We have spoken so much about sex and that is all well and good for true sex is of God. The original couple, created for each other, with their union together in the light of his presence and blessing, proved a wonderful model for your own union, oh couple (Part 1: Back to the Garden).

Then, beyond the practical exhortations in Proverbs, Solomon has taken you on an extended tour of that garden where the delights, and occasional pitfalls of that sexual relationship were played out amidst the hillsides and vineyards of his own Eden-like garden paradise. Hopefully you followed suit in your own romantic break, oh couple (minus the pitfalls)! (Part 2: My Beloved is Mine)

New Testament Focus: Love In the Light of Christ not of Adam
However it is time reach higher. For in the New Testament the union of husband and wife is not so much in the light of the first Adam as of the second, and there is a clear difference between the two…

 

“45 … “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:45-49)

The first Adam was a man of earth. Eden itself, for all its paradisiacal qualities, was still an earthly paradise. Our union however is in the light of a higher man from a higher place... - the man of heaven. Oh couple, the New Testament, therefore, does not suggest our union is in the light of Adam and Eve, as much as it suggests our union is in the light of that of Christ and his own beatified bride – the Church.
The pre-fall Adam was pretty special, but still a man of dust. Christ is far more than that! Eden was great but heaven is so much higher! Heaven not Eden, Christ not Adam, becomes our higher focus here, oh couple! It’s not “Back to the Garden” anymore, it is “Forward to Heaven! “Hallelujah!
So, as Christ, rather than sex, becomes the primary focus oh couple, take this with eagerness not disappointment. Trust me, oh couple, sex itself will be only the better for that. As mentioned in the introduction…

…..”Sex fueled by the very love of Christ; sex as a picture of the union between Christ and his church,”… "this is a sex of an height and a depth of joy that no sex focused manual can ever hope to approach."

Beginning with a Deep Exploration of Christ’s Love.
Thus, especially for the first few meditations we go quite deeply into an exploration of the Love of Christ for if we do not understand it or receive it ourselves, how can we hope to apply it into marriage or anywhere else?
This might be hard going for some but hang in there. No few readers may end up scratching their heads a little for the next few chapters. “I thought this was a book about marriage and sex but this is a commentary on Ephesians!”… but hold your judgment! We will get back to many aspects of the practical outworking of that love in marriage and in sex in the latter half of the section. For the first half our focus will be unapologetically a laser like focus upon Christ and his own love, as revealed in the book of Ephesians.
For it is Ephesians 5 that holds out that “as Christ” love as a model for marriage – but we cannot simply jump strait there as it is in Ephesians 1-4 that we find how that love is to be received and to be understood.
“As Christ Loved,” therefore, is not given as a standard to live up to as much as the nature, the fuel and the source of the love to which he is called as a husband. Ephesians chapters 1-4 speak of how Christ’s love may be known and received. From Ephesians 1-4 the husband becomes first, utterly convinced that Christ loves HIM! In such chapters he sees how he may receive that love; comes to understand that love; be filled with that love.
Only then does Ephesians chapter 5 call him to love with the love he himself has thus received from Christ. He is enabled to love because he has first received Christ’s love for and in himself. He freely forgives with the forgiveness he has freely received. His husbandly sacrifices exist in the shadow of Christ’s great sacrifice for him– the sacrifice in which he knows Christ took away his very sins.
  But such a love has to be received –before it is given. You have to be filled up with that love before you can pour it out! You need to drink deep of Christ before the springs of life-giving water that is Christ’s own love can possibly flow out from you. The focus of the husband’s love is, thus, that the husband himself is filled with the love of Christ! A love not of his own– not brought about by his own efforts, but a love focused upon Christ and what fruit Christ’s own efforts has manifested in his life. It is a fruit of the Spirit - a fruit of love outworked into his heart, mind, life and character as he keeps in step with the continued work of the indwelling Spirit of God.
Oh husband, no tree manufactures its own water, no car produces its own fuel, so the call to love “As Christ love” is a call to a love of a higher octane than any human-husbandly efforts could ever dream of producing. It is a love which is not contingent upon the ability to manufacture love, but, as for a tree planted near a stream verses a tree planted far into the desert, its life and its fruit relates solely to the distance it is planted from the very life giving spring of love - which is Christ.   

 

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