Just last year an old friend of mine got married. She married a fella who is an automobile mechanic. A couple of friends and I agreed that this was a big score for her. What better than to land a guy who can fix cars.
I suppose in a way my opinion has been colored by the Red Green show. At times I watch brief snippets of it. A recurring moniker of the show is this saying "If women donât find you handsome then they might as well find you handy"-- Personally I know that my wife chose me for my mind·.she wanted someone that wasnât as smart as her.
Anyways· oneâs motives aside for choosing a husband, the question before us today is this: What is the primary responsibility of a Christian husband. What command of the scripture is their given to Christian husbands as it relates to their wives.
In the book of Ephesians ch. 5 there is one explicit command given to husbands: the command to love their wives.
The word for love in the text does not have as its focus romance nor the love of friend to friend. The specific word used implies that the love demonstrated comes from a conscious decision of the will. This kind of love remains for the most part independent of feelings. This kind of love does not depend upon reciprocation. This kind of love is unconditional. This kind of love is lasting.
READ TEXT
As you might have noticed, this text is a lot fuller in content as compared to its parallel in Colossians 3:18-4:1. You probably are also aware that the discussion of the text goes beyond talking about husbands and wives. Paul in this section of scripture is addressing all who were members of the church of Ephesus (husbands, wives, Fathers, slaves, masters, children).
I. One very important observation that you and I must note from this text is this: you canât talk or study deeply about marriage without talking about Jesus and his place in it.
Throughout our text every responsibility and every description of both man and wife is somehow related to Jesus
Paul could have just done what he did in Colossians. He could have said "Wives, submit to your husbands" "Husbands, love your wives". But thatâs not what Paul does in this passage: He doesnât talk about marriage or its responsibilities without somehow relating it to Jesus Christ.
At times you have heard me speak of how we are to have Christ centred marriages. This is the perfect passage for one to refer to, for in every reference to marriage ötied firmly to the discussion is Jesus Christ.
II. A second important item to note from our text is this: Within the context of instructing husbands and wives regarding their fundamental marital responsibilities 3 pictures of the church emerge for us (they are not new pictures either).
1. There is the picture of the church as one who is to be subject in all things to her head: Jesus Christ. As the head of the church, which is also called his body, Jesus is our captain, our leader, our master.
The springboard for this picture of the church is the instructions that are given to wives: to be subject in all things to their heads: their husbands.
The churchâs submission to Christ teaches us about what submission is to look like for a Christian wife to her husband . Our submission as the church, to Jesus is to be willing and joyful for we serve one who loves us and gave himself for us. We are servants of Jesus who in all things cares for us and in our submission to him every conceivable benefit and blessing becomes ours.
2. There is the picture of the church as the bride of Christ.
For us, the bride of Christ, Jesus sacrificially gave his life that we might have life and that we might be fitted for heaven. While we are pictured as the bride of Christ, Jesus is spoken of as the groom.
Jesusâ sacrificial love for us, his bride, stands as the example for us men on how we are to sacrificially love our wives.
This is not the only time in the scriptures that portrays the people of God as being a bride or wife to God. Israel was often referred to as the wife of God. Scattered throughout the N.T the church is consistently called the bride of Christ and what is it that we anticipate: The Heavenly Wedding Banquet of the Lamb.
3. There is the picture of the church as the body of Christ- with him as the head.
The reason Jesus cares and loves for us so much is because we are one with him, we are his body. The reason husbands are to love their wives is because they are one with them.
The love of Christ for his body stands as an example for how we men are to love our wives as our own bodies.
3 pictures of the church: a. subject to her head b. bride of Christ c. The body of Christ.
As we delve into this text and this command let me present you with a brief outline of where we are going to be going.
-Love your wife
-Love your wife sacrificially. Contemplating the sacrificial love of Christ for his bride, the church
-Love your wife as you do your own body
-Love your wife as your own body because you and her are one. Contemplating our oneness with Christ: he the head, we his body
-Love your wife
Q Why do you suppose our text repeatedly tells husbands to love their wives?
Is it because men are slow? Is it because men are selfish? Is it because sometimes ones wife is kind of unlovable/ just like men are sometimes?
I personally think the repetition is here in part because there is a sort of connection between a wifeâs submission to her husband and a husbands loving his wife. A fully submissive wife will be easy to love and a man who loves his wife like Christ loved us will be easy to submit to.
Yet this doesnât mean that if a wife doesnât submit to her husband that he shouldnât love her, neither does it mean that if a man doesnât unconditionally love his wife that she shouldnât submit to him.
1. Commanded to love our wives
The question is HOW: How ought a man to love his wife? SACRIFICIALLY
HUSBANDS, LOVE YOUR WIVES, JUST AS CHRIST LOVED THE CHURCH AND GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR HER.
Sacrificial love is a tough thing to come by in our day and age. Selfishness is in. Sacrifice is out. Personally giving up at a cost to self is hard.
To motivate us and give us the frame for what it means for us to sacrificially love our wives we are called to contemplate the sacrificial love of Jesus for his bride: the church÷thatâs you and me who have given our lives to Jesus.
In Romans 5:8 it says "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us"
In I John 4:9-11 it says "This is how God showed his love among: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a propitiatory sacrifice for us sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
Again in I John 3:16 it says "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers."
In Ephesians 3: 17-19 it says "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
What happens when we lose sight of Christâs love for us? We become unthankful, disobedient, and unsubmissive to our Savior Jesus Christ. On the flip side, when you and I ponder and grasp the love of Christ for us doesnât our hearts say "anywhere you lead me, whatever you ask of me, you have all of me". öHere also is a lesson: that applies to our wives. When our wives lose sight of our love for them whether it be through an indifferent callous heart or whether it be because we are not being loving: then what a struggle it must be for a wife to be submissive in all things to her husband.
However, I canât imagine a godly woman not responding to a man who without complaining or dragging his feet loves her sacrificially like Christ did for us. When as men we joyfully, willingly, give of ourselves in love to our wives then we make our wifeâs submitting in all things to us a joy and delight÷just like our submitting to Jesus in all things ought to be a joy and delight for us.
Our contemplating the love of Christ expressed in his sacrificial dying upon the cross for us is our teacher inregards to our loving our wives sacrificially.
Q Men, can your wives detect elements of sacrificial love for them in you?
II. IN v.28-33 HUSBANDS ARE AGAIN COMMANDED TO LOVE THEIR WIVES, THIS TIME AS A MAN WOULD HIS OWN BODY.
Husbands are commanded to love their wives as their own bodies because husbands and wives are 1 flesh
If someone came up to you and said: Give me 5 reasons that I should love my wife, what would you say?
Paulâs reason for my loving my wife is: because I am one with her. She and I are one flesh and just as I love my own physical flesh, so to I must love her.
Paulâs argument: every man loves his own body, the husband and wife are 1 flesh, therefore the husband must love his wife.
To help us understand what it means for a man to love his wife as his own body Paul turns our attention to Christâslove for his body: the church.
Because the church is the body of Christ our text says that he feeds and cares for it. No good thing do we lack for we are the body of Christ and Christ cares for his body. As a man cares for his body so Jesus cares for his.
As husbands the care and attention we afford ourselves is to be equally given to our wives. As people we tend to pamper ourselves. When you are a married man you are to pamper your wife and care for her physically, spiritually, mentally.
The reason for a husbands loving his wife as his own body is because he and his wife are reckoned to be one flesh.
In leading us to contemplate what it means to be one flesh with our wives Paul brings us to ponder our oneness with Christ. The church is one with Christ. He is the head, we are the body. Our oneness with Christ is somewhat mysterious, yet our oneness with Christ means that we have a living, lasting, loving relationship with Jesus.
In marriage husbands and wives are reckoned as 1 flesh. The passage quoted from in our text is Genesis 2:18-25 which documents Eveâs creation as being from the side of Adam. They were one flesh "bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh" said Adam.
Today, by the sexual act husbands and wives are one, yet being one flesh is more than just that. In the Bible in reference to husband and wife it says "therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate". There is to be no divorce because husband and why are somehow one, they have been joined together by God.
Being one flesh means that a permanent connection between you and your wife has been established. A connection established by God.
Being one flesh means that all that is your wifeâs is yours and all that is yours is hers. All things you hold are to be in common.
This past week I found a perfect story that illustrates the one flesh connection between husband and wife. Let me read an excerpt of a book by Tolstoy, entitled Anna Karenina.
In this novel Tolstoy contrasts 2 couples. One couples marriage ends up destroyed, the other survives on the basis of their understanding that they were one.
"Levin had thought there could never be any relations between himself and Kitty other than those based on tenderness, self respect, and love: But the first month of their marriage showed otherwise.
There first quarrel arose because Levin had ridden over to inspect a new farm. He returned 1 ¸ hours late because he had attempted a short cut and got lost. He rode home thinking only of her, of her love, of his own happiness, and the nearer he came to the house the warmer grew his tenderness for her. He rushed into the room with a feeling that was even stronger than the one with which he had gone to propose to her, yet all of a sudden he was met with a grim expression he had never seen on her face before. He tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away. "Whatâs the matter?" "Youâre having a nice time·.." she began, trying to appear calm and venomous.
But the moment she opened her mouth, she burst forth into a flood of reproaches, senseless jealousy, and everything else that had been tormenting her during the time she had spent motionless at the window.
It was then that he clearly understood for the first time what he had failed to understand when he led her out of the church after the wedding. He understood that she was not only close to him, but that he could not now tell where she ended and he began. He realized it from the agonizing feeling of division into 2 parts which he experienced at the moment. He felt hurt, but he immediately realized that he could not be offended with her because she was himself. For a moment he felt like a man who, receiving a sudden blow from behind, turns round angrily with the desire to return the blow only to find that he had accidentally struck himself and that their was no one to be angry with and he had to endure and do his best to assuage the pain··.
You see, the husband understood that he and his wife were one.
The command of the scripture is to love your wife as you would your own body, because you and her are one flesh.
Since husband and wife are one flesh the husbands responsibility is to care for, provide, and nurture his wife, just as Christ our head does for us his body and church.
There is a bond between you and your wife made by God. Her misfortune is your misfortune. Her pain your pain and vice versa. Because your wife is of your flesh, love her as you would yourself.
To often husbands use their wives as if they were some sort of resource or commodity. Sometimes Christian wives feel used. To love a wife as one does himself will mean the end to this.
CONCLUSION
All to often husbands act selfishly in marriage, concerned with their individual needs.
This text calls us to love our wives.
This text tells us how: Sacrificially
To help us understand what sacrificial love is all about this text draws our attention to the sacrificial love of Christ for us, his bride, the church
This text calls us to love our wives as we would our own bodies. This text then tells us why: because husbands and wives are one flesh.
To help us understand how to love our wives as ourselves our attention is drawn to how Christ loves his body, the church. To help us understand what being one with our wives is about our attention is drawn to our oneness with Christ.
Bottom line: Husbands are to love their wives!
On this fathers day one of the greatest gifts you as a father can give to your children is this: Love your wife.
