Song of the Bride

Markus Barth describes Ephesians 5:22-33 as a lover’s song, but distinguishes the love expressed there, the love of Jesus for His bride, from all other loves: “The vision of love described by Paul is sui generis . Though Christ’s love includes features found in many a strong, wise and devoted man’s love, there is something unique in his love: this lover has the will, the power, and the success to make his bride perfect. He loves his beloved only for her own sake. He seeks no other or higher reward than her alone. His love, incorporated in his bride, is an end in itself. The Messsiah has set out and will not rest until she appears before himself glorious and free of any defect.”

Thus, “The way in which the Messiah looks upon the church is not that of a girl-watcher, a Victorian chaperon, or a doctor, a judge, an artist after he has completed a piece of work. His ‘vision’ consists of ‘seeing to it’ that all becomes ‘very good.’ He does not ‘look on a woman with a lustful eye’ . . . , but it the eminent example of what it means to be led by a ‘sound [lit. single] eye.’” The passage “gives a testimony to the high esteem in which the church is held by God and Christ, and to the manner in which Christ makes this esteem distinct from a romantic illusion. In their own way these verses describe nothing else but what in another Pauline passage is called ‘justification of the ungodly.’”

This is remarkable on several fronts. First, if we can indeed link Ephesians 5 to Romans 4, as Barth does at the end, then “justification of the ungodly” includes not only Jesus viewing the bride as beautiful now but Jesus committing Himself to seeing to it that the bride is in the end “very good.” This comes close to some of Luther’s “medicinal” formulations of the doctrine of justification.

Second, Jesus’ affection for and devotion to His bride is clearly an affection for and devotion to a still-imperfect bride. For Barth, Paul is not speaking of some beautiful “ideal” church, but of the bride-who-is-being-beautified. No theology of perfection can capture the wonder of this – no theology that says the perfect God can only love things like Himself. Jesus loves to make His bride like Himself, but He loves her when she is anything but.