Christ, Love, and Husbands #1

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in the Truth Pulpit. Well, this morning we go straight into our message in order to have plenty of time to honor the Lord at His table at the end of the service. And in the never-ending, ever-wise providence of God, the natural course of our pulpit plans leads us into a text that both satisfies what we've been speaking about on marriage and also preparing our hearts for communion.

Only the Lord could generate such things without any sense of planning on our part. So I invite you to turn to Ephesians chapter 5. We're going to begin at verse 25 in just a moment as we come to the role of husbands in marriage. All of the past three or four weeks have been devoted to the topic of marriage. After I preached a message on Tuesday night titled, When Marriage Gets Difficult, it was the topic. And there was dozens, if not scores, of people that said, please speak on marriage more.

And so we've paused everything in order to be able to do that. And we come now to the role of husbands. On Tuesday, we're going to have a special Q&A.

There's going to be a link sent out for you to submit questions that you might like us to address during the interview on Tuesday evening that will be of a very practical nature compared to some of the principles that we're trying to articulate from the pulpit. And so last week we addressed the role of women biblically from Ephesians 5, 22 to 24. And now we come to verses 25 through the end of the chapter on the role of husbands in Christian marriage. Now immediately I have good news for you men in the audience today, you husbands in the audience. I promise you that I am not about to rebuke you for anything that you have or haven't done. I promise you that I am not going to embarrass you in front of your wives or make the drive home difficult because of anything that I say.

The spirit of it is not like that. And maybe in years past, especially maybe when I was still in California, I preached on marriage with a little bit of a different spirit, but today at least it's different. All I want to do today is to help you men think rightly about what it means to be a Christian, to be a husband, or one day to become a husband. All I'm going to do today is to help the way that you think. And that is going to be very essential. And it will be far more impactful than me trying to give you a list of things that you ought to do that I think you should do for your wife, which she may or may not want. And so let's just think today, let's just look at principles from God's Word.

And I want to set it up this way by way of introduction. Back 13 years ago in September of 2011, I had a privilege, the kind of which cannot be estimated to be able to experience. For a few short days, I had direct personal custody of a first edition, first issue, 1611 King James Version Bible. The thing must have weighed 40 pounds, at least it seemed like it.

It was a massive thing. It was a gift for someone else. And it was my high privilege and high honor for those few days to protect what has been called the most influential book in the history of English civilization. And you know, there's a lot of KJV only pastors out there that I bet have never held one of those things like I have. Great men produced that Bible. Great men over the years for that single copy of it have held it and passed it down from generation to generation. You could see that at one time it was possessed by a pastor or a church that was emphasizing New Testament preaching because the pages there were worn.

And it was obvious it had been handled greatly in the New Testament era. And you know, somewhere along the line, a pastor better than me had that Bible and was preaching from it, pointing his people to Christ from it and all of that. And it was my privilege to hold that Bible and to protect it for just a few short days before I delivered it to the next step in the chain of custody. Nothing bad, nothing bad was going to happen to that book, that Bible on my watch. And it was very, very special to me.

It almost makes me emotional thinking about the privilege of that even today. Now, that special book and that special sense of protection gives you a little bit of a picture of the way that Christian men should think about their wives and how they respond to them. Because men, the way a man views his wife will inevitably determine his response to her. And the right value or whatever value he places on her is going to have a driving force in the nature of his relationship to her. And what I want to do, I just want to break this message down into two parts. The first part of this message will be a little bit of review over what we've looked at over the prior two or three weeks and bring it all into bear here, and the second part will come more directly from the text in Ephesians chapter 5.

Now men, listen. The way you value women in general is going to largely be determinative of the way that you value your wife and the way that you treat her. And secondly, the way that you value Christ is also going to directly determine the way that you value and relate to your wife. The way that you value women, what you think about God's gift of women generally is going to carry over into the way that you respond to your wife. And the way that you think about Christ is going to inevitably carry over into the way that you treat and value your wife. What you think about redeeming love is going to determine the way you think about marital love. The way that you think about atoning blood from Christ for the sake of your soul is going to determine the attitude that you have toward marriage. And one of the things that I said in one of these prior messages, I can't tell you how much I wish I had heard these things 30 years ago or 35 years ago.

They would have made me a better husband, let's just leave it at that, than what I have been. And I want to purge you of a lot of marriage sermons you've heard in other places. The answer to your marriage is not buying flowers or buying chocolate or going on a romantic date or anything like that, or setting up a regular time to court your wife.

You can do that stuff if you want to, but it's all outward ornamentation that doesn't change anything. If you're not thinking rightly about women and about Christ before you even get to the woman that you actually have or that one day you actually will have. And so we need to think rightly about broad principles and then the broad principles will inform the right way for you to go forward. So let me just start with the way that you value women, point number one here, the way you value women. And it is essential for men to have a right biblical view of women in general as they consider the role that husbands have in marriage. So we start with the high dignity that Scripture gives to women.

We've already covered all of this, but I did not want to go into the text and just assume that, assume what you've heard maybe, maybe you haven't even heard it. I don't want to assume anything because this is fundamental. If you are mindful of this about women in general and understand, as I've said many times, that wives come from the realm of women, then the way that you view women will carry over to your wife. And the whole idea here is that we need to help men not simply view their wives as someone who, you know, performs functions in different rooms of the house, including the kitchen, and just exists to make you happy and to fulfill what you want. And you get angry and out of sorts when she doesn't and boss her around because you know something about, you take one verse out of context that wives are supposed to submit to their husband.

I'm not being rebuking here or anything like that. I just want to set the context that we earnestly need to deal with this rightly because this is a central part of the Word of God. And so we start with the high dignity Scripture gives to women. And the question is, you know, how do you value women? What do you think gives women their worth?

And what is it that make women special and how that affects the way that you relate to them? We've seen multiple times in these past few weeks that women share in the image of God. Christian women share fully in the pardon of sin and eternal life and in union with Christ. Women are fully equal to men in the image of God that they bear. They're fully equal in the value and the union that we have in Christ. They're full participants in the forgiveness of sin, the imputation of righteousness, the promise of eternal life in heaven.

Women share in all of that fully and equally. And so for a Christian man, there is absolutely no room whatsoever to have a condescending or undignified view of women to begin with. Now, you go on, you know, and you read in the Gospels with an eye toward the way that Jesus Christ related to women.

What do you see? You see that he freely taught women. He freely honored women. He freely healed women.

He freely forgave women. It was to a woman in John 4 that he made himself known as the Messiah. And this is all contrary to the culture of the time where women were not viewed as equals with men. And so Christ himself, men, if you say that you love Christ and that you belong to him and that he's your Lord and Savior and example and all of that, well, that immediately informs the way that you view all women.

It does away with any secret sins that you might want to have to, you know, to pursue your lusts and things like that. You can't view women in the same way anymore once you see that much. Then, for us men, another way, another thing that we need to see is the way that women responded to Christ during his earthly ministry. And what we saw in that was that women were more faithful to Christ than the men were. The women supported his ministry. The women followed him.

You know, the disciples of Christ fled when the heat was on during his trial. The women followed him to the cross. The women followed him to the grave. The women were the first witnesses of the resurrection. God gave Christ to us through a woman.

And so all of this, all of this comes together and we start to see that the realm of women, women who God, you know, God created a woman to be a helpmaid and a companion to Adam, God has bestowed such high dignity on women through the image of God, the gift of salvation, the way that Christ ministered to them during his earthly life. I venture to say that there needs to be a lot of cleansing and changing of thinking taking place in the minds of many men. In light of this, even men who hold to the Bible as their standard in terms of the practical way that we actually think and relate and what forms the fundamental principles by which we respond to women. Not all men have that problem.

Not all men have stumbled in this way. I know, you know, and I'm grateful for men within our congregation that honor their wives as they do. But generally speaking, I think that this is where a lot of the weakness in Christian marriage has come in.

And when you realize that, again, broadly speaking, that divorce is practically as common in the so-called Christian church as it is in society at large, it's obvious that there needs to be a complete revolution of thought in the Christian church without any regard to what's happening outside of the walls of the Christian church. Let's say another word or two about women and think rightly about godly women as we saw them in the four Gospels. What did we see? We saw women displaying a humble faith in the promise of God. An admirable, exemplary, humble faith in the promise of God. They displayed a teachable spirit under the word of God. You think of Mary at the feet of Jesus.

She just wanted to be there and hear what Christ had to say. And the preoccupation with the events of the Gospel were things that manifested and were exemplary. And all of that to say that, and for this, you know, to encourage ladies also in terms of what they think, when we observe a humble spirit before the promises of God, a teachable spirit under the word of God, attention to the things of the Gospel, the Gospel of Christ, ladies, you know, just by way of reminder, this is a completely different realm of thought and existence and life than what is shoveled down your throats from the world around you. And that you can't help but be influenced by, if even embracing, you know, the whole competitive spirit nature of life and trying to be like a man and needing to follow after and do what men do and all of that.

So completely different. That is so contrary to the godly spirit of that humble spirit, that teachable spirit, that preoccupation with the Gospel, you know, and to have a, for a woman to pursue Christ and to love Christ and be born of Christ and led by the spirit is going to lead her into things like that and not trying to prove what a man she could be if only she, you know, had been born differently, I guess. And so it's, all of that was very important because we see the high dignity of women and that Scripture teaches this, and so when we come to Ephesians 5, 22 to 24, and we see wives submit to your husbands, it's impossible to view that as something that takes away from the dignity of women in regard to the whole context of the way that Scripture teaches them. This is about a matter of a role that God has assigned. God gives responsibilities to different people in different ways, but it's not at the expense of the inherent dignity that a woman has.

It's simply a different role that is given to her that she is to honor. But as we said, submission is biblical submission, rightly understood, is a place of high dignity because it is Christ who calls you to it, the Christ who made you in the image of God, the Christ who makes you a full heir of eternal salvation, the Christ who loved and ministered to women in life. You know, whatever position or lot the Lord assigns to us in life is by definition dignified because he is the one who orders all of our circumstances, including our roles in marriage. And so with all of that, men, we come to the question.

We call the question, as it were, to the table. Men, how do you respond and how do you value the high dignity of women? How do you value the high dignity of women? Is that an influential formative force in your personal character that as you think about women, as you see women in this room, as you contemplate your wife or your daughters or women that you encounter in the course of daily life, how do you view them? I'm afraid I know, and I therefore call you to have your mind transformed by Scripture, have your mind renewed by the Holy Spirit in terms of the things that we have seen, and have a completely different view of the way that you think about women around you. Women are to be on the receiving end of your respect, your honor, your chivalry, if we can put it in terms of that old-fashioned term, and this is completely countercultural. I know that, and I know that most women don't portray themselves in consistency with the high dignity that God has given to them. But men, that doesn't affect you. You let your mind be determined by what Scripture says, by what Christ exemplified, and you view women with a sense of dignity, and then you carry that right over to your wife in an even more elevated way, and you start to see the effect that this has on everything.

It's really, really remarkable. And again, I have to repeat this, perhaps because I'm just mindful of being sanctified in my own thinking and seeing how far short I've fallen in my own life over 35 years of marriage, that the woman that God has given to you, the wife that God has given to you, is more than your cook and your housekeeper and your mate and the mother of your children. She's so, so much more than that. And you have to view her. You should never think about another woman, especially your wife. You should never think about another woman, and especially about your wife, apart from Jesus Christ. You should see Christ side by side with her, the one who saved her, the one who made her, the one who gave her to you, the one who bestows and confers such dignity upon her, that it is ever-increasing a matter of motivation to you that the dignity that I bestow on my wife needs to be somehow commensurate with the dignity that Christ himself has given to her.

And the great likelihood is that for many, if not most of you, that will elevate your view of your wife in a way that perhaps has passed your understanding before. So the way you value Christ, men, how do you value the high dignity of women, and how does that carry over into the way that you consider women in your own mind and in your own heart? If we get these principles established in the heart, everything else will take care of itself.

I don't need to give you a bunch of illustrations today, because we're concerned about the principles. Now, secondly, let's go and consider the way that you value Christ, men, the way that you value Christ. And ultimately, the way that a man develops in his consideration of his wife is going to be reflective of the way that he evaluates and considers Christ.

There's no denying that. It's right on the surface of the text that we have before us here, Ephesians 5, verses 25 to 33. Let me read that text to get it in our minds. It will prepare our hearts not only for consideration of the role of husbands, but as we approach the table here for all of us. So in Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 25, 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 and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

I want to make a couple of general observations here in the text before we move on to it. Notice the direct comparison that Paul makes three times in the passage about comparing marriage to the relationship of Christ and the church. He had already done it in verses 23 and 24. He said, the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. Verse 24, as the church submits to Christ, wives should submit and everything to their husband. You add those two in, it's five different times that marriage is wrapped tightly around the nature of Christ and the church. You see it in verse 25, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. You see it there in verse 29.

You nourish and cherish your wife just as Christ does the church. Verse 32, this mystery is profound. I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

And so you see this heavenly, eternal picture that is to frame the entire way that we view marriage, not about the day-to-day things that preoccupy us, but we're to start there. And I know that for many of you this passage is familiar. And yeah, it's familiar to me too, but the Spirit of God can certainly give us a fresh understanding, fresh insight, fresh motivation. This is the eternal, living Word of God, and it's living today.

The fact that you've heard messages on this text in the past doesn't mean that you don't have anything new to learn today, does it? Notice also that love is the controlling thought in this passage, specifically as it applies husbands to their wives. Look at verse 25, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. Verse 28, in the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. And in verse 33, let each one of you love his wife as himself. And so love, love, love Christ and the church, five times Christ and the church, going back to the role of the wife. And so men, and all of us, I guess, but we cannot be claiming to be disciples of Christ and, you know, boast in our, you know, whatever, and think about marriage in any less of a way.

And that means to think about our wives in any less of a way. Now, I understand, let me just say this, and, you know, as a mild word to the ladies as well, I understand that your wife in herself is not worthy of all of the lofty things that are spoken of here. In herself, she's not worthy of that. But understand, men, and this is why right Christian thinking is so essential, you, in an infinitely greater way, are not worthy of the love that Christ has shown upon you. You're not worthy of redeeming love. You're not worthy of atoning blood from the cross.

Now are you? And so the matter of personal worth, if it was a matter of personal worth, we would all be outside of Christ. We would have no hope apart from his self-motivated redeeming love and his atoning blood which he gave us. And if he is the pattern and you are unworthy of him, then the fact that your wife may fall short, may have flaws and sins and besetting sins of her own and irritate you from time to time or even often has nothing to do with the way that you think and the way that you respond in marriage.

It has absolutely nothing to do with that. You draw your instruction, your cues, your thinking, your motivation from Christ himself. And so everything, men, about your role in marriage, everything flows from the way that you value Christ and what you understand about Christ. Everything flows from that. You think vertically before you think horizontally about your wife.

Because the way that you value Christ will determine your response to his word in general and it will determine the way that you respond to this text in particular, which means it will determine the way that you respond to your wife. Well, my friend, just before we close today's broadcast, I just wanted to give a special word of greeting and thanks to the many people that listen to our podcast internationally. It's remarkable to me. The last report that I saw listed 83 different countries that in one way or another are listening to us. And I just want to send a special word of greeting to those of you that are in lands that are distant from my own home here in the United States. You know, we've seen people from every continent except maybe Antarctica and people from countries like Ireland and Australia and Singapore, Canada, the UK, India.

I have friends in all of those countries. And whether you've met me face to face or whether you only know me as a voice through your favorite device, I just want to say God bless you. Thank you for your interest in the word of God. And may the Spirit of God work deeply in your heart as you continue to study God's word. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your prayers. God bless you. My prayers and love are with you as well. And we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit.