The Divinely Designed Role of a Husband

Amen. Amen. Go ahead and have a seat. And it’s great to worship King Jesus with you in the house of God. And I am excited to continue in what we started last week, a new series called Divinely Designed. But go ahead and grab your Bibles and you can open to Ephesians chapter 5 again. Ephesians chapter 5. And we’re going to be in verses 25-30 this morning. And the message that I’m going to preach today is called “The Divinely Designed Role of a Husband.” The Divinely Designed Role of a Husband.

And as we begin and as you’re finding your place in God’s Word, I just want to say I realize I am talking to a room full of people and not all of you are husbands. And I want to take a moment just to call you above the noise of the enemy that would ever try to say to you that this is not for you, this message is not for you. Remember that every time we open God’s Word, God has breathed out His holy and divine Word for your good, for your benefit, for your salvation, for your life and your godliness. Jesus prayed in John 17, “Sanctify them with your truth. Your word is truth.”

So I want to encourage every person in the room today to lean in. At the core of everything that we’re talking about today in Paul’s discourse on marriage and specifically in these five verses to husbands, the good news of Jesus is all over it. And Christ says to seek Him while He may be found. And the Spirit of God wants to illuminate God’s Word for you today.

So the love of Jesus for every disciple who has been chosen, who has been adopted, who has been redeemed or sealed by a triune God who loves you and gave Himself up for you is all over the text. So whether you’re a wife or a widow or whether you’re a single or a senior citizen, whether you’re a teenager or an old timer, I promise that the Spirit of God wants to meet you today as we open His Word.

Now the big idea that we’ll give or that we’ll drill down on is this. Husbands who love their wives must die to themselves as they look to Christ and follow His example every day. Husbands who love their wives must die to themselves as they look to Christ and model His example every day.

Why don’t we just begin by allowing God’s Word to speak? And let’s get our eyes on a copy of Ephesians chapter 5 starting in verse 25. And now hear the Word of the Lord.

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. (Ephesians 5:25- 30)

Let’s pray together this morning. Father, we come in this place. And as we just sang, all hail King Jesus. So Lord, we need Christ to reign supreme in this service today. We need Christ to be seen as glorious and magnificent as He is. So Lord, would You cause our hearts to yearn for Jesus this morning? Would you cause our eyes to be lifted toward the hills, where our help comes from? And Holy Spirit, would You illuminate God’s Word to us today that we might walk in a manner worthy of our calling in every aspect of ife, in every circumstance that we’re facing?

And Lord, we pray that as we look at the divinely designed role of a husband that we would see the beauty of Christ loving us, His Bride, in the text. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Now Paul, he gives us a pretty extensive list for the men as he goes into these five, really the eight, verses. Verses 22-24 that we’ll look at next week, wives submitting to their husbands. That gets a lot of heat and a lot of smoke in our culture. But clearly the men needed more instruction. Clearly the men needed some serious instruction regarding this role that they have been called to as they model Christ to the church.

And I quickly want you to remember the context in which Paul is writing in Ephesians chapter 5. He’s writing to Spirit-filled believers in the Body of Christ who are eager to maintain unity among one another and who are giving thanks always and for everything as they minister to one another. Remember, that’s what saints do. We stir one another up through psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And we have learned to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

So the command that we looked at several weeks ago now in Ephesians 5:18 that every believer should continually be being filled with the Holy Spirit, this is crucial to every marriage and everyone’s divinely designed role being carried out to the glory of God. It doesn’t matter if you think you found your perfect other half or your soulmate. I’d argue that that doesn’t exist. There’s just sinful people who God joins together. And if you don’t have the Holy Spirit in you, it could be a trainwreck for the rest of your life. Especially you’re not going to walk out the calling that Christ has called you to walk out on this earth if you don’t have the Holy Spirit.

So today we’re focusing on Paul’s instruction to the Spirit-filled husband. So I’ve got three points for you from the text. The first one is this. A husband’s love must be sacrificial because Jesus gave up His life for His church. A husband’s love must be sacrificial because Jesus gave up His life for His church.

Look at verse 25. It says, “Husbands, love your wives.” Husbands, love your wives. Notice that it doesn’t say, “Husbands love someone else’s wife.” It says, “Husbands, love your wives.” And it doesn’t say, “husbands, command your wives,” or, “hubands, try to change your wives,” or “husbands, solve your wife’s problems,” or “dominate your wives,” or “move your wives into submission.” It says, “Husbands, love your wives.”

Now what do you suppose love means? What is this love? I’m sure that we could get a lot of different definitions. How many of you have ever heard of Kids Say the Darndest Things? You remember that show? I remember watching that show. I looked up some of my own quotes about kids saying the darndest things about love. And here’s some funny ones.

Jessica, age 8, she said, “You really shouldn’t say, ‘I love you,’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot because people forget.” I thought that was good.

Danny, age 7, says, “Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him to make sure the taste is ok.” Amen. That’s great.

Now Chrissy, age 6. Ok? This is probably a female’s perspective on love. But she says this (Chrissy, age 6): “Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your french fries without taking any of theirs.” No guy is sharing too many french fries.

One kid said this (this is great), “Love is when mommy puts on perfume and daddy puts on shaving cologne and then they go out and they sniff each other.” That’s love man. That’s love.

Now Rebecca, age 8, she says this: “When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore, so my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. Now that’s love.” Everyone says, “Awww.”

And I think I agree with Rebecca. I think that there is some kind of sacrificial love going on in that grandmother and that grandfather as she is experiencing it.

But the Greek word in Ephesians 5:25 is agapao, which is the verb form of “to love.” The noun form would be agape. But agapao love is a love that is commanded of all believers. It is empowered by the Holy Spirit. The love that Paul is talking about, it is empowered by the Spirit of God that is continually filling you as a believer. It’s taught and demonstrated by God Himself. It’s an undeserved love that seeks the recipient’s highest good, not activated by virtue in the recipient. Agapao love is given even if the love is not reciprocated or received. And it’s love that finds its perfect expression in Jesus Christ and the cross.

So ultimately the love that the apostle Paul is calling husbands to as they love their wives, the agapao love, it is a cross-shaped love. It is an unconditional, sacrificial, undeserved love toward a recipient, whether deserving or not. And of course in the case of Jesus Christ loving us, none of us deserve the love that God has extended to us, the sinner. It’s Romans 5:8 that God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So the love being described in Ephesians 5:25, it’s different than the Greek word phileo that we see in Scripture. The Greek word phileo is where we get brotherly love or brotherly affection. But agapao love is a choice to love not based on emotion or affection.

So what Paul is saying when he says, “Husbands, love your wives,” is that when the feelings fade or when the affections fade or when the attraction fades or when the ease of the relationship fades, husbands, choose to love their wives like Jesus chose to love sinners. Now understand that every believer in the room is called to love this way, sacrificially in the world. But God has elevated this in the holy covenant of marriage. Christian love is shown by its sacrificial nature and the laying down of one’s life.

Here’s what it says in 1 John 3:16. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

So certainly husbands ought to lay down their lives for their bride. And look at what verse 25 continues to say. That’s exactly where Paul goes, the example of Christ. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

That’s a hard calling. The role of a husband is a wonderful calling, but one of the hardest callings this side of heaven. And I want you to understand, everyone in the room, the mission of every disciple in this room today is not to be a husband. The mission that every disciple of Jesus has put on is to love God, to love people and to make disciples of all nations. We do that urgently. We do that actively.

And the apostle Paul, even as he’s writing this letter, he was making disciples of all nations. And he said in 1 Corinthians 7:7, “I wish that all of you were single as I am.” And we scratch our heads about that. Why would Paul say that “I wish that everyone was single as I am”? And here’s the truth. Paul’s singleness made him a dangerous disciple for advancing the gospel around the world. He used that season of his life or that commitment in his life to not live for himself, to not live for his own desires or the things that he wanted. He lived to advance the message of the gospel by loving God with his heart, soul, mind and strength, loving others as he loved himself, and making disciples of all nations. And God used him to spread this around the world.

And all of us are called to be dangerous disciple-makers. But listen. When a man enters into the marriage covenant, he is entered into an earthly drama reflecting Jesus and the Church. And husbands are still called to urgently and actively make disciples, but in marriage their primary role is to play the role of Jesus in their covenant love for their wife. That’s a high calling. That takes everything that a man has. No wonder we need to continually be being filled with the Spirit of God because we can’t do this on our own.

And I could biblically say from Ephesians 4:25, this is hard, but anything short of the way that Jesus loves you is a husband’s failure to love their wife. Anything short of the way that Jesus loves you is a husband’s failure to love their wives.

And you would say, “Well, who is sufficient for that? It’d be far easier to remain single. It’d be far easier not to enter into the covenant love of marriage.” But we say but for the grace of God and the example of Christ.

So how can a husband sacrificially love his wife? How about do anything short of dying on a cross for her? Jesus set His innocence aside. Jesus set His preferences aside. Jesus set His power aside, His ability aside, His perfection aside. If anybody could have said, “I’m right. I’m right in the argument. I’ve got this altogether,” it could have been Jesus. He set that aside. He set His intellect aside, and He died for those who would become His bride.

Now I mentioned in the big idea that husbands who loves their wives must die to themselves. My wife and I, Nicole, when we do premarital counseling or when I get the opportunity to talk to young men who are stepping into marriage or who are newly married, sometimes I get asked the question, “What’s your go-to marriage advice?” Or, “If you could tell me one thing about marriage, what would you say?”

And I always say the same thing. I say, “The most important thing about being a husband is learning the art to dying to yourself.” And that of course is not my counsel, but that’s the counsel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He said this in Mark 8:34: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

You want to lose your life for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ, you can not only save yourself but as a husband who loves his wife like Christ loves the church, you can actually save your wife. You can be a part of your wife. The two become one flesh and together as you deny yourself as a husband and take up your cross and follow Christ, you can point your wife and your household to Jesus Christ.

So one of the realest ways to put this into practice beyond your personal salvation is a husband to his wife. It’s coming to the point that your way as a husband is not the highway. It’s coming to a point; it’s coming to contentment, to not have the final word or the final say in every argument or circumstance that comes about. This is Philippians 2:3 where the husband considers the wife better than himself and humbles himself to serve her needs. This is an opportunity to lay down your prerogatives and your preferences in order to meet your seif where she is.

And this is a husband proclaiming with John the Baptist from John 3:30, “He (Jesus) must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.” This has to be the heart and the demeanor of a husband that has the sacrificial love of Jesus on his heart and on his mind as he loves his wife like Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Now the second point that I’ll give to you is this: a husband’s love is not only sacrificial but a husband’s love must be purifying because Jesus cleansed us from every sin. A husband’s love must be purifying because Jesus cleansed us from every sin.

Look at where 26 goes on. “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.”

This is a purification that happened in your life when you were brought from death to life. When Jesus saved you as a disciple, you were sanctified, positionally sanctified, and you’re being progressively sanctified here on the earth. It’s the doctrine of sanctification. We looked at it when we went into Ephesians chapter 4. It was that the divine Holy Spirit-led process of new affections creating new desires that lead to holy living in the life of a believer. It’s the process of sinning less and becoming more like Jesus in this life.

So when you were redeemed and sealed for salvation (remember the Holy Spirit seals you; He’s your guarantee of the inheritance that is to come). When the Holy Spirit sealed you for salvation, you were positionally sanctified. So you are already holy and blameless before God as He chose you to be. So don’t miss that. That’s massive. Positionaly perfect before the God of glory.

But you wake up every day and you’re like, “I don’t have it all together. I am not holy. I am not blameless. I need the help of the Holy Spirit.” And that’s because you are being progressively sanctified in the already but not yet.

I believe Paul is giving us a picture of the positional sanctification that we have in Christ in this passage. Jesus laid down His life so that you, His bride, could be clean, could be without wrinkle, could be holy and without blemish. And God knows all of your imperfections and flaws. But because you belong to Him, He calls you holy, He calls you blameless, and He calls you favored. And every believer in the room should have a huge “amen” and a “thank God” for the blood that has been applied to your life.

But likewise, the sacrificial love of a husband for his wife should cause her to shine. It should cause you, the husband, to hold your wife up. It should cause you to celebrate your wife’s character. It should cause you to boast about her beauty just as you boast in your salvation. It should cover every rough edge or flaw. And a husband whose love is purifying doesn’t speak down about his wife.

Man, I’ll just be real with you for a minute. I cringe sometimes at the way I hear men talk about their wives. Cringe. If you can throw your wife under the bus or absolutely trash your wife without taking any form of responsibility or coming with any amount of humility, then my mind is automatically going to the place that there is a problem with how you are loving your bride like Christ loved the church. As husbands, we don’t talk down about our wives. Husbands get to present their wives to others like Christ presents you to God. Get that.

Aren’t you thankful that Jesus doesn’t see all of your imperfections and all of your flaws and then run to God and throw you under the bus and tell God how much you fall short of the glory of God? Jesus represents you to God as if you are holy and blameless and without flaw. And Christ has cleansed you from your sins. So husbands cover the sins of their wives. And Christ has washed you with water. So husbands, speak about your wives so that they shine and so that they shimmer. Christ has washed you with the Word, so husbands, gently guide and shepherd your home with the truth of God’s Word and with Scripture-soaked prayers.

Husbands, I just want to encourage you to be a gospel initiator in your home. Every circumstance, every hardship, every victory, every joy, every sad day, husbands it is on you to view all of those things through the lens of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can help your wife, your bride, see that God is holy and that we are sinful and broken and live in a broken world, a marred world. But Jesus is a perfect, loving Savior who gave up everything for us.

And we have the opportunity to repent of sin. We have opportunity to lay down our preferences, our desires, our sinful nature, at the foot of the cross and respond to the love of Jesus. And husbands, as you do this, you will start to die to yourself. You will start to see your wives as so much better than yourself. And from this position you can work overtime to present her without spot or wrinkle, even if she has them.

When Nicole and I did premarital counseling like sixteen years ago we were with our pastor, my pastor growing up, Pastor Bob Huber. He’s at home in heaven now. But I remember (my wife reminds me of this) and so I’m giving you some of my best stuff here, ok? But she reminded me of an example that our pastor gave us that the husband ought to treat his wife like fine china. Ok? Just bear with me a second. Fine china was created for royalty back in the day. All right? I did a little research on fine china. It was most often made of porcelain with intricate design and painting. Porcelain was often referred to as white gold because it was so valuable and hard to get your hands on. Now we can just eat off our toilets because we’ve got porcelain all through our houses, ok?

But anybody, anyone here have a china set in the family? Anybody, china set? Yeah, I see some heads nodding, some back there. I’ve been in some homes where people had fine china. And get this. It wasn’t kept in the cabinet with the ordinary dishes and cups and silverware. Usually the china has its own protective case right in the middle of the dining room. And not only was it a protective case, but it was meant to display the fine china in all of its glory for all to see. And it was only taken out for special occasions. And if you were going to eat on it, it definitely had a story associated with it. And there’s usually some story about how it’s been passed down from generation to generation, and people are boasting about their fine china.

And if by chance you eat on the fine china, you definitely are not putting that in the dishwasher with those other peasant plates and those other cups and all that. You’re going to get the water temp just right and you’re going to bring out the special cloth and you’re going to massage that china and rinse that china and shimmer and shine and dry and wax that china. And then you’re going to put it back in the protective case in all of its glory on display, mirrors and lights. And boom, it’s just shining in the middle of your dining room.

You get the point? Husbands, as you love your wives, protect her like fine china. Protect her reputation. Protect her well-being. Protect her security. Protect your wife. Be vigilant about your covenant love that Christ has placed you in. husbands, as you love your wives, display her like fine china. Speak highly of her. Talk up about your wife. Boast about her qualities. Boast about her hard work. Boast about her love for the Lord. Make her shine like fine china.

SPLIT HERE

Ultimately, Scripture tells us as a husband and wife who are one, we are to shine the light of Jesus in the world. So husbands, ask God to help you help your wife use her gifts for the glory of God. Lord, would You show me how I could take my wife’s gifts and see them multiplied in the kingdom of God? See her being useful in the kingdom of God. Would You provide avenues where my wife can glorify You with the giftedness that I see in my home?

Listen to her. Pray Scripture over her. Be gentle with her as she shares her hardships and struggles with you. Bear her burdens because you care for her and she is ultimately your sister in Christ.

And finally, husbands, as you love your wives, celebrate her like you celebrate with fine china. Laugh together. Dance together. Go on dates together. Make memories together. Have hobbies together. And the Lord will continue to make you one just as we talked about last week. And all of this purifying love has the ability to present your wife like Jesus presents you to God.

And all of that display and protect and shine; that’s one thing. But ultimately husbands, we are called to be the spiritual leaders of our home. So fight for your wife to have space to read God’s Word. We’ve got women’s workshops coming up. Husbands, get your wife the ability to go. I’ll take the kids. I would love for you to go and pursue Christ.

Speak and pray the gospel over her life and your circumstances. Be the initiator to get in Bible studies and theology classes so that you are deep disciples as husbands. Often our wives are the initiators or quick to jump in a Core class or a Bible study. Men, we need to be concerned about our spiritual depth.

I just want to talk to you and challenge the single men, the young men, the old men in the room. Your hope of being continually filled with the Spirit and having the ability to love like Christ loves will not come from passive spirituality or from immature adolescence. That is not husband material. God created men to love and to lead like Jesus, but sin has marred things and sin has caused men to either become passive and squishy or oppressive and tyrannical jerks. And all of us lean one way or the other because of sin coming into the world. God created Adam to love and lead like Jesus. But Adam became passive and didn’t protect his territory. And he took the fruit and he tried to cover up his sin.

And sin came into the world through one man, so God sent forth His only Son Jesus to be the perfect example of what a man looks like. And it doesn’t look like passivity. It doesn’t look like oppression. It looks like staying in submission to God the Father and to one another, who are joined to the Body of Christ.

So men in the room, be being filled with the Spirit of God. Walk in a manner worthy of your calling. That’s what we’ve been looking at in the book of Ephesians. You can claim the wealth all day long, but if your walk doesn’t match up, what have you got? Put off sin every day and put on Christ and His righteousness. And husbands, love your wives with the sacrificial, purifying love of Jesus.

Now point number three this morning is this: a husband’s love must be chrishing, because Jesus treats us as His own body. A husband’s love is sacrificial. It’s purifying. But it must be cherishing because Jesus treats us as his own body. Look at verses 28-30. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Verse 29. 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.

So what’s being described here, Paul continues with the analogy that we saw earlier in the book of Ephesians. Paul is referring to the church like a human body where Christ is the head. So Jesus does not simply look out for His own well-being. Jesus isn’t only concerned with taking care of Himself. Jesus takes care of you if you are a part of the Body. Jesus takes care of His Body because He is one with His Body.

So if Jesus is the Head and if we are the members of the Body, we can trust that Jesus will nourish and will strengthen and will help find healing for that which belongs to Him. If you have a broken arm, you don’t just neglect it; you don’t just ignore it, right? You get a check up. You get an x-ray. You get a cast put on it. You go to another check up. You get the cast taken off and you jump in physical therapy. And then you begin to gain strength back in your arm.

And this is the idea that Paul is going after as he continues to exhort husbands to love their wives like Christ loved the Church. This is what he’s saying. Love your wife as if she is an extension of your very existence. And that’s what Paul quoted from Genesis chapter 2 that a husband leaves his father and mother, holds fast to his wife, and the two become one flesh. You’re cemented together for life, and the husband and the wife are one.

So look at verse 28 in the text. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own body. Lord knows that we’re prone to love ourselves. The natural bent of every human being is to get self-centered and is to love yourself. But the problem is this. When a husband isn’t loving his own wife, he’s actually neglecting himself. He’s actually tearing down a piece of who he is after he’s entered into the covenant love of marriage.

So every husband here, you would say I have desires. I have longing. And just as you have longings and desires for intimacy or friendship or security or companionship or health or fun, you are called to provide these things for your bride as if she’s an extension of your very existence. You’re going through life together. It’s a beautiful thing.

Verse 29. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church. We take care of our own bodies, don’t we? We nourish it. We feed ourselves. We clothe ourselves. We go to sleep. We take care of ourselves. The same way that you nourish your own body, nourish the relationship you have with your wife. Cherish that relationship.

I want to zero in on this word cherish for a minute. And I’ve been challenged in my own life and in my own marriage, and my wife has helped me to see that this is a very important word in Ephesians chapter 5 over the years. And I just want to share with you. Cherish means caring for and protecting someone lovingly. Don’t miss this, men. Cherishing is the idea that your actions toward your wife validate the love that you say you have for her.

So you could say, “I love you. I love you baby,” till you’re blue in the face. You could say it all day long. But until your actions toward your wife prove that you actually love her, you’re not cherishing her like Christ loves the church. It’s the difference between going home at the end of a long day (we’ve all been there) and your wife is pouring out her heart about what she went through that day and you’re just kind of nodding your head as you scroll through your phone. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. You’re half listening. Versus you giving her eye contact and you actually caring about what she has to say.

It’s the difference from running out the door in the morning. Love you babe. See you. Shut the door. Or you go and give your wife a hug and a kiss and you let her know how painful it’s going to be to walk out the door that day. And I’m being a little bit funny, but a husband who cherishes his wife has the husband’s expression from Song of Solomon verse 9. Listen to what it says. You have captivated my heart, my sister and my bride. You have captivated my heart with one glance of the eyes.

So when a husband cherishes his wife, she has his attention, she has his eyes, she has communication, she has his intimacy. She has his romance. She has his help. She has his gracious, compassionate heart toward her. That’s what we’re after as husbands who love our wives like Christ loves the Church.

Now I was reading this interesting article from Gary Thomas and he was comparing the sacrificial love of 1 Corinthians 13 to the cherishing love that you see in the drama played out in the Song of Solomon. So for example, he says, “Love tends to be quiet and understated. So in 1 Corinthians 13 it says that love does not envy or boast, but the cherishing love of Song of Songs, it boasts boldly and loudly. The husband says, ‘My beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand.”

So it’s like Buddy the Elf. I’m in love! I’m in love and I don’t care who knows it! That’s a husband who loves his wife, who cherishes his wife like Christ loves the Church. The sacrificial love of Corinthians is gracious and altruistic, but the cherishing love in Song of Songs is enthusiastic and enthralled. The sacrificial love thinks about others with selflessness, but the cherishing love of a husband thinks about his beloved and praises her. The sacrificial love puts up with a lot. The cherishing love enjoys a lot. And you’re going to need both if you’re going to be in a marriage this side of heaven.

You’re going to need the sacrificial love in order to endure all things. But with the Holy Spirit and with the filling of God and His grace, you can enjoy a life together as you walk about this earth, two becoming one. You can have friendship. You can have companionship. You can have intimacy. You can have partnership for a lifetime. And husbands, it is your job to nurture and cherish your wives just as Christ has loved you and gave Himself up.

Now we’ve covered a lot of ground, and even a lot of theological ground. Because the role of a husband, it’s a Christological role. But we’ve also covered practical ground this morning. And while I hope you’re encouraged and challenged as I have been, it could also cause you to feel a little bit like a failure. And here’s what I want to challenge you with. Just hang on for a second. I want to challenge every husband in here. Don’t feel like a failure, but allow the truth of God’s Word to drive you to the cross for grace and cause you to desperately cry out for the continual filling of the Holy Spirit in your love and in your leadership.

I don’t know what your situation is. I don’t know where you find yourself as a husband. But lean into the Spirit of God. God won’t hold against you your shortcomings if you’re in Christ. If you’ve repented and believed and you’ve come to the cross and you’ve been redeemed and sealed, God sees you as holy and blameless. And so what the truth of His Word is calling you to is to now live up to that calling, to walk worthy of it.

So husbands, now is the time to lay your failures and your shortcomings at the feet of Jesus. Now is the time to get honest and get real about… You know what? I haven’t been loving my wife as Christ loves me, like Christ loves the Church. I have become passive in my relationship. Or, you know what? I have been a jerk. I have gone a little too far on the other side. I need to get back, quit trying to change my wife, and I need to start loving my wife just as Jesus loved me.

And wives, I don’t want you to get caught in the trap of comparison. Satan loves to use comparison. Satan loves to beat you down with your situation, with the things that aren’t true. Can I just challenge the wives in the room to love your husbands and to champion your husbands? Pray for your husband as he shoulders the responsibilities the Lord has asked of him. And pray that the Spirit would fill him every day and make him more like Jesus. God can do it. God can change things. God can heal the worst of marriages when we’re willing to forgive, when we’re willing to be filled with the Spirit, when we’re willing to get honest, when we’re willing to wait and pray.

Now I want to go back to where we started. Husbands who love their wives die to themselves as they look to Christ and follow His example. Little secret, every disciple in this room needs to die to themselves every single day. That’s the call of a follower of Christ. I have this quote that I keep in my phone for a lot of years about the art of dying to self. It’s from an unknown source. And I came across it this week in a commentary, and it confirmed that it’s unknown. But I thought it was helpful. I want to read it to you.

“When you lovingly and patiently bear any disgrace, any irregularity, any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with folly and extravagance and spiritual insensitivity and endure it as Jesus did, that is drying to self. When you are content with any food, any money, any clothing, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God, that is dying to self. And when you never care to refer to yourself in conversation or record your own good works or itch after commendation from others and when you truly love to be unknown, that is dying to self. And when you see your brother prosper and have his needs wondrously met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy and never question God though your needs are greater and still unmet, that is dying to self. And when you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and humbly admit inwardly as well as outwardly, that he’s right and find no resentment and rebellion in your heart, that is dying to self.”

All of it is perfectly displayed in the person of Jesus Christ. If anyone could’ve been justified to give up his prerogatives, to give up His rights, get off the cross, it would have been Jesus. But Philippians 2 said He humbled Himself in the form of what? A servant. And He became obedient to the point of death, even a humiliating death on the cross. This is how much Jesus loves you. This is how much Jesus sacrificed for you.

So husbands, love your wives with the sacrificial, purifying, cherishing love of Jesus. Let’s pray together.

Lord, it’s a tall order to even walk as a believer on the earth. It’s a tall order as men to model Jesus in our marriages. And Lord, I just come and I pray for the men of this church. I pray for the marriages in this church. I pray that You would look onto the marriages represented here and that You would see these qualities because we are willing to humble ourselves and because we are willing to allow the Spirit of God to continually fill us up.

Lord, as we men abide in Jesus Christ, would you sever the branches that don’t belong? Would you sever the things that aren’t of You? Would you strip away all of the things that would cause us to not love our wives as Christ has loved us? And we thank You for the power of the gospel that is on display in this text. We thank You that Your Word is all that we need for life and godliness and it’s constantly pointing us to the center of the universe, the center of all things, the center of our marriage, which is Jesus.

Lord, help us to walk worthy of that call as we imitate God on the earth. And would You heal marriages? Would You heal the hearts of husbands and wives? And would You set yourself up as King, reigning supreme in our hearts and in our homes? In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. C’mon, let’s stand and respond together.