In 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 1 it says, "But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come," now the last days began when the Messiah arrived, so we are in the last of the last days. And here is how it describes people in these last days. "Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant." Now you could stop right there and understand that people who are self-lovers, money lovers, boastful and arrogant are going to have a hard time with any sustained relationship, aren't they?
Not only that, "They are revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable," and by the way, the word "unloving" is "astorgoi" in the Greek, it means they lack normal family love. One of the features of last-days disintegration is the death of family love. "They are malicious gossips without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." They are unloving, "astorgoi," they lack normal family love they are so involved in their own self-love and self-fulfillment.
And we ask the question, and it's rightly to be asked, "Is there any hope for marriage when marriage is assaulted by this kind of last-days mentality, when it is assaulted on the outside by the godless immoral culture in which we live, when it is assaulted on the inside by the battle of the sexes, a woman trying to gain the ascendancy and dominate a man, and a man trying to suppress and control a woman?" Can marriage be rescued in the midst of all of this? Here we are fighting it on the inside, fighting it on the outside, fighting it in terms of the very time in which we live, when prophecy is coming to pass, is there any hope?
Well, the answer comes to us over in Ephesians 5, so you can turn to that text. That's home base for us as we go through this study of God's plan for marriage and the family. And we are reminding ourselves here in Ephesians chapter 5 that in order for marriage to be what God wants it to be, there are some prerequisites. He starts discussing marriage in verse 22 with the wives, and then down in verse 25 with the husband, and then down in chapter 6 verse 1, the children, and then in verse 2, a little more about the children how they honor their father and mother in verse 3 as well. And then in verse 4 he talks about fathers, no doubt encompassing parents as well. So as he gets into the whole idea of marriage and the family in verse 22 and flows all the way down into chapter 6, we begin to see the details. But before the details come the preliminaries in verses 18 to 21.
And we are reminded that verse 18 says, "We are to be filled with the Spirit," Spirit-filled, to be controlled by the Holy Spirit is the only hope for marriage to be what God wants it to be. God can turn the curse into a blessing, as He said in Nehemiah 13:2, and He does that by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit in the life of believers. Only believers, really, have the possibility of having this kind of fulfilled relationship in marriage and the family because only believers possess the Holy Spirit and can therefore be filled with the Spirit, dominated by the Spirit, controlled by the Spirit.
Secondly in verse 19, there is to be singing, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord. This indicates a happy heart, a joyful heart, a rejoicing spirit. Where you have a Spirit-filled person, where you have a heart full of joy, you have hope for a good relationship.
Then verse 20, saying thanks. "Always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God even the Father." No matter what happens, no matter what goes wrong, no matter how you might be misunderstood, treated in a marriage, your heart is filled with nothing but thanks, even for your trials because you know they come from God and have a perfecting work.
To be Spirit-filled, to be singing from the depths of your heart with joy, to be saying thanks for everything, and then in verse 21, "To be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. To have an attitude of mutual submission in which you consider others better than yourselves." Those are the spiritual prerequisites for a successful marriage...Spirit-filled, singing, saying thanks and submitting.
Now after those general spiritual realities are discussed, verse 22, Paul launches right in to the role of wives. "Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church. He himself being the savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything." And we discussed how God has designed this marvelous role of submission to the woman in marriage. And by His design marriage can be fulfilled when that role is assumed with joy.
Now coming to verse 25 we embark upon the husbands. "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also 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, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that she should be holy and blameless. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself." We'll stop there for the moment.
A clear principle then is given in verse 25, the husbands responsibility is to love his wife. She is submitting to him, he is to express love to her. It is the leadership of care. Yes he is the head of the woman as God is the head of Christ and Christ is the head of the man, as 1 Corinthians 11 says. He is over her, she is to call him lord, as we learned in 1 Peter chapter 3. He is the stronger vessel, as Peter says. It is his responsibility to give direction and provision and leadership. But it is in a context of love...always in a context of love.
Colossians chapter 3 and verse 19 says, "Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them." There is always the danger of the loss of love and the husband becomes a petty tyrant. When love is not the context of that relationship, a petty tyranny begins to take shape. And so it is the headship of love, it is the leadership of love, it is the guiding of affection.
Now I want us to look more closely at what God means in this command because it's laid out so magnificently. Let's talk about the manner of this love. Back to verse 25. "Husbands, love your wives." How? "Just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her." That's pretty clear. It is the love of self-sacrifice. It is not the love of domination. You are to love your wives just as Christ also loves the church and gave Himself up for her. That is the manner of love, the same kind of love that Christ extended to His church. In Acts 20 it says He purchased the church with His own blood. In Romans 5:8 it pictures Him pouring out His love in His death for unworthy sinners. In Romans 8 it is an unchanging, undying love. He loves us with a love from which we can never be separated.
John Chrysostom, the great preacher, said, "Hear the measure of love, if it be needful that thou shouldest give thy life for her or be cut to pieces a thousand times, or endure anything whatever, refuse it not. Christ brought His church to His feet by His great care, not by threats or any such thing. So do thou conduct thyself toward thy wife," end quote.
I have often heard people and I suppose they have good intentions when they say it, say about their wife, "I love her too much," to which you can promptly reply, "Do you love her as much as Christ loved the church, if you don't, then you don't love her enough." That's the standard.
A man had complete control over the female population, both his wife and his daughters, and could take their life at any moment without any legal recourse. When Paul says to husbands, "Love your wives and sacrifice your lives for them as Christ gave Himself up for His church," this is frankly revolutionary stuff. It's revolutionary today where you have an agenda in which a man basically says, "As long as you fulfill what I want out of life you can be my wife. And when you cease to do that, I'll get somebody else," right? That's how it works today. What God said through Paul was shocking then and it is shocking now.
Women were considered in that culture differently than they are today. They were considered less than human. They were considered as slaves, beasts of burden, in many cases. They had no rights at all. And men fulfilled the curse in fully exercising a vicious kind of rule and domination over women in general. And Paul says you have to exchange that in Christ for a love that is the kind of love with which Christ also loved the church and it caused Him to give Himself up for the church. it is a self-sacrificing love. It is humble, unselfish love.
Peter further defines this love without ever using the word. Look at 1 Peter chapter 3. Men, it's important for us to understand this and we want to cover all of the related texts. In 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 7, we can all rejoice in verse 6 where Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him lord, and women are to do the same. But how about verse 7, "You, husbands, likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way as with a weaker vessel since she is a woman and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered." What a great statement.
Now there are a number of things here, just to remind you, let me give you three "C"s, men, that you need to remember. One, consideration. Live with your wives in an understanding way. This is opposite the cave men mentality, the macho mentality, the independent mentality, the self-serving mentality. This is understanding, sensitivity, meeting her needs, understanding her feelings, fears, anxieties, concerns, goals, dreams, desires. That's what he means. Live with your wives in an understanding way, sometimes it boils down to listening, doesn't it? Understand her heart because you cannot express your love to her unless it is sacrificing love that meets needs, you have to know what those needs are. Not only consideration, but here's an old word, chivalry. He says in verse 7, live with her not only in an understanding way but as with a weaker vessel since she is a woman. What does that mean? It simply means you are unequal physically. She is weaker. You don't say to her, "After you've changed the tire I'll be glad to take you to the store." You understand that there is a physical weakness in woman. God has so designed her to be under the strength and protection of a man. She needs our strength.
Consideration, live with her according to understanding, chivalry, treat her as a weaker vessel, be her strength on the physical side and then thirdly, communion...communion. Treat her with honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. Men and women are unequal physically. They are equal spiritually, treat her as a spiritual equal.
I love what it says in Song of Solomon where the man says, "This is my beloved," and the woman says, "This is my beloved, my friend." A deep sense of intimate equal sharing of spiritual things. Peter gives us some straight forward things, gentlemen, if we are to be the husbands God wants us to be. We must understand our wives, understanding their needs, understanding their feelings, understanding what it is that they long for and desire. We must live with them providing our strength, strength physically, strength emotionally, strength of character, all of those things could be added. And we must treat them with communion as equals spiritually. We are to love our wives, that is a command.
You cannot say, "Well I don't love her anymore," without confessing that you've sinned. You say, "Well wait a minute, you don't know how she's treated me." That's not the issue. Christ loved sinners when they hated Him. Is that not true? And that's the model, that's the standard.
It doesn't mean that there's no emotion there. If you truly love, the emotion is rich, the feelings are thrilling, the friendship is wonderful.
The biblical definition really plunges to some immeasurable depths. Let's go back to Ephesians. When we start to talk about how we are to love in this sacrificial way, it really starts to go down deep. In verse 25 it says, "Just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her." Can I say it simply, gentlemen? The Spirit-filled husband loves his wife not for what she can do for him, but what he can do for her. That's how Christ's love worked and works. He loves us not because there's something in us that attracts Him, He loves us because He determined to love us in spite of our unattractiveness. He loves us with a love that seeks not to tyrannize us, a love that seeks rather to meet our needs, to understand us, to provide strength for us.
It's not a question of deserving. We didn't do anything to earn Christ's love. It wasn't because we were more desirable than other people that He set His affection on us. We don't deserve His love. There's nothing attractive in us. God doesn't look over the world and pick out the people who somehow draw out His affection. Not at all. God loves us, Christ loves us like...I suppose like Hosea loved Gomer. He saw her as a prostitute. He watched her carry out her professional prostitution. He watched her go through many lovers. He watched her stripped naked on a block being auctioned off, a prostitute for the highest bidder in the slave market, and he went into the place and bought her, not because there was anything about her that was clean and sweet and gracious and lovely, but because it was in his heart to love her. And so God loved prostituted Israel. And so Christ loves His church, even before they are His church and thus sets His affection upon them. And even after they are His church and they prostitute themselves to iniquities, He still loves them. It is a love that never dies. It is a love that can't be killed. It is a love that is utterly and completely self-sacrificing.
I suppose if there's any one way to characterize this love it would be like this: Swallow your pride, swallow your personal desires, swallow your personal ambitions, swallow your fantasies and dreams about how life might have been with someone else, or under some other circumstances, put all of that aside, it is all meaningless, it only boils down to temptation. And love your wives with a love that knows nothing of self and only of her and her needs and her concerns and her heart and sacrifice your life on her behalf.
This is the kind of love, of course, that the Spirit of God gives us the capacity to...to carry and to share, the love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts. The very love which Christ Himself demonstrated toward us, we partake in that love. The fruit of the Spirit is love. The Spirit produces in us this incredible love. First Peter 1:22 says, "Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls, or been converted, you now have a sincere love, you have the capacity to fervently love one another from the heart for you have been born again." This is the kind of love that belongs only to people who have been born again. The world tries to hang on to romantic love as long as it possibly can, and eventually the bells stop ringing and the whistles stop blowing and life gets pretty mundane and pretty routine and you start getting older and something outside your own marriage may look better than what's there at home. And you can't sustain that love and you can't hold on to that love because you don't have a new nature. But we who have been born again have a sincere love, a fervent love because of the imperishable seed of the living and abiding Word of God which has granted us new life.
God so loved us that He gave His Son. Christ so loved us that He gave His life. We love our wives to the point of self- sacrifice.
Lastly, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. In 1 Corinthians 13 every characteristic of love listed in that chapter is in a verb form. Love is not static, it is not a substantive in terms of language, it is a verb. Love acts, love does something.
Note: We also host a Bible lesson called, "God's Patter For Wives." Click here to read it.
