Husbands, Love Your Wives

Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband. Let’s pray together. Father, come to you now once again and, we just want to try and humble ourselves and ask for your understanding and guidance and wisdom as we hear the word, your word, your commandments, as we receive them and as we try to respond to them in a way that is, pleasing in your sight.

I pray that you would give us ears to hear and eyes to see and a heart to understand and a desire and a willingness to do exactly what you said here. Lord, I pray for our husbands here.

And our marriages here. Help the husbands among us. Lord, both present and future husbands even. To to know how to love our wives in a biblical way. Help us not just to know how as a matter of knowledge but help us to actually do it. And I pray for our families that again you would strengthen our families. You would bless the marriages. That they would be rich and they would be full and they would be fulfilling and they would be glorifying to the Lord Jesus. For we know that our marriages and our families are not just for our our own satisfaction but ultimately for the glory of god and I pray that they would do just that in our church here.

So, give grace, lord. Help us as we study the word. Lord, we need your help. We ask for your help. In Jesus name, amen. So, this morning, we talked about the first three verses of this passage which is verse 22, 23, and 24 which is that wives in the in the biblical pattern that God has established for the family and he is the one who has authority to determine and to decree to us, really, to dictate what a family is supposed to look like. Whether it is something that this world approves of or not, the Lord’s never really been interested in that.

And we saw this morning how that the pattern of the wife submitting herself to her husband is something that goes back to the creation. It’s not a not a byproduct of sin, but it’s a byproduct of the way that god went about creating the world and creating man and woman in the in the Garden of Eden. We also saw how that this, that the Lord did not leave us with, especially as concerning the wives, did not leave the wives with no guidance, practical guidance as to how they were to submit themselves to their husbands or in what circumstances or to what degree, but the Lord gave a pattern, and that pattern is the way that the church is to submit herself to Christ.

Now, we turn that, we turn that around and we switch it, switch it around and as I said this morning, these two things, both the wives submitting themselves to their husbands and the husband loving his wife, which is what we read starting in verse 25, are things that go together. It does not work as it’s supposed to work if only one part, one party of the marriage is doing their part.

It really requires both. Now that doesn’t mean that if both, if my wife is not submitting, then it’s okay if I treat her any old way, and it doesn’t mean that if my, if if a lady’s husband is not treating, you know, giving her reverence, giving her husband reverence and and submission that or I got that back, but you understand what I’m saying. One does not depend upon the other, but it does make it far more difficult for one to do their duty before God than if both are doing their duty before God. And so, it just reminds us, and this idea of love also reminds us of a greater scriptural truth, which is when we live in a way that is pleasing in god’s sight and we obey god’s commandments, when we do that, it actually makes it easier for other people to do god’s commandments and when we don’t live in a way that is pleasing in God’s sight, and we disobey or rebel against God’s commandments, it actually makes it more difficult for those around us, other brothers and sisters in Christ, people in your family, people in the church, people around you, to live for the Lord.

And sometimes it’s hard for us to see that, but it it becomes it comes into clear focus when you’re talking about marriage. Because every one of us knows how hard it is to deal with a spouse who’s not obeying the Lord. How hard it is for us to do our part when that’s not happening. That’s just hard, and it’s not the way it’s supposed to be. But we do affect one another in that way. And that’s certainly true inside in the church as well, on the subject of love.

Now, notice what it says in verse number 25. The Bible says, husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church. This is a command. Now, just like we said to the to the wives this morning, when in verse 22, God speaking directly to wives, thereby making the wife directly accountable to God, not via her husband, but directly from the Lord, so the wife is accountable, and in the same way, the husband is accountable to God.

And so whether a man loves his wife or doesn’t love his wife, how he treats his wife, because that’s really what we’re talking about when we say love, and I’ll get to that in a minute. How a man treats his wife is not a matter between him and his wife only. It is ultimately a matter between that man and his God. And so, not loving one’s wife is a rebellion against God, in the same way that not submitting to one’s husband is a rebellion against God.

And if it’s true of one, it’s true of the other, because this is both, they both occur in the same context. And so, we have to keep that in mind. Whenever our relationships, you gentlemen, whenever your relationship with your wife is out of order and you don’t feel like she’s giving you the honor that you you think she ought to be giving you or or whatever the case might be, and switch it around and it’s true for the woman as well toward her toward her her husband. Whenever that’s out of order, you still have as a backstop the reality and the knowledge that, Lord, I still have to obey you. In all circumstances.

My wife might be treating me poorly, might be disrespecting me, might be doing things not according to God’s will and word, but that I still am required to love her.

Right? Yes. Right. This is why the Lord speaks to us individually and directly. If we just latched onto this one truth, it would fix a lot of problems. Because again, one leads to the other and when one starts, one problem starts, then there’s a reaction and then you have this spiral. And once the spiral goes, it is very hard to pull out of the spiral. I know some time ago I was trying to counsel with a couple that were in that spiral.

And when I was talking to these people about about the spiral and about what was leading to it, it became very evident that except there was a clear, like decisive and mighty intervention from God, that this spiral was not gonna end well. Because for every for every action and then reaction and then reaction to that reaction, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to come out of until at least one person says, enough.

I want to be right with god more than anything else. That’s really the only question. Whether do you The question should not be, wife, do you want to submit yourself to your husband? Do you want to reverence your husband like the text says? That’s not the question, it’s do you wanna be right with God? Husband, the question is not whether whether you like your wife or whether you want to treat her right or whether you want to love her in the way that that you should. The question is do you wanna be right with God?

Everything in our Christian life leans on that question. In verse number 25, the Bible says, husbands love your wives as a command. God is not in that verse commanding us to manufacture some kind or some particular form of emotion or feeling. God is not saying, Sam, you need to love Anna and so so you need to work the the romantic kind of feelings up. You know, you know, that that that youthful and it’s not youthful. Mean, it’s true of older people too. That kind of what we often associate with youth.

It’s not that we’re conjuring up and working up and trying to produce this kind of fondness. That’s not what we’re talking about. God is not commanding us to have an emotion. It is very important for us to get that Because we all know, and you’ve heard this before many times, that love in this world is basically an emotion. Well if it’s an emotion it’s not something you can just easily manufacture.

There’s a lot of things that go into that. Like for instance, you have good you have good feelings and emotion toward your spouse when things are going well. And when they aren’t, not so much. But none of that changes God’s command. Right? It stands there rigid.

Like, I’ll give you an example. When the Lord says, rejoice in the Lord always. You don’t always, you and I always don’t don’t have that that kind of happy feeling. But God’s not commanding us a happy feeling, to have a happy feeling. The happy feeling is a byproduct of obeying the command. It produces the feeling. Just like loving your wife, submitting your husband. It produces things but the command itself is not be happy.

The command is rejoice. That is an action that we take in the in response to god’s command and in this case, god is commanding husbands not to have a particular feeling or emotion but he is commanding husbands to act toward their wives out of love. He’s commanding them to do something when he says, husbands love your wives. In other words, you and I choose to love our wife based upon our actions.

Regardless of what our feelings might be. Did you know, sir, it’s possible to be out of sorts with your wife and still exercise love toward her? Absolutely. Can you do that? It is absolutely possible to do. Not easy to do, you will need the power of God to help you, but it is absolutely possible to do. Does God expect us to do things that we don’t feel like doing?

Oh, yes. If there’s one thing that’s the Christian life, it is this flesh, there are many, many, many hundreds of things. This flesh does not want to do and yet god commands us to do it. And part of the growth in Christian in the Christian life is not how how many of you every time you get down to pray, you wanna pray? How many of you every time you read your Bible, wanna read your Bible?

I mean, there there are so many times where this flesh is contrary. Our feelings are contrary. That’s not what we base it on. That is not what is the driver of our action. It is obedience to what God says, and then we worry about the feelings later. We will be in a poor state indeed if we allow our transient emotion to determine what we do. But God says, I have something for you to do. I want you to act in love. Look if you would at the beginning of the chapter, chapter five verse two, or verse one to get get the pick up the context. Be you therefore followers of god as dear children and what does it say?

Walk in love. That’s a that’s kind of a good way to put a little bit different, right? Instead of love your wife, love your wives. Now, this is speaking to the church but instead of love one another and that’s biblical too but when Jesus said, love one another, what is he saying? He’s saying, walk in love. What does the walk represent? The walk represents the actions you choose to do.

That is a clear biblical analogy to the actions you take. So, when god says, walk in love, it he he is saying, love one another in the church. He’s saying love one another. You know what? I wanna tell you something that will that will transform the church. You know, sometimes people in a church will get the will get the feeling, the sentiment, the emotion. You know, I don’t really like all those people.

I don’t really like all those people. I don’t like those people. You come to a church, you don’t like, you don’t like the people. Truth is though that people have those thoughts or if it’s not everybody, it’s it’s a group. There’s a group they like and a group that they don’t really care for a whole lot.

That’s not, first of all, there’s a problem there, generally speaking, it’s a problem of schism where we like some, don’t like others and of course I acknowledge that we gravitate towards some and not others. I I get that. A lot of it has to do with age and gender and that kind of thing, okay, stage of life. But the whole idea where it’s like, well I don’t really like those people.

But the answer to that is walk in love. Not, well, you don’t really, I don’t really like those people. Those people kind of get on my nerves, walk in love.

I don’t care how you feel, walk in love. The command is walk in love. The command is not feel better, the command is walk in love. And so even in a church, this kind of love of action, which is what it is, that’s what love is. It’s a choice to act consistent with love.

And for you that are married, for you husbands that are married, you wanna boil down your duty towards your wife in sentence, if one thing above everything else. It is not you bring her flowers, it is not that you take her on dates, it is all those things are fine and good, you should do them. It’s not all of that, you bring it down to one thing and it is you should love your wife. You should act towards your wife in a way that is consistent with love.

God has commanded us that. Look if you would at three verses. One’s in Ephesians, actually we’ve already read it, look at verse two just as a reminder. Notice what it says, and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us. Notice that. Remember the pattern from this morning? The pattern of the wife submitting herself to her husband is the church submitting to Christ. Well, the pattern of the husband loving his wife is the same pattern, is Christ’s love toward the church. But here’s what I want you to do, I wanna I wanna more fully develop what we mean when we say love.

Walk in love as Christ also hath loved us. I can’t leave this without touching on this as it relates to our church. The pattern for loving one another in the body of Christ among the people of God is the same as the husband. Did you see that? Christ said, he told his disciples when he was on earth in the book of John, he says, love one another as I have loved you. That’s the pattern.

Here it’s the same pattern. The pattern for our loving one another is the same pattern as a husband loving his wife. So really, we’re just kind of expanding out what that what the context is here. Walk in love as Christ also has loved us and hath given himself for us. For an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. Look at John chapter three.

John chapter three. Verse 16. Are you really making me turn to John three sixteen? Yes. For God so loved the world. That’s our pattern, right? That he Gave. Gave. Alright. We’ve seen in in Ephesians five two, the association with the word love and giving. Here, we see it again. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Look at Galatians. Galatians.

Chapter two verse 20, probably the life verse for somebody in here. Is it true of anybody? Galatians two twenty, anybody use that verse? It’s a good one. One of them, one of the ones you might use. Galatians two twenty, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me, who loved me, and what does it say? Gave for me.

Okay, that’s the third time we’ve seen love in the New Testament associated with giving, especially and particularly giving of oneself. Look at it back in Ephesians five. Verse 25. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. If there’s any ambiguity, and there might be, on how exactly you walk in love, what exactly does that entail? Well, it entails a lot of things, but all, pretty much all the things that loving another person, in particular your wife, pretty much everything can be put under the heading of giving.

And especially giving yourself. You wanna know how to love your wife? What is the action of loving your wife? Choosing to love your wife? It is giving yourself. How do we know that? Because that’s the pattern. That’s what our Lord did. Greater love hath no man than this, than than he what? Lay down his life for his friends. Hereby perceive we the love of god because he lay down his life for us but god commended, demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet sinners. Christ said, it’s over and over and over, is it not? Christ laid down his life for us and he did it out of love to us. He is our pattern. Sir, he is your pattern for your love, you loving your wife so that you might look at him and know how to love your own wife.

And in this con in the in the context of verse 25, we know he’s talking about the church. He kinda switches between marriage and the church, but in this context, he’s talking about Christ gave himself specifically for the church by bleeding and dying for her salvation. Right?

And following our lord’s example, sir, husband, should you be willing to give your life for your wife? Trade your very life for hers. Should you be willing to do that? Would you do that? Don’t answer too fast.

Very few of us have ever been in that that place. I sure hope I would. I feel like I would. But I just laid a trap for you. If we would give our life for our wife, if we would die for our wife, which is what Christ did, right? Why do we find it such a struggle to live for her?

I mean if we would lay our life down and give it up out of love for our wife, why do we find it so hard to use our life?

Because obviously when when you lay your life down for another, that’s the extremity, that’s the the kind of the worst case scenario, is it not? But what about everything short of that? And yet that is where we have all the trouble, is it not? We say, oh well I would do anything for my wife and for my kids. I would lay down my very life, but we have trouble allowing her to choose what to have for dinner.

We have trouble deciding whether or not we’re going to do something nice for anniversary. We have trouble deciding whether what I want or what she wants is gonna have priority. And we talk about we would trade our our life for our wife. Hold on, you’re not even being asked that. You’re being asked to use your life.

To give yourself. Far short of the extreme, is it not? But man, is that not difficult? If we’re willing to trade our life for hers, why aren’t we willing to use our life for her?

This idea of living for your wife is what we’re really talking about in verses twenty eight and twenty nine. It is not dying for her but living for her.

Now that might sound a little funny, you should live for your wife. Because did we not this morning talk about submission and male headship and all those kinds of things? All that’s still true, none of that changed. And this is where it gets good.

What this means for you to live your life for your wife, that is you’re giving yourself for her. This means that you give the money that you’ve earned for her needs and for her wants. It means you give of your time for the things that she wants to do.

It means that you give up your desires and your preferences to prioritize hers. That’s what it means, in things small and in things big. On a day to day basis we usually deal with minutiae, small things, right?

But remember, as a husband, every time you demand, you insist, and this the problem with men now. I talked about it a little bit this morning, but this is the problem with men, Christian men who, you know, in churches and in Christians that believe in male leadership, male headship of the family and all of that, this is the problem, is they find that as a reason, they find that as a pretext to then satisfy their own will and desire on the grounds of submission.

My wife is supposed to submit, so that means I get my way. I say what we should do, I say where we should go, and the Lord says precisely the opposite.

He says, you give up yourself for your wife, right? And what You see how both of these when they put together they create a harmony? They can both be abused, but when you put them together in the right way it creates a harmony.

But if you’re gonna love your wife in this way and give yourself up for her, Give up your money, give up your time, give up your desires, give up your preferences, give up your priority. Everything for you, you you lay it down and it becomes second place and it becomes back seat to everything with your wife. She is first. It’s not that you completely abandon anything you want to do. You want to go fishing? It’s not you abandon fishing but your wife is first.

It’s not that you abandon, you know, liking the food you like but what she likes is more important. Where she wants to go is more important. And that’s just small examples, but sometimes this touches on big things. It might be that that your wife needs a medical procedure that would really help her, but you know, you’ve been saving up this money for this other thing and you don’t really know, you don’t really want to do that.

Lay it down. It might be your wife really wants something, but there’s something that you really want, lay it down. This is what it means to give up yourself.

But this kind of love that is exemplified in our Lord, that is commanded us is a love of self denial. Did not our Lord Jesus Christ, expressed and demonstrated his love for us, if you could kind of summarize his love when he gave himself, did he not deny himself to the nth degree? That’s that’s all the cross was. He says, if a man will come after me, let him deny himself, and what does it say? Take up his cross and follow me. So, self denial was part of the cross, part of the demonstration of his love. There is no way for you to give yourself to your wife in that way without denying yourself.

Was it possible for our lord to do that? To love us and give himself for us without first denying himself? No, Christ denied himself to the greatest extent. It was that was possible.

And in this way, listen now, I want you to get this. The difficulty that a man has in loving his wife in this way is similar to the same difficulty that his wife has in submitting to him. It’s the same problem.

You see, the wife doesn’t want to yield her will to the will of her husband. And he, the husband, does not want to deny his will for the sake of his wife. Do you see that?

And so therefore, the will on both the side of the husband and on the side of the wife is the real problem, is the culprit for a great number of marriage problems. It really is a matter of the will. The wife doesn’t want to give her will up to her husband’s will, that’s submission. The husband doesn’t want to give up his will and his desires for the benefit of his wife.

And so they have a battle of the wills. She doesn’t want to submit, he doesn’t want to love her, he wants to put himself first, she doesn’t want to do what he says, it’s a battle of the wills and it’s like boom, boom, boom, boom.

Now when you start to have this kind of grind, it doesn’t end well does it? It doesn’t. Who’s gonna budge first? Who’s gonna budge first? Gentlemen, it is you who must.

The impetus, the duty to move first and to obey God first is always upon the leader. When you have marriage problems, sir, you need to take the first step to get it right. And that means laying your life down.

Yielding your will to prioritize your wife’s will. And when you do that, you remember we talked about the question about submission that a lot of, that causes a lot of ladies to stumble at submission. And sometimes it’s because of the extremes of bad leadership, I get that, but the question that comes to their mind is, if I submit myself to this man, what about what I want?

The husband is the one who steps up, takes the initiative and answers that question in the relationship. And he says, you get what you want. I will give myself to fulfill that thing.

And so the very thing that is a stumbling block, that is a hindrance, that makes it difficult for a woman to submit herself to her husband is removed. Because he says and he conveys not so much in word, but in deed, in action, he conveys what you want is my priority. What you need is is at the top of my list. Here, I’m giving myself to you. I am denying my own desires for your sake and when she sees that, all of a sudden, one of the biggest hang ups is is gone.

Doesn’t fix everything but it takes a lot away. Because now she knows she’s married to a man that is going to make sure that when she risks and trusts him with submission, with that voluntary yielding of the will, she’s gonna be okay. Because she has a man that will lay his life down. In big ways and in small ways.

And her fear is calmed. Now this kind of this kind of prioritizing your wife’s will, laying your life down for her, there are boundaries to it, just like there are boundaries to submission, right? Those boundaries, and if you’re gonna be a scriptural leader, you have to lay boundaries down for those that you lead. It’s not anything and everything goes. Within godly, within scriptural, within wise boundaries, your wife should get what she wants.

I’m a say that again. I didn’t get the feedback that I was expecting. Within godly, scriptural, and wise boundaries, your wife should get what she wants. She should get everything she needs and pretty much everything she wants within those boundaries.

Well, I don’t get what I want. Who cares? Nobody cares about you. You lay your life down. What I want takes a back seat. What I need must come second.

This is one of the ways, remember we talked about trust. This is one of the ways that a husband builds trust with his wife. And that trust is what helps her submit. Did you know as a leader, one of the jobs of a spiritual leader is to aid and to help those you lead to also obey the Lord? So I said, it’s on them. No, it’s not.

We all affect one another in that way, just like I said at the beginning. And you as a spiritual leader, as a husband, as the head of the wife, you have power to aid and to assist and facilitate your wife also obeying the Lord in this matter. When a wife observes her husband consistently give himself in big and small ways for her at the expense of himself, she learns to trust him.

And that’s the foundation for submission. It’s not that well, only then is she supposed to submit. No, but it it makes it a lot easier. Her husband becomes trustworthy to put those needs that she has and desires that she has in the front of his mind. Now back in Ephesians five, there’s one other point I wanna draw your attention to. Verse number 26.

Well, just read 25. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That, now this is the end, why did Christ give himself for the church? To sanctify, cleanse it. What’s the goal? What’s the end? Verse 27 states the aim. That he might present it to himself a glorious church.

Not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men, now remember, the pattern. So the example of the Lord Jesus with the church is the pattern for what we read in verse number 28. So in that same way, ought men to love their wives as their own bodies, he that loveth his wife loveth, what? Himself. Now follow this.

Our Lord, he died, he he laid down his life for the church to cleanse it with the ultimate aim that he might present himself that church. You follow that?

The church will The benefit of what he did, his death on the cross, his resurrection, his his work, the benefit of that actually not only It’s obviously for our benefit because we escaped the the the torments of the lake of fire and we escape judgment for all of eternity, and we escape you know all you know the terrible effects of sin, and all of that. I mean that’s a great benefit to us, right? It helps us, but ultimately the benefit also circles back around to the Lord himself. That he might present to himself his church as a glorious church without spot or wrinkle.

That’s the pattern. And then following that truth in the next verse the Lord says this, so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies, he that loveth his wife loveth himself. Here’s the point, in that same way, if you love your wife, if you love your wife as yourself, not only is it going to help her, but the benefit of that is going to come back to you also.

Do you see that? By you, sir, being the spiritual leader, taking the initiative, setting the example of loving your wife and giving yourself for her, it will produce in her fruit that will that will bless your life and your relationship with her also. It is not just her benefit, but yours too. It’ll create a wife who is submissive and who does reverence her husband. A wife who trusts her husband.

A wife who is who is who loves her husband because that’s also something wives should do. Definitely more prominent directed toward the men but it’s in Titus two. Women are to love their husbands and their children. It’ll produce a a loving wife who who rejoices to serve her husband. And you know, do you know why? That’s the fruit that has come back.

To himself. It says in verse number 29, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. How many of you, does anybody here know how to take care of yourself, know how to satisfy your needs, know how to pamper yourself? Gentlemen, do you know how to do that? If you had money and there’s a burning hole in your pocket, do you know how to spend it to make yourself a little bit, you know, brighten your day?

If you had $600 do you think you could find some way to spend that to make yourself happy? Many of you, you’d make a beeline for the nearest gun store And your day is instantly happier.

Or it might be something else you’d like to do. Maybe it’s a nice restaurant or a trip or whatever you like to do. You know how to pamper yourself. Do you know how to go to the restaurant you like to eat at and buy the food you like to eat? Do you know how to go to the places where to do the fun things that you like to do? And we all know the answer to that. Yeah, we all know how to pamper ourselves. We all know how to nourish ourselves, cherish ourselves. We all know how to do that. So, just take that.

If you know how to do that for yourself, then you know how to love your wife. All you have to do is replace the yourself and all of those questions with the word her.

And do those things that I just asked for her nourisheth and cherisheth her. Do those things for her before you do it for yourself. And you’ll have a happy wife. When you have a happy wife, you have a happy life. That’s just an old saying, but there’s a lot of truth in that. And the truth is not that the wife should make her husband’s life miserable if she’s unhappy, but the truth is that the way a husband loves his wife does actually come back to him.

There is a lot of truth to that. So gentlemen, if you’re finding that your wife is not submissive, she doesn’t respect you, The answer for you is to love her and not wait on her to change her ways. The initiative, the burden, the onus is on you to make the move, not her, you. And to love her as Christ loved the church. To give yourself for her as Christ gave himself for the church. To nourish and cherish her like you would yourself.

But why would I do that if she doesn’t respect me? Because Christ commanded you to love your wife. That by itself is reason enough. Sometimes when I’m talking to the ladies seeing that I’m not a lady, I try to be careful because I want to be I don’t wanna steamroll the sensibilities of ladies. And listen, I can. I’m married to one, I got four of I mean I can do that. Men can be overbearing and I’m no exception.

So I try to be cognizant of the sensibilities of ladies when I’m dealing with ladies. But I don’t care about you men. Man up. Quit you like men. Be strong. Be the leader you’re supposed to be. Take the initiative. Obey the lord.

Don’t use your wife as an excuse. She doesn’t respect you, love her. Why? Christ told you to. That is good enough. But the reality is there’s other reasons. Because you know beyond what Christ commanded, you know that loving her produces in her the fruit that will lead to the very thing you want, which is a biblically submissive wife.

Let’s pray.