THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
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prca.orgDear radio friends,
God intends marriage to be the picture of
Christ and the church. God has created
marriage to be a model, to be a mirror, of something that is dear to Him, of
what He calls His covenant, a covenant that He has made in the blood of His
dear Son with His people in Jesus Christ.
As God loves His bride, the
We find it in
Ephesians 5:25-27: “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 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.”
One reason why you cannot
say too often that marriage is to be the picture of Christ and the church is
that this reminds us that our marriage is based on grace. Marriage is not 50-50. Marriage is not, “Well, I will if you
will.” But if we look at the
relationship that exists between Christ and the church, we find that it is,
after all, all about grace. Christ chose
the church by grace, eternally, in election.
Christ, by His power and faithfulness, preserves the church. Christ obtained the church by His own
blood. Christ pursued the church and
made the church His own. And He will
perfect the church by grace. We do not
deserve any of this. Salvation is all of
His grace.
So marriage is
based on grace. The definition of
marriage would be this: Two sinners,
knowing the grace of Christ to them, and now bound for life, showing each day
grace that they have tasted from God.
In the last weeks
we have emphasized that God’s grace gives us as a husband and as a wife to
forbear and to forgive their spouse the annoying idiosyncrasies, the sins, and
the weaknesses that become apparent in married life. Grace gives us to obey what we find in I Peter 4:8: “Above
all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of
sins.” Grace gives a husband and wife
the ability to live together in marriage.
The emphasis on
forgiving and forbearing in marriage is, after all, at the very center of our
calling in Jesus Christ —whether married or unmarried, male or female, young or
old. Jesus said in Luke 6:29: “And unto him that smiteth
thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh
away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.” He said further (v. 35), “But love ye your
enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing
again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the
Highest.” Now if that is the general
rule for the Christian (we are to return good for evil), how much more in our
marriages!
These commands of
God in Jesus Christ to return good for evil do not stop when one gets
married. Marriage is an opportunity
given by God to exercise that grace. In
marriage we must find a way, standing before the cross, to maintain
covenant-keeping love and forgiveness.
But the grace of God does more.
That is good news for us in the married state.
The grace of God
gives us to do something else as well.
Not only does the grace of God give us the power to forgive and to
endure when we believe that we have been sinned against, but it is also the
power to change. It is also the
wonderful power to stop sinning. The
apostle Paul could say in I Corinthians 15:10, “I am what I am by the grace of
God.” He was a changed man, by
the grace of God! Christ’s grace to the
church, to us the bride, changes us. If
you look at the text that I read in Ephesians 5 you will note that the apostle
says that Jesus “might sanctify and cleanse [the church] with the washing of
water by the word.” In
other words, the grace that is in Jesus Christ changes the church.
If the emphasis on
grace in our marriages were only that we are called to forgive and to forbear,
you might get the idea that I am saying to married people, on the basis of
God’s Word, “Well, there is little hope.
You just have to put up with this.
Marriage is ‘grin and bear it.’”
No, there is more. Grace
sanctifies, that is, makes holy. Grace
changes. By the grace of God, before the
cross we begin to learn how to live pleasing to God in marriage. In fact, if you read chapter 5 of Ephesians,
you will find that the whole chapter is talking about the transforming
power, the renewing power, of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, husbands
and wives are indeed to be ministers of the grace of God one to the other. We are, then, as a husband and wife, to see
our calling to be to help each other, to conform each other more and more to
Christ and the church. The words “You
can’t change him” are not true. Well, it
is true in the sense that you do not have that power. But it does not mean that husbands and wives
are simply to be stuck in bad patterns of behavior. We may be instruments of God’s grace to each
other—to change each other.
In other words,
marriage is not simply: turn the other
cheek. But as Christ loved the church,
so must be our marriages. God’s grace and
word do sanctify us in our Christian life. We do, while never becoming perfect,
mature in faith. So
also in marriage. Marriage is the
place where we are called to grow in grace.
Marriage is not a static union.
Marriage is an institution in which God will produce change, in which we
are to grow up spiritually. We are to
learn to stop some of those foolish, selfish, sinful things that we do,
hurting each other. You do not just keep
on doing them.
Yes, there must
first be the grace to forgive. That is
the foundation. If we do not begin
there, then it will not work. If we do
not from the heart forgive, then all of our efforts to change the other person
in marriage will sound like an ultimatum.
“If you don’t…, then I’m out of here.”
No. That is not Christ and the
church. We do not become His by our
obedience, but by His blood. And when
He, our husband, calls us to change, then that call is the fruit of His
wonderful grace. Because He forgives us,
His grace makes us want to be pleasing to Him, to change from a sinful way to a
way that is pleasing to Him. In fact,
the Christian experiences a burning desire to put away his sins and be like
Christ.
Is marriage, then,
to be the picture of Christ and the church in which we exercise forgiving
grace? Yes, but a grace to be conformed,
to change, and to be instruments of change in each other so that we become what
is pleasing to Him.
So husbands, love
your wives, even as Christ also loved the church.
The whole passage
in Ephesians 5 impresses on husbands that they are consciously and
deliberately, out of an obedience and allegiance to God, to conform their
actions and attitudes after Christ. God
is saying something very simple here.
“Husband, you have to mirror to your wife what Christ is to His church.” The comparison runs through the whole
passage. We read in verse 23: “For the husband is the head of the wife, even
as Christ is the head of the church.”
Then, later on, we read that we are to nurture and cherish our wives as
Christ the church. And the apostle
makes it very plain in verse 32 that all that he is saying about marriage has
to do with Christ and the church. That
means, husbands, that the one thing that you must do is to drink in
Christ. If you are to be a good husband,
you must immerse yourself in Jesus Christ.
With the apostle Paul, as he says in Philippians 3, you must have one
holy passion: “That I might know him, my
lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Now, you do not get
yourself immersed in Christ in front of the television night after night. You do not get that by looking inside of
yourself. But you get that in this
blessed book called the Bible, and in its blessed doctrines, its beautiful
truths.
Let me give you a
few suggestions of passages to make your meditation, your study, your intense,
heartfelt quest to understand.
Look into
Colossians 1, especially the passage beginning after verse 15, where Christ and
the church are so beautifully explained for us.
Look into Hebrews 1, where Christ is taught to be the express image of
God. Read Proverbs 8. Make the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament
an object of your study. And spend some
time with Ephesians 5. Pour over such
passages and ask God to make you know Christ, to walk with Christ, to obey
Christ, to be like Christ to your wife.
Now when I say that
we are to be like Christ to our wives, immediately I want to guard that
statement from an abuse. I will not play
into the hands of an attitude that is shown toward wives, an attitude of a
small-minded, selfish, controlling husband who takes that statement “be like
Christ” to mean: “She had better be what
I want. I will change her to suit
me.” When you hear the words that you
must be like Christ to your wife, it should not register in your mind as a
lever and as a place of great prominence over her so that now she has to be
what you want. But it should make you
tremble.
The apostle says,
“Husbands, love your wives as Christ. Be
as Christ.” But he does not say, “You are
Christ.” “As” does not mean that in
every way you are like Christ. You are
not. We are not—as husbands. Christ is infinite. Christ is perfect. Christ is omnipotent. And we are not. Christ is infallible. Christ is sinless. And we are not! The goal that we have as a husband is that
our wife serve Christ.
Love your wife as
Christ loved the church. The word “love”
here is a reference to the pure and the holy love of God in Jesus Christ. It is a cleaving together. It is a faithfulness to be together in
holiness. We find this statement in
Colossians 3:14, “And above all these things put on charity [love], which is
the bond of perfectness.” Charity, or love, is a bond in holiness.
Now note with me
that God gives it as a command:
“Husbands, love your wives.” In
other words, love is not primarily, or first, a feeling. But it is a grace that God gives to us when
we are born again. The apostle John says
in I John 4:7 and 8, he that loveth is born of
God. To love means that you have been
given, in your heart, by grace, to know the amazing love of God to you, a
faithful love that will not let you go, an infinite love, that He gave His own
Son for your foul sins. Love, now, your wife, as Christ loved the church.
To do that means
that you will, by faith, see your wife as God sees her. You will see her as she is chosen in love and
is given God’s Son to die for her, so that God will hear no charge brought
against her as to any condemnation. You
will see your wife as Christ sees her—Christ working in her, Christ placing her
close to you. It is by faith to see that
God in His all-wise and infinite love gave your wife and your children to
you. And they are perfectly right for
you.
This love is an
exclusive love. Love your wife as Christ
loved the church. Christ loved only the
church. He says in Isaiah 43 and
Jeremiah 33 and many other places of Scripture, “You alone are my love. You are my fair one. I have chosen you out of all
the world to be my own.” So when
you as a man say “I love you” to the girl that you marry on your wedding day,
then that love is not simply a rush of emotions in a dark spot. But you are saying, “God has given me to know
His love. And you, my wife, you alone,
will reign in my heart. Without you I am
not complete. I will give my life for
you. My thoughts, my heart,
my body. I will protect you, I will guard you from evil.”
This love is a
self-denying love. That is the most
amazing part of this. “Husbands, love
your wives as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for her.” In His love, Jesus, our eternal husband, died
on a cruel tree, a cursed tree of
Now, as husbands,
you and I must love our wives as Christ loved the church, by dying to yourself, by seeing your life expendable for her spiritual
good and growth. It means that you go to
work 10-12 hours perhaps to support your family. When you come home, you are tired! But to love your wife means that you listen
to her. You talk to her. You hug her.
You care for her. You pray with
her. You encourage her. You counsel her. You comfort her. Because she is more
important to you than yourself.
And when we get
beyond the romance of that, and we realize after awhile, that “I am not that
way. I can not do that. And, besides, my wife is not always the kind
of person who makes it very easy to do those things,” then we get on our knees
and we listen to God, to the God who made us, the God to whom we belong. Marriage, your marriage, is to be a picture
of Christ and the church. Love her as
Christ loved the church. Be like Christ
in this aspect, that you love her with a self-denying,
sacrificial love.
This is the most
radical thing that the gospel has to say to a Christian man, to a Christian
married man. You love by dying to
yourself. To the unbelieving world, that
is a conundrum. They cannot figure that
out. But it is no riddle to the child of
God who stands before the cross. We are
to love. And then we understand that the
love that we are to show always comes at the cost of our own self and our own
pride. This is exactly what offends
men. The gospel goes into all the world—into the
May God give us to
know what it means to love our wives even as Christ loved the church. May He give
us to know that out of a rich experience of His grace—to know the love of
Christ to us, to one so undeserving. And
may God give us to measure our love by the sufferings of Jesus Christ. May our love, then, for our wife be a vocal
love (that we tell her); a thoughtful love; a strong love in Christ that
provides for her protection? For the
church is certainly safe in the love of Jesus Christ. The church never needs doubt the love of
Jesus.
And may our love
for our wives be practical. Maybe you
come home and you say, “Honey, I’d die for you.” And there she is in the kitchen after a busy
day, with all the kids and the supper dishes all around, and she responds,
“Well, that’s nice, dear. But while you
are waiting to die for me, would you please load the dishwasher?” That is the way you love your wife. You help her.
You make your wife feel that she is treasured and that you will lay down
your life for her in serving her spiritual good.
May God give us
that kind of love.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee for Thy Word. It is a good Word to
us—a Word that corrects us, a Word that always points us to the cross for our
strength and for our forgiveness. Now,
Lord, work profoundly in our hearts that we might humble ourselves daily before
the cross, confess our pride and sin and live in that self-denying, sacrificial
and wonderful love of Jesus Christ. We
pray this in His name, Amen.