gengwall

It is this errant blending of Jesus many relationships with the church that often lead to significant problems in our own inter-relational interactions. I will give one very disturbing example.

I once had a person advocate for domestic discipline (physically disciplining of the wife by the husband) by quoting Revelations Rev 3:19 (Jesus speaking to the church at Laodicia) “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” He coupled that with the Ephesians 5 command for husbands to “love” their wives and Jesus’ relatively violent cleansing of the temple in John 2:14-16 as example of a valid form of “rebuke and chasten”. In other words, in his thinking, a valid expression of Ephesians 5 “love” toward ones wife is to “rebuke and chasten her” with a switch to her back side when she is in sin to help her “repent”.

Does anyone here believe for one minute that this is what the Bible teaches? Yet the Revelations passage my friend began with did indeed involve, to a degree, Jesus relationship with the Church. Clearly though, it was a different relationship than Jesus as husband to his bride the Church, is it not?