LESSON 3
Ephesians 5:25-32
“That He might present the church to himself in splendor.”
Why was I created in the first place?
*Maybe you have asked yourself, if God loves us so much, why does he allow bad things to happen to good people? What God originally planned for man was perfect, but man broke it when man chose to disobey God’s law. The gospel is a love story of how Jesus gave his life to rescue us, from our own bad decisions.
God created man in his own image, this is how God knew that it wasn’t good for man to be alone. Just as God had a profound desire to have a relationship with man, He understood that we would have a profound desire to have a relationship with a help meet. You and I were created to connect, it is hard wired into us. There is nothing more fulfilling in life than a paternal and marital love, and this is the love that God wanted to share with mankind. This is the “Profound Mystery” Paul is talking about here in Ephesians. God wanted to be our heavenly Father, and Jesus wanted to present himself a bride. Think about that… Jesus left His father to pursue his bride, Jesus sacrificed His safety and well-being for His bride, and Jesus desires to have a deep passionate relationship with His bride… You.
Ephesians 5:1
“As dear children…”
Ephesians 5:2
“As Christ loved us…”
In God’s perfect design for mankind, we would have had eternal fellowship and love from God in both a paternal and marital way, but mankind sinned. Genesis 3 tells the story of how “the curse of sin” entered the world and messed up God’s perfect world. Why would God allow mankind to mess up His perfect world? If you took someone home against their will and forced them to stay there, gave them no freedom and never let them choose anything for themselves, you could not rightly call it marriage or adoption. God’s love could not be forced, it had to be humbly offered.
Romans 8:15
“By whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’…”
Mark 10:45
“Gave His life a ransom for many…”
The gospel then, is the good news that God has made a way to bring us back to a perfect relationship with Him, as He intended in the first place. When we place our faith in Him, and what He has done for us, God begins the process of restoration in our lives. Notice what God says He has done for us in Ephesians 1:3-14
- We are blessed
- We are holy and blameless
- We are adopted into the family of God
- We are redeemed by His blood
- We are sealed for eternity
Becoming a disciple of Christ is really the lifelong pursuit of becoming closer to the One we were created to be with. How beautiful is that!
Consider What Paul said in Philippians 3:7-11
“That I may know Him…”
1 John 4:19
“…because He first loved us.”
Does your relationship with Jesus look like Paul’s? Are you as passionate in your pursuit of Him as He was in His pursuit of you? Jesus found joy in going to the cross according to Hebrews 12:2, because He knew it would result in a relationship with you. Real joy in our lives can only be found in a relationship with Him.
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