Husbands and Wives Before God #3

Introduction to the Husband's Duty to Love

0:01 The following message was delivered at the 1992 New England Reformed Baptist Family Conference. Now once again, may I urge you to follow with me as I read from Ephesians chapter 5, Ephesians chapter 5, reading the section of this chapter which speaks explicitly and directly to husbands. Ephesians 5 beginning in verse 25 and reading to the end of the chapter.

0:59 Not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as his own wife loveth himself.

1:29 And so does Christ also the church, because we are members of his body. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church. Nevertheless, do ye also severally love each one his own wife, even as himself.

2:03 And let the wife see that she fear her husband.

2:10 Our theme, husbands and wives before God. In our first session, I sought to introduce the subject by approaching this key passage in the New Testament, which gives us a watershed of biblical instruction, concerning how a husband ought to walk before God in relationship to his wife, and how a wife ought to walk before God in relationship to her husband. Now this passage does not exhaust all of the teaching of the word of God on the duties of husbands and wives. And there was a time when in attempting to speak on a subject like this at a family conference, I would have sought to explain, that I had crammed into my four or five messages the full corpus of the major teaching of the word of God from all of the passages, much to the breaking of my own mind and spirit in the process of preparation, and much to the weariness of those who attempted to take it all in five sessions. And so I want to underscore that I hope the years have taught me at least a few things, and one of them is this. Far better than the one I had learned in my first year in the New Testament, far better than the one I had learned in my first year in the New Testament,

3:29 better to nail down with some degree of fixation and permanence one major passage of a subject than to make a futile, albeit sincere and earnest attempt to nail down everything the Bible has to say on the subject. And now in attempting to think our way through this pivotal, though not exhaustive passage, we have considered the duties of wives to their husbands. The fundamental duty of the wife identified, the qualifying elements of that duty described and amplified, and then some very quick, but I hope helpful, concluding observations and applications. And that's precisely the same outline we'll follow this morning as we now turn to the subject of...

4:25 Husbands before their wives, or the divine pattern for Christian husbands. We'll first of all consider the fundamental duty of husbands towards their wives identified. And obviously, as you listen to the reading of the passage, you know that that fundamental duty is not expressed in terms husbands assumed, in terms husbands assumed, in terms husbands assumed, in terms husbands assumed, assume headship over your wives, or husbands exercise authority over your wives, but rather, as surely as the fundamental duty of the wife is identified by the words, be subject to your husbands in everything, so the fundamental duty of husbands is identified by the word love. be subject to your husbands in everything, so the fundamental duty of husbands is identified by the word love. No fewer than six times in this section dealing with the duty of husbands to their wives, the word love in its verbal form is found. Several times it refers to Christ's love, but only to Christ's love,

5:45 as illustrative of the pattern and the standard with which husbands are to love their wives. as illustrative of the pattern and the standard with which husbands are to love their wives. For example, it is found as an imperative on the threshold and on the back door of the definition of the duty of husbands. Husbands are first addressed in verse 25, husbands, and now we have a present imperative of the verb to love, husbands begin and continue to continue to love your wives.

6:24 And then when you go out the back door of the passage, you have the verb in the imperative form again. Nevertheless, do ye also severally love each one his own wife, even as himself. And it's very interesting that in the two imperatives of the duty of husbands to love, on those two imperatives, and this was a fresh insight in reworking the material for this conference, there is the very structural backbone of the thinking of the apostle. For the two standards which are to regulate our love to our wives are the redemptive standard of Christ to his church and the standard of native inbred self-preservation. Divinely implanted self-love. And so the first imperative points us to that highest standard. Husbands love even as Christ loved the church.

7:31 And the final imperative says, do ye also severally love each one even as himself. And so husbands, you have a lovely little pocket reference to this matter of love. Your fundamental duty to your wife. You are to love her as Christ loved the church.

7:54 You are to love her as you love yourself. So the fundamental duty of husbands to their wives is clearly and unmistakably identified in terms of loving them. And I need not remind you, I'm sure, that the word for love, and there are only two of the current Greek words for love used in the New Testament, eros, that love which pertains to the physical and to the sensual dimensions of love, not necessarily sinful in itself, but often the occasion of sin is not found in any of the references to the love among believers between a husband and a wife. Phileo is used on occasion. But here we have that word agapao, that word which is used to describe what God is. God is love.

8:56 And which is the love that is manifested when God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Ah, but someone asked Pastor Martin, that is such an elusive word. What does this word love mean? That it is the primary duty of husbands to their wives is very clear.

9:24 It lies scattered all over the surface of the text. But precisely what does it mean to love? Well, with biblical words it's often far better to take God's method, and that is to see the word illustrated, demonstrated, demonstrated rather than to take the road of a formal technical definition. To love is to express that highest form of affection which God himself is and which God himself manifests in redemptive concern for men.

Defining Biblical Love: Purposeful Affection

10:08 It is that which 1 Corinthians 13 describes in its actings in a real world of sin. But I do want to make an attempt at a working definition which I believe you will find fits, at least as I've tried to put it into the major passages which lay out the duty of love. It at least is in the ballpark, if not technically absolutely accurate. This love, this love that you and I as husbands are called upon to exercise towards our wives, which has as its two major standards Christ's love for the church and our natural love for ourselves is that purposeful affection which wills and seeks the good of its object even at great personal cost. That is the love that is commanded. Purposeful affection which wills and seeks the good of its object even at great personal cost. There may or may not be delight in the object.

11:34 When God says love your enemies He does not mean delight in them. What the old writers call the love of complacency. That is a love in which you look with delight upon your object. I cannot look with delight upon my enemies but I'm commanded to love them.

11:54 What am I commanded to do? I am commanded to have a purposeful affection which wills and seeks their good even at great personal cost. Now a man is commanded to love his wife even though there is no present delight in her. He's still to love her.

12:23 Hopefully as he does love her with a purposeful affection which wills and seeks her good even at personal cost she will by that nurture become the object of his delight and that he will be able to add to his working definition of love a purposeful affection which with delight wills and seeks her good even at personal cost. And this is why from 1 Corinthians 13 we learn love seeks not its own. Love bears all things. Love endures all things. Greater love hath no man than this than a man lay down his life for his friends. You see here's the element of love acting with purposeful and deliberate and intended action seeking the good of its object even at great personal cost. Lenski, the Lutheran commentator not only suggests but insists and writes wherever it's appropriate that the dominant ideas of Agapao are spiritual intelligence and spiritual purpose.

13:45 God had an affection that was suffused with spiritual intelligence. He knew what he was loving. He so loved that he gave. There was spiritual purpose.

14:05 Hence the need of Ephesians 5. 18 Be ye being filled with the Spirit. Remember the remote context. Paul does not introduce familial duties without reminding us that we need to be continually filled with the Spirit.

14:22 Why? For the fruit of the Spirit is love. It is the Spirit who enables us to experience this purposeful affection which wills and seeks the good of its object even at great personal cost. So much then for identifying the primary duty of husbands to their wives.

14:49 It doesn't say make love with them. It says love them. Love them as Christ loved the church. Love them as you love yourself.

Qualifying Elements of Love: Position and Quality

15:06 Now we come to that which will be the heart of our study and take up the bulk of our time. And that is secondly the qualifying elements of this duty described and amplified. Because that's exactly where the passage takes us. We have the imperatives to love.

15:26 We are told that our love is a duty. Verse 28 Even so ought husbands also to love their wives. And the word ought means there. Under solemn obligation.

15:39 We have a debt to love them. But what are the qualifying elements of that duty? Well let us seek to describe and amplify upon them. And I shall do so as I believe the text does along four lines.

15:55 First of all the position from which that love is to be exercised. Secondly the quality by which that love is to be marked. Thirdly the ground on which that love rests. And then the expressions by which it will be manifested.

16:13 So we have the position, the quality, the ground and the expression. First of all the position from which this love is to be exercised. Look at verse 24. But as the church is subject to Christ so let the wives be to their husbands in everything.

16:36 Why? Because of verse 23. The husband is the head of the wife. If you were a husband sitting at Ephesus that morning when this epistle was first read the first word about you that would have entered your ear was that your wife was to be in subjection to you and that you were constituted her head.

17:01 The husband is the head of the wife. Every husband is the head of his wife. He's either a rotten head a mediocre head or a good head but head he is. That's non-negotiable.

17:16 In all the stupid articles and all the pseudo scholarship that tries to prove something else notwithstanding the Bible stands the husband is head of the wife. So the husband sitting there in that assembly when Paul turns to them and says now husbands here's your duty. He's assuming they have not forgotten the position from which that love is to be exercised. Having asserted that the husband is the head having commanded the wives to recognize and embrace and manifest their hearty commitment to Christ by submitting to that headship when he says to the husbands love your wives and gives the two great standards as Christ loved them love the church as you love yourself he is assuming that they understand that the position from which they express and manifest that love is indeed the position of a consciousness of the dignity the responsibility and the privilege of headship. He's assuming that. But alas what Paul assumed in our day it seems we have to stop and prove. Christ as the covenant head of his people loves from a position of federal headship.

18:42 He loves from a position of redemptive headship a position of vital headship from a position of authoritative and governing and ruling headship in every way he is head and savior of the body and there is no part of his salvation which he administers apart from his position of redemptive headship and therefore he assumes that husbands called upon to love as Christ loved will love from the position from which Christ loves that is of a headship marked out by the living God and so my dear brothers do not be bullied by all that is said against male headship until Christ abdicates his headship over the church you must never for a moment be ashamed of a conscious recognition of your position as that of head in your home until you're ashamed of the fact that Christ is head and savior don't ever be ashamed that you are head and leader of your wife so the position

20:08 from which this love is to be exercised and demonstrated is the position of a conscious assumption of my divinely appointed role as head without that your love will degenerate into a carnal sentimentality and into an unprincipled gushiness that will be a caricature of the headship of Christ rather than a mirror of it now we come to the second aspect of this love we're seeking now to grasp the qualifying elements the first was the position now the quality of this love and this brings us to the heart of verses 25 to 27 and this is a staggering concept the quality of my love as a husband is to be that with which Christ loved and still loves his church that which moved him to his voluntary self-emptying his voluntary submission to the sneers of men his voluntary submission to the billows of divine wrath to the blackness of divine abandonment ringing from his soul the cry of dereliction my God my God why hast thou forsaken me

The Quality of Love: Realistic and Exclusive

21:36 but look at the text husbands love your wives and here we have the Greek word which is like an equal sign even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it this is to be the love the good of men at great personal cost not only when we love them with a love of complacency and delight but when at any given point there may be very little that to our judgment is lovely in them as surely as their submission does not rest upon any given elements in our character at any given point in our development as men so our love is not to rest on anything in them it is to rest upon the changeless revelation of the will of God and the changeless standard of that love in the person and work of the Son of God now we can never quantitatively love as Christ loved the church

23:01 but we are to strive to a qualitative reflection of that love for his love was divine love and the infinite can never become the finite no matter how much it grows and develops so the even as has to do not with quantitative but qualitative and what are the characteristics of the love wherewith Christ loved and continues to love the church well let me give you four of them that are in the passage quickly number one it is a realistic love love your wives as Christ loved the church when the father had by some other means sanctified it cleansed it and made it presentable no he loved us in the language of Ezekiel 16 he cast his eyes upon us when he saw us wallowing in our birth blood our navels uncut thrown out as an unclean thing and he loved us it was a realistic love it was not a blind love it was not the love of the two lovers who under the glow of the moonlight shimmering across the pond could not conceive that either one has a fault

24:27 but he looked at us wide-eyed and with the omniscience that pierced to the depths of our beings seeing all that was vile and foul and wretched enough to make him puke over us he set his love upon me in the language of the hymn writer he saw me ruined in the fall yet loved me notwithstanding all he set his love upon us not a blind love but an open-eyed realistic love husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it that he might sanctify it therefore before he set it apart to himself it was wallowing in its filth that he might cleanse it therefore it was uncleansed and unwashed polluted and vile and this says to you and to me as husbands we must never allow our love to be diminished because we discern false sins and weaknesses in our spouses and Paul was a realist that's why in the parallel passage in Colossians 3.19 he says husbands

25:55 be not bitter against your wives why? because he realized that in the intimacy and the multi-level pressures of marriage we discover things about one another that can make us bitter that's why he said be not bitter against them we got a couple of honeymooners and engaged people who sit here saying oh well that may apply to some of those old wretched depraved duffers but not us I've got news for you the day is coming young husband when you're gonna walk in the bathroom and shut the door and say oh God if you don't give me grace I'm gonna let loose with a verbal barrage tinged with bitterness from the first word to the last oh God help me that's gonna happen Tim yes it will God doesn't give us warnings for nothing husbands be not bitter against them there will be things that but we're to love is Christ's love a realistic love that looks wide-eyed with 20-20 vision into the face of the false and says my duty has not changed my standard is the one who saw me in all the realism of my filth in all that which was twisted and marred and grotesque and ugly

27:23 and he loved me he saw me ruined in the fall he loved me not withstanding all and then it's to be an exclusive and exclusive and particularistic love not only realistic we're looking at the quality of the love now realistic yes but also exclusive and particularistic love your wives even as Christ also loved all men and gave himself up in sacrificial death for all men without distinction that hopefully some of them might accept his general atonement and it might be effectual that's the problem you have when you believe in an indiscriminate atonement you gotta rewrite the most practical directions to husbands and wives and stand them on their ear you see theology and practice high doctrine and practical experience are so wedded it is only within the parameters of doctrinal accuracy that we can have ethical accuracy and so we're to love them with an exclusive or particularistic love he loved the church gave himself up for it now granted he has a love for all men the love of good will and benevolence but the love he bears to his own is a discriminating

28:51 distinguishing love so that the people of God have as one of their distinctive titles beloved ones 1st Thessalonians 1 and verse 4 Colossians 3 12 to be beloved of God is a distinguishing title of a Christian not all men in general that idea is underscored powerfully in verse 33 look at it nevertheless writing to husbands do ye also severally love one his how could anything more be more distinct and particular and this says to us as husbands we will have a quality of love for our wives stands in a class a sacred guard hopefully not orpheus goodwill which seeks her good at personal cost but will grow more and more into a love that is suffused with complacency and delight a sacred garden a sealed garden into which we let no one else in our fantasies in our desires in our relationships

30:18 in our looks in our touches and in our words within the sacred garden of marital love a man should have looks that none but his own beloved wife sees and fully understands in terms of endearment it's one of the little litmus tests I make with couples that obviously have a bad marriage giving away one of my trade secrets I say in the midst of a counseling session by the way let's do a little role play when you're addressing her and by the way what are some of your pet names by which you address her and when a couple looks at me with a blank stare and says pet names what do you mean well you know dear honey sweetie pie we don't have any pet names I've yet to find a marriage with no pet names that was a healthy marriage now there may be but I've not found one in 40 years in the ministry it's an exclusive love has its own unique looks its own vocabulary it has its own peculiar touches it has its own peculiar signals and symbols of the exclusive partature of that love

31:45 I tell you who sees her husband more a gentleman to his secretary and to his neighbor's wife than to her has got a raw deal when a man saves gentlemanly nobility for his secretary for the neighbor's wife for the other brothers and sisters at the church and listen to me it's intensified a hundred times more when it's the wife of a pastor and he is the epitome of grace at the door every Sunday when he greets the women of the church he is the epitome of tenderness in the counseling room when women come with needs and his wife says he must exhaust all of his tenderness and all of his love and all of his sensitivity upon others because there's none left for me what a tragedy a woman should be able to say when any other woman comes up and says you know your husband is a very gentle man your husband is considerate and thoughtful your wife ought to be able to smile and say you don't know the one hundredth of it and I'm not about to tell you now I ask you men do you dare to go home

The Quality of Love: Sacrificial and Purposeful

33:13 from this session today and ask your wife if she can say that of you are you man enough to do it to help you woman if he gets up the courage to do it if you're not woman enough to help him face reality by answering him honestly love as what is it it is exclusive and particularistic son of God love and I know the symbols and the signals of that exclusive and particularistic love that he bears to me but thirdly the quality of that love is not only realistic exclusive but sacrificial look at the text husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church notice and it says he does not did not give up something of his possessions but he gave himself up for it

34:37 sacrificial love he himself said great have no then he laid down his life for his friends I am the good shepherd I laid down my life for the sheep but it wasn't love all marshalled and then expressed at the cross but look further this Christ continues to do something verse 29 no man ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it even as the church he is he in sacrificial love sacrificial unto blood and unto an immolated body and unto outpoured wrath and unto shrouded heavens no but sacrificial love that leads him into perpetual intercession that finds expression in incessant nourishing and cherishing of his church sacrificial love is the only love he knows to his people as one has said the very life of love is to spend itself for the sake

36:06 of another spends itself for others that's how love lives and he gave himself not something external to himself not gifts from himself but he gave himself and he does not and he does not merely employ the service of angels though he does they are sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation he gives his church pastors and teachers to perfect his saints there are many ways that he gives in his nourishing cherishing work things to his people but above all else he gives himself to his people so that he is called our life now men I want to speak very bluntly to you this may be the point at which some of you need the most work this means that as a husband you must learn to give up yourself and yourself is the sum total of your time your energy your interests your hobbies your friends the things you naturally like to do and deliberately to renounce them when in so doing you can advance your wife's well-being that's to love her as Christ loved

37:35 the church that's to love her love the church where you take where you take law creations and lawful self-interest and you joyfully sacrifice them that you might in some area perfect yourself your wife you see a self-centered selfish man can abuse the concept of headship but he can't mirror the headship of Christ because Christ headship according to the text is joined to his saving work he is head and savior and he could only save by giving himself and it's only when by the spirit we perceive the wonder of his self-giving love that we joyfully come under his headship and you see that redemptive motif must never be broken in the Christian marriage you want your wife to be more joyfully subject to her then you sacrifice more for her well-being you don't win her love by going down to the health club and looking half way like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a year for some of you it might not hurt to go to the health club and get a few bumps where you now got bulges but that's really

39:03 not the answer folks all of the advertising in body worship notwithstanding that's not the answer I've seen relationships where the guy was dumpy and out of shape where that woman loved him like he were an Adonis like he were a Greek God why? because she saw the qualities of self-giving love that made it her joy to be submissive to him when she knows you have liberty to take that Tuesday night and to do something good not with the guys down at the local pub but to do something that the other guys in the church are doing legitimate in itself but you happen to know from following the local paper that Tuesday night is the time when they're offering a class in macrame at the local high school for free community service and you know your wife has said for years you know honey every time I see someone who can make one of those beautiful macrame things to hold a pot I'd love to be able to you know please her to take that course but she's too gracious to nag you but brother she's had the hints hanging out all over the place and now the moment of truth comes you can spend Tuesday night with the boys for those 13 weeks or you can go to your wife and say dear I have been waiting for an opportunity to walk over the belly of something I really wanted to do to please you

40:31 and now the time has come I want you to sign up for the macrame class you really do? yes I do oh but dear I don't want you to you have to I have to pull rank on you do I have to pull my head ship I am not doing that thing with the guys in the church I have chosen to say no to that and yes to the thing that would please you that's what it's talking about men just that practical how many times has your wife told you when she comes into the bathroom and you have left the toilet seat up it grinds her socks for some reason you say it is unreasonable beyond all comprehension why should 90 degrees difference on the toilet seat get her so ticked off well I don't know but it does there's a lot of self confession going on in this laughter and some of you men love yourself so much you won't train yourself to just go plunk that's all it takes and you know what you're saying to your wife the next time she comes in and the dumb toilet seat is still up you're saying I love

41:52 snuggly start whispering sweet nothings in her ears and she doesn't respond to you and you say she's cold no she's wounded by that practical expression of your non sacrificial self love because the only sacrifice was making yourself remember and you can a three by five cup with a red felt tip pen put on with a piece of masking tape buckle put the seat down ask your wife for permission to put it there until it becomes a habit now why do I use something that is so simple I hope you don't regard it as coarse because experience has shown me that that is a major irritant in many a Christian home a major irritant because it's an ongoing vital indispensable non-negotiable part of human experience to have to use the room where the toilet seat is you see most of us men will never have to run into a burning and carry out our wives on our shoulder and be written up in the local paper as heroes most of us will live and die

43:22 never once having been a hero the most heroic thing you may ever do is change the diapers on your kids discourage but you see it's the little drip drip drip drip the stalagmite of the little things that show you love her with a sacrificial love ready to say no to what is natural to you and to do what is not natural or to what is natural and to choose what you know will please her and you who've got moonbeams in your eyeballs what do you really look for in a period of courtship and dating you look for the symbols that this man is ready to lay down his life for you and his life is his time his interests his friends his natural inclinations remember rarely will there you must look for those little indications of sacrificial love yes I mean opening a door for you and making you feel the dignity of your womanhood I find in my own home I have to constantly bark orders to women who come visit for counseling

44:50 or come in entertainment and we have time to go and we go down by the door and they run and they start to grab the door I say uh oh stop please will you allow me to be a gentleman in my own home it tells me worlds about what their husbands are not doing sacrificial love the sacrifice that on a Monday when everything in me wants to goof off and I know the six month period is up for the heavy cleaning on the old gas stove my wife never once has asked me to do it but she doesn't have even the physical strength to pull it out she doesn't have the arm strength to really scrub and I'm not a flowers man but when I take half of my day off to pull that stove out and take it all apart and scrub the burners and all the stuff that's gotten down on the splash pan and it's gone through who knows what it's mixed boiled over tomato soup and pea juice from the peas that boiled and boiled over and all the rest to see the glow on her face when she comes home and sees her stove she knows there was a little sacrifice that's what I'm talking about and though I don't say I'm the paragon of virtue I want you to know I'm not just trafficking in notions you men you getting the idea it's gonna cost you something

46:20 and are you man enough to go home from this conference and say dear where are the areas I could sacrifice myself to demonstrate I truly love you and if you don't you don't know what I mean you're too proud to do that I wonder if you're Christian at all because the standard is Christ he loves love even as Christ loved but then the fourth quality of this love is this it is not only realistic exclusive sacrificial but it's purposeful look at verses 26 and 27 why did he love and give in order that he knew exactly what at the end he had in view in order that he might sanctify it having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word in order that he might present the church to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but it should be holy and without blemish it's a purposeful love two Hena clauses of purpose for you Greek students the perfection of the church and the presentation of the church to himself it's an amazing thing from self-sacrifice to self-interest and then in Christ he gave himself

47:48 for the church that he might present the church to himself to have what he desired in a bride he had to give what he gave to make her the only bride that was fit for a holy Christ and that's a holy bride as no priest under the old covenant could marry any but a virgin so our great high priest said I will take the vile polluted harlotry ridden sons and daughters of men and of them I'll make a pure and spotless virgin fit to be my bride for eternity as the priest king in the midst of the throne so all of his sacrifice and all of his current self-giving in nourishing and cherishing is not willy-nilly it's purposeful he loved he gave in order that he might sanctify in order that he might present it therefore as a Christian husband the quality of my love is to be like Christ I'm to love as he loved it's to be a purposeful love my love should envision a distinct purpose and what is it let me try to

49:17 summarize it I'm to aim at the spiritual physical emotional psychological and personal maturation of my wife to the end that she may be to God's glory and to my delight more and more a reflection of the purpose for which Christ died for her that's it I'm to be committed to the spiritual that's first physical emotional psychological mental and personal maturation of my wife to the end that she may be to the glory of died to make her and that will make me happy and that will make her fulfilled and she will be utterly immunized from all of the propaganda that marriage is not a bummer and that headship and subordination is a bummer she won't even need to argue with the most radical feminist she'll just shake her head and laugh and say

50:45 little do you know little do you know it's a wonderful thing years into a marriage when a wife can look into the eyes of her husband and say by the grace of God in the hands of God to make me fulfilled as a woman before God and that doesn't just happen any more than our perfection and presentation will just happen it's the result of purposeful love in Christ and when you see a woman like that it doesn't just happen it's the outworking yes of the blessing of God of the church and Christian friends I understand all of that but we are focusing on a passage which is laying upon husbands the burden of accepting this goal and giving oneself to it if you are a Christian you and I are monuments of the purposeful love of Christ to his church we're monuments that his love was not holy gosh that went nowhere and is taking us nowhere we are monuments of the purposefulness of his holy love and so should our wives

The Ground of Love: Union with Christ and One Flesh

52:13 be monuments of our purposeful love so we've looked at the quality of that love realistic exclusive sacrificial and purposeful now very quickly and more briefly the ground of this love the position from which we exercise it headship assumed consciously with a sense of stewardship before God that's the position from which we seek to fulfill our primary duty the quality of this love we've looked at its four dimensions but now what's the ground of this love verses 28 to 32 even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies he that loveth his own wife loveth himself for no man hath ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it even as Christ also the church because we are members of his body for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh this mystery is great but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife the key word in verse 28 is also which indicates the introduction of a new thought its duty

53:42 yes the word ought is there even so ought a verb which means to be indebted to be under solemn obligation even so husbands are under solemn obligation to love their own wives so we might say the ground is revealed duty that's assumed another ground brought forward and amplified and that ground has to do with the whole concept of union with Christ the whole concept of the natural self care for our own flesh and let me try to sort it out by first of all addressing this key thought in its most elementary essence Paul says that the ground of the quality of love is the essential union of the husband and wife as a picture of the union of Christ and the church that's the key the central thought Paul himself tells us this he starts out with husbands and wives gets so caught up with this thought that he says I speak concerning Christ and the church oh nevertheless back to my subject do ye each also severally love you see what happens once you get Paul into the orbit of the thought he started on the low plane of wives and husbands once he touched

55:11 union with Christ he was in orbit he says uh oh gotta get back to terra firma again this mystery is great but I speak in regard of Christ and the church nevertheless though I've been in orbit for a bit here I'm coming back to my subject that's why I don't get too distressed if occasionally a preacher in opening up point two but while in preaching he gets shot into orbit in point one and may end up half a galaxy away from where he was but so long as he's going there by the tracking devices of holy scripture under the impulse of the holy ghost no one that loves Christ will ever get upset but it is helpful when they tell you coming back to earth now and that's what Paul does in verse 33 so the central key thought is the essential union of a husband and wife is a picture of the union of Christ and the church now in the explanation of the idea a couple of propositions I trust you'll find helpful number one Christ and his church are joined in a vital spiritual union that's clearly stated in verse 30 we are members of his body verse 29 for no man ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it even

56:40 as Christ also the church Christ and his church are joined in a vital spiritual sometimes called mystical union and so vital is this union that Christ as our covenant head is incomplete without his body that's why his church filleth all in all reverently Christ is incomplete as redemptive head of his people without his body think of it he's incomplete we are the fullness of him not we partake in his fullness that is another biblical truth of his fullness we've all received but in Ephesians 1 Paul says without us he would not have a fullness so vital is the union that Christ I say reverently is incomplete without his body hence the members are so united to him that you touch them you touch him Saul Saul why persecutest thou me why do you my humble saints you touch me in as much as you've done it unto the least of these my brethren you've done it unto me and we could look

58:09 at many other passages but that proposition Christ and his church are joined in vital spiritual union this union of Christ in the church is the pattern of the union existing between husband and wife now remember similarity doesn't mean identity analogy does not mean identity and that's where you've got to watch out the deeper life teachers they take analogies and they make identities and then they end up with all kinds of nonsensical and crippling teaching but nevertheless this union of Christ is the pattern of the union existing between a husband and a wife even as because verse 29c and 30 it sets the parallel between the two there is similarity without absolute identity and then the third proposition this union of the husband and wife is culminated and expressed in the sexual relationship why did Paul import this statement out of Genesis of his body verse 30 for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh this mystery is great he says the union of the husband and wife which is analogous to the union of Christ in his church finds its culminating expression

59:38 in the sexual intimacy and that is the prime reference to the two one flesh so we have one flesh and one we have two two and three on a two one and three two and four and twenty two three and fifty and thirty and forty thirty forty forty and seventy He still do honor them and love them as mother and father, but no longer is supreme familial affection to be set upon them, but upon his wife. And he shall cleave, be attached to his wife. And what's the conclusion of all this? Now here's the nub of it, Mendelssohn, carefully.

60:39 Just as Christ's union with his people is such that he does not think or act in any other way than one which clearly manifests that to touch the members of his body is to touch him. It's not theoretical with Christ. The union, though spiritual, it is real, so real, when you touch one of the members, you touch him. Now he says, husbands and wives, in this relationship, the two-one flesh.

61:09 You are no longer to be talking about I and her, but we. We become one flesh. She becomes an extension of me, an extension of myself. Look at the text.

61:30 Even so, verse 28, ought husbands to love their wives not even as they love themselves, but as these, that is, as. He goes on to say, he that loveth his own wife, loveth himself. Why? Because she has now become one flesh with him.

Practical Implications of 'One Flesh' Union

61:55 Let me put it this way. In my 58 years of human experience, I've always had regard for all the members of my body. If my toe got stubbed, I felt it, nursed it, cared for it. If my finger touched the stove, I nursed it and cared for it.

62:10 Suppose on my 59th birthday, I should grow suddenly a third arm. Right? Out here. Perfectly normal arm, with five fingers.

62:22 And you know, there are many times you're doing a job at home, you say, man, if only I had a third hand, I could get so much more done. You know those situations? You're in a position, you're holding something back, and you're holding something back here, and you want to set it in there. You say, I need a third hand.

62:36 Well, suppose, miraculously, you grew a third arm. I know you'd have to find some way to cover it up so people wouldn't freak out when they saw you. This is illustration. This is not a suggestion.

62:48 This is not a suggestion to do something, but an illustration. You see, what I would have to begin to do from that moment on, if I judged that it was in my best interest not to have this strangely grown appendage amputated, but to keep it from there on in, I'd have to regard it as myself. It would have to have all the care that the right hand and the left hand has, and now the middle hand would have to have all the care. Its nails would have to be clipped, and if it got a thorn, it would have to be removed.

63:14 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:15 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:16 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:16 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:16 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:16 Why? Why?

63:18 Why?

63:33 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:33 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:33 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:34 Why? Why? Why? Why?

63:34 Why? Why? And for a pastime, putting his hand on a piece of wood, and with an axe, saying, Well, what shall I lop off today? Oh, I think I'll take the front joint of my left index finger.

63:45 Ka-plunk. And tomorrow, I think I'll take the front joint of my pink. and then you see him on wednesday and he's out there and he's got six inch skewers that he usually would use to his barbecuing and he's saying i think i'll stick this one through my left ear today and the next day he's out there and says i think it'd be nice to stick one through from the left cheek to the right cheek he said when did you see a man hating his own flesh maybe a crazy man maybe a demon possessed man who cut himself but no normal rational man what's he do why the stinker will act like he's dying if he just got a splinter and he wants the whole household all to stop while they pull out his why he nourishes and cherishes his flesh if you don't believe it let something happen to his flesh we used to have a little kid in our neighborhood when we played indians and western cowboys and cops and robbers and every time you'd shoot him sonny yates and go you're dead he'd duck down and say i ain't killed you're only ruined it i'm only ruined it he couldn't pronounce his w so the term you ain't killed you're only ruined it became famous in our household one of us would come running in you know with all kinds of blood on our knee and we'd think we were dying and my mother would say son you ain't killed you're only ruined it sit down we'll

65:13 start to clean you up why because no man hates his flesh he nourishes and cherishes it even as christ his body which he now he says husbands the ground of your love to your wife is she is a part of yourself what a revolutionary concept when in wrought by the holy ghost i will then be a solicitous for my wife's well-being in the totality of her redeemed humanity as i am for mine am i concerned that my soul is nourished by a consistent devotional life i'll have the same concern for my wife there's some of you men months have gone and you couldn't tell under oath whether your wife has her devotions shame on you you're not nourishing her relationship to christ there's some of you is that she's struggling along spiritual matters you don't love her as an extension of yourself the ground of is to be the acceptance of this reality live in every single area of your life

66:41 what you declare every time your intimate in your bed and though i know we have the young people here i will speak to speak to you and you don't need to get this concept of biblical sexuality we're all you get is the pictures of the gene ads and everything else that show people as though they're animals in heat that has nothing to do with biblical sexuality in a very real sense what paul is saying is this If you're to be a biblical husband, the ground of your love must be understood this way. When you leave the bedroom, live out in every detail of your life what you declared in the intimacy of your bed. You've declared we're one flesh. Now leave the bedroom and live that way.

67:32 That's what he's saying.

67:37 And don't leave half your flesh behind in the bedroom when you're done getting what you want from her flesh.

67:46 Live in that reality. So that when you're planning your vacation, it's not what do I like to do. Where do I like to go? There's a part of me which ends with my two hands, but I consider that third one I've grown, my wife.

68:08 And I say, what pleases me, that part of me that is her.

Living Out the 'One Flesh' Reality in Daily Life

68:17 What would make these two weeks most meaningful to her? I have a lot of people that don't understand why I don't take my wife with me when I go off in all these meetings. Especially. Especially when, as with your conference, she's graciously invited.

68:33 You know what the major reason is?

68:37 Because it would be an act of selfishness to demand that she come. I don't need to say, honey, will you come? But I know that for my wife and the way God's put her together, she needs to get up in the morning and know she has meaningful self-giving service to render to others. And at conferences, she's the woman in the way when I need the room to prepare.

69:01 She's the lady in waiting that people fondle, that they care over her and provide for her. God's given her a heart to serve. And when she gets up in the morning, she wants to have her list of things to do in which she can pour out her life in service to others. Shall I, for the selfishness of having her to snuggle up at night because rest of the day I'm working and amongst people in counseling, as I have been.

69:30 this conference be a cruel and selfish thing to say dear i demand you come with me all i need to say is i want you to come she's a submissive wife she'd come but if i'm thinking in terms of she's an extension of myself then i count it my privilege when she says honey are you sure you really wouldn't rather that i come i say no i'd rather you be and do where you're going to be most happy now there are other dimensions and this is not the full story i'm just giving you a part of it to try again especially for some of you younger men to pass on that this stuff really works and it really meets you in real decisions that involve real places and events and i want you to know her reason for not being here is not a lack of love for any one of you but when she's got a sickly daughter that any given day may need to have mom take her grocery shopping and when she's got a pregnant daughter who misses so much having mom at her side during this precious time when after seven years she's with child and something special happens and she wants to call her mom and mom's not there what a selfish wretch i'd be to say

70:55 honey you're my wife come with me we're secure enough after 36 years that the phone calls where we share and that's a little ritual we have every night she brings her day into mine and i bring mine into hers now am i saying you must do the same no some of you you better take your wife with you everywhere or she'll think you don't love her you see you can't set up the rules and don't anyone go out with my illustration and make a rule for some of you men if your wives aren't with you it would be an indication you are not regarding her as an extension of yourself you see the outworking of it is distinctively individual and personal but the principle is divinely mandated so that's the ground of it our time is gone i'll save my exhortations to the last moment men to the last session all right because it is 1209 and i don't want to be held back from the photograph and from your lunch but i just plead with you men to ponder the exposition done very little applying but may the holy ghost make the applications and may some of you have solemn dealings tonight when the kids are asleep

Concluding Exhortation and Prayer

72:15 i'll even offer this baby sit outside your door if you need a half an hour to go out and take a walk and talk together that's a bona fide offer available to the highest bidder let's pray together father we thank you for your word oh how refreshing it is to step into the pure air of your word away from all the polluted and foul air of the thinking of the so-called specialists and the experts and the sociologists we thank you that you have been ennobled and wonderfully exalted the marriage relationship and set the cross and the person of your son at the center of it and oh that he may be the one from whom all the lines and contours of our marriage are taken lord help the men who perhaps have heard things today that have shattered us and are now seeing things so much harder for us in our marriage than they ever would have things today that have shattered them expose their crass selfishness Lord may they go down in brokenness Lord don't let them heal slightly their wound may they lay it bare till you have taken the scalpel of your word and cut out all of the existing cancer of crass self-centeredness

73:39 lovelessness tyrannical headship oh God excise all of these cancerous cells from our breasts then pour in the healing balm of your grace and then Lord teach us to be men who when people look upon us will have just some little idea of how Christ loves his church hear our prayer and seal your word to our hearts we pray in Jesus name amen