The Husband's Love

0:10Thank you for listening to the sermon audio podcast for Crossroads Reformed Baptist Church in Rockdale, Texas. Crossroads Reformed Baptist Church is a reformed confessional Baptist church that meets every Lord's Day at 10 a.m. for Bible study and 11 a.m. for corporate worship. For more information about our church or for directions, you can visit us online at www.crbcrockdale.org. Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

0:40Good morning again. We you know we lean so heavily and so often on uh the providence of God. Amen. And we and I would trust that um that his providence includes even those who uh arrive here on any given Sunday morning. So why it is that God in his providence decides to bring forth uh a number of visitors today, which we're so happy on on a particular Sunday in which we are speaking so clearly and directly about the relationship between a husband and a wife and duties and roles of a husband, um, we leave to him. Uh but I trust that uh that the word will be spoken this morning and that it is indeed for you, um, because you are here uh this morning. As we begin then, let me uh summarize uh where we uh uh are and have been. It's vitally important that we connect all of these passages uh together this morning. We began several weeks ago with that general, or we said that guiding principle uh from Ephesians chapter 5, which was to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. It's to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, and out of an understanding of what Christ has done for us in his life and in his death, his submission to the Father, shown in his obedience unto death. It is then from our all, our love and our gratitude for the person and the work of Christ, from that we submit ourselves to one another in love. Submit to one another, love and serve one another, honor and respect one another. This is the command. For no other reason than to do such things is to honor Christ. The bonus is that we all get to live more peaceful, more joyful, when we walk in obedience to God. More specifically than last week, one of the ways in which we submit to one another, as that command gives, was wives, you are called to submit to your own husbands, to respect him as your leader and provider. This is the God-honoring image of the relationship between Christ and the church. That is Ephesians 5, verse 22. And we hold both of those commands in harmony with one another. We receive both within their proper context, that is, to submit to one another and the relationship between wives and husbands, not throwing one out in favor of the other, not using one to disqualify the other, but rather receiving God's word as he gives it to us, following as his spirit gives wisdom and discernment, and we walk in obedience. And this brings to mind then a broader point that we touched on on this past Wednesday night during our Bible study there, and that is that we are to receive the whole counsel of God as he has given it to us. How God presents himself to us, and how he explains himself, how he describes his work and his will, this is how we must take him. It is not our job to attempt to figure out what he really means by something because he couldn't possibly mean that, whatever that is. Because to do that is to not to follow the God of the Bible revealed in Scripture, it is to follow a God made in your own image. Idolatry. Let us not be guilty of that. We must either accept him as he has revealed, or reject him as he has revealed. I pray and ask our Lord that he would allow us to accept him as he has revealed. So now that we turn our attention to the second specific that grows out from that general command to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, and that is the call for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. And to that end, I put men in the hot seat this morning as we define love. We push to walk worthy of this high and demanding calling to love our wives this way. So we are, I don't know if I said it yet, I'm apologize. We're in Ephesians chapter 5, starting in verse 25. If you would please stand with me for the reading of God's Word. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 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. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ in the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. This is the word of the Lord. Lord, we thank you again, and always for your word, Lord. We pray for open hearts now by your spirit to illuminate this word, Lord, to teach us, to give us wisdom and understanding, Lord, to apply this word to our heart. Lord, that we would indeed be sanctified into you, to be grown more into the image of your beloved Son, and that we would honor and serve him in all that we do. It is in the name of Jesus that I pray. Amen. If you're taking notes, everybody can write this down, but since this is specifically directed at men just right now, men, if you're taking notes, write this down. Love your wife. It sounds simple enough, right? But is it? Love is a topic, perhaps you could say the topic, that has captivated humanity since Adam first said, at last, this is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones. Countless books, numberless how-tos, teaching series on the types of love, the languages of love, and sadly, today all manners of distortions of love. Love is the most defining virtue of a culture, and is possibly the most misunderstood virtue of Christianity, certainly of humanity at large. To say that love and our view of love and how to love is a big deal for us, this is a massive understatement. Here are the words of Jonathan Edwards on this topic. Quote, all that is saving and distinguishing in a true Christian is summarily comprehended in love. So when we consider the Bible's commands for a wife to submit to her husband, as we did last week, to honor and to respect him, we couple that with what Edwards just said, and many others have said, about the grand importance of love, we arrive at an unavoidable end, where we must confess that for a husband, for a man, his command to love his wife as Christ loves the church is the single most important command he is to understand if he desires to serve Christ rightly. Other than his command to repent and to believe the good news of the gospel and to salvation, for a married man, there is no grander call than to love your wife as Christ loved the church. This must be true. Because, as we said last week, if a wife's submission displays the gospel submission of the church, then the husband's love for his wife displays the very essence of creation and salvation. It was in love that God created. It was in love that the Godhead decreed the plan of redemption whereby Christ would come, fully God and fully man, to redeem his people through a sinless life, through a sacrificial death, through a justifying resurrection. Love is most central to creation. Love is most central to salvation. And it is this love we are called to image, not generally, but specifically as men. So hear the word when it says that your call is to love your wife with the same love that the Father has for the Son. And the same love that the Son has for the church. Which sent him in flesh, sent him to a cross to save us from our sins and rescue us from evil. What we believe about love, what we believe love is, has far more than just emotional significance. Worldly speaking, there are many ways that a husband can show love to his wife, right? Supposedly there are five love languages that he can speak. He can have quality time, he can buy her gifts, he can be physically affectionate to her. He can buy her flowers, he can go on date nights, he can write her love letters. The list is practically endless. I'm not saying those things aren't good. You should do those things, man. But that alone is what the world or what where the world thinks that the expression of love stops. And because of that, they stop well short of what biblical love is. We can max out our credit cards at H E B floral department. But if you don't love as Christ loves the church, then you aren't loving as the word says we should love. And if you aren't loving as Christ loves, then you're loving like the world loves, not like Christ loves. There's really only one grand expression of love that should guide and inform our view of love. This should guide and inform our view, generally speaking, but certainly guide the husbands for the love of a wife. And that is how our text began in verse 25. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. To know what love is, true love, is to look no further than what Christ did for the church. Often for us as Christians and for the world certainly, love is purely emotional, right? Driven by feelings, driven by desires. And while love is emotional, and it is, it is only known and expressed rightly through the sacrificial giving of oneself. Hear a verse that maybe you've heard before. John 3 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. That whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting eternal life. This is love. That one would give to say. How corrupt is the world's view of love that it would make it about some selfish expression of our distorted desires or perversions. True love is the opposite of whatever that is. Has nothing at all to do with self-expression. Consider this. If it is true of our relationship to one another, as Jesus says to his disciples, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. He continues, greater love has no one than this, then he lay his life down for his friends. Well, if it's true of our relationships with one another, then, this concept of sacrificial love, how much more true is it for the only unbreakable, one-to-one, covenantal relationship that we are explicitly called into? The marriage relationship. Because of that, there's no trouble at all for me to press the command on the wives to submit to their husbands and do so without reservation and without qualification. Without saying, well, but and only if. Because I wouldn't offer those same qualifications to the husband saying you can love your wife but or only if. Husbands, you don't get to love your wife only if she is worthy of loving. Or only if she fulfills your emotional or physical checklists. You don't get to love her only if she speaks your love languages properly. You love her because Christ loved the church. And he gave himself up for her. And Christ did that far before we were worthy of that love. The same is obviously true with respect to a wife for her respect and submission to her husband as the leader and the provider and the protector. It's not conditional on the worthiness of the other. It is grounded in the nature of God and the church. What I am saying is what Paul has said. This all refers, as does everything in life, I guess, to Christ in the church. The Trinitarian fullness of God, his character, his nature, his relationship. This is what informs our faith, our hope, and our love. And now, faith, hope, and love abide. These three. Hopefully, at least in some respects. There's four main Greek words that are used to describe love, but to set up where I'm going, I'll briefly say this. The New Testament, perhaps interestingly, never uses the Greek word for the romantic or the desiring kind of love, which is eros. It's used in the Greek translations of the Old Testament in places like Song of Solomon 7 verse 10, where he says, I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. And so while we can understand the aspect of love, we do understand that aspect of love. The New Testament never uses that aspect of love, so it's not helpful for us in our understanding of what our passage means this morning to consider the romantic kind of love. The second kind of love, which is also used very little in the New Testament, is the Greek word storge, which is a familial love. Romans 12, verse 2, Paul says, love one another with a brotherly affection. This is storge. This is a love of a family. Again, important, but not particularly helpful for us today. The third is in the Greek phileo. This is a Greek word I know many of you know, which is a it's a friendly love, brotherly love. More like a general fondness for one another. Used much more often in the New Testament, 25 times to be exact, it does help us more because Jesus himself expresses this kind of love often to his disciples, his friends, the church. When Lazarus, Lazarus dies in John 11, this is the word that's used to describe Jesus' affection or love for Lazarus. Certainly, we must say that a husband must love his wife in this way, right? He must be fond of her. He must desire to be her friend and her companion, enjoy her company, have mutual interests, etc. And so often, though, that is where the love of the world stops, though. And where the relationship between the husband and the wife generally fractures is when that kind of love fails. If we cling only to the romantic love, which is never expressed in the New Testament, or we lean only on that fondness or that compassion, that brotherly love, husbands, we miss out not only on the true gospel imaging love, but on the fullness of what love really is, the fullness of what love truly is. The fourth kind of love that is used far more in the New Testament, and specifically here in our passage this morning, used 259 times is agape love. And you may have heard that this love means unconditional love. I want to correct that because that's not super helpful to capture what this love actually is. Because the word agape is used many times in the New Testament. In a negative sense. In Luke 3, verse 19, people loved the darkness. It says that's agape. In 2 Timothy 4, verse 10, Demos who deserted Paul, loved the world. That is also agape. So what this love is, then, the love that's used in our text this morning is a committed love, a devotional love, an attached love. And the character, or I guess you could say, the virtue of that love comes not from the love itself, but from the object or the person to which you direct that love. So a husband who loves his wife like this, who is committed, who is attached in devotion and affection and duty, will act in such a way that accords with the object of that love. In the same way, Dimas's devotion to the world compelled him to desert Paul, a husband's devotion, commitment to his wife should and must compel him to lay down his life for her. We know this is true. Because it was this love of God through Christ from which we were saved. Ephesians 2, you remember. Verse 4, but God being rich in mercy because of what? Because of the great love with which He loved us. Even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. I mean, this is love. The same commitment and devotion our God showed to us in Christ that we are to direct towards our wives, towards our love to them. How can you say I'd love my wife more if she did this? How can we say that about anybody, frankly? How can you say you would love your wife more if she acted like this? How can you say I'd be more devoted to my wife if she fixed this or if she stopped doing that? How, men, and everyone in general, can we allow our affection, our affection and our action to be contingent upon someone else's emotions, someone else's attitude, someone else's disposition, someone else's obedience? We must not. Because even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, the love of God has made us alive together with Christ. Praise and thanks be to God. That he loves us with an unbreakable, unbreakable covenant love. Rooted in his devotion and commitment to us, unfailing, never fading, always faithful. This is the love that he has loved us, and we are to love as he first loved us. Again, this is how God has chosen to image his divine love for us through this marital relationship. His love for his church, his people is imaged through the marriage relationship. What this means then is true obedient, true faithful love. The love of God looks like God's love to the church and her love for him. How different is that from how the world views marriage and love, right? Consider how culture and the world has indoctrinated our view of love in marriage. The husband is considered to be a bumbling fool oftentimes. And the wife has to keep him in line. Or he is portrayed as a tyrant. The wife is considered too often by the husband as he jokes with his friends, as the bald and chain that he sometimes somehow has found himself tied to. Whether you admit it or not, that is a distorted image of marriage and love. This has infiltrated our minds. But as we look at the rest of the text, then thanks be to God and to his gospel that he can heal us. He can correct our thinking here. The gospel is a gospel of love. Once again, I ask, is doctrine important? Is doctrine worth our time pouring over? It has to be. Because so clearly we see here in the text that husbands can only rightly know how to love their wives. And what could be more practical than that, then? By rightly understanding the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the church, the doctrine of love, and even more fundamentally, the gospel itself. I'll read the text again. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the words, 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. We've talked about biblical love broadly, but what is this love expressed more specifically in the gospel? How does Christ love the church? Our text gives us a few things. It says first that he gave himself up for her. He loved the church, and he gave himself up for her. That is to say, Christ surrendered the whole of his earthly life, even to death on a cross, for his bride, the church. If anyone in all of human history had any right to be selfish, had any right to live his best life, to look out for his own happiness, to chase his own dreams, it was the only person to ever live who was himself perfect in every way. Of course, Jesus Christ. Yet he did none of those things, did he? He surrendered it all. He gave it all up for the sake of his bride. That's not to kill your manly ambition. But it is to say, consider who you are striving for, men. Who are you striving for? Yourself. No, for our brides. And for Christ. The text also says that Christ sanctifies the church. One of the most humbling thoughts is the reality that Christ took great pride in his bride. Christ saw her, the church, as who she would become, not who she was at any given moment. He loved her such that he did all to bring her into the fullness of where his sanctifying love would lead. Remember, Ephesians 3, verse 10 says, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and to the authorities in the heavenly places. That is through the church. I said then, when we covered that passage a number of months ago, Christ's mission was to present the church, to present his bride before the rulers and to the authorities, that is, the whole of the cosmos, or the whole universe, you could say, the spiritual realm, as the spotless crown of his work and wisdom. He thought so highly of his bride. Christ thought so highly of his church that he made it his mission to sanctify her as his crowning redemptive achievement to the universe that he created. He did so to shut the mouths of the demonic scoffers in judgment who belittle his bride, who mock his church, by adorning his church in honor and in glory, such that on that day, when all the saints in heaven are gathered and they shout and we sing for joy and praise to the king while the reprobates receive their just punishment for their deeds, the whole the universe will know the power, they will know the beauty, they will know the love and the work of the true and triune God. All the love of God, all the work of Christ is set on that end for his people. We can be sure then that there is nothing that will be left undone as so not to bring about that end. The question then is how does that inform our love? I've said it, I'll say it again. How often is our idea of love so selfish and self-seeking? But here, given to us in the gospel, is the love of Christ, which is the eternal, perfect display of sacrificial devotion and sanctifying motivation. So, in conclusion, then, do we love our wives like that? Do you love your wife as your own body, Paul says? In the same way that you nourish and care for your body, do you care for your wife? In the same way Christ cares for the church, do you support and care for your wife? I see what Paul says then in quoting that creational language again in verse 31. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is the profound mystery of the relationship to Christ and his church, where the two become one flesh, and marriage is that image. The union of the husband and wife is the representation of the union between Christ and his church. And if Christ can enter into this mystical union with the church, is it too much for us to image it as the Spirit leads? In our most sacred earthly relationship? I would say, men, to not love your wife this way, with Paul's support, I think, is to neglect your own body. And even more to neglect Christ, who is himself one with the body, his church. So my challenge is this, then, for us all, specifically for men. The best thing you can do for your marriage, here's my book on marriage. I've written a few, but this is, I haven't actually, but I'm gonna write one right now. Study and meditate deeply on the doctrine of the church, on the doctrine of Christ, on the love of God the Father displayed through Christ. It is here and here alone where we learn and are refreshed in the gospel of grace, and we will learn to love as Christ has loved us. That is it. I'm not giving you a magic bullet, I'm not giving you seven steps to a better marriage. I'm saying that to love your wife is to commit to a lifelong pursuit of the image and the wisdom and the glory of Christ. And the more you know him, the more you will love him. And the more you know and love the true and triune God, the more you will truly love others, and the more you will love your wife. This is the power of the gospel. This is the sufficiency of God's holy word. I pray that you do that, husbands. And I pray that in doing that, wives, you will and you must, regardless, gladly submit to and respect and follow your husband as he loves and leads like Christ. That's the gospel. And that's the goal. And may we even then today take steps towards that end. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word, as always. We thank you for the truth that you have given in and through this word. And I pray and ask that you would help us to love you more. Grow us in wisdom and knowledge of your truth, Lord, that we may learn who you are more, and we may love you more. Lord, and then from that love and that knowledge and that wisdom that you give us in and through your word, Lord, help us to love one another. Help us to submit to one another. Help us to love and serve our wives and respect our husbands, Lord. Grow our relationships deeply and intimately in response to your love for us. Lord, grow us and shape us into the image of Christ. And we will indeed give you all the glory. It's in the name of Jesus that I pray. Amen.