself?” How is that possible? We are willing to give our best, but how can we love a neighbor as ourselves? He is a neighbor; he is not me. I can love him to some extent, but I cannot love him “as myself” because he is not me. It’s as simple as that.
For the Jew, a neighbor is a fellow Jew, or a believer of the same God - Yehovah
The first thing to understand is that the word “neighbor” in Scripture does not just mean any X, Y, or Z.
The word translated as “neighbor” in English translates the Hebrew word “rea”, which means a friend, a companion.
It does not mean a person who lives next door. necessarily, because the word “neighbor” in the Old Testament referred specifically to someone who was your friend; that is, he/she stood in some kind of relationship to you even if that relationship was quite distant, in the sense that you were members of the same community.
For a Jew, “neighbor” did not mean any foreigner, or anyone who happened to sit beside you on a bus or a subway, etc. A neighbor had to be at least a fellow Israelite, or someone who may not be an Israelite but a proselyte, that is, he had the same religion as a Jew, even though he was not a Jew.
Now this is
important to understand. Even in the lord Jesus’ teaching, we find that the
word “neighbor” does not mean just anyone.
For example, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Jew asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Quite rightly, the Samaritan was his neighbor. The Samaritans are very rightly the neighbors of the Jews, not only literally, by being next door to the Jews, but also because they believed in the same God and they read the same Bible. In fact, they shared basically the same faith. The Samaritans were very adamant in their devotion, particularly to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. For them, the words of Moses were absolutely authoritative, far more so than Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or anyone else. Moses was the lawgiver for the Samaritans, so the Jews and Samaritans shared the same lawgiver, and they had faith in the same God. They were indeed neighbors even though the Jews hated them.
After all, there is no hate as deep as a religious hatred, as you have long discovered. The hatred between Protestants and Catholics, between even Protestants of one denomination and another, is absolutely revolting! And such was the hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans, and vice versa.
“Neighbor”: a fellow-Christian in the same called-out Assembly
When you look in the New Testament, you will find that the word “neighbor” means, particularly and specifically, a fellow-Christian, a member of the same local called-out Assembly, for example, not just a question of different denominations. We can see this especially in Ephesians 4:25, which says:
“Speak the truth with his neighbor, seeing that we are members of one another.”
“Neighbor” is paralleled with “members of one another,” who are members of the called-out Assembly, members of the same body.
This is very important because of these words: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
In Ephesians 5:28 and 33, do you see that it says twice to the husband that he should love his wife as himself? I hope you will notice that very carefully. It is most important to take, for example, the last verse, Ephesians 5:33 – let each one of you love his wife as himself. Why can you love your wife as yourself? He just explained in the previous verse that it’s because you two have become one body, one flesh (v. 31). That is why you can love your neighbor as yourself. If you don’t see your neighbor as being one body with yourself, of course, you wouldn’t love him as yourself. That is the whole point. You cannot give a command like “Love your neighbor as yourself” and leave it hanging in the air without context. I cannot love my neighbor as myself if I don’t see his/her relationship to me. I can love my wife as myself because she is united in commitment to me, and I am united in commitment to her. We have been united in such a way that we have become one flesh, one body. So, in loving her, of course I am loving myself because we are one body together. But how can I love my neighbor as myself if I don’t see that he/she is one body with me?
You notice
twice in this passage that the relationship we are meant to have with our
neighbor parallels the relationship meant to exist between husband and wife.
Can you see the parallel? It’s so deeply rooted in Scripture that it hit me
with astonishing force that I had never considered my neighbor or
fellow Christian as spiritually united to me in the same profound manner as my
wife is physically united to me!
Look around
at the people in the called-out Assembly. Is the person sitting next to me united
to me as my wife is united to me? The thought is almost mind-boggling! So I
have to love him/her as myself in the same way as I love my wife as myself. I
love him/her spiritually, because “as myself” is the spiritual model. Note that
it is not a physical connection. Can you look at each one around in the
called-out Assembly and say, “I love that person because I am united to that
person”? If you don’t feel united to that person, it is because you have not committed
yourself to that person, and that person has not committed himself or herself
to you. So, because of a lack of commitment to one another, we don’t have the
sense of unity; we don’t have the love that enables us to be committed to one
another. This takes place when we realize that we are one body. So, the
first point is “as yourself.” We see this as true in the marriage
relationship, and as true in the called-out Assembly.
2. Love
fellow Christians as husband and wife love each other
The second
point is that this is possible only when we observe and accept one another as
members of the same body – one body. Again, as you looked at Ephesians 5:31, “as
one body” is exactly the whole basis of the marriage relationship. The two
are no longer two persons but become one physical unit, one body, one flesh.
And yet, in this same passage, in verses 30-31, Paul equates the unity of the called-out
Assembly as one body (the Messiah’s body), to the unity found in marriage as
“one flesh.”
In the Old
Testament, the word "basar," which is translated as “flesh," literally means body. The first definition of basar in Brown, Driver &
Briggs is body. It can be translated either way you like, as flesh or body. So,
husband and wife become one body. The Catholic translation of the New
Jerusalem Bible rightly translates Ephesians 5:31: husband and wife become
one body. So just as husband and wife are one body, we, in the called-out
Assembly, are also one body. The whole terminology of Paul, time and again,
concerning the called-out Assembly is that we are one body (cf. Romans 12:5; 1
Corinthians 12:13).
However, do
you feel that we are one body? Probably not. Our Christianity is far too
shallow for that. Our commitment to one another is simply a courtesy
commitment. There is no depth in it. We don’t realize that, being
bought by the blood of the Messiah, we have been baptized by God’s Holy Spirit
into one body, so that we are so united and related to one another as indeed a
husband and wife would be members of one body. That is striking, isn’t
it
3. Be
subject to one another, and lay down your life for one another
Let us move
on to the third and final aspect of this comparison of the internal
relationships of the called-out Assembly to a marriage relationship. The wife
is to be subject to the husband, and the husband is to love the wife.
Remarkably, this is exactly the kind of relationship which defines the
relationship between the members of the called-out Assembly. Notice Ephesians
5:21, “be subject to one another out of reverence for the Messiah,” belongs to
the previous passage, which is on the internal relationship of Christians, to
be subject to one another. This statement is repeated throughout Paul’s
epistles, so I hardly need to give you a lot of references on that.
Paul
repeatedly tells Christians to regard the other more important than yourself
(cf. Philippians 2:3 [NAS]), which means “be subject to” the other one. And “be
subject to” in Ephesians 5:21 is the same word in Greek as is used in verse 24
concerning the relation of wife to husband.
In what way
should the husband love his wife? He should love her to the extent of being
willing to lay down his life for her, “as the Messiah loved the called-ut
Assembly and gave himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25). That is the same command
given to Christians in relation to one another in 1 John 3:16, where it says we
are to love one another even to the extent of laying down our lives for one
another. In other words, what a husband would do for his wife is precisely what
a Christian should do for a fellow-Christian. It is the same command. Isn’t
that remarkable?
Now we can see from the whole Scriptural evidence that in whatever way you look at it, the marriage relationship portrays the spiritual relationship between the members of the called-out Assembly. This is how we are meant to relate to one another.
Giving your
best to God means giving ourselves to one another!
What are we
supposed to do to give our best to God? Well, “giving the best” turns out to be
giving ourselves to one another, and that turns out to be not so easy to do
because you might look at that fellow in the called-out Assembly and say, “Give
myself to that guy? Oh no! I might accept one or two people, and I can give
myself to them, but not to the others.” Now if the Messiah loved us in that
way, where would our salvation be? If the Messiah looked at us and said, “I see
some good fellows here; I will die for them, but the others are not worth dying
for. Put them on the side.” If we treat each other this way, God will deal with
us at the Judgment in the way we deal with others. What will happen to us at
the Judgment? God will reject us on the same grounds we rejected others,
wouldn’t he? We would be wiped out at the Judgment!
So, I hope that you and I can catch the picture of what the called-out Assembly is meant to be. It’s a very exciting picture! I think you know that we are a long way from where we need to be, but we now have a goal before us we can commit to doing. We know what we must aim for. And when we say that we are going to give our best by God’s grace, what we have to strive for by His grace in this generation, the called-out Assembly will become again what it was meant to be. We must start with the called-out Assembly.
God
designed marriage to teach us the first step to a community
God meant
the marriage relationship to be a kind of beginning in which two people begin
to learn to give oneself to the other. For example, if you cannot give yourself
to one person, how can you give yourself to the whole called-out Assembly? You
start with one person. So, marriage was designed to teach us the first step to
a community. That is the beauty of God’s plan. When you look at Genesis, that
was exactly God’s plan.” What is the reason for marriage? Genesis 2:18 says,
“It is not good for man to be alone.” It is not good for you to be alone spiritually.
So, you have to start by entering into a relationship with someone else. You
cannot do this with everyone at the same time, so you start with one person.
And this is the model for us to begin in the called-out Assembly. Build a
relationship with one brother or sister and then build one with another brother
or sister. And then another, and another, and so the community grows.
“It is not
good for man to be alone,” but if two people are in a marriage, they can still
be alone in a sense. God goes on to show this in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful
and multiply.” Marriage was meant to be the beginning of a new community.
“Be fruitful and multiply.” Don’t just stay as the two of you, but increase
until there is a whole community of you. This is the very intention of
marriage. In the same way, we are to begin by building within the called-out
Assembly these kinds of commitments, beginning with one and then two.
