Hello again my friends. Last week I did not write, partly because I was applying what I will talk about today. I want to relay what I have learned about loving my wife like Christ loves His church. Eight years ago today, September 28, 2002, I entered into a covenant with Becky.
As I reflect on the gravity of what happened that day, I am left with a mix of feelings. I keep a picture in the cover of my bible of the two of us as we stood by our car after friends and family showered us in rice. Whenever I look at that picture I get great joy. I just love this woman.
The emotion of joy has often been interwoven with frustration at times. Like any marriage relationship, there are times when you feel like your nerve is being worked. For me, it is the clumps of hair that get globbed up in the tub and need to be removed (eeewwie!) or the hair that has fallen out all over the house, for that matter. I find it in the weirdest places. Once, I found one stuck on the side of the interior of the dishwasher. I don't know how hair lands on a sideways surface, but ok. Or there's those pesky socks that never seem to make their way into the area that we (maybe just I) have designated for the used clothing. You get my point. Sometimes we can get frustrated by what we expect from our wives. Consequently, I let my frustrations turn into bitterness. At one point, I wondered if all this was really worth it.
Amidst the joy and frustration of our marriage there have also been times of sadness. We have had our share of "rocky" times. I remember one conversation we had nearly two years ago where Becky basically told me she wished I would go away. I remember what I felt in that moment. My heart sank and I was overcome with grief. That was one of the worst days of my life. I used to treat my wife harshly. And she felt unloved.
I remember crying out to God in utter desperation, "Lord, help me... help me love Becky the way you want me to." And the Holy Spirit brought this verse to mind time and time again over the next two years, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). Brothers and sisters, He is faithful. He continues to answer that prayer the more I continue to pray it. Now, I am learning the joy of serving my wife because I love her. Now, cleaning the house on my day off is a labor of love. Giving her those special little things in life, not just the things she needs to survive, is an act of love.
I have a long way to go in loving my wife as Christ loved the church, nevertheless, I know the Lord has been and is continuing to do a work of grace in our marriage. A few months back I asked Becky, "Can you tell I have changed?" She embraced my, looked into my eyes and melted my heart, "Yeah. Before I didn't know if you loved me. Now I really know you love me." I thank God for what He has done for us. And I pray that by His grace we can display His glory through our marriage. So let me shift gears a little bit and talk about that.
That sounds churchy, "display His glory through our marriage." But that's exactly what Scripture is teaching us here in the larger context:
[22 ] Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. [23 ] For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. [24 ] Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
[25 ] Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, [26 ] that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, [27 ] 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. [28 ] In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. [29 ] For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, [30 ] because we are members of his body. [31 ] “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” [32 ] This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. [33 ] However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
(Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV)Here, Paul is exhorting the church to submission in general (v. 21), and this principle of general submission is displayed in various relationships that call for submission to authority in society: wives submit to husbands (v. 22-33); children to parents (6:1-4); and slaves/employess to masters (6:5-9).
So, why do I desire our marriage to be a display of God's glory? Paul gives us a clue in verses 31-32. The reason a daughter of God submits to her husband and a husband sacrifices himself for his wife... the reason a man leaves the relationship from his father and mother and cleaves in a new covnenant that is so tight it is in essence a becoming one flesh with his wife... the reason for all this is because of what God intended to display through the covenant of marriage.
Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 and declares that this cleaving in new covenant is a "mystery" in which God displays the covenant between Christ and His bride, the church (5:32). At this point, all of us who are Christian should be laid low at the gravity of what Scripture is teaching us. Did you know that the Lord's purpose for instituting marriage was to display the glory of a covenant between His Son and His church? Now I am seeing that my marriage is not about what I want.
That should have radical implications for us as wives and husbands. Those of you who are wives. When your flesh rises up against submitting to your own husband in godliness what does the world come to know about the church and her Lord? Should there not be a joyful submission to a godly man who has his eyes set on leading his family in a direction that glorifies God?
And to us who are husbands. How are we doing REALLY on loving our wives as Christ loved His church? Is there a humility that manifests in sacrifice? I daily fight a battle in laying down my life to serve the needs of my wife, especially in promoting her godliness by teaching her the word. Let us be real men. O, my brothers, is our life marked by caring for our wife or neglect? What I mean is, how are we doing at meticulously caring for our wives in anticipation of their growth in Christ? How are we doing at expressing a warm tenderness to our wives that shows in abundantly lavishing love on them? Does she know this to be the way you treat her? The way we live out the answers to these questions tells the world how we regard Christ's love for His bride and the very nature of His relationship to His body, the church.
Brothers, like you, I fall short every day. I have to admit that there are times when you would see that I fail at loving my wife this way that the Scripture shows us. I keep repenting. But over the course of my life I pray that people will glorify God for what they see between Becky and myself. For all that is at stake, the very glory of God, may we purpose to be godly husbands to our wives because God purposed to show the glory of the covenant between His Son and His bride through joining us in one flesh to our wives.
