With Jesus, we married up, way up!

Eph. 1:22 “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church.”

Christ has two positions that he gladly occupies, King of the Cosmos and Head of the Church. As King of the Cosmos, he has all power and is above every other authority, dominion, and rule. 

As the head of the church, he is, in a sense, vastly over-qualified! He is perfect, sinless, God incarnate, perfect in love, perfect in justice. All that power, all that authority, all those perfections, he uses to redeem, protect, and lead little old us! And what love! He proved his devotion to us by dying for us. What church could ever expect to have such a head?

According to an old Seinfeld episode, in every relationship there is a reacher and a settler. I always advised our four sons to marry up, and, like me, they did. We were the reachers, and our wives (let us sympathize with them) kindly decided to settle. 

But Jesus, in this regard, is the one who married down. Way down. We are his bride, the church. We get the one who is King of the Universe, the Lord of Glory as our Head. He gets us.

And here is the kicker. Jesus is delighted to have us! "He will rejoice over you with gladness" (Zephaniah 3:17). He is excited to have us as his church, his bride. He does not consider himself to have settled at all. He is enthralled with us. He was so excited to have us he died for us to be his own. Go figure! 

This same passage in verse 23 tells us that we, the church, are "the fullness of him who fills all in all." There are many things to learn from that phrase, but here is one key: Christ is delighted to find his fullness in us. While the Triune God needs no one else to be filled, yet somehow, Christ finds a new fullness with us, his church. 

John Calvin writes in his commentary on this passage: "This is the highest honor of the Church, that, until He is united to us, the Son of God reckons himself in some measure imperfect. What consolation is it for us to learn, that, not until we are along with him, does he possess all his parts, or wish to be regarded as complete!"

Let us rest in the glory of this: Christ, who rules the universe, has taken us to be his. He is the Head of the church, Head of our church, our Head. We, his church, have married up! And Christ our head, is happy that we did. 

Let us, therefore, trust our Lord, our Head, with full confidence. He has all power. He has all love. We could not hope for better!