I. The love of Christ. None of us, it is truly said, is a stranger to this master emotion of the human soul. Flowing through the earth like streams amid desert sands, shining in life's darkest nights like stars in a wintry sky, throwing its bright bow over every cloud of fortune, this world owes to love more than to anything else what blessedness it enjoys. Life without it would not be worth the having; and without it, though we had a house, and that house a palace, we could not have a home. In human love we see much to admire, but in that of God there is a something that eludes our grasp when we endeavour to fathom it, and which baffles our conception as we try to find it out. God only knows the love of God.
II. The practicalness of Christ's love. He not only loved the Church, but He gave Himself for her. It is an easy thing to make great profession of affection; it is quite another thing to carry out and prove our profession. Christ was not only a Preacher, but a Sacrifice.
III. The sublime design of His love: "That He might sanctify and cleanse His Church with the washing of water by the word, and that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church." Christ loved the world before ever there was a Church in it, and determined, out of the very ruins of the Fall, to build up for Himself a temple worthy of being inhabited by Himself. He saw the resplendent future to which she was heir by His grace, and so He loved the Church. (1) The Divine Spirit is the efficient cause of this cleansing, but the word or the Gospel is the instrumental cause; the Spirit accomplishes His work of cleansing by means of the truth. (2) That He might present her to Himself a glorious Church glorious in her position, immunities, and honour, not having a spot, for the redeemed shall be without fault before the throne. No wrinkle of decay shall mar her countenance, or blemish of sin.
J. W. Atkinson, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 976.
References: Ephesians 5:25-27. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xi., No. 628; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 80; W. Landels, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 376; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 13; Sermons on the Catechism,pp. 184, 197; J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 101.Ephesians 5:27. Parker, Cavendish Pulpit,p. 95.Ephesians 5:30. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1153; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 101.Ephesians 5:31. W. Braden, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 353.