The Art of Seeking, Part 7
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Seeking the Heavenly in Marriage - Part 2
Colossians 3:18-19 .
18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.
From this passage we are launching into Ephesians 5:18-33, where Paul thoroughly covers seeking the heavenly in marriage through mutual submission and love modeled after Jesus.
In review of Ephesians 5:18-33, the first section is Eph. 5:18-21, the conduct of everyone in the church.
The second section is Eph. 5:22-24, the conduct of a wife in marriage, having her conduct supplied from the verb in Eph. 5:21. This conduct is modeled after the church’s relationship to Christ.
The third section is Ephesians 5:25-33, the conduct of a husband in marriage, modeled after Christ’s relationship to the church.
Last week we discussed the art of seeking the heavenly in marriage through submission to each other as fellow believers, and through submission to each other as husbands and wives as Christ has modeled for us.
This week we will discuss the art of seeking the heavenly in marriage through love modeled by Christ.
Love and submission go hand in hand. Jesus said in John 14:15
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Turn in your Bibles to the third section, found in Ephesians 5:25-33
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
30 because we are members of his body.
31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
The command is quite clear: husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church.
Like submission, the command is challenging to apply.
Also like submission, the command to love is not exclusively given to husbands, but also to the church.
Ephesians 5:1-2 makes that abundantly clear.
1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
How do we love sacrificially well?
This is a difficult question because it is not satisfied by a cookie cutter answer.
Sacrificially loving well includes four areas for consideration.
The first area is our relationship with God, established through the gospel (Ephesians 5:2, 25-27).
The second area is our relationship with ourselves (Ephesians 5:28-29; Philippians 2:4).
The third area is our relationship with our spouse or fellow believers (Ephesians 5:30-31).
The fourth area is our relationship with the world (Ephesians 5:7-10; 2 Corinthians 3:2-3).
Our relationship with God is foundational to loving sacrificially. 1 John 4:15-19 makes this clear.
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
19 We love because he first loved us.
Love flows out of our connection with God. It is perfected in us as we pursue our connection with him by abiding in him.
Abiding is engaging with God on a regular basis. The more we engage him, the more his love will be perfected.
It is challenging to love sacrificially if we are not abiding well.
The ability to love sacrificially does not come from ourselves but from our continued connection to the Spirit.
The second area for sacrificially loving well is our relationship with ourselves.
We are called to love as we love ourselves, and nourish and cherish each other as Christ nourishes and cherishes the church.
This area has a lot of confusion for us.
We are often hearing mixed messages of self-care and self denial. Which is it?
Do I take care of myself, or do I deny myself and take my cross and follow Jesus?
The confusion is partly born out of what the scripture means by “self”.
We often see “self” and interpret it as the fallen nature corrupted by sin.
It is this “self” that we easily identify with, and thus apply this “self” definition when we see Scripture talking about “self”.
Some examples of this definition of self are found int Matthew 16:24; Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:8-9.
8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.
9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices
This, of course, brings confusion, because Scripture does not always use “self” in this way.
The other way Scripture uses “self” is the new self that is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Colossians 3:10 ; Ephesians 4:23-24).
10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
We are called to love from this “self”, the new self.
We are called to care for this self, to love and cherish it; and in doing so, we love and cherish each other.
This is the “self” Paul is talking about in Ephesians 5:25 and Philippians 2:4
and the “self” Scripture is talking about when it commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39).
It is this “self” that needs to receive self-care.
This is challenging, especially if we do not identify with the new self, which Christ has created in us through his death and resurrection.
We must care for the new self to sacrificially love well.
We care for this new self through disciplines centered on God.
First, we recognize God created us with limitation, and thus we express our trust in him through rest.
Second, we recognize God created us with emotion, and we process our emotions with him through lament and praise.
Third, we recognize God created us for relationship, so we spend time with him and with fellow believers.
There are other self-care disciplines, but these three are the basics. If we are not practicing at least these three, we will not sacrificially love well.
The third area of sacrificially loving well is our relationship with our spouse or fellow believers (Ephesians 5:30-31).
We all have a tendency to view love as conditional.
When both parties needs are being met and no harm is coming to either party, it is easy to love.
This, however, is not the economy of heaven. We are not called to conditional love, but unconditional love.
We are called to love like Jesus. Jesus chose to show his love for us in that while we were sinners, his enemies, he willing died for us (Romans 5:8).
He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21).
This is the love we are called to - love not based on merit, but on God’s love for us.
Therefore, we are not justified in withholding love based on an individual’s actions. We must still love them.
Now, that does not mean they can do whatever they please with no consequences.
Part of loving each other well is accountability for our sinful actions (James 5:19-20).
That accountability, however, does not take the form of withholding our love, but the form of setting healthy boundaries.
The fourth area of sacrificially loving well is our relationship with the world (Ephesians 5:7-10; 2 Corinthians 3:2-3).
Our relationship with the world has two aspects to sacrificially love well.
The first aspect is we must forsake the world’s values and ideals in relationships. We are to be in the world but not of the world (1 John 2:15).
We often struggle with loving well because the world’s ideas are defining how we love, rather than God’s.
The second aspect is we are living letters of God’s love to the world (2 Corinthians 3:2-3).
When we sacrificially love each other well as husband and wife, as brothers and sisters in Christ, we are a living letter of the gospel to the world - a light in the darkness.
Church, in grasping the common call of submission and love in seeking the heavenly in marriage and the church, we guard against the pitfalls of extremes expressed in culture, which produces sin.
Go, therefore, in God’s love, submitting to each other and sacrificially loving one another well.
