God's Pattern for Husbands, Part 1

Love always seeks the absolute purity of its object, and it seeks it sacrificially. And husband, if you're filled with the Spirit, if your heart is right, your life is right, you're going to purify your wife, it may mean confrontation, but it certainly means you protect her from temptation and you expose her to the purifying influence of God's truth. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Love your wives as Christ loved the church. That biblical standard for husbands couldn't be higher.

How can you ever hope to reach it? Well, the first step is making sure you know what the Bible means by love. Today on Grace to You, John MacArthur takes you to 1 Corinthians chapter 13—that's the Bible's love chapter—to show you that for a husband, love is primarily about what he does, not about what he feels. Our lesson is part of John's current study, The Fulfilled Family.

Now, John, before you continue this series on the family, I want to ask you about your experience counseling struggling marriages. What would you say is the number one cause of conflict within Christian marriages, and what is the way to restore unity? So the number one issue in marriage is sin, and it can show itself in a lot of ways. The number one solution is to get rid of sin, and then the thing that's corollary to that is forgiveness.

So, look, we're going to sin, we're sinful people, we're put together in these very intimate relationships for decades and decades and decades and decades and offenses come. It is the ability to forgive, and when I say forgive, I don't mean in some sort of tertiary, superficial way. I mean deep down, I love you too much to hold this against you, because Christ loved me too much to hold it against me. What sustains every relationship, and certainly marriage, is that sort of sweeping reality that forgiveness is yours always, always. Whether you ask or don't ask, you live within the grace of my forgiveness. Forgiveness can be abused, right? But our Lord said, how often should you forgive?

How about 70 times seven or 70 times a day? So get ready. If you're going to be a forgiver, you're going to you're going to have to be dispensing a lot of it, but it's the only way that you can sustain a meaningful relationship, and eventually forgiveness breaks down people. Love has a way of crushing people's selfishness, because you take them back in grace. So the answer to whatever's going on that's wrong in your marriage is to be forgiving, and I realize even if it comes to divorce, you've got to forgive the person who divorced you, and leave them to the Lord for however he wants to deal with them, and move on with a heart freed from any bitterness. Thanks, John.

That is something we can't be reminded of enough. Forgiveness and love are the foundations of a healthy marriage that honors God. And friend, husbands especially, stay here, as John shows you how to cultivate that kind of love and forgiveness that he just talked about.

So here again is John MacArthur continuing his study called, The Fulfilled Family. We need to be reminded that 96% of all men and 94% of all women will say, I do. And then most of them, sooner or later in our culture, will say, I don't, and get divorced. But the fact of the matter is, well over 90% of people still pursue marriage. Sad reality is they can't make it work, and the collapse of marriage and family relationships is certainly predictable in our culture. 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. Now, coming to verse 25, we embark upon the husbands. A clear principle then is given in verse 25.

The husband's responsibility is to love his wife. It doesn't say rule her. He already has that tendency, even a tendency to dominate her, to control her, to command her.

The curse does that. 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.

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. Love, verse 4, is patient. Love is kind, is not jealous, does not brag, is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never fails.

All of those are verbs. That's how love acts. It is patient. It is kind. It is never jealous. It does not brag.

It is not arrogant. It does not act unbecomingly. It does not act in a way that cheapens. It never seeks its own.

It is not provoked easily. It doesn't remember wrongs against it. It doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness. It rejoices only in the truth. It endures all things. It believes the best.

It hopes the best. It endures everything and never fails. That's the character of love. And that's how we are to love our wives. It is always a verb.

It is always acting on someone. We have been given the capacity to love like this by the Holy Spirit. Because we have been transformed and born again, the Spirit of God has come into us. We have received the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, and we can share that love. The one in whom the love of God is perfected, said John in 1 John 2, is the one who has been born of God. If you are a Christian then, you cannot come along and say, well, I'm sorry, I really tried to love her, but I don't have the capability.

Yes, you do. That supernatural, spiritual love is there if you choose to exercise it. When a man is Spirit-filled, when he is so filled with joy and gratitude to God for all that Christ has done, and when he loves his wife as himself, he will sacrifice himself for her, and thus his authority will be soft and warm and affirming and secure, and she will follow if she is obedient to God's plan for her. I suppose, men, we might even ask the question, when was the last time you made a sacrifice for your wife?

I'm not talking about something trivial, something significant. Have you crucified self, set something aside to focus on her? I know many men are anxious to be leaders and spiritual giants, and they want to appear as they are in control of everything, and they are the pious leader of the family, but true spirituality really, really is death to self. So sometimes it's hard to recognize the real strong spiritual leader in a family because he's humble, he's humble, he's taking up his cross daily, he's denying self, he's dying daily, he's willing to be crucified with Christ, he's looking not on his own things, but on the things of others, esteeming others better than himself.

He's setting aside his desires for her, and it may well be that he appears weak when, in fact, he's strong. I suppose death to self is the real issue. Somewhere along your pilgrimage as a Christian, you need to learn to die to yourself regularly.

It saves you from being defensive, revengeful, retaliatory, hostile, accumulating the list of things against you. When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set aside and you sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy and you count it a privilege to suffer for Christ, that is dying to self. When your good is evil spoken of, when she misunderstands you, when your desires are not interesting to her, when your advice is disregarded and your opinions are ridiculed, and when you are abused, when you are mistreated or misunderstood and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even defend yourself, that is dying to self. When you lovingly, patiently bear any disruption, any irregularity, any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with folly and waste and extravagance and insensitivity and endure it as Jesus endured it, that is dying to self. When you are content with any food, any clothes, any climate, any society, any interruption, or any solitude, that is dying to self. When you never care for you, when you never care to refer to yourself in a conversation or to record and recite your own good works or to pursue commendation, when you can truly love to be unrecognized for something good, that is dying to self. When you see someone else prosper, someone else reach goals that you desire, and you can honestly rejoice with that other person in spirit, feel no envy and not question God while your needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances, that is dying to self. And gentlemen, when you can receive correction and reproof from your wife and humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, feel no rebellion and feel no resentment rising within your heart, that is dying to self. And that's what makes you the leader God wants you to be in your home.

It's when self dies. The manner with which we are to love our wives is the manner with which Christ loved the church. First of all, that is a sacrificial love that demands death to self.

It's not easy, especially if you're a strong person, confident person, capable person, successful person, smart person, wise person, respected person, leader type. To constantly deny yourself is a great spiritual challenge, but that's what God calls for. And when you lead in an environment of love and self-denial, you create the atmosphere that a woman longs for. Secondly, this love is not only a sacrificial love, but it is a purifying love.

It is a purifying love. And this is very important for us to understand. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 26, we are to love as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Verse 26, 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. Now this is a very important point. We are to love less.

Now this is a beautiful picture here. Christ loves His church with a sacrificial love and with a sanctifying love or a purifying love. He loves His church enough to cleanse her. He loves His church enough to present her without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and blameless.

What does it mean? It means He seeks the church's purity. He wants the church, can we see the word there in verse 27, in all her glory, endaxan, that is in all her gorgeous splendor. Luke 7, 25 translates it, gorgeously appareled, as if she were a queen.

Christlike beauty, it's talking about, the beauty of purity, the splendor of holiness and virtue, without spot, that means stain, without wrinkle or flaw, rotita in the Greek, flaw. When Christ takes His church to be His bride, He gives His life for His church, and then He seeks the purity of His church. Christ is the purifier of the church, and that is the way we are to be toward our wives.

We are to do everything we can to lead them to holiness and to purity. Verse 26, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word. Gentlemen, if you do anything in the life of your wife, expose her to the Word of God, bring her under the hearing of the Word of God, that she might be daily, routinely cleansed, that as John 15, 2 puts it, the one right before the verse I read, he takes every branch that bears fruit and purges it that it might bear more fruit. God wants to purify His own, and a husband must desire to purify his wife.

How does He do that? By constantly exposing her to the Word of God. You are the...you are the prophet in that home. You are the one to bring her under the hearing of the Word of God, to make her clean, to purify her. John 17, 17 says, Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth.

It's the Word that cleanses. First of all, in your own heart, in your own mind, you want to be certain that you never lead your wife into any sin. You never expose her to any iniquity. Don't draw her in to those things which are going to tempt her. Don't take her to some form of entertainment that's going to expose her to sinful feelings. Don't irritate her or exacerbate her or embitter her so that she falls to the temptation of anger.

And you know where the buttons are, don't you? You can say to her, oh, you're just like your...fill in the blank...mother, and you know what that does. Or you can drag up that same deal out of the past that always elicits the same hostility when you're ready to really wound. Don't do that. If you seek her purity, if you seek her holiness, if you seek her to be spotless and without stain and without flaw, to be cleansed and holy and blameless, then you would never lead her into anything that would produce iniquity. You would never expose her to anything that would produce strong temptation. On the other hand, you would constantly bring the Word of God to her.

You can do that a number of ways. Make sure that you're here to hear the Word of God and she's by your side. Make sure that you give her up to her. Make sure the Word of God and she's by your side. Make sure that you give her opportunity to be involved in a Bible study or whatever it might be, to spend time she needs reading the Word of God and being challenged by books or whatever tapes, whatever source. Make sure that you encourage those things in her life.

It's so sad to have men come to me and say, I don't know what went wrong, but all of a sudden my wife is gone and she ran off with whoever. And I often have to say, of course you understand that's not the beginning of something, that's the end of something. And what it is the end of is a long developed pattern of sin before you finally bolt like that. What have you been doing to disciple your wife so that that doesn't happen? That spiritual leadership as a joint heir, as one who is equal to you in Christ, what are you doing to strengthen her spiritually? Bring her under the sound preaching and teaching of God's Word. Expose her to great truth out of Scripture. Call her to purity. Never do anything that could lead her to be tempted.

Don't put her in a position to be tempted. That's another reason why I'm so concerned about men who send their wives out to work in an ungodly world because they are exposed to very strong temptation. They're in that kind of office environment with all those well-dressed, slick, successful men. They're dressed for that environment as well.

Everything looks pretty good. And they come home and it's a little bit different, you know. You're slopping around in your dirty jeans with your old t-shirt on and she's poking around in a ragged bathrobe and it just isn't the same. Why expose her to the kind of temptation that she will experience in that environment? You know what the Lord constantly does with His church? He says, come out from among them and be what?

Separate, don't touch the unclean thing. He's always trying to pull the church out of the world. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. I know the damage those things are going to do because friendship with the world is in me with God, James says, and the Lord is always trying to pull us out and separate us and not allow our thinking to be influenced by the world. In Romans 12, a very, very straightforward command is given to us with regard to worldliness. Do not be conformed to this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Get out of that system.

Get out of that way of thinking. And gentlemen, you have the responsibility for the protection of your wife's purity on every front. And the negative side of that is to prevent temptation.

The positive side of that is to expose her to the teaching and the instruction of the Word of God. In Athens, for example, when a bride was taken, she was to be bathed in the waters of the Calorot River. The river was sacred to the people and it symbolized a cleansing from all previous defilement and an entrance into a pure, marital life. And that's why traditionally there's a white gown worn by a bride the first time she is married.

That is to represent purity. Marriage is to be a purifying experience. It takes this woman and separates her from all others unto her husband, a purifying relationship. Her husband then takes on the responsibility for the maintenance of that purity.

The love of Christ for His church causes him to desire to keep His church clean. And your love for your wife should have the same exact desire. Let me tell you something. It's pretty challenging to live with a godly woman. Pretty challenging. I know how challenging it is. It's pretty challenging to live with a woman who expects you to live everything you preach.

Pretty ridiculous, isn't it? It's very challenging to live with somebody who has immensely high expectations for your virtue. And you might say to yourself, you know, I could have a lot more fun if my wife wasn't so picky. But in the end, your heart tells you what a privilege, what an honor, what a joy to have someone who has such high standards of spiritual accountability to hold you to what benediction and blessing that brings on your own life.

If a wife can bring that to a husband, surely in the husband's role, he has a greater responsibility to bring it to her. 2 Corinthians 11, 2, Paul says, I'm jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I betrothed you to one husband that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Paul says, I want you pure and devoted to Christ and I fear that you're going to follow off after some other lovers. True love is always concerned with the purity of its object.

Christ with His church, Paul with his congregation, a man with his wife. Disciple her, purify her, never expose her to impure influences. Her purity is your responsibility. In fact, it even says in 1 Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 35, if women desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home for it's improper for a woman to speak in church. Gentlemen, we are to be the theological teacher. We are to be the spiritual source.

We are to be the spiritual repository of truth where a woman can come that in hearing the truth she may be purified. If you really love your wife, you're going to hate anything that defiles her. Anything that steals her purity will become to you a terrifying enemy. Any so-called love which drags a partner down to uncleanness is a false love, a false love. Love always seeks the absolute purity of its object and it seeks it sacrificially. Real love is sacrificial and real love is a cleanser, a cleanser.

It'll use discipline if it needs to. Hebrews, chapter 12, verses 5 to 10 tells us how the Lord disciplines whom He loves. And husband, if you're filled with the Spirit, if your heart is right, your life is right, you're going to purify your wife, it may mean confrontation, it may mean a certain discipline, but it certainly means you protect her from temptation and you expose her to the purifying influence of God's truth.

Well, verse 27, and we'll close. Paul says we're to present our wives just as Christ presents 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. You want to present your wife in all her pure splendor. That's her beauty. It's not her hair and her wardrobe, it's her purity that is her beauty. No place for degrading her, no place for criticizing her, no place for knocking her.

You want to lift her up. Her purity is her glory. Her holiness is her beauty. The loving husband, the loving husband is not ashamed of his wife. He never degrades his wife. He never criticizes his wife. He never speaks unkindly of his wife.

He never paints her faults large. The loving husband, like Christ, seeks only to present his bride exalted, pure, and glorious. Love seeks to honor. So that's how we love. Sacrificially, cleansing or sanctifying her as well, purifying her, and the love that honors, that lifts her up and says, look what God has given me. That's the love that thrills the heart of a wife. Sacrifice for your wife, keep her pure, expose her to Scripture.

If you're a husband, you're practicing biblical love when you do those things, and you're helping lead your family to real fulfillment. That summarizes today's message from John MacArthur as he continued his series on Grace to You, titled The Fulfilled Family. Keep in mind, you can own this study in an 11-CD album, or you can download all of the MP3s free of charge.

You're sure to review these biblical truths again and again. To get a copy of The Fulfilled Family, contact us today. The CD album is reasonably priced and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. And again, you can download all 11 messages from The Fulfilled Family, MP3s and transcripts free of charge at gty.org. Now, if John's Fulfilled Family series has encouraged you to follow God's pattern for your family, or if you've been strengthened by our recent blog series on God's compassion, or the one on the heart of the gospel, or if someone you know has come to faith in Christ after hearing John's verse-by-verse teaching, remember that it's the support of listeners like you who make this ministry possible. To partner with Grace to You and to help encourage believers around the world, mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. And of course, you can also donate online at gty.org, or express your support when you call us, 800-55-GRACE. Our website one more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today, and join us Friday when John continues his study, The Fulfilled Family, with another another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.