Building Strong Marriages in the Local Church
Introduction
Marriage as a Mystery
The ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it exists for God’s glory. That is, it exists to display God. Now we see how: Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream
As God made man in His own image, so He made earthly marriage in the image of His own eternal marriage with His people
Main Point
Transition
1. Sacrificial Love
Give Yourself Up: Eph 5:25, 28-29
This is why leadership is not mainly a right and privilege, but a burden and a responsibility
Love” is Paul’s key word for Christian husbands, just as “submit” is his key word for Christian wives.
Obviously no sinful human being has the capacity to love with the divine fullness and perfection with which Christ … loved, and will forever love, the church. However, because a Christian has Christ’s own nature and Holy Spirit within him, God thereby provides for husbands to love their wives with a measure of Christ’s own kind of love. The husband who submits to the Lord by being filled with His Spirit (v. 18) is able to love his wife with the same kind of love Jesus has for His own bride, the church. The Lord’s pattern of love for His church is the husband’s pattern of love for his wife.
If a loving husband is willing to sacrifice his life for his wife, he is certainly willing to make lesser sacrifices for her. He puts his own likes, desires, opinions, preferences, and welfare aside if that is required to please her and meet her needs. He dies to self in order to live for his wife, because that is what Christ’s kind of love demands
Christ’s Sacrificial Love
Jesus’ sacrifice was purely of grace. Jesus loves and saves because it is His character to be gracious. “For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:7–8). Jesus’ love for His church not only was sacrificial but graciously sacrificial.
He loves because it is His nature to love that which He has created and because the objects of His love need to be loved—not because they are attractive or deserve His love.
Love does whatever needs to be done and does not count cost or merit. It reaches out and helps, leads, teaches, warns, or encourages. Whatever is needed it gives. Whether its help is received or rejected, appreciated or resented, love continues as long as the need continues.
Have this Mindset - Philippians 2:3-8
When Christ came to earth in human form, He knew that He came to be mocked, ridiculed, maligned, rejected, beaten, and crucified. He knew from eternity past what would be demanded of His eternal love if men were to be provided a way of salvation. He gave up His prerogatives as God’s Son, not regarding “equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, … He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6–8).
Loving as Christ loves does not depend in the least on what others are in themselves, but entirely on what we are in Christ.
Where there is need, love acts, with no consideration of deserving or worth (cf. 1 John 3:16). God’s love is its own justification; and when we love as He loves, our love is also its own justification, because it is like His love
A Command to Be Obeyed
God can command His own kind of love from those who belong to Him because He has given them the capacity to love as He loves (cf. Rom. 5:5; 1 Thess. 4:9) and because His commanded love must, therefore, be a matter of choice
A husband is not commanded to love his wife because of what she is or is not. He is commanded to love her because it is God’s will for him to love her
If every appealing characteristic and every virtue of his wife disappears, a husband is still under just as great an obligation to love her. If anything, he is under greater obligation, because her need for the healing and restorative power of his selfless love is greater
The husband who loves his wife for what she can give him loves as the world loves, not as Christ loves. The husband who loves his wife as Christ loves His church gives everything he has for his wife, including his life if necessary.
Sanctifying Love - Eph 5:26-27
If a husband is loving and wise like Christ in all these ways, his desire for his wife’s change will feel, to a humble wife, like she is being served, not humiliated. Christ clearly desires for his bride to grow in holiness. But he died to bring it about
Conclusion
Do this within the church
For the benefit of your marriage
Why should God listen to a man who does not even know how to treat his wife properly?
The true spirituality of a church leader is not measured best by how well he leads a deacons’ or elders’ meeting, by the way he participates in Sunday school, or by the way he speaks from the pulpit—but by the way he treats his wife and children at home when no one else is around. Nowhere is our relationship to God better tested than in our relationship to our family. The man who plays the part of a spiritual shepherd in church but who lacks love and care in his home is guilty of spiritual fraud.
