Ephesians 5:25 – 27 discusses the role of the husband in marriage, and compares it to how Christ loved the church.
Paul then uses the famous phrase, “without spot or wrinkle” to describe how the Church will be presented to him as a pure bride.
To my theologically sound readers: I know that Christ’s death was the ultimate sanctifying act, and baptism signifies our new-found purity.
But if the church is wearing these garments, you could say any set of clothes continually needs washing and ironing to keep them free from spots or wrinkles.
The common way to get rid of wrinkles is to use your iron.
A superheated piece of metal, filled with water, that then produces steam and pressure that will eliminate wrinkles in my clothes.
And every so often, the very thing I use to get the wrinkles out spits out dirty water spots on my clothes.
Annoying, hard to remove spots.
Not because the water was originally dirty, but because the water was infiltrated with contaminants inside the iron.
Here’s my analogy.
The iron is society.
The water is the Truth.
And the heat of the iron is the battle between spiritual and cultural forces.
God is perfectly capable of giving us the pure water of truth, and using society’s heat to continuously get the wrinkles out of us.
The problem is when we let the water get dirty.
When it sits in a receptacle of inaction on principles of our faith, indifference to those who are hurting, and disaffection with truth, the water gets dirty.
And the Church has ended up with some serious spots and wrinkles.
So we shouldn’t be surprised that the society at large will eagerly point it out when we go out in public with spotted, wrinkled garments.
Even though the society helped put them there.
I believe our current crisis is a call to get the dirty water out, so we can continue the journey to becoming a spotless, wrinkle-free body of believers.
Because that’s what Christ will be expecting.
Let me be clear:
I’m not calling for the iron to be set at a lower temperture.
It’s supposed to be hot.
What I am suggesting is that we put more clean water in.
mplrs.com says
Exactly!
whoiscall says
Cheers!