John Angell James
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).
The doctrine of the cross is the substance of Christian truth, and the great support of Christian morals; and the apostle’s mind and heart were full of it. Does he enforce humility ? It is thus: “Let the mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.” An unreserved devotedness to God? It is thus: “Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God with your body and with your spirit, which are his.” Brotherly love? It is thus: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” A forgiving temper? It is thus: “Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Benevolence to the poor? It is thus: “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we, through his poverty, might be made rich.”
And who but an apostle would have thought of enforcing conjugal affection by a reference to the love of Christ to his church? And he has done this; and has thus represented redeeming love as a kind of holy atmosphere, surrounding the Christian on all sides, accompanying him everywhere, sustaining his spiritual existence, the very element in which his religion lives, moves, and has its being. And this, indeed, is religion; not a name, not a creed, not a form, not an abstract feeling, not an observance of times and places, not a mere mental costume, or holy dress which we put on exclusively for certain seasons and occasions; no; but a moral habit, a mental taste, the spirit of the mind, which will spontaneously appear in our language, feeling, and behaviour, by a reference to Jesus Christ, as the ground of hope, and the model for imitation.