 Ladies,
I think you can sit back and relax this morning. If the biblical spotlight
glared down on wives last week, it will focus just as firmly on husbands
today. But try not to enjoy yourselves too much. “Amens” are authorized
in response to particularly relevant points; however, please try to keep
the elbowing to a minimum.
Look
with me again at the passage we read last Sunday. Listen again to God’s
requirements for both husbands and wives:
 |
Ephesians
5:21-33 |
"Submit
to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives,
submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of
the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is
the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit
to their husbands in everything.
Husbands,
love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for
her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain
or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way,
husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his
wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds
and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of
his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be
united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound
mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one
of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect
her husband."
All right, husbands, let’s
get down to business. The Bible here makes one assignment, and gives two
orders for completing that assignment properly. Your divine assignment
is to serve as head of your wife as Christ serves as head of the Church.
To become a husband is to become the head in your marriage. We talked about
that last week. Let’s do a quick review for the husbands who weren’t here—or
weren’t paying attention.
Your assignment as head of
the wife represents merely a distribution of function, not a hierarchy
of value. The point is not prestige or hubristic power, but responsibility.
At no time does Paul suggest that men are better than women, or brighter,
or more effective leaders. But God has nonetheless assigned husbands
the final responsibility for the spiritual, social, moral and physical
condition of their marriage.
You may have been assigned
this position in marriage because husbands generally need to exercise authority
more that their wives do. But you are not told to demand or force submission
from your wife. It may also be that God wants to stimulate your spiritual
growth and commitment, rather than letting your wife, who may be
more spiritually mature, “carry” you spiritually? You are not authorized
to abdicate your place as head of the wife because you find the demands
made upon you heavy or difficult to satisfy. Whatever your shortcomings—you
got the job! |
|
Your assignment
as head of the wife represents merely a distribution of function, not a
hierarchy of value.
|
|
Consider: The captain of
a ship may not be the best navigator on board, but the navigation of the
ship is still, ultimately, his responsibility. And if the ship founders
on the rocks, it is the captain who will be held accountable. Too many
“marriage captains” are jumping ship at the first sign of rough waters,
or hiding in their cabins while their first mates struggle to run the ship
and lead the crew alone. Husbands, depend on your wives and honor their
support, but take charge as God requires you to. |
There are two orders given to
husbands in the Ephesians passage. The first is so subtle, you could easily
miss it: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. This does not
authorize you to shirk your responsibility to be the head of your wife.
But it does require you to submit to the refining influence your relationship
with your wife will have on your life, your personality, and your faith.
It also suggests something of the spirit with which you are to approach
carrying out your assignment.
 The
other direction God gives husbands is this: Love your wives, just as Christ
loved the church. It sounds easy: “Love your wife.”
“Well, of course, I love
my wife. That’s why she is my wife. I fell in love with her and just couldn’t
imagine my life without her. I love the way she walks. I love the way she
talks. I love the way she makes me feel.
Well, yes, that’s love of
a sort, but it’s not really what the Bible is talking about. To satisfy
God, you have to love your wife as Christ loved the Church.
So
how does Christ love the Church?
Christ loved the Church by
giving Himself up for her. He died saving the Church. He suffered—and bled—and
died. And husbands are to do the same, if circumstances require. In various
parts of the world today, they do.
But before Jesus walked the
Via Dolorosa to the Cross—or bared His back to the “whip with teeth” in
Pilate’s dungeon—He had already sacrificed His personal will on the altar
of total obedience to God. Before Jesus went to the Cross to save the sinners
He loved, He went down on His knees in a simple dining room to wash their
feet and demonstrate what we now call “servant leadership.”
Jesus gave up His professional
aspirations and his privacy. He gave up any chance to live in peace, or
to enjoy an ordinary life as “one of the guys” in Nazareth. Jesus gave
up self-centeredness and easily offended pride and the normal perks of
a leader. Before that, He gave up His divine place and power in heaven
to become a man and devote Himself, body and soul, to His Bride, the Church.
“Husbands, love your
wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.” The husband
cannot hold tight to his own hopes and dreams and desires and pleasures
as the most important things. He must give up his commitment to all these
things as the driving motivations in his life. He must give “himself” up,
and embrace his wife as the focus and goal of his life, or he will not
be loving his wife as Christ loved the Church.
The will of God is clear:
“Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church.” Don’t bother checking
how you feel about it. Just do it. Christ-like love is love you “do.” It
is an ongoing act of self-discipline. It generates incredible power and
transmits that power through this love. What Jesus felt for the Church
we may infer by what He did. He loved the Church in what He did—to and
for her.
The Bible is remarkably
indifferent to feelings as the basis for deciding whether something should
or should not be done. That’s what the Law of God is for, and later the
word of God in the person of Jesus and the writings of His early followers.
Husbands, do what the Bible tells you. Your feelings will catch up in time,
if they need to.
How do your love your wife
as Christ loved the church? The Bible says, “Husbands should love their
wives as their own bodies.” Your wives are a part of you. They are like
your own bodies, and are to be treated as such. What do you do when you
sprain your ankle or get the flu? Do you cut off the part of your body
causing you pain and throw it away? Do you badger it, or smack it around?
Do you give it the “silent treatment”?
No, you attend to it. You
touch it gently and carefully. You think about it all the time and pray
that the pain will go away and its cause will be healed. Though you may
hate what has happened, you don’t hate your body for the suffering it’s
going through. It’s your body and you just want it to get well. And you’ll
do whatever it takes to make that happen. Love your wife as you do your
own body.
Love your wife as Christ
loved the Church. It’s a hard command, when you know how you are to love.
But the “how” will become easier when you understand “why.”
Why
does Christ love the Church?
Someone once said, “Christ
does not love the Church because it is lovable, but rather to make it so.”
The love of Christ is not determined by what the Church deserves, but by
what God is, by His nature and His character, by His purpose for establishing
the relationship between His only begotten Son and His only redeemed remnant.
Christ loves the Church in order to make her holy.
The husband’s Christ-like
love is to sanctify the wife, to make her holy—to bring about growth in
godliness. We don’t use the word “sanctify” very much. What does it mean?
It means, primarily, to set something—or someone—apart for a sacred purpose.
Christ loves the Church the way He does so that He might sanctify her.
A husband doesn’t have the divine grace that Jesus had to save people from
sin. A husband is not Christ. But a husband can be in Christ and have Christ
in him.
Paul says in Colossians that
Christ “is the image of the invisible God… For God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself
all things…by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Jesus is the image of God
to you—and you are to be the image of Christ to your wife. God is pleased
to reveal Himself to your wife through you, as part of the reconciliation
God is working in her. What better vehicle does God have to introduce His
intention to have an intimate relationship with humanity than the most
intimate human relationship: marriage?
A husband can receive the
grace of Christ, and use it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to bless—and
even sanctify—the life of his wife by seeing her and treating her as the
divine creation she is. A husband can love his wife as Christ loved the
Church—but only if Christ is helping him?
There is a wonderful truth
expressed in
|
2
Corinthians 5:16 |
“From
now on…we regard no one from a human point of view.”
This is to be especially
true for the regard a husband has for his wife. Do you see your wife as
Christ sees her? Are you trying to? Do you see or seek to see what Christ
sees? Jesus said, “Seek, and you will find.” If you look for her beauty,
for instance, you will find it and make it more apparent to the world.
On the other hand, if you
overlook it, or deny it, or belittle it—if you just take it for granted—you
will tarnish it and cause it to fade, no matter how brightly it shone at
the first. The same is true of your wife’s potential for holiness. You
will not see who your wife will become, so much as your wife will become
who you see her to be.
Sanctify, cleanse, splendor,
spotless, holy—these are divine terms. As head of the wife, the husband
prepares his wife for her relationship with Christ and her eternal place
in His presence. When you look at your wife—when you think about her—what
spiritual things do you hope and dream for her? Can you imagine your wife
as the woman God created her to be? Can you imagine the plan God has for
her—in this life and for all eternity? Can your imagine her spiritual need?
And when she enters eternity, what part of her “spiritual readiness” will
be attributable to you and your lifetime of Christ-like love for her.
The point of being in charge
is to meet the needs and enable the success of those you love—those you
lead and serve. Husbands, do you set aside your power and privilege to
provide for your partner—to give her the grace gifts she needs to lift
her up to her proper place in Christ?
A husband’s primary witness
to Christ is his relationship to his wife. In this, he tells his wife:
this is what the love of Christ for you is like. This is what you may expect
from Christ as a part of His Church. A husband’s treatment of his wife
will be the first and strongest lesson his daughter will learn about how
she should be treated by the boys and men she encounters in her life—what
she may expect and what she should accept. A husband’s treatment of his
wife will be the first and strongest lesson his son will receive about
how to treat girls and women he interacts with as he grows to manhood and
seeks the one who will become his wife.
Now, for the information
of all hands, there are wives among us today. One may be yours. Which kind
of husband do you think your wife would prefer—the kind who would love
her as Christ loved the Church, or the kind who merely loves her like the
“what’s-in-it-for-me” world around us?
What kind of husband would
she be most willing to be submissive to? I suspect that even those wives
who are less than enthusiastic about submitting to their husbands are very
enthusiastic about the idea of being loved as Christ loved the Church.
Feel free to conduct your own opinion survey on this after the service.
And, after all that, is
there no personal benefit to the husband who loves his wife as Christ loves
the church? Well, you get to love a woman better than you ever could if
you were limiting your love to what you could generate from your own feelings
with your own personal perspective on life. You get to participate in the
work of Christ in your home in a direct and significant way—validating
your very existence.
You get to spend your life
with a woman who experiences the greatest form of human love available,
and probably responds accordingly. You get to look yourself in the mirror
every morning and respect what you see because you know you have been chosen
to be—and have agreed to be—God’s primary instrument of grace to the woman
you love the most in life. And you get the indescribable joy of knowing
that God loves you in the same way that you are committed to loving your
wife—and that God is proud of you for obeying His word. All in all, not
bad—for a husband!
This is a profound mystery,
says Paul. But don’t let that stop you. Love your wife—as Christ loves
the Church—as Christ loves you. |
