The Christian Husband's Love

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Introduction and Scripture Reading

Scripture Introduction

Scripture reading

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Ephesians 5:25–33 ESV

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.

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I. Christian husband, love your wife for Her eternal good.

When the Apostle Paul commands husbands to love their wives in this way, he is opening their eyes to a new paradigm brought about by the way God has distinctively loved them in Christ.

The old paradigm:

The command for husbands to love their wives was not part of their cultural thinking and practice. Maintain the family order? Sure. Authority, you bet. Dominance, absolutely. This was the norm. This way of treating women was part of the household practices of this Greco-Roman era.

This command to love, especially considering the way women were treated in their day, was not heard of. This new paradigm was counter-cultural. And though it is no longer a new command, it is still far more counter-cultural than we realize because it is not our default. It does not come easily because we’re generally pretty selfish people (interestingly part of the assumption for the argument Paul makes in v. 28 below).

The new paradigm/way of thinking is not entirely new to God’s plan, but is re-introduced and undergirded by the foundation of Christ’s love for the church.

God has always intended that people love selflessly. God has always intended that husbands love their wives for God’s glory. (Remember in Malachi 2:14-15 when God’s people are weeping and groaning because God’s no longer accepting their offering with favor from their hands.) He answers

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Malachi 2:14–15 ESV

14 But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.

Marriage and family has always been purposeful to the Lord. God created the covenant of Christian marriage to expand the Christian family. And there are consequences when we fail to do so.

Here, in Ephesians, Paul commands us, Christian men, love your wives. Paul drives the point home as he repeats it two additional times in 28, 33.

Love is the priority for Christian husbands.

God did not command you to make her submit. God commanded her to submit out of love for him, and respect for you. Your job is to love her.

God did not prioritize our role as the head of our homes over our responsibility to love. In fact, our responsibility to love our wives for their eternal good is the only way we can faithfully live out the role that God gave you.

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Col 3:19 “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.”

1 Pt 3:7 “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.”

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II. Christian husband, love your wife as Christ loved the Church.

Jesus’ love shows us, models for us, how to love with our wives' eternal good in mind. In 1 Cor 13:4-7, Paul defined Christlike love in great detail. He commends qualities such as patience and not seeking one’s own interests. Here he’s already told Christians to walk in love toward one another by treating one another with genuine kindness and forgiveness (Eph 4:32-5:2). But here Paul zoomed in on the more particular love a husband should have for his wife.

A husband’s love is motivated by these two interrelated actions which Christ modeled for us.

Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,”

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Love your wife sacrificially (25b).

Christ demonstrated this by giving himself up for the Church on the cross for our sins (Eph 1:7; 2:13-16).

Christ’s sacrificial love set a high bar for the love that husbands were expected to aspire to. Christ had set aside his own interests and had accepted a painful and humiliating death on the cross (Phil. 2:6–8) for the sake of his church.

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Philippians 2:6–8 ESV

6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

This was how he had demonstrated his love. Paul challenged husbands to treat this remarkable display of Christ’s love as a pattern for their own love for their wives.

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Love your wife purposefully with eternity in mind (26a).

The world paints love as a state of blissful ecstasy. You “fall” in love and “fall” out of love. Romantic love is unplanned, full of spontaneity and has the purpose of making you happy by meeting your needs as you determine them.

A Christian husband’s love is to be purposeful. How?

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Love her by sanctifying her, or set her apart unto God for His purposes, by washing her with the Word of God (26-27).

Here Paul invokes the imagery of the bridal bath we read of in Ezekiel 16.

When Israel was a young nation, she was in a pitiable state, lying in blood, with an un-cut umbilical cord, uncleansed by the washing of water, and she was abhorred by all (16:4–6).

When she grew up God entered into a covenant with her and bathed her with water (ἐν ὕδατι), washed off the blood, anointed her with oil, and clothed her with the finest materials, making her exceedingly beautiful, fit to be a queen (16:8–14).

This washing of water is “with the word,” meaning the gospel.

Husbands, we are to bath our wives with the gospel of Jesus over and over so she is continually reminded of who she is and Whose she is.

Pray for your wife with her.

Read the Word with her.

Grow in knowing the Word well yourself so that your vision of life aligns more and more with God’s purposes and she hears God’s Word coming out as you speak.

Love wants only the best for the one it loves, and it cannot bear for a loved one to be corrupted or misled by anything evil or harmful.

When a husband’s love for his wife is like Christ’s love for His church, he will continually seek to help purify her from any sort of defilement or dishonor.

He will seek to protect her from the world’s contamination and protect her holiness, virtue, and purity in every way.

He will not entice her to do what is wrong, unwise or expose her to that which is less than good.

God’s priorities for your marriage and family are to be yours, and Christian husbands, we live to honor them with our wives.

We are to continually cast a vision for our wives that God’s ways truly are best and most desirable for our lives:

The way we spend our time, finances;

How we determine and prioritize our careers;

What we feed our minds through T.V., movies, music, social media;

The bride does not make herself presentable; it is the bridegroom who labors to beautify her in order to present her to himself. His love and self-sacrifice for her, his cleansing and sanctifying of her, are all designed for her freedom and her perfection, when at last he presents her to himself in her full glory.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes:

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‘Dare I put it like this? The Beauty-Specialist will have put his final touch to the church, the massaging will have been so perfect that there will not be a single wrinkle left. She will look young, and in the bloom of youth, with colour in her cheeks, with her skin perfect, without any spots or wrinkles. And she will remain like that for ever and ever.’ (Lloyd-Jones, Life in the Spirit, pp. 175–176.)

Do you see how Paul shows the implications of Christ’s headship?

The church’s head is the church’s bridegroom. He does not crush the church. Rather he sacrificed himself to serve her, in order that she might become everything he longs for her to be, namely herself in the fullness of her glory.

Just so a husband should never use his headship to crush or stifle his wife, or frustrate her from being herself. His love for her will lead him to an exactly opposite path. He will give himself for her, in order that she may develop her full potential under God and so become more completely herself.

Are you helping your wife see her value as a sojourner and stranger here on this earth, waiting for the blessed hope, the appearing the the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13), rather than as a woman who must maintain the appearances and priorities of our largely feminist driven culture?

God’s call for women is so much greater than our culture has told us.

God’s purposes are eternal…soaring to heights we can only attain with the Holy Spirit together.

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Love her by caring for her as you would yourself for she is one with you (28-31).

Paul’s next phrase may seem a bit jarring. After painting a beautiful mural of Christ’s self-sacrificing love, he seems to drop to the lowest common-denominator assumption: He who loves his wife loves himself.

But here, Paul applies the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:18) specifically applying it to the wife.

Paul is not suggesting we must love ourselves before we can love someone else. Both the writer of Leviticus and Paul assume that a person will look after his or her own interests and welfare, and both seek the same for other people.

In the end love is a matter of justice for the other person, but raised to the degree that one is willing to forego one’s own rights, interests, and desires.

The words of 5:29 (nourishes, cherishes) express a tenderness and nurturing expected from the husband so that the well-being and wholeness of the wife are assured

Paul assumes a theology of the oneness of the husband and wife based on Genesis 2:24 (which he quotes in v 31). The idea of hating or neglecting one’s wife is as strange as hating or neglecting oneself.

Love her with an unbreakable love.

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III. The motive for loving your wife.

The marriage relationship is a beautiful model of the church’s union in and with Christ!

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Ephesians 5:32–33 ESV

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.

Paul sees the marriage relationship as a beautiful model of the church’s union in and with Christ. When applied to Christ and his church, the ‘one flesh’ is identical with the ‘one new man’ Paul speaks of in Eph 2:15.

This mystery—this magnificent picture that men could never discover on their own, and that was unknown to the saints of the Old Covenant but is now revealed—is profound—is great.

God’s new people, the church, are brought into His kingdom and His family through faith in Christ.

He is the Bridegroom and they are His bride (Rev. 21:9):

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Revelation 21:9 ESV

9 Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

A husband’s greatest motive for loving, purifying, protecting, and caring for his wife is Christ’s love, purifying, protecting, and caring for His own bride, the Church.

Christian marriage is to be loving, holy, pure, self-sacrificing, and mutually submissive because those virtues characterize the relationship of Christ and the church.

Paul’s concluding summary in verse 33 is a succinct summary of the fuller teaching which Paul has been giving to husbands and wives:

“Let each one of you love his wife as himself,” for she and he have become one,

“and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

The apostle began with one couplet ‘love’ and ‘submission’. He ends with another ‘love’ and ‘respect’.

The love he has in mind for the husband sacrifices and serves with a view to enabling his wife to become what God intends her to be. So the ‘submission’ and ‘respect’ he asks of the wife express her response to his love and her desire that he too will become what God intends him to be in his ‘leadership’.

When Christian husbands and wives walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, yield to His Word and His control, and are mutually submissive

Body, Building, and Bride.

Paul’s burden in Ephesians is helping God’s children see God’s plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth (Eph 1:10).

And Paul has painted three pictures of the church in Ephesians to help us see it fully—the body, the building and the bride—each of which emphasize the reality of its unity on account of its union with Christ.

Conclusion and Transition to Communion

Closing Prayer

Communion