Husbands (Part 1 of 2)

There are some marriages that suffer from neglect. But that's not how God intends for marriage to be. Today on Truth for Life weekend, Alistair Begg continues his series on the Christian family by teaching us what marriage looks like when a husband loves his wife as Christ loved the church. Well, let's get straight to our verses. Colossians 3.19, husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

It's very straightforward. Somebody could readily say, Which part of that do you not understand? Peterson paraphrases it, Husbands, go all out in love for your wives. Do not take advantage of them.

And J. B. Phillips paraphrases it, Husbands, be sure that you give your wives much love and sympathy. Don't let bitterness or resentment spoil your marriage. And we noted last time that the authority to which we refer is none other than the authority of the Bible itself, that the mystery is that of the relationship between Christ and the church, the piety, or godliness, is equally to be on display in the context of the husband's role and the child's role as it is in the wives. Indeed, piety is to be worked out in the context of home life where, for better or for worse, each of us are truly ourselves. And it is true to say, as someone has said, that if our Christianity does not work at home, our Christianity does not work. And if our professions of obedience to the Scriptures do not find their outworking in the interplay of human relationships within the home, then of course we're in trouble. And the fourth word was the word freedom or liberty, and that liberty, we said, was to be discovered in obedience to the commands of God. I came across a quote during the week on this very subject from C. S. Lewis, who wrote as follows, If the home is to be a means of grace, it must be a place of rules. The alternative to rule is not freedom, but the unconstitutional and often unconscious tyranny of the most selfish member.

And N. T. Wright, in a follow-up comment, observes, As in improvised music, spontaneity and freedom do not mean playing out of tune. So the freedom that is found in the fulfilling of God-given roles is a freedom which is founded, grounded, and bounded by the authoritative statements of Scripture. Now we saw last time that the great temptation to the wife is to rule over her husband. When you think of the responsibility of a wife to fulfill her role and the temptation that she has to rule over her husband, a la what we discovered in Genesis, you perhaps remember the story of the fictitious story of the individuals who had all arrived in the realm of heaven. And Peter and some of the others were getting the men as organized as they could. And the fellow stepped forward and said, Now what I want you to do is I want you to just get yourselves organized here.

I'm going to put you in two groups. Over here on my left, I'd like to have all the men whose wives, frankly, dominated them in their earthly pilgrimage, whose wives ruled the home. And then over on my right-hand side, I'd like to have all the men who exercised leadership and jurisdiction in their earthly pilgrimage.

And there was just a huge shift over to the left-hand side—just droves and droves of men. And when they had finally assembled themselves, Peter looked, and there was just one man standing over here. And Peter said, You're probably quite lonely over there.

How come you're there? And he said, My wife told me to stand over here. Well, you're very gracious.

It really wasn't worth it. But anyway… Last time we had four words for the wife. Tonight we have five words for the husbands. In Ephesians 5, Paul addresses the wives in forty words.

He uses 115 in instructing the husbands. That might give us some hint of what's involved here. And we might also be tempted to debate. You may have a coffee later this evening with your wife or someone and debate whether God has given the husband or the wife the more demanding role.

In fact, you may already have begun to think that out. Last time we pointed out, and tried to do so quite clearly, that the wife's submission to her husband is one evidence of her submission to Christ—that for a wife to declare the lordship of Jesus will be borne testimony to within the fabric of home life in her submission to her husband. Now we come to the reverse of this, and we recognize that in the selfsame way, for a husband to declare that Jesus is Lord demands that he serves his wife, and by doing so makes it clear that he is serving Christ.

Let me just say this, in case I forget later on. Children growing up in a Christian home should actually be able to see the gospel modeled in the way their father loves their mother with a sacrificial love—the love of Jesus for his church—and the way the mother submits to the father as an expression of the church's submission to the lordship of Christ. As soon as we put things in that framework, taking them out of the realm of the superficial, many of the preoccupations, which are not irrelevant but are not really germane to the central issues, then we realize what a high standard the Scriptures call us to. And particularly this notion for the men. How characteristically New Testament is this, that husbands are commanded to love their wives? Commanded to love.

This is not unique here. You'll find the same thing is true in 2 John and in verse 6, and indeed in Titus—we studied it years ago now—you'll remember that the older women are to help the younger women to train them how to love their husbands. So in other words, this notion of love is not the victim of human emotion.

It is rather the servant of our human will. That the real issue for both the husband and the wife is whether we are going to bow our knee, bend our will to what the Bible says, or whether we are going to try and go on our own. Now, the word that Paul is employing here for love is an important word. It's not the word eros for sensual or sexual love, nor is it either of the two words that would be used for brotherly and sisterly affection or for human affection, storge or phileo, but it is, as some of you will know, the word agape. A love which considers the other before the self and then acts on that premise. Now, let me come to our words, and we'll do so quickly.

Some of them will go faster through than others, but the first word is the word sensitively. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. What does it mean for the husband to love his wife and not be harsh with her?

Well, it means that first he must love her sensitively. Now, romantic suggestions and sentimental expressions are easily come by. Indeed, the phrase, I love you, is easily come by. It can become just a routine phrase. But those sort of sentimental expressions on their own will offer only the thinnest of disguises if there is a failure on the part of the husband to pass this most practical test.

It is a practical test, isn't it? If it simply said, Husbands, love your wives, full stop, then, of course, that would be okay. It would immediately let us off the hook in relationship to his correlative statement.

But when he says, And do not be harsh with them, he said, Oh, all right. Or as Phillips puts it, Don't let bitterness or resentment spoil your marriage. And that notion of spoiling something is the spoiling that can so often happen over a period of time as a result of neglect. Few marriages disintegrate as a result of some cataclysmic moment in time.

Most disintegrate, like the leak in a tire on a freeway, which finally the car is found pulled over in the center of reservation. And something that has gone undetected over a period of significant time, over a long number of miles, finally has shown up. And one of the ways that that can happen is so easily in the realm of neglect. And as husbands, if we are not careful, and even if we attempt to be careful, we may cultivate a harsh tone, not only in our voices but in our attitudes, which is fueled by bitterness—a bitterness which often stems from disappointment, a disappointment that is grounded in our wife's failure to live up to our unrealistic ideals.

Now, did you get that? This is a harshness which is found in a bitterness that is tied to a resentment which is fixed in a failure on the part of our wives—not to be good wives, but a failure on their part to live up to unrealistic expectations established by Mr. Harsh, who holds his wife to a standard that he has no right to hold her to, either emotionally, physically, spiritually, or otherwise. And yet so often we as husbands make huge mistakes when we think to replace love with fault-finding and with nagging.

One of the pieces of work in Andrew Lloyd Webber's orb of musicology is the show Aspects of Love, which I've never seen. But somebody gave me a male-voice choir from Wales singing. Everyone in my home thinks it's a huge joke, and when I put it on they go out of the room or just laugh. But that's all part of the husband's role in the joy of being a dad. But anyway—and I'm not bitter about it in the slightest.

I refuse to say anything harsh about that at all. But you've got this male-voice choir, and do you know the song Love Changes Everything? Love, love changes everything, Hands and faces, earth and sky, Love, love changes everything, How you live and how you die, Love can make the summer fly, Or a night seem like a lifetime, Yes, love, love changes everything, And now I tremble at your name, Nothing in the world Will ever be the same. Love changes everything, Days are longer, Words mean more, Love, love changes everything, Pain is deeper than before, Love will turn your world around, And that world will last forever, Yes, love, love changes everything, Brings you glory, Brings you shame, Nothing in the world Will ever be the same.

Now, that's written from a purely secular perspective. There is a measure of sentimentality in it. But when we take that and recognize that poured into the essence of that is the self-giving love of Jesus in the life of a Christian, then surely we understand what a challenge and privilege it is to love our wives in this sensitive way.

All of that is in direct contrast to the insensitivity which has become the hallmark of so many a husband's life. You remember the song by Shel Silverstein in contrast to that? No, they said, I don't remember it. Well, that's okay, because I'll remind you of it now.

Do you remember this song? Put another log on the fire, Cook me up some bacon and some beans, And go out to the car and change the tire, And wash my socks and sew my old blue jeans. Come on, baby. You can fill my pipe and then go fetch my slippers And boil me up another pot of tea. Then put another log on the fire, babe, And come and tell me why you're leaving me. Now, don't I let you wash the car on Sunday? Don't I warn you when you're getting fat? Ain't I gonna take you fishing some day? Well, a man can't love a woman more than that. Ain't I always nice to your kid sister?

Don't I take her driving every night? So sit here at my feet, cuz I like it when you're sweet. And you know it ain't feminine to fight. Come on, baby.

That's the average guy's attempt at sensitivity right there. Secondly, sensitively, naturally. Naturally.

I struggled for a long time with this word, and I figured this is actually the right word. Go back to Ephesians 5 and verse 28 and 29. Husbands ought to love their wives as their own body. He who loves his wife loves himself. In other words, men ought to give their wives the love that they naturally have for their own bodies. Now, the love a man gives his wife is the extending of his love for himself, enfolding her in himself, if you like.

So in one sense, it is entirely unnatural for a husband not to love his wife in this way. Now, you see, all of this, again, is grounded in the creation ordinances and what happened at the very beginning when God made man and woman. And so much of Paul's argument relates to what God did when he made woman. And man said, after the woman had been given to the man, man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

The order of that is very important. The sustaining of that is vital to a healthy marriage—leaving, cutting the cord, cutting the apron strings, moving on, a new affection, a new devotion—not the absence of parental love or childhood love to parents, but the changing of that love, because of the expulsive power of a new affection. And it is in that leaving that there is then a cleaving, and it is in that cleaving that there is then a union, and there is in that union some profoundly mysterious dimension that takes place. Hence the monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside the framework of marriage as God intended. It is a silly, stupid, ugly, meaningless thing when it is removed from the framework in which God establishes it—the one flesh union of a husband and a wife. Purity before marriage, fidelity in marriage, union in the context of marriage, the freedom, the security, the delight that is wrapped up in that. And at the very heart of it is this natural affection on the part of the husband.

And I'm not sure that I understand it all, but somehow, in some profound way, the Bible says that a man's wife is part and parcel of his living frame. And vice versa. I think this must be one of the reasons why people say, as couples grow older, they're starting to look like each other.

Isn't that strange? And it is more than just an observation. There is a measure of truth in it. I think somehow or another it is wrapped up with this very notion that the husband's love for his wife is both in Christ's supernatural and within the framework of Genesis 2, it is also natural. It writes, my good friend Sinclair, for a husband not to love his wife, who has become one flesh with him, is not only to be a poor husband, it is to be a dysfunctional Christian. Now, once again, it is at this point, you will see, there, as we follow on from that in Ephesians 5, it's at this point, driving home this truth, that Paul references again this profound mystery.

And what is the mystery? Well, it's Christ and the church. Who is Christ and the church? Well, it's the ultimate couple—the bridegroom and the bride. And what he's saying is that when a husband loves his wife in this way, they then, as husband and wife, as bride and bridegroom, they point to the ultimate couple. And that the interface between the bride and bridegroom, Christ and the church, and husband and wife, as Paul moves back and forth between them, is an unassailable point that needs to be bowed to.

In the nineteenth century, Charles Hodge commented on this—and this is what he says, this is a fairly long quote, so you can just listen up for a moment. Married love, writes Hodge, is as much a dictate of nature as self-love. And it is just as unnatural for a man to hate his wife as it would be for him to hate himself or his own body. A man may have a body which does not altogether suit him. He may wish it were handsomer, healthier, stronger, or more active. Still, it is his body.

It is himself. And he feeds it and cherishes it, as tenderly as if it were the best and most lovely in the world. So a man may have a wife whom he could wish to be a better or more beautiful or more agreeable. But still she is his wife, and by the constitution of nature and the ordinance of God a part of himself. In neglecting her or abusing her, he violates the laws of nature as well as the law of God. Now, when a husband treats his wife with disregard and disrespect, it is frequently because he has hopes and notions which he has projected and which he now expects her to subscribe to and to fulfill. And if he's honest, it is often a cover for his own sense of personal inadequacy.

And so instead of looking within to address the issues of his own heart, life, psyche, soul, body, fitness, whatever, it is easier to do what is unnatural, and that is to abuse she who is one flesh with him. We will return to this topic next week in part two of a message titled Husbands. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

Scripture teaches a lot about God's design for the Christian family. If you're looking to dive even deeper into this topic, you can read the written transcripts that correspond with this series. Simply visit truthforlife.org, click on the sermons option in the top menu bar, then you can select sermons by topic or by scripture, by other filters. If the sermon has a transcript, you'll see it right below the player box when you select a message. Or you can select the has transcript filter to browse all of the sermons that have a transcript available. You can also supplement what you hear on this program by reading books that our team selects.

The book we're currently recommending is for preschool and elementary age children. It's called The God Contest. It tells the exciting story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal and the victory of the one true God. This is a book full of bright colorful illustrations, expressive characters that will grab the attention of children as you lead them from Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel to Jesus' ultimate victory on Mount Zion. The God Contest is a wonderful way for parents, teachers, and anyone who interacts with young children to present Bible stories and the gospel in a simple, understandable, and entertaining way. Request your copy of The God Contest today by visiting truthforlife.org. I'm Bob Lapeen. Hope you can join us again next weekend when Alistair will continue teaching on the topic of marriage by explaining how husbands should love their wives sacrificially. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.