Page 151 - Ephesians

the joy of the Lord. It’s a spiritual thing. You might say that it’s
the same thing. Well, it’s not the same thing at all. There’s a
change in direction here, a change in emphasis. It’s the
difference between God and man. It’s the difference between
grace and works. It’s the difference between heaven and earth.
You see, if you make the illustration the point, you’re a legalist.
That’s what legalism does! Legalism, is like trying to make love to
a picture of your spouse. The facts are given, by the Spirit, to
illustrate the principle. The picture itself, is not God’s heart. We
need to have the eye that God gives, to see the spiritual principle.
There’s a spiritual truth here, underneath the illustration of
marriage, and that’s what God intends. No illustration can
perfectly picture what God is trying to communicate.

You see, we come to marriage as an illustration and we run into a
problem. When you look at most marriages, you don’t see union
with Christ. Most marriages today are tragic failures. You see an
illustration that has been smashed to smithereens. In order to see
what God is trying to illustrate, you’ve got to understand He’s
using marriage, not as it is, but as it ought to be. Marriage as He
intended it, is the illustration. I can’t look at marriage in my life
and say, “Now, there’s a picture of union.” I hope, by God’s
grace, I’m moving toward that.

So, by saying that the point of this passage is not marriage,
doesn’t weaken the practical application. On the level of earth,
there’s going to be a great deal we can apply to marriage. God by
His grace begins to restore the illustration to what it ought to be.
So, you see where we are headed. We’ll deal with marriage in
order to see the real point which is union with Jesus Christ.

Let’s begin our discussion on this. I trust as we look at the ideal
marriage, that we’ll find many practical relationship principles. I’ll
give a simple outline of how I’d like to develop this and then we’ll
go deeper. The blessed responsibility we’re looking at is union
with Jesus Christ. If we are entering into our wealth from the first
three chapters, we will be walking in the light of the Lord. We will
be walking in the joy of the Lord and we will be walking in union