Feminine Glory

(1 Corinthians 6:19-20) …Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

The church’s relation to her Savior is one of bride to bridegroom. And therefore our corporate relation and response to Christ is fundamentally feminine and wonderfully womanly. The essence of true femininity is receiving, glorifying and responding. Woman takes the seed from man and returns it to him a fully formed baby; she takes the various staples that his work-a-day-wage supplies and returns it to him and to her children a delicious and nutritious feast. She receives the shell of a house and transforms it, in other words, glorifies it, into a place of aesthetic charm, comfort and rest. She receives the attentions, affections and admirations of her husband and glorifies herself with beauty, both within and without.

This is, in a nutshell, the church’s lifework. To receive from God our husband, to glorify that which He has graciously given to us, and then to return it to Him with thanksgiving and praise.

Take for instance God’s Word. The bride thankfully receives this incredible gift and then immediately sets about to glorify it, so that she might return it suitably adorned to her loving husband. To do this she first glorifies it by adorning it with the meter, metaphor and rhyme of poetry. Then, in increasing glory, she sets the poem to music. But not content to offer it to her husband as mere shadows on sheets of paper, she sings His gift back to Him in the assembly. And she not only sings His word adorned with melody, but presents it gilded with the greater glory of harmony sung by well-trained voices and if possible accompanied by the stirring sounds of strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion.

As Paul taught, glorifying God is not merely an exercise to be performed between our two ears. Rather we are to glorify Him “in our body and in our spirit.” In all things material and all things spiritual, receiving good gifts from Him, glorifying them, and then returning them back to Him to the ever increasing praise of His glory and amen.