Bride of Christ Coloring Page
My “Scripture Sunday” coloring page is late this week. So sorry about that! This free printable takes as its theme “The Bride of Christ,” but my mind’s been occupied with brides of a different sort lately.
Our family hosted a wedding shower over the weekend for some dear friends of ours. Don’t they look positively giddy with excitement?
It is such a joy to see two committed Christians marry. They stand the best chance of accurately mirroring the love Jesus has for His bride, the church.
That’s one of the reasons God established marriage in the first place. (It’s also why Satan tries so hard to destroy it.)
Which brings us to the topic of today’s free printable: our Bride of Christ coloring page:
In Ephesians 5:25-33, God gives a clear command to husbands and wives:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.”
This passage is easy enough to read and understand. But living it is another matter!
Even so, that is what my husband and I, together with countless other Christian couples, have dedicated ourselves to doing. First, because we’ve experienced firsthand the blessings that come from such a selfless, committed love. And second, because we earnestly desire that our marriage would reflect to the watching world the great love Jesus has for us.
He loves us even when we are difficult. Even when we are undeserving. Even when we are far from lovable. Of course, His love says a lot more about HIM than it says about US.
This coloring page comes from my newest devotional journal, Because He Lives.
Christians should never grow weary of pondering the fathomless depths of Christ’s love for us, and what that love compelled Him to do on our behalf. That’s the purpose of this book in a nutshell.
The season of Lent and Easter seems a natural time to reflect on such matters, but the self-sacrificing love of Jesus should be our theme and our goal, every day of the year. Amen?
