Marriage and Redemption (e)

Introduction: The Context of Marriage and Redemption

0:03 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, June 23, 2002, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:14 As I indicated in introducing our earlier scripture reading, I shall now read in your hearing Ephesians chapter 5, beginning at verse 15. In light of the previous call to walk in love in relationship to all of our brothers and sisters, to walk in purity, to walk as children of the light, the Apostle writes, Look therefore carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore do not be foolish. But understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine wherein is riot.

1:10 But be filled with the Spirit, speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, subjecting yourselves one to another. Subjecting yourselves one to another in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, Subjecting yourselves one to another in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, in the fear of Christ. Wives, subject yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, being himself the Savior of the body.

1:54 But as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their husbands, husbands in everything.

2:07 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself, a glorious church, 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 loves his own wife loves himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ also the church, because we are members of his body. But the Bible says, 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 you also severally love each one his own wife, even as himself?

3:30 And let the wife see that she fear. Or reverence her husband.

3:38 Someone who just began to attend this place of worship a few weeks ago might leave this morning and mutter under his breath or to someone else, well, all they preach about in that place is marriage, motherhood, and homemaking. Well, such an evaluation and judgment would be both unfair and untrue over the course of what will be 40 years. We have sought to preach the whole counsel of God, and to be honest with all of Scripture. However, it is true that the past several weeks our attention has been focused upon this vital theme.

4:24 And after giving what in my judgment are two compelling biblical reasons for addressing the subject of marriage, motherhood, and homemaking, and laying before you two important, biblical qualifications as we take up that subject, I asserted that we, if we are to think as we ought about these vital issues, must think of them in the light of the biblical doctrines of creation, of fall, and of redemption. And having already examined these realities in their pristine beauty and glory in the original created order in Eden, and having examined the devastating impact of the fall upon marriage, motherhood, and homemaking, we are now looking at these institutions and relationships and activities in the light of redemption. And I have defined redemption in its broadest sense as God's sovereign, gracious rescue and restoration project procured in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, and applied with power by the person and ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Now as we take up these matters one by one, that is, marriage in the light of redemption,

5:49 then motherhood, and then homemaking, I stated that there was no more critical passage on the subject of a redeemed marriage than Ephesians 5, verses 22 to 33. And as we came to this passage, I took a whole Lord's Day to identify what I called the prerequisites for a redeemed marriage. And my thesis basically was this. When Paul wrote, verse 22, wives and told them what they are to do if they are to be wives reflecting God's redemptive grace.

6:25 And when he said husbands in verse 25, and what he tells husbands to do if they are to reflect the dynamics of redemptive grace, he is presupposing that every one of those wives and every one of those husbands meets the prerequisites essential to any reasonable compliance with those directives. And I stated that those prerequisites were a vital participation in the salvation described in the first two chapters of this letter, and a commitment to the perspectives of Christian living that are outlined in chapters 4 and 5 all the way up to the passage that is before us. Paul did not detach his directives for a redeemed marriage from all that he had previously said was true of these redeemed men and women. And we must continually keep ourselves within that orbit of apostolic thought that what we are called upon to do as believers is rooted in what we have become in Christ. And we cannot do what we are called upon to do

The Assumed Context: Husband's Headship

7:44 apart from the dynamics of grace in the light of who and what we are in Christ Jesus. Well, we spent last Lord's Day then seeking to unpack God's redemptive directive to wives as contained in this passage, and we saw in our study that that redemptive directive, in its essence, is very straightforward. Wives, be submissive, or better rendered, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. And then we considered some of the qualifying and explanatory aspects of that submission as contained in verse 22. 23, 24, and 33b. Now then, we come this morning to take up, and again this evening, God's redemptive directive to Christian husbands. And as we do, I want us to notice, first of all this morning, what I'm calling the assumed context of this redemptive directive to Christian husbands.

8:56 When Paul writes to Christian husbands, beginning in verse 25 continuing all the way down to 33a, there is an assumed context of every facet of his directive to these Christian husbands. When he says, husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church. When he says, even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. When he says, furthermore, nevertheless, do you also severally each one love his own wife, even as himself, there is not only in Paul's mind these prerequisites, these mighty aspects of God's gracious saving work deposited and effected in the hearts and lives of these husbands, but there is an assumed context as husbands with respect to this redemptive directive to the husbands. And what is that assumed context? Well, the assumed context is the reality of the husband's relationship to the wife as head. In other words, when Paul writes in verse 25, husbands, love your wives,

10:19 where does he see those husbands placed in relationship to their wives? Well, he's already told us that. Verse 23, For the husband is the head of the wife. He didn't say the husband ought to be.

10:35 He ought to strive to be. If he can get his wife to capitulate that he should be, he may eventually become. No. Husband is head.

10:45 He may be bad head. He may be poor head. He may be woolly headed head. He may be any kind of head.

10:52 But he is head by divine appointment. And surely as Christ is head of the church, husband is head of the wife. So in telling the husband to love, he is assuming that these husbands recognize that they have been constituted head, and that they are willing to bear the burden and the responsibility of that divine appointment to headship in the marriage relationship. Further, when the apostle goes on and speaks to wives saying, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything, he is assuming these husbands have faced squarely the responsibility and appointment by God to be proactive and hands-on administrators of the marriage relationship in everything. How can a wife be subject to a husband in everything who is a husband who doesn't see and own that he's responsible to be her head in everything? You follow me? So he's assuming.

12:15 He doesn't stop to say, now husbands, take up your headship. Take up your headship in everything. That's assumed. He states it as a matter of fact.

12:25 Husband is head of the wife. So when he comes to say to the husbands, now you are to love your wives, and you are to love by a two-fold pattern that we shall see in the unpacking of the passage, the assumed context of this redemptive directive to husbands is that these husbands are conscious that co-extensive, with the marital relationship is their responsibility to be head in that relationship. Nothing in the redemptive directive to Christian husbands is intended to dilute, let alone to neutralize the clear teaching of the husbands' divinely established male leadership. Rather, the directive to Christian husbands is intended to slay all selfish, insensitive, domineering, and tyrannical aspects of male headship, and to suffuse that headship with the glory of the loving, self-giving, nurturing, and cherishing headship of Christ.

13:53 In relationship to his church. Now I want to park on that matter by way of application for a little bit because it's critical. The purpose of these directives to Christian husbands is to strip from the institution of marriage the tattered, smelly, moth-eaten garments of a sin-infested headship, and in its place to clothe male headship with the beautiful, the clean, the fragrant garment of Christ-like headship. You got the imagery?

14:32 The intention of these directives is not to neuter headship. It is not to shift the husband from his divinely appointed place's head. It's to strip off the garments that make headship ugly, and smelly, and unattractive, and to make it beautiful. It is not to slay real headship, but to slay all that is sinful and un-Christ-like in that headship.

15:01 Now why do I make that emphasis so forcefully? For this simple reason. The so-called evangelical feminist movement, and I don't like to use the terminology, to me it's an oxymoron. To me it's like talking about a hateful, loving man.

15:17 If you're an evangelical who believes the Bible, you can't be a feminist. An intelligent, self-committed, self-conscious feminist. But anyway, it's called the evangelical feminist movement. Their perspective is this.

15:33 The more the dynamics of redemption enter the marriage relationship, the less there will be of any concept of a hierarchical relationship in that marriage. You follow me? So the mark of a redeemed marriage is in direct proportion to the dissolving and dismantling of any concept of headship in the marriage. Redemption equals an egalitarian marriage, where you have equal partners mutually submitting to one another without any concept of authoritative headship deposited in the husband.

16:16 Now that's not a caricature. I can support that with their own literature. They turn out their books by the dozens. Now we've got to understand that in the context of this passage, that is not so.

16:34 And one eminently brilliant, thoroughly biblically committed, astute, courageous woman you can tell I really respect her. She went to a convention of these so-called evangelical feminists. And when they were spewing out this stuff that headship was a matter of the result of the fall and they misinterpret and misapply Genesis 3.16 thy desire to be to thy husband he shall rule over thee, something spoken after the fall, that the closer we come to an ideal, redeemed marriage, the closer we will come to a total egalitarian marriage in which the concepts of submission and headship are obliterated.

17:15 And this woman had the courage to stand up and say, so then, you would have us rewriting, write our Bibles. And then she quoted verse 24. For as Christ is subject to the church, so let the husbands be to their wives in everything. At which point the discussion ended.

17:38 But she had both the perception and the moral courage to stick it to them where they needed to have it stuck to them. And you're going to be facing this. Some of you are going off to Christian colleges. You're going to face it in Christian colleges.

17:53 You'll face the more raw, disgusting forms of feminism in your secular colleges. You'll face the sophisticated form of feminism in Christian colleges. And you need to have your understanding and your conscience riveted to your Bible. When the apostle writes, husbands, love your wives.

18:15 Whatever servant-loving leadership is, don't end up bleeding out the word leadership. I had one of our own members tell me a week ago or two weeks ago, he said, you know pastor, I go to the marriages of some of my friends from college, and they so emphasize the husbands' loving leadership, that by the time they're done, leadership has just become a word. So remember, there is an assumed context of whatever Paul says to the husbands, it's husbands who are constituted head of the wife in just as clear a structured relationship as Christ is head of the wife. And he assumes that these husbands have in the presence of God faced the responsibility that rests upon them by divine appointment. Once the two have become one flesh, husband is head as Christ also is head of the church. So that's the assumed context of this redemptive directive to Christian husbands. Now then, secondly, consider with me what I'm calling the essence of the redemptive directive to Christian husbands.

The Essence of the Directive: To Love Your Wives

19:35 What is the essence? Well, it should be clear from a cursory reading of the passage, as surely as the essence of the redemptive directive to Christian wives is submit yourself to your husband. Her personal, voluntary subjugation of herself to her husband's headship. So the essence of the directive to husbands is to love their own wives.

20:08 Look at it, verse 25. Husbands present active imperative of the verb agapao, to love with agape love. Husbands, you are under solemn obligation to love your wives. Continuous obligation to love your wives.

20:30 Husbands present active imperative. Husbands, be continually loving your wives. The essence of the redemptive directive is be continually loving your wives. Verse 28.

20:46 Even so, ought, and the word translated ought, the Greek word ophelo, used as a present accusative, is the word that speaks of solemn moral obligation. It's the word you would use when you say to someone you ought to pay that debt. You are under a solemn legal obligation to make that debt good. That's the word that's used.

21:12 Every Christian husband, from his posture of divinely appointed headship, is under a constant, inescapable moral obligation than a present participle of agapao. To be continually loving his wife as his own body. Even so, ought, even so are husbands under continuous, inescapable, solemn moral obligation to be loving their own wives. And then verse 33 in the summary statement.

21:46 Nevertheless, do you also severally love each one his own wife? You see the difference in the nuance of emphasis? We move from third-person plurals to third-person singulars. Third-person singular verb, third-person singular nouns and pronouns. He brings it down into the theater of each individual husband. And he's boxing off every husband in the Ephesian congregation saying, now, are you a husband Henry? You a husband George? You a husband Pete? This is for you.

22:25 Each one of you husbands, you are severally, individually, specifically, personally to love each one of you, his own wife, even as himself. Now it's interesting, isn't it, that when God is giving to women the essence of their redemptive directive, he doesn't use the verb directly to them once. It's carried down from verse 21 as we saw in our exegesis last week a participle, submitting yourselves one to another, wives unto your own husbands. And we supply the verb which has imperitival pressure, but there is no explicit use of an imperative verb. But it's clear that that has that flavor. And then in verse 24, as the church is in subjection to Christ, so let the wives be. There is in essence a very weak but clear setting forth of the essence of the wife's redemptive responsibility.

23:29 No question about it. But when it comes to us dodos, I'll call us dodos today. I won't use the other word. God says it explicitly, not once with a present imperative, not a second time with a present indicative of solemn moral obligation and a present participle to be continually loving.

23:55 But then he says it with another imperative and bringing it into every individual husband and say, hey, if you didn't get the message, you dodos at Ephesus, you husbands generically, I'm coming to the theater of every man's conscience in the presence of God and I'm telling you individually and specifically each one of you husbands. You got a ring on your finger? You got a woman called your wife? This is for you. You got a lover.

24:24 You got a lover. At all times, in all circumstances, when she's very lovely and lovable and when she is not lovely and unlovable, when everything in you feels like loving her and when everything in you does not have a twitch of desire to love her. The essence of your obligation is to love her. To love her at all times. To love her in all circumstances. To love her in all of the vicissitudes of your married life. Husbands, here is your directive. Here is mine. I'm a husband.

25:11 God says, alright, I'm going to get it through to you with clarity. Three times I'm going to tell you, love her. Love her. Love her. Certainly then the essence of the directive to husbands is not, you husbands, subordinate and subdue them. And a word in the Bible that tells husbands to subordinate and subdue their wives. You cannot force submission upon your wife. She must render it as a voluntary, personal act before the eye of God to you, her husband, or she will not be submissive. God directs her

25:56 and says submit yourself to your husband. The essence of a husband's directive is not subordinate and subdue your wives. Rule and govern your wives. Lead and direct your wives.

26:11 The assumed context is that insofar as those duties are part of taking the burden of headship, yes, you will govern. You will lead. You will be proactive in the marriage relationship. But the essence of the directive is not to rule, to govern, to lead.

26:33 It is certainly to oppress them, to stifle them, to demean, to denigrate. No. It is to love them. To love them. But now the inevitable question which arises. What does it mean when it says to love them? I thought love was something you fell into and you fell out of. Didn't love something? I fell in love.

Defining Agape Love: Beyond Feelings

27:01 Husbands, if you happen to fall, love. No. He said love them. Whether you are in or out, love them.

27:12 Whether you feel like you are in love or whether you feel like you are out of love, it doesn't make a big difference. Your husband, she is your wife, love her. What in the world does it mean? Well, as most of you know, the Bible nowhere gives us a neat, simple, compact, tidy statement of what it means to love with agape love any more than it gives us a nice, neat, compact, succinct statement of what it means to believe.

27:39 We do have 1 Corinthians 13 which is probably the closest to a neat, compact, comprehensive, beautiful statement of what love looks like in the midst of interpersonal relationships. So in that sense, you husbands want to know what God is telling you to do in Ephesians 5? You go home and write over 1 Corinthians 13 in your Bible. This is what I am and to be and to do in relation to my wife.

28:09 Love suffers long and is kind, is patient, seeks not his own, is not puffed up, is not easily provoked, believes, hopes. And you say, Lord, help me to manifest these things that I might be loving my wife. But because the love is commanded and it's identified as a constant duty, this much should be clear. That whatever the world thinks about love, marital love, something you fall into and then you can fall out of, it has nothing what's whatsoever to do with the essence of your redemptive duty as a Christian husband or mine.

28:53 This love, whatever it is, is commanded. No one can command me to get twitterpated. But I can be commanded to love. And I am, as a husband, commanded to love.

29:10 What then is this agape love? One of the most helpful brief descriptions and definitions, and he sticks with it all the way through his commentaries, is given by Lenski, my favorite Lutheran commentator. And Lenski, in opening up John 3 16, for God so loved the world, he gives this seminal definition of what that kind of agape love is. And he refers to it again and again throughout his commentary.

29:41 And I feel, if it's not the best statement of it, it at least gets close to the heart of it. He says, in agape lies full understanding and true comprehension coupled with a corresponding blessed purpose. God so loved the world. He had, in loving the world, full understanding and true comprehension of what the world is and was.

30:09 In all of its ugliness, in all of its vileness, in all of its rebellion and hell deservingness, with full understanding and true comprehension coupled with a corresponding blessed purpose. That purpose being that in the sending of His Son, He would rescue a people through the death of His Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Then he goes on to say, how could God like the sinful, foul, stinking world? How could He embrace and kiss it? He would have to turn from it in revulsion. But He could, and He did love it. Comprehending all its sin and foulness, purposing to cleanse it and thus cleanse to take it to His bosom. We see this force of agapao whenever it is used. For instance,

31:03 in the command to love our enemies. This is the same word used. When Paul says, Husband, love your wives, it's the same word used in the same form when we're told to love our enemies. Am I to get Twitter painted over my enemies and get the fuzzies over my enemies and feel romantic drawing and attachment to my enemies? Of course not.

31:25 Lenski goes on to say, of course not. We cannot embrace and kiss an enemy. He'd smite, revile, thrust us away, as did the Jews with Jesus. But we can see the baseness and wickedness in the action of an enemy and by the grace of God we can do all within our power to overcome it. It is a love rooted in comprehension, full understanding, joined with a corresponding blessed purpose. I want to overcome the cause of the enmity in the heart of my enemy. I want to do him good. I can love my enemy in that sense.

Contrasting Love: Disposition and Action, Not Feeling

32:03 And so when we think of this command, Husbands, love your wives, it is a command that we should know that love which is marked by full understanding, true comprehension coupled with a corresponding blessed purpose. Now let me give you some contrasting statements. I've labored over these thinking that maybe one that doesn't strike someone may strike another. We are not commanded, my brothers, to experience a certain feeling in the detached contemplation of our wives. Rather, we are commanded to maintain a disposition and to choose a course of action in the realistic interaction with our wives. You following me? I sit up in my study working on this. And my wife is downstairs thirty feet away.

33:01 And I say, Lord, do I love that woman down there? I say, yes I do. And if I sit and contemplate there are times when the felt affinity of romantic attachment will suffuse my spirit, I'll come downstairs and hug her and tell her I love her. Is that what Paul is saying? Get alone, and in detached contemplation of your wife, feel great love. No. We are not commanded to experience a certain feeling in the detached contemplation of our wives. Rather, we are commanded to maintain a disposition and choose a course of action in the realistic interaction with our wives.

33:50 That means, if I know that in her present state of weakness she needs to have somebody take the laundry basket down two levels to the laundry room, and I've got something else at that moment I want to do. The love commanded means what? That I maintain a disposition and choose a course of action in that realistic interaction that shows her needs are more important than my present desires. Paul captures this in the parallel passage in Colossians 3 where he gives a condensed table of family laws.

34:31 And he says, husbands, love your wives, same directive. But then he says, and be not bitter against them. Now that word, be not bitter, is the same one used when John said, I ate the roll and it became bitter in my stomach. Sour.

34:51 See, Paul says, now you husbands, I know that in the realistic interaction with their wives they're going to do things that in themselves left to work out their natural impact upon you will make you bitter. But you have no right to indulge it. You're to love them in the realistic interaction with them even when they do things that in themselves would make any rational person bitter. You're still to love them in the realism and the understanding of what is the disposition of commitment to her good remains unmoved and undisplaced by what she's done or what she is at that moment. We are not commanded to experience a certain feeling in the detached contemplation of our wives. We're commanded to maintain a disposition and to choose a course of action in the realistic interaction with our wives. Let me give you another contrasting thing. The love commanded

36:04 is not a feeling to be sought, but a way of life to be learned. Not a feeling to be sought, a way of life to be learned. The love commanded is not rooted in the elusive and mysterious chemistry of romantic attraction. Rather it is rooted in the objective pattern and provision of redemptive grace and the evident pattern of legitimate self interest. Now let me unpack that.

36:42 The love commanded is not rooted in the elusive and mysterious chemistry of romantic attraction. It may be surrounded with it at any given point in a marriage when you will feel head over heels all in love with your wife. I feel that way at times even after 46 years. But that's not the love commanded here.

37:04 It's not rooted in this elusive and mysterious chemistry of romantic attraction. Why does Bambi get twitterpated with Feline and not with another Doe? Shall we resurrect Walt Disney and ask him? Why do you get twitterpated with John and not with Henry?

37:26 And with Mary and not with Salary? Romantic involvement is a most elusive thing. Very elusive. Very mysterious. Poets write dreams about it. And philosophers stretch their great brains until they're weary and poop out. Mysterious and elusive. Why in the world did I get a dose of excessive twitterpation in the spring of 1952 when I saw that woman that sits here this morning?

38:08 I can't tell you, but I know it was real. Asked me to explain it. I couldn't explain it. I didn't know her from Adam.

38:16 She could have been a witch with a beautiful smile and nice brown eyes. I still got twitterpated. I didn't know her. But a good dose of twitterpation.

38:28 Can you explain this elusive and mysterious thing of romantic attraction? When you can, announce it to the world. You'll make a lot of money. This love, man. Hear me, man.

38:42 It is not rooted in that elusive and mysterious chemistry of romantic attraction. It is rooted in the objective pattern and provisions of redemptive grace. Husbands, love as Christ loved. And you husbands who are called upon to love, you have been previously loved and saved by a condescending redeemer who gave himself up for you.

39:10 And love in Christ to you begets love in you for your wife. You have both the pattern and the dynamics of redemptive grace. And as we'll see in this passage, you have also the obvious patterns of legitimate self-love. Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

39:30 You don't need to have anybody teach you what it is to love your own body. Your mama didn't have to teach you when you got a sliver. You got to come to her and tell her take it out. You came running, my body.

39:45 Nobody had to teach you. It's instinctive. This love commanded, I say, is not rooted in the elusive and mysterious chemistry of romantic attraction. It's rooted in the objective pattern and provisions of redemptive grace and the evident patterns of legitimate self-love.

The Fuel of Love: Divine Grace, Not Subjective Feelings

40:06 The love commanded, here's my third attempt to talk around it, the love commanded is not fueled by the changing impulses and degrees of subjective feeling. Rather, it is fueled by the constant and predictable supplies of divine grace. When God says to me as a husband, love your wife, that love commanded is not fueled by the changing impulses and degrees of subjective feelings. Rather, it's fueled by the constant and predictable supplies of divine grace.

40:49 Abide in me and I in you. Apart from me you can do nothing. Abide in me and you bear much fruit. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

41:04 In those moments and in those days when the measure of the atmosphere of romantic love is barely discernible and there emerges in your wife that which in and of itself would precipitate bitterness, at that point you can love her with as much biblical love as at those times when the atmosphere is dripping the dew of romantic passion. And she's the most lovable creature in all the world. Why? Because that love is fueled by predictable, redemptive grace promised to us in Jesus Christ. Now let me give you Albert M's attempt to define this love. I don't claim that an angel came down and moved my pen, but I've tried to put it to the test and use this definition in passage after passage where we're commanded to love. And I think it fits fairly well. If you can improve

42:19 on it, help me. I say that sincerely. When the apostle says by the Spirit of God, you husbands, you want to redeem marriage? This is what you've got to do. You've got to love your wife.

42:29 At all times, in all circumstances, irrespective of who she is and what she is and what you feel at any given moment, you're to love your wife. What is he telling us to do? The love commanded is a Spirit produced, God-like disposition of the heart that desires, wills, and seeks the good of its object even at great personal cost. That's what Paul's talking about.

43:05 This is the same apostle who wrote and said, the fruit of the Spirit is what? Love. The fruit of the Spirit, apart from the indwelling and constant provisions of the grace of the Spirit. We cannot know this kind of agape love.

43:26 We are self-centered and self-serving and self-seeking. We live unto ourselves, 2 Corinthians 5 15. But when we've been regenerated and indwelt by the Spirit of God and we have known the impact of being loved by a selfless, sacrificial Savior who loved us with a disposition of His heart that desired and willed and sought our good at great personal cost, then we can love with a love that is a Spirit produced, God-like disposition of the heart that desires, wills, and seeks the good of its object, our wives, even at great personal cost. Now when directed towards one's wife, this love will be overlaid with varying degrees of romantic warmth and passion. And it ought to be, and there ought to be a growing measure of it. When I pray for my friends, and when I pray for my fellow office-bearers in this church, you know one of the things I pray for them almost every single week when I pray for them?

44:45 Lord, bless their marriages, keep their communication open with their wives, and Lord, deepen their passion one for another. I pray that for you men. God will deepen your passionate attachment to your wife. However, this illustration may help you.

The Ocean Floor Analogy: Stable Love Amidst Changing Passions

45:08 I want you to think of the ocean floor. Solid, stable ocean floor. Some of you say, oh yes, but there are...

45:16 I know that, but for the sake of illustration, some of you techniques, I know there are parts of the ocean floor very unstable. Please don't come up afterwards and instruct me, but I want to use an illustration. Think of a part of the ocean floor that's been basically undisturbed for millennia. Think of the waves above it. At times the sea has been calm as glass. Other times there's been a slight chop. Other times tumultuous seas disturbed like the Sea of Galilee when one of those storms came down upon it. Think of the tremendous range in what happens in the water above the ocean floor.

45:57 And there the ocean floor, undisturbed by all this quiet or tumult above it. That's something akin to what we have in this passage. Husbands, love your wives with a love that's like the ocean floor. That in varying times, the levels and the consciousness of romantic passion may be pretty much like a calm sea there, but doesn't attract much notice. Other times there may be four foot waves. Your wife gives you that particular look that she knows gets to you. Just like that. There's a surge of romantic attraction and passion. And there are other times, I mean the waves are crashing. Alright? If you're married and you don't know what I'm talking about, you've got a problem in your marriage. Okay?

46:49 Most of you guys are looking at me with a very knowing look. And most of you wives are dropping your head with a kind of modest embarrassment. But that's reality. Now what Paul is saying to these Christian husbands, if you're going to have a redeemed marriage, you've got to learn the pattern of love that is like the ocean floor. It is not disturbed by the differences in the state of the waves above it. And you see, even wives have to learn to love with this kind of love. That's why in the Titus passage that we'll look at in another connection down the road a few weeks, God willing, he says the older women are to return the younger women to sober thinking. That's the verb.

47:36 Unusual verb. With respect to their domestic duties and privileges, and one of them is the older women are to return the younger women to sober thinking to love their husbands. You've got to learn this kind of love. This kind of love doesn't come naturally.

Duty and Delight: A Call to Commitment

47:55 It must be learned. It must be acquired in the dynamics of grace and in the patterns of the biblical standards that are set before us in such passages as the one that we're examining. So then, in summary, this love commanded my brothers who are husbands. It is a commitment to love another in this way that will enable a couple to say in their vows, these things I vow as long as we both shall live. Do you know that's been changed in many contemporary wedding liturgies? And it goes like this. These things we vow to keep as long as we both shall love. And it sounds so right.

48:52 Surely if a husband and a wife maintain the ring on their finger, live under the same roof, and they have fallen out of love, when what brought them to their rings and under the roof was their love, isn't that the essence of hypocrisy? So when we fall out of love, then we dissolve the marriage. Otherwise it's hypocritical to remain as husband and wife. Whether you know it or not, that's the philosophy that rules the day, folks. Be not conformed to this age. If the only thing that brings you to a roof, a common roof and rings on your fingers, is that you quote, fell in love, you may well soon fall out of love. In the realism of two sinners living together, there will be far more to create bitterness and keep the waves crashing above the ocean floor. So you who are unmarried, think very clearly. When you're

49:55 contemplating marriage, is this the man? Is this the woman? You husbands especially, you boys, you young men, is this the woman? To whom I'm ready to make a commitment to love in this way, in a context of realism and comprehension, joined to a commitment of desire to do her good. I am prepared to commit myself to a life long life of love. To love her. To love her in terms of this biblical concept of love. And I want to say a word to you wives here. I just must.

50:38 I know for the average woman, for you to think that my husband loves me as a matter of duty seems so unromantic. I've had my wife ask me a few times in the course of our marriage, are you doing this because you love me or because it's your duty? It's both. Because I love you, in obedience to my Lord's word to me, I count it my privilege to do this. So you wives, don't be upset and think it's very unromantic when your husband out of a sense of duty loves you because it is his duty. God says so ought husbands to love. So are husbands under solemn moral obligation. Should they feel that obligation?

51:38 Don't make duty and delight enemies. I delight to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart. Well, Lord Jesus, are you doing it out of delight or because it's your duty? Both.

51:56 Don't set up a false dichotomy. So you wives, don't discourage the very thing God commands your husband to do. He's to love you because he loves Christ and Christ says if you love me keep my commandments and what's Christ's commandment to him as a husband? Love your wife. With what kind of love? Living in the tumult of the waves above the ocean floor? I can't command. I can't command.

52:20 And control the levels of romantic passion. They are outside my control. And I have no promise that the fruit of the Spirit is tons of tumultuous romantic passion with ever increasing tumult. But I can plead with God for ever increasing measures of the fruit of the Spirit which is love.

The Pattern of Love: Christ and Self-Love

52:44 Well then, very quickly, just to set the framework to whet your appetite for tonight, we've looked at the assumed context of this redemptive directive to husbands. Secondly, the essence of this redemptive directive. Now thirdly, and I say this is just going to be spreading the table. What is the pattern of this redemptive directive to Christian husbands? What is the pattern of this redemptive directive? Well as we read and reflect upon Ephesians 5 25 to 33 A, it will soon become clear to us that the command to love is to find expression in terms of two distinct shapes or patterns. And the first is, I mean first of all, let's just identify those patterns. Note the common source of those patterns.

53:41 What is the identification of the two-fold pattern? Well look at verse 25 to 27. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church, gave himself for it, that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it, that he might present it, having no spot nor wrinkle or any such thing. The first pattern for my love to my wife is the pattern of Christ's love for his church.

54:14 But now in verse 28 notice there's a second pattern. Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies. For he who loves his own wife loves himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.

54:36 Verse 33 Nevertheless do you also severally love each one his own wife even as himself. You see the two even as's. Love her as Christ loved the church. Love her as you love yourself.

54:59 You see that with your eyes in your bible. Took me years before I saw it. I couldn't believe I'd been so thick headed or so blinded. Two fold pattern of the husband's love. Now here again does God know this is more difficult for us than for our wives? He gives one pattern to the wife. Be subject to your husbands as Christ is to the church. He says to us husbands I need to give you a two pronged pattern. You are to love as Christ loved the church. You are to love as you love yourself. As you love your own body. That's the identification of the two fold pattern.

55:41 But now I want you to notice that there is a common denominator and substructure to that two fold pattern. In our responsibility men as husbands to love our wives as Christ loved the church. The whole context of that is we are to love our wives as Christ loved the church as his bride. But when it comes to what is the ultimate standard of even our self love. He goes beyond the individual Christian husband and even brings in Christ as the highest example of legitimate self love. Look at it in the text. Even so ought husbands to love their own wives as their own bodies. Verse 28. He that loves his

56:28 own wife loves himself. No man ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it even as Christ also the church. Because we are members of his body. So the unifying fabric of the two pronged pattern is Christ and his relationship to his people. On the one hand Christ in relation to his bride. Christ in relationship to his body. Isn't that beautiful? He says husbands I am going to soak you with Jesus.

56:58 You want to love your wife as you are? You got to have a Jesus soaked heart in mind. And when you think of your love to your wife in its self sacrificing dimensions. Think of Christ's love for his people as his bride.

57:18 Think of what it is to love your wife as yourself. Think of Christ's love for his body. And how he nourishes and how he cherishes his body. You see why we spent a whole week on the prerequisites? You take Christ and the realities of redemptive grace and all that that grace produces in bringing hell deserving defiled rotten stinking filthy sinners to be a beautiful bride through the death and work of Christ. Take that out of here. There is nothing left. But a few moralistic suggestions take out the truth of the union of believers with Christ so we become his mystic body. He's the head and we are his living members. And it's incongruous that he be indifferent to the members of his body that he purchased with his own blood. It's that truth that is to so percolate the heart of a Christian husband that when it comes to loving his wife he's got the stuff with which to do it. He's got the redemptive realities within his soul and the power and enabling grace of God's salvation. Well,

Conclusion: The Necessity of Redemption for True Love

58:31 that's what we hope to look at, God willing, tonight and probably going to spill over the next week. I told Pastor Carlson, talking to him at 10.30 last night, I didn't know how to divide the baby. But I think I've laid out enough to stimulate your thought this morning.

58:45 Let me close with this very simple but I trust helpful word of application. Do you see, as I've already asked, I'll ask again, do you see why I took the time to lay out those prerequisites for a redemptive marriage? Without them. Without them.

59:04 Paul's language, in essence, makes no sense. There may be some of you sitting here and the idea of Christ loving the church, giving himself for it, big deal. What's that have to say to me? You see, until you've been conquered by the love of Christ for his own, until you've been humbled and broken and wooed and won by the heavenly bridegroom, you won't have a clue what it is to really love your wife. Until you know what it is to be part of his body and know something of Christ's nourishing and cherishing of you as a member of his body, you won't have a clue what it means to nourish and cherish your wife. You see, my friend, you can't be the husband you ought to be until you're a Christian. You've got to get saved. You young people who see the fruit of redemptive grace in the marriages around you, you can't have it without the roots of it.

59:57 If there's no other reason than to go to Christ, go to Christ! That you might know something of the blessedness of this kind of marriage and not the living hell that so many know. And to which the proliferation of divorce decrees is sad but inescapable witness. You need to go to Christ. And it could well be for some of you who name the name of Christ. As I said to the wives last week, there will be women who go to hell because the point of their controversy with God is I will submit to no man. And I believe there are men who go to hell in whom the point of controversy is I will not love any woman with the selfless, self-denying, self-giving love demanded of me. You'll go to hell.

60:46 It will be the focal point of your rebellion against God. And if God uses the exposition to show you yes, in spite of all my profession, in spite of all of my talk and my knowledge, the root of the matter is not in me. I still have a carnal heart and enmity with God. It's not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can it be as one who is yet in the flesh. I cannot please God. I can't love that way. That's right, you can't. Because you are basically committed to a course of self-pleasing as an unregenerate sinner. And you need to go to God and cry to Him that He would have mercy upon you and for Jesus Christ's sake transform you. You see we come back again to those opening verses of chapter 5 where the generic precedes the specific. Here Paul says to all believers, men and women of all ages and all backgrounds, we are to walk in love as Christ loved you and gave Himself, the very same language that He uses with husbands until we have known something of this in the dynamics of our relations with all men in the lesser pressures of those relationships. We'll never

61:57 experience it in our marital relationship with all the additional pressures that draw forth the remnants of our corruption and cause us to be bitter. Well may God help us that in the coming days we will see more and more redemptive grace throbbing through our marriages. We'll see some marriages that right now are kind of tattered and moth-eaten and stinky replaced with the garments of a truly redeemed marriage that will be to the praise of the glory of God's grace. Let's pray.

62:35 Our Father we're so thankful that amidst all of the sentimental slush and confusion of our present society, you have given us your word as a lamp unto our feet and a light to our pathway. And we pray that the things we've considered today will be sealed to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. God forgive me, forgive us as husbands when we have failed to love our wives as Christ loved the church. When we have failed to love them as we love our own bodies we confess with shame our miserable failures.

63:13 And we pray that cleansing us you would then fill us anew with your Spirit. Send us from this place today determined that by your grace and the power of the Spirit we will love our wives continuously in all circumstances regardless of whether or not at any given point in our judgment they are lovable or lovely. Oh Lord Jesus you love us. You love us continually. You love us without intermission. You love us at the point of our greatest expressions of our remaining sin. Help us to love as you love. Seal then your word to our hearts and dismiss us with your blessing.