The Forty-First Sermon, which is the Ninth upon the Fifth Chapter
inseparable bond until we come to the kingdom that He has bought so dearly for us.
May it please Him to grant this grace not only to us but also to all people. Amen.
The Forty-First Sermon, which is the Ninth upon the Fifth Chapter.
28. Men ought so to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loves his wife loves himself.
29. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but rather he nourishes and cherishes it, as the Lord also does the Church.
30. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
Seeing that the Holy Scripture exhorts us to be kind-hearted, meek, and patient towards one another, and sets us down the example of God, who is reconciled to us in the person of His Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ, and shows us also that Jesus Christ spared not Himself but demonstrated the love that He bore us, and the care He had for our salvation in that He gave Himself to such a hard and bitter death, it must needs be that our hearts are harder than steel if they are not
softened by it. And yet, notwithstanding, all these exhortations cannot suffice us, due to our willfulness and corruption.
God, therefore, to put us to greater shame, sends us back to the order of nature, as if it were said that although we had never heard any word of God's mouth nor had any teaching by Holy Scripture, yet each of us ought to enter into himself and consider his own state, for that will be enough to hold us convicted without any other witness.
And that the heathen men could tell us full well, who, having neither belief in God nor any religion, could nonetheless say that the wild beasts do not make war one against another. For one wolf does not eat another; the bears and lions that live abroad in the wild woods have a certain instinct that holds them in order, so they do not hurt one another. And yet they have no discretion as is among men, but they have, as it were, a natural instinct that drives them to love one another, so that each of them lives quietly with his fellow.
Now then, must it not needs be that men are altogether out of order and despise God and nature, seeing they live like dogs and cats, as they say, and every man is like a wolf or a fox to his neighbor, so that there is nothing but craftiness and malice or else utter cruelty?
That is why God tells us that we are all of one flesh and of one kind.
And Isaiah uses the same reason to persuade us to help our neighbors and to have pity and compassion on them if they stand in any need: "Thou shalt not despise thine own flesh" (Isaiah 58:7). For the furthest stranger in the world is never the more separated from us for all that, but both he and we spring from one fountain, and we ought to acknowledge him to be our image. Therefore, whoever disdains any man surely forgets himself too much, and he does not know what he is, nor is he worthy of the honorable degree in which God has set him.
And why? Because he perverts all order. Now, if this reason ought to take place in general, much more ought men to be deeply moved when they are reminded of what they are, especially seeing they are linked together in a much closer bond. As if a man should say to a father: How now? If you are so far out of love with your son that you are unwilling to see him and disdain to talk with him, and he can find no means to come to atonement with you, what a cruelty is that? For he is your flesh and your blood. And how then can you be so blinded in your excessive mood as not to consider that God has given him to you as though he had come out of your own person?
And likewise, to a son it will be said: How now? Is it right that you should be born into the world, have room and place among God's children, and in the meantime forget your father who begat you and by whose means God sent you into the world?
Now the holiest bond that God has set among us is the bond between man and wife. That is why Saint Paul says that a man cannot love his wife without loving himself; and, conversely, if he despises his wife or hates her, it is the same as if he falls at odds with himself. And is that possible?
Previously, he had exhorted husbands to do their duties by looking to the example of our Lord Jesus Christ. He had stated that the Son of God had given Himself to death to wash His Church; so that, although it was poor and miserable and full of filth and uncleanness,
He suffered that which was necessary for our salvation. He left us, moreover, a record of the grace He purchased for us. In baptism, we have a visible token that the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is our washing and cleansing. Can we think upon all these things and not be moved to some gentleness?
Yes, if we consider first of all that we are but wretched worms of the earth and (to be short) that there is nothing in us but utter misery, so that we may well be called vermin, carrion full of all corruption and loathsomeness, and afterward compare ourselves with the Son of God. Should there then be any such pride in us as to esteem and commend ourselves and to tread others under our feet? Now, if this applies generally to all men (as I said), what shall it be between man and wife? For the knot that God has knit between them is such that the husband is, as you would say, but half himself, and may no more separate himself from his wife than the wife may separate herself from her husband. Each of them must regard their own state, as shall be declared in the end, and has been partly declared already.
The husband is indeed the head, but the woman is the body. And whereas the head has preeminence and sovereignty over the body, it does not, therefore, follow that he should hold scorn of it or be glad to have it shamed or reproached. For does not the honor of the head extend to the whole body? But now, forasmuch as husbands are not sufficiently moved by the reason that is taken from our Lord Jesus
Christ, Saint Paul brings them back to their origin.
And since the heathen folk and unbelievers were acquainted with marriage and had given judgment on it, therefore we need no Holy
Scripture (says he) to teach us in this matter, for the ignorant souls who had only natural understanding and walked as their native wit directed them knew that the wife is a part of the husband and that there exists an inseparable bond between them, so that one ought not to forsake the other unless they will tear themselves to pieces.
Seeing that the blind wretches perceived this, what a shame it is for those who are enlightened by God's Word and have been taught familiarly as household folk, just as a father has his eye upon his children, to be ignorant of it.
Seeing (I say) that God speaks so familiarly to us, as it were, mouth to mouth, showing us His will and telling us our duty, must it not need to be that we are worse than the infidels and much more grievously condemned than they if we continue hard-hearted or stop our ears lest we might receive the advice that He gives us?
Therefore, let us mark well that, seeing Saint Paul has set forth our Lord Jesus Christ as an example and told us that He is so given to us, it is right (considering how we are linked unto Him) that we should show ourselves willing to follow Him and fashion ourselves like unto
Him. This means pitying those who are in distress, bearing patiently with the vices and infirmities of our neighbors, and relieving those who are in need, if we can conveniently and have the means to do so.
Let us think well upon that.
Again, forasmuch as mention is made here of man and wife, let those who are married consider what damnation is prepared for them if they are not moved and touched to the quick by the things that are told them here. Namely, that on the one side, the heathen folk shall rise up to give witness against them on the last day, and that (on the other side) the order of nature teaches them what they ought to do. If they do not live in concord and friendship, as is shown to them here, they do (as it were) willfully withstand God, utterly forgetting themselves and becoming worse than brute beasts.
Furthermore, let them know also that, forasmuch as marriage is a figure of the holy union between the Son of God and all the faithful, the same ought to hold them in greater reverence. Although many contentions may arise, they ought to subdue them, let them lie as dead, and consider that since our Lord Jesus sits over them, it is to show that wedlock was blessed in such a way by God the Father at the first, that He Himself also ratified the same blessing by His death
and passion. Indeed, He reconciled us to God so that the husband may perceive, as in a living picture, that he is one with his wife, but in such a way under the obedience of God, that both of them ought to serve Him with one accord until they come to Him, cleaving to Him thoroughly in all perfection.
Now, although such warnings ought to be of great force among us, very few are touched by them accordingly. And the world sees it. For let a man look into all households one after another, and where shall he find such friendship as may resemble Jesus Christ and His
Church? Nowhere. But the man and his wife are rather ever jarring and disagreeing.
And if there happens to be some foolish affection, yet there is no fear of God, and the least occasion in the world will be enough to set them at odds, so that they forget all that is contained here. Or, to say the truth, they never once think of it. The love that is between them is led and provoked by their lusts, not grounded upon any knowledge they have of discharging their duty. The husband does not consider how he ought to bear with his wife, how he ought to guide her in the fear of God, and how he ought to love her as a helper allotted to him for his ease so that he might walk as he ought to do. Nor does the wife humble herself to her husband or bend her wits to please him because she perceives that she is expressly given to him to be a furtherance, not a hindrance, to him.
There is no talk or inkling of all this. If all is well considered, the common and most ordinary state is that, in every house, a man will find devilishness, cursing, banning, blasphemy, swearing, spitefulness, and harming. And although some woman is a fiend towards her neighbors as well as toward her husband, yet if her husband had any wealth or goods by her, he must take her part
without discretion and maintain her quarrel, whether good or bad.
One may see that this perverseness reigns nearly everywhere.
Again, every man complains of his wife, saying, "I cannot live with her. She is a mad beast. There is nothing in her but pride and peevishness; there is nothing in her but forward stubbornness. I cannot speak a word to her, but she pays me back with four for it."
Now surely, such as men make their wives, such they have of them.
For were there no more but this that I spoke of—namely, that men, as it were in spite of God, maintain their wives' wrongful quarrels— ought not God to yield them their deserved hire and make it rebound back upon their own heads? Whatever I say, if a man marks well every man's ordinary trade of life, he will find that there may be a sort of foolish love and a lot of excessive affections, but as for wellordered friendship, such as depends upon God and is grounded on His Word, hardly shall he among a hundred houses find one where the husband and wife are so well qualified.
Yet notwithstanding, we are inexcusable if we do not profit from this doctrine. So then, every one of us must fight against his unruly affections. If a man does not have such a wife as he could wish, let him understand that God intends to try his patience by that means.
Let him consider well that he behaves worse toward our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Husband to whom all of us are married. Therefore, let him not be rigorous toward his wife, seeing that he himself deserves to be so humbled.
To be short, let every man so mind this doctrine, that when the husband does not have all things in his wife that he desires, he may think thus with himself: "Yet am I bound unto her, and I am not only bound unto my wife but also unto God, who is the master of marriage, and to our Lord Jesus Christ, who is a mirror and lively
image of it unto us. Therefore, I am bound to do my duty toward her and both to love her and to bear with her, even though there be vices in her."
Yet it is not meant that the husband should foster and feed his wife's vices. For as we must warn and counsel one another, there must not be any such closeness or linking together that if the husband sees anything amiss in his wife, he must at least tell her of it, rebuke her, and labor and endeavor to bring her into the right way as much as he can possibly.
But yet, howsoever the world goes, as long as we are married, this stands continually: we cannot change the order that our Lord has set, even to be inviolable. Therefore, we must not pass over what the persons are, insomuch that although a woman has too rough and sharp a husband, and such a one as deals overly harshly with her, yet she must always consider that he is her husband, and that when God matched them together, He allotted her that portion because she was worthy of it. Let her also examine her sins, that she may pray to God to take away that rod and deal more gently with her.
Then, just as the wife must on her side continue the bond of marriage and submit herself without respecting what her husband is, so when the husband does not have a wife to his liking, let him think likewise: "My wife does not do her duty; I cannot live with her." But yet, does wedlock endure still? Who ordained it? God. Then, if I forget my duty, seek revenge on my wife, or become obstinate without regard for what belongs to my charge, it is not against a mortal creature that I shall bend myself. When the husband overshoots himself in that manner, surely he fights against God and endeavors to annul what is inviolable by nature.
So then, let every one of us put this doctrine better into practice on our own behalf, and let not only married folks but also all men in general understand that we cannot estrange ourselves from one another and become unkind, merciless, and impatient toward one another. If we do so, we must be like witless creatures who have no reason or regard for where they come from or the purpose for which we live in this world. This is the essence of what we need to keep in mind.
And if we regarded well the Prophet's reason, *surely we would be more moved by this exhortation that is set here: "No man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it" (Ephesians 5:29). If every one of us took time to consider the care we have for our own person, how tenderly we cherish all parts of our body, even the smallest toe, how carefully we ensure nothing is lacking, and how we are provident in all respects, so that if any member is ill at ease, we endeavor to remedy it and maintain our health—if we each thought through this thoroughly, then it would surely be a good lesson for us to do likewise to our neighbors, that is to say, to all men.
Much more consequently, the fathers to their children, and the children to their fathers, the husbands to their wives, and the wives to their husbands, and so forth mutually, according to how it has pleased our Lord to link us in a nearer bond, as I have said before.
If anyone replies, "Hush, he or she is not myself," I answer: then it must follow that you are no man. For, as I said before, God's creating and maintaining of us are with the condition that we should all be as one body. For though there are many fingers and many sinews in a man's body, that is no reason why they should not all be one thing, nor is it any reason why one member should not succor another as
well as itself. It is unnatural for the body to start dividing itself into factions; it is impossible for it to do so.
Then, if every one of us is so wedded to his own profit that, in the meantime, he disdains others through pride or is cruel, so that if he sees all the miseries in the world, he has no compassion to relieve them, nor can he find it in his heart to bear with anything or forgive it—is it not a sign that we have forgotten our own nature?
Wherefore, to the intent that we may fare the better by this doctrine, let us weigh well these words of Saint Paul: that never has any man hated his own flesh, but that every man nourishes and cherishes it.
Do we need a schoolmaster to teach us this? Does God need to send His angels from heaven, or do we need to take much pain to learn this art or skill? No, we are already too much given to it by nature.
Since this is so, every one of us bears his own evidence recorded against himself, and his own indictment is already framed; there shall need no long examination before God. For the more careful that men have been for their own bodies, the more they have looked out for their maintenance, and, to be brief, the more signs they have shown of loving themselves, the more grievously shall they be condemned before God because they have not done the same toward those who are their own flesh, even if they were the most unknown and from the furthest country in the world, as I said before.
And if this is general for all, what shall become of it when the son sets himself with all outrage and stubbornness against his father, refusing meekness and resisting governance by him, even utterly shaking off the one whom he ought to serve, even to the death? Also, when fathers on their side use nothing but bitterness toward their children, or govern them in such a way as to provoke them to impatience; when husbands deal so roughly with their wives that it
utterly discourages them and casts them into sorrow, leading them to loosen themselves and fall into all manner of lewdness; when women likewise are stiff-necked and cannot be brought to good order; I say, when these disorders are among us, let us assure ourselves that there is no need for any other record to condemn us than the care that each of us has had for himself, in that we have been mindful of our own welfare, and have labored earnestly for it while, in the meantime, breaking the bond that our Lord set among us.
Each of us has drawn alone by himself, forgotten all duty of lovingkindness, and would, if he could, have made a new world for himself.
Truly, there is no man of such ability that he can forgo the help of his neighbors; yet we are loath that our neighbors should dwell with us or even be counted in the number of men. There is no man who would not reign alone like a lord. But this unkindness and lewdness are sufficient to show that we are not worthy to enjoy the benefits that God deals to us in this transitory life. For since we are too much wedded to it and mind it more carefully than we should, we are so guilty that no man can open his mouth to reply or to make any excuse for himself.
And Saint Paul, having told us what we ought to know and to judge of our own nature, returns again to what he had touched upon before. That is to say, those who profess themselves to be members of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ ought to be persuaded by His example to live quietly, friendly, and agreeably with their wives. "No man," says he, "loves himself, but he loves his wife also." Truly, God has ordained wedlock in such a way that the wife must be as the body of her husband. Therefore, if a man loves himself, his wife must be matched with him, or else it will be a monstrous love. It is a thing that men ought most to abhor, that the thing which is most holy in a man's life should be utterly debased.
Seeing it is so, he that loves himself will love his wife. For we are of his flesh, we are of his bones (Ephesians 5:30). Here, Paul touches upon a matter he did not speak of before. When he set down the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, it was by alleging that He spared not Himself but shed His blood to wash us from our filthiness and uncleanness. We were then defiled and stained before God, and our
Lord Jesus Christ found the means to bring us into His favor again.
And how? Even by His own bloodshed.
But here, he presents another reason to confirm the matter further: that we are bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh. In so saying, he helps us understand that when men do their duty, it is to their own benefit. For thereby, they may taste the inestimable and infinite grace of God, in that every man, according to his degree, does in his marriage represent the union between themselves and our Lord
Jesus Christ.
The thing, therefore, which Saint Paul intends is, yet again, to remove the hardness of our hearts by showing us that we cannot enjoy the grace that is purchased for us by our Lord Jesus Christ unless we live in friendship together, according to the image thereof, which we have in the love that He bore us in His death and passion, which surpasses all the love that we can have for one another.
However, before we go any further, let us see why and in what sense Saint Paul says that we are of the bones of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His flesh, and members of His body. For He is descended from Adam's lineage (Romans 1:3) and is called the seed of David. And although He was conceived after a wonderful manner in the womb of the Virgin, yet He took man's flesh upon Him and became very man.
He says that He is the Son of Man to show that He has taken on a nature that is common to us, wherein He has made Himself familiar
with us. And indeed (as the Apostle says in the Epistle to the Hebrews), He is not ashamed to call us brothers (Hebrews 2:11).
But now, let us come to what is said here. It seems that Saint Paul would make Jesus Christ, as it were, the root of mankind, so that we should descend from Him, for he calls us His offspring. But we have to mark that, forasmuch as our Lord Jesus Christ was shaped from the seed of Abraham to perform the things that were promised, and that He could not be the Mediator between God and us unless He was of our nature (for He could not have amended our misdoings, through which we were bound to endless damnation, unless He had clothed Himself with our body and had also a soul to present Himself in the person of all men), it was necessary for our Lord Jesus Christ to be our flesh in our body.
Therefore, we may say that He is of our bones and of our flesh. And why? Because He is descended from Adam's race, as I said before.
But, however the case stands, He was conceived marvelously by the Holy Ghost. Nevertheless, there is another aspect to consider.
Despite all this, He does not cease to be the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), as Saint Paul terms Him, by making a comparison between the grace whereby we were set again and the deadly fall whereby we were all lost.
He says that the first Adam, by his transgression, made us enemies to God, so that we have no access to Him and would be thrust back if we approached Him—and that justly. For where sin reigns, there must necessarily be, as it were, an irreconcilable division. God, being the fountain of all righteousness, cannot match with our iniquities and corruptions.
Then there is also a second Adam, who comes to remedy all, that is to say, our Lord Jesus Christ. And how is He the second Adam? For (as
I told you before), it is not meant that we should be so bold as to think we can approach Jesus Christ as though we were linked to Him by our own nature; that is done in the power of His Holy Spirit and not in the substance of His body.
Behold then, Jesus Christ has become truly man and has taken upon Him the very same human nature as ours. Yet, it is not by nature that we are His flesh and His bones (for we are not descended from Him concerning our own substance), but it is by His divine power.
Therefore, we must come to this point: that we are bone of the bones of our Lord Jesus Christ because we are restored in Him and have in Him, as it were, a new and second creation.
And Saint Paul (as we shall see hereafter) has an eye to the origin of Eve, for she was taken out of Adam's substance and shaped from one of his ribs. Now then, are we restored by our Lord Jesus Christ? If we consider our first birth, whereby we are brought into this world to be mortal men, we cannot say that we are of His flesh unless we are of the seed of those who were before us. But whatever we are, in that seed we are accursed. It is true that Adam was created in the image of God, but that image was defaced by sin, so we are not worthy to be counted among God's works.
The same horrible condemnation is pronounced with His own mouth, where He says that it repents Him that He made man
(Genesis 6:6), as though He disclaimed us all because we do nothing but infect the earth and are not as worthy to be counted among His creatures as worms, lice, fleas, gadflies, and all other vermin of the world. That, then, is the benefit we have by Adam; and as often as it is said that we are of his seed and of his flesh, it serves to show us that there is nothing in us but a gulf of curse.
Now, hereupon, if we come to our Lord Jesus Christ, we are restored again (as Scripture speaks of it), and we are made new creatures in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17). You see then, that it is by the power of the Spirit, and not by order of nature or by any common fashion, that we are of the bone and flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ. The reason we are members of His body is that God His Father has ordained and established Him as our head. However (as I said before), this is done by a secret power that we comprehend only by faith.
Thus, both these things agree very well: namely, that Jesus Christ is of our bone and flesh because He has taken our human nature upon Himself and clothed Himself with it, without which we would have no alliance with Him. For if we cannot attain to the angels, how shall we attain to Him who is the sovereign head of them? But whereas He has come to us in such a way that He has vouchsafed to be knit in the bond of brotherhood with us, that is done especially when He works by the power of His Holy Spirit, so that He is our head, and we are gathered together in Him. We have a heavenly state, whereas before, we had nothing but of the earth. Consequently, having nothing in us but corruption, now we are lifted up on high and made children of God by the grace that is spoken of here. Whereas previously, we were heirs of His wrath, which we hold from our father Adam when we follow his nature, because we are all lost and perverted in him.
This, in effect, is how the two things are to be agreed, wherein there seemed to be some diversity. Indeed, if we do not have this, what would become of us? How miserable would our state be? I have shown already that if any man looks well at what is in himself, he shall find nothing there but matter to separate him from God.
Therefore, until we are of the substance of our Lord Jesus Christ, God must needs hate and abhor us and not know us to be of the number and company of His creatures.
Now, it remains to see how it comes to pass that we are of the bones of Jesus Christ and of His flesh. For He is in heaven, and we are here beneath on earth. Again, when we are begotten, each of us is begotten after the order of nature; he has his father and his mother to come from, and they are of the same race that he is. How then are we of the bones of Jesus Christ? It is not in respect of substance, for if we look upon our own flesh, neither the skin, nor the bones, nor the gristles that we have come from the body of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Rather, it is in respect that the curse which we bring from our mothers' wombs and is spread over all Adam's lineage is taken away by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, along with that, He has shed forth the grace of His Holy Spirit upon us so that we are enlightened by it. Therefore, it is as a quality (as men term it) and not a substance. Every man shall descend from such lineage, and God lets the common order continue which He appointed at the beginning, namely, that men beget one another from issue to issue.
But in the meantime, Jesus Christ renews those whom God His Father has chosen and those who are members of His own body, ridding them of the corruption they had taken from Adam.
Afterward, He gives them such power that each of them feels by faith that he is under the head that is set over us, that we are all gathered together in Him, and that His life is given to us, so we should no longer live to ourselves or to the world, but rather that He should live in us, as Saint Paul says of Him (Galatians 2:20).
You see then that Jesus Christ does not need to come down from heaven to make us members of His body, nor to diminish His own flesh to make us grow out of Him and be shaped by Him. For all is done by the wonderful power of His Holy Spirit. We do not draw
anything from the flesh or from the body with which He once clothed Himself, for that is in heaven, to the intent that we should be fashioned like unto the glory that is now in Him. Yet, for all that, He works in such a way that we have all our strength continually from Him.
Just as trees draw their flowers, leaves, and fruits from their roots, and just as the body of a person feels its strength flow down from the head, so do we feel the virtue and force of the union that is between us and our Lord Jesus Christ, while He continues still in His full state all the while. Neither does that hinder us from enjoying the inestimable benefit that Saint Paul magnifies so much in this text.
Moreover, let us bear in mind that it is significant when we are inwardly stirred up to do our duty, for thereby we taste the grace of God concerning the salvation of our souls.
The matter at hand here is that men should live amicably and harmoniously with their wives. When a husband considers the things spoken of here, he ought to be provoked, not only to discharge himself of the bond in which he is bound to God and his wife, but also to think thus with himself: This is such a state that, although it is corruptible and serves only for this transitory life, yet God has set it before us as a living image wherein I see that Jesus Christ is my head, that I belong to Him, and that not only am I His, but also He is mine, so that His life belongs to me, and, to be brief, I am as if I were a member of His body.
Seeing then that men, in doing their duty towards their wives, and wives also in obeying their husbands, may behold how they are joined unto Christ, and that they do the things that belong to the heritage of the kingdom of heaven, must it not be that we are too unthankful if we do not consider how our Lord Jesus Christ labors by