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In just these few verses, Paul tells us that this thing called marriage is a picture. In the working out of what it means to be husband and wife, married couples paint a picture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the unique role of a man being a husband, he is playing the part of Jesus. In the unique role of a woman being a wife, she is playing the part of the church. The man isn’t Jesus, he is just playing His role. The woman isn’t the church, she is just playing her role. But what a role it is. In playing the role of Jesus, the husband is supposed to treat his bride like Jesus treats the church. In playing the role of the church, the bride is supposed to respond to her husband the same way that the church is supposed to respond to Jesus.
How does Jesus treat the church? Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus had everything. He is God, and as God, He was seated in perfect relationship with the Trinity in His holy, heavenly throne room. He didn’t continue to selfishly cling to that position, but instead, He gave it up. Even though He is God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. He gave up that position and stature and benefit. He made Himself of no reputation. He became a helpless, crying baby who had to put up with all the physical issues that you and I do. He had to become a teenager. He had to become an adult. He had to endure temptation. He had to be hungry and thirsty and hot and cold. That’s a far cry from what the creator of the universe deserved, isn’t it? But He humbled Himself even further than that. Because He humbled Himself to the point of allowing Himself to suffer shame and humiliation and abuse. Even to the point of death. Why? He did it for His bride. He did it so that He might set her apart as holy unto Himself. He did it that He might cleanse her and wash her and purify her. He did it so He could present her to Himself as clean and pure and holy and without any blemish or stain from sin. Verse 25 says, “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it.” We are to love our wives in such a way that we will one day be able to present her to Jesus as holy and without blemish. Men, we will be held accountable for the spiritual condition of our wives. Yes, she will stand and give an account as to how she responded to your spiritual leadership. But you will be held accountable for providing that leadership. The kind of spiritual leadership that has as its goal, your wife’s sanctification and her purification. If you ever ask your wife to do something that will defile her or lead her into sin, the Lord will hold you accountable. And when you treat your wife like Jesus treats the church, it should be easy for her to respond to you the way she should.
That’s how Jesus treats the church, but how is the church to respond to Jesus? By loving Him with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. By adoring Him and praising Him and showing Him His worth. That’s what worship is, isn’t it? Worship is an old English compound word that means “to show worth”. When we, as the church, worship Christ, we do it because He is worthy of our worship. We submit to Christ. Why? Because He is a dictator? No—because we love Him and He is worthy. We serve Him and devote our whole life to Him. Everything we are and everything we do is supposed to be for His honor and for His glory. Verse 24 says, “Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” We can’t water that down just because we don’t like it. We can’t juggle the meaning of words just because we don’t like what they say. The fact is, the Text says that wives are to respond to their husbands in the same way that the church is supposed to respond to Jesus.
Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as unto the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it. That’s great Sunday morning theology, isn’t it? But tell me something. What does that Sunday morning theology look like on Monday morning? What does it look like when the kids are screaming and driving you crazy and all he wants to do is plop down on the couch and watch TV? What does it look like when you get home from work and all you get is an earful of complaints about all the things you’re not doing right? Is this passage for Sunday mornings only? Or can it play out on Mondays too? Over the next few minutes, I want to give you some practical implications that come from this passage. I’m not going to turn this into some kind of self-improvement seminar where we look at “10 easy steps to a happy marriage.” Those things are usually a crock. The fact is that there are no easy steps to a happy marriage. If it was easy, God wouldn’t have used it as the mystery which displays the sacrificial love of Christ for the church, would He? No, there are no “easy” steps to a happy marriage. But the biblical commands are clear. Wives, you are to biblically submit to your husbands. Husbands, you are to biblically love your wife. The question is, how can you do that? Let’s start with the ladies, because that’s the order of the passage.
Ladies, how can you biblically submit to your husband? Does that mean you are to be his glorified slave? Does that mean you are not to have any input in running the household? Does that mean you are not to have a job outside of the house? Does that mean you are supposed to pine away at the house in your pearls and heels like June Cleaver waiting for your man to come home? Of course not! If those are things you choose to do that’s fine—but that’s not what biblical submission means. Submission of a wife to her husband is in the context of how we respond to Jesus. Jesus isn’t our dictator. But we serve Him anyway. We serve Him because of who He is. We love Him because He first loved us. Ladies, I’m going to give you a little insight. Men and women are different. And your most fundamental needs and desires are different from his. Danny Akin has said that women are like cats and men are like dogs. In one sense, he’s right. What do you have to do to absolutely make a dog’s day? Play with him! Pet him on the head. Scratch his tummy. Tell him what a good boy he is. If you do that, you can get a dog to do anything you want him to. Ladies, you’re husband is like that. He’s not a dog and he’s not Jesus. He’s somewhere in between. But your husband has a built in need to be praised. We have big fat egos. You don’t have to pat us on the head like dogs… and you certainly shouldn’t give him the worship that only Jesus deserves. But you should praise him. Lift him up. Encourage him. Encourage him in the things he does. Encourage him in the person he is. Remember that he will be responsible to present you to Jesus one day… so encourage him spiritually. Ask him to pray with you. Make opportunities available to worship with him. Ask him spiritual questions and value his opinions. Of course, you need to personally weigh his opinions against Scripture… but spiritually encourage him by giving him the opportunity to lead you. “But preacher, you don’t know my husband.” You’re right—I don’t. He might be lost. He might be mean. He might just be completely uninterested in you or anything you have to say. He might be the furthest thing away from the example of Christ I can imagine. I don’t know. Here’s what I do know. He can change. If Christ could save me, He can save your husband. And one thing’s for sure, you will never win him to Christ by nagging him. You will never win him to Christ by rebelling against him and fighting with him and causing strife with him. You will win him like Peter said in 1 Peter 3:1-2. Peter wrote, “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.” See, Peter gives a different reason for biblically submitting to your husband. He specifically puts it in the context of a lost or backsliding husband. He says that if your husband is living a lifestyle that is far from Christ, you will win him back to the Lord by your lifestyle. You won’t nag him, or argue him, or preach him back to Jesus. But you can praise and serve him to Jesus. Use every gift and talent you’ve got to serve him and please him. And do it with a loving smile. And when he asks you what’s gotten into you, show him this passage. Now, before I get to the men, I must throw in a caveat. Does submission have limits? As the church, our submission to Christ has no limits because He is perfect and is perfectly good. But we live in a fallen and cursed world. And some men are cruel and ruthless. Ladies, your submission and service to your husband ends at the point where he asks you to do something illegal, immoral or harmful. If you ever find yourself in an abusive situation, you must immediately leave that situation. Biblical submission is not self-destruction. Allowing him to destroy you will only empower him in his sin. It will actually move him farther away from Christ that closer to Him. Now men, it’s our turn.
How can we biblically love our wives? Dr. Akin’s analogy about dogs and cats was a good one. Here’s the problem. Dogs are easy to figure out. Cats are impossible. So is your wife! One minute your cat might like to be petted. The next minute it might claw your eyes out. It can go from rubbing up against your legs to completely ignoring you in a split second. I can give you no easy formula that will work for you. Look at the church. Each local church responds differently to Jesus, don’t they? Some jump up and down and holler and shout. Some are very passionate in their worship, but at the same time are very quiet. Some are working churches that don’t seem to ever have any fun. And then others seem like all they do is party. But how does Jesus respond to His church? He loves her. No matter how people respond to Him, He loves them. Whether we work for Him or serve Him or love Him, He loves us. And whether we curse Him or deny Him or ignore Him, He loves us. His love is steady. His love is faithful. His love is longsuffering. I told you before that men have a built in need to be praised. Well, women have a built in need too. They have a built in need to feel security. They need to feel safe. They need to feel that no matter what happens, you will be there for them. They need to know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you will never leave them nor forsake them. If your wife’s safety has been threatened, she will need an extra measure of safety from you. If her security has been threatened, she will need an extra measure of security from you. That is especially true if she has come from an abusive background. The Bible spends an inordinate amount of time giving true believers the assurance of our salvation. The language of God’s sovereignty and the perseverance of the saints is found on nearly every page. The Lord continually reassures us that He finishes what He starts. If you are going to love your wife like Christ loves the church, you need to do the same thing. Reassure her by spiritually nourishing her. Feed her soul. Be the spiritual head of your home. Don’t shirk that responsibility and pass it off to her. If she reads better than you do, she will get more benefit out of you trying than she will anything else. She doesn’t need you to be a theologian. She just needs to know that you nourish and cherish her like you do your own physical body. She needs to know that you are in the long-term process of making her ready to present to Jesus one day. And you won’t stop until she’s ready. Reassure her by spiritually nourishing her and by sacrificing yourself for her. This is the hard one. How much did Jesus sacrifice for the church? So, how much should we be willing to sacrifice for our wives? But what if she doesn’t deserve it? What if she’s mean and nagging and spiteful? What if she treats me like garbage? How did we treat Jesus? And how did He respond? He let us hang Him on the cross. As a matter of fact, Hebrews 12:2 says that it was His joy to do so. “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Can you ever change her? How does Jesus change us? Does He force us to change? No—He changes us by giving us more of Himself. He changes us by His Word. He changes us by wooing us. He changes us by His example. She will change because of your sacrifice. Be clear in your expectations—speak the truth in love. But always leave the response to her. And love her and continue to pursue her whatever her response is.
Now, how is all of this possible? How is it possible to biblically submit to your husband? How is it possible to biblically love your wife? It’s not. As a matter of fact, it’s completely and totally impossible. It’s impossible, because, ladies—ever since the curse in Genesis 3, it is your desire to usurp the role of your husband. As a result of the curse, you don’t want to submit to him. You want him to submit to you. You want to be in charge. But not only that, it’s impossible because, guys—ever since that same curse, you are bound and determined to dominate your wives. “Ain’t nobody going to tell me what to do.” “I’ll show her who’s boss around here.” It either plays out like that… or more often today it plays out like this: “I’ll just go somewhere else where I’m respected.” “I can be the boss at work.” “They respect me at the club.” “The boys respect me when we hang out.” So instead of dominating a woman who refuses to be dominated, you check out. And notice how this snowballs. Men, when you check out… what does that do for your wife’s security that she needs so badly? Ladies, when you usurp your husband’s role, what does that do for his need to be praised? It’s a terrible downward spiral, isn’t it? Are you in that spiral? If you are, it’s not hopeless. Because even though it is impossible to biblically submit to your husband… with Jesus all things are possible. Even though it’s impossible to biblically love your wife… with Jesus all things are possible. You see, Jesus is the only answer. His death broke the bondage of the curse. His death broke the bondage of the curse on wives. His death broke the bondage of the curse on husbands. But not only did Jesus death break the bondage of the curse… He lives again. And because He lives again, His life provides His Spirit. And when His Spirit lives in you and lives in your marriage, He can reverse the curse in your marriage. Ladies, through His power, you can live free from the desire to rule over your husband. You can live free to safely submit to him and serve him and please him. Men, through the power of the Spirit, you can live free from the desire to dominate your wife. You can live free to glory in the fact that your wife is your trophy. She is your trophy that you will present to Jesus some day, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. So, let me ask you this morning—is that the kind of marriage you want? Is that the kind of lady you would like to be? Is that the kind of man you would like to be? If it is, there is only one way it can happen. That is through the blood of Jesus. The first step to being the kind of man, woman, husband or wife that you want to be is to trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Would you take that first step today?
