A Love Story
Ephesians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewHusbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church
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A Love Story
Ephesians 5:25-33
The tittle of the message this morning is “a love story.” Because that’s what we see in this passage. We are going to see a love story that began in eternity with God’s love for His creation. It was a love that compelled Him to send His Son to die on a cross so that we could be saved. it is a love He commands be reflected by the Christian marriage.
Many times, throughout the bible we see God’s relationship with His people displayed as a metaphor for marriage. In the Old Testament, when the children of Israel descended into idolatry and served other gods it was described as adultery.
When Jesus came onto the scene in the New Testament, He spoke of Himself as the bridegroom, and the church as the bride of Christ being prepared for the wedding supper of the Lamb. Well, Paul continues that same metaphor in Ephesians chapter five. What we learn from this passage is husbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church. (Read 5:25-33)
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.
28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself;
29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,
30 because we are members of His body.
31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. [1] (Pray)
In our passage this morning we have what Martin Luther, the great reformer called kitchen table issues. He said that because, Paul is addressing everyday circumstances in the Christian home.
In these verses he teaches us how to conduct ourselves as husbands and wives, children and parents, and slaves and masters.
What we learn from this passage is the Christian marriage is supposed to be different from the rest of the world. The world outside of the church, should look at our marriages and see something exceptional. The Christian marriage is intended to reflect the love and faithfulness between God and His people.
Unfortunately, that is not that is not the case today. In fact, the divorce rate in the church is slightly higher than society. And there can only be two reasons for that; 1. we are illiterate about what the bible teaches, or 2. we don’t care and we ignore it. Either way my goal is to lay the Word of God before you in a way that you understand it and are inspired to live by it.
Remember one of the great themes of the book of Ephesians is spiritual warfare. Paul is building up to a grand crescendo of how to fight that battle in Chapter 6.
So, remember Satan is like a roaring lion, who wants nothing more than to destroy your home and marriage. And the way we prevent that is by knowing and applying the Word of God to our life. What we learn from this passage is husbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church.
The first thing I want you to see in this passage is The Command Vs. 25. God commands husbands to love their wives. It is important that we understand this is not a suggestion. This is not Paul recommending that a husband be good to his wife and treat her well. This is Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, giving us a command from God.
Vs. 25 says, “Husbands love your wives.”
The last time we were in the book of Ephesians we left off in Vs. 22-24. God’s command was for wives to submit to their husbands. So, one might think Paul would follow up with a command for husbands to exercise authority over their wives, (to control them, to rule over them) after all they are the head of the household. But instead, He commands us to love them.
The command in these verses, for both men and women are so simple on the surface. They are easy for us to understand. A child could understand them. Yet they are incredibly difficult for us to put into practice. Because it requires the help of the Holy Spirit.
But God never gives us a command He does not empower us to accomplish. So, when we surrender our hearts to Christ, we become capable of doing what He tells us to do.
Listen reading the scripture is not like a visit to the Old Country Buffet. You don’t get to pick and choose what you like and don’t like. You must recognize the authority of scripture to live for God. Otherwise, (what are we talking about) your relationship with God is based on feelings and emotions and not on truth.
So, when God’s Word says “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church” this is not a suggestion. This is what God says is best for your life and your marriage.
And because this is a command from God means there are no excuses. You don’t get to say, well I used to love my wife, but I don’t feel that way anymore.” Because God’s response would be “Get to work, obey my command and I will rekindle the fire.”[2]
Someone once said, “Falling in love is easy, it’s staying in love that requires effort.” That is true. Marriage is hard work. So, if you have lost the desire to love your wife. If anger, frustration, bitterness, and blame have become your marriage, then you need to get to work. You need to obey the Word of God, because the fact is God not only requires it, but He makes it possible. (Psalm 119:60 )
It is also important that we understand that Paul is writing this to men in Ephesus who were saved out of a very raw Pagan culture. These were men who frequently worshipped at the Temple of Diana. These were men who took part in cult prostitution.
The whole notion of faithfully loving their wives was a foreign concept. They saw their wives as possessions, and their marriages were arranged marriages. They had purchased their wives from their families. So, this was radical idea for them.
And this is radical in our culture today. The Christian view of marriage is the minority. The view of marriage as being sacred, between a man and a woman who are faithful to each other and love each other for a lifetime is absent in our world.
We live in an age where everything we do is based on what is in it for us. It is against that backdrop that God says, “Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church.”
The word “love” here is the word “agape.” It is an unconditional love that is not based on what a man gets but on what he gives. It is not based on your wife’s worthiness to be loved, but on what God is doing in your heart personally.
And Paul uses it as a verb. So, it is an action word describing an act of the will; your feelings do not enter in. It is to act in a way that you truly want what is best for your wife. It is to love her much and show her a love that is deep and tender.
John MacArthur puts it like this, ‘God’s way to successful marriage focuses on what husbands and wives put into it, not on what they can get out of it.’[3]
The point here is you might not get along with your wife. She may not cater to you and meet your every selfish need. But if you want to live a life that is pleasing to God, you are commanded to love her with all your heart and to love her only.
In the eyes of God, she is your wife forever, and she is meant to be treated as sacred. (I trust this is how you are treating your wife today) (It should make it easy for her to submit)
The next thing I want you to see in this passage is the example, Vs. 25-30. Christ is the example of how a husband is to love his wife. God’s Word does not just give us this command, but He teaches us how to do it, and it does it in the form of non-other than Jesus Christ.
Could there be a greater example of Love? The bible says, greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends. Well, that is exactly what Christ has done for us and God says this is the example we should follow.
Please note the rest of Vs. 25 because it modifies the command. Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”
The words “just as” mean in the same manner, to the same degree, and with the same intensity as Christ loved the church, is how a husband should love his wife.” Then Paul goes on to give us 4 examples of Christ’s love we are to model.
# 1 It is a sacrificial love. Vs. 25 says, He gave Himself up for her. This speaks specifically of the cross and the sacrifice Jesus made on behalf of all who would believe. He gave Himself up for us. He left the glory and majesty of heaven and became a man.
He went to a cross so that He could become our atonement, our forgiveness, and our grace. That very thought led Charles Wesley to write, “Amazing love, how could it be, that you my God would die for me.” [4]
I think a lot of husbands today would say they are willing to die for their wives. But the real question is are you willing to live for her? Are you willing to crucify your flesh every day that you might live for her? Because that is the difficult thing to do.
It's easy to say I would fight to protect my wife, because that feeds our ego. It is much more difficult to say I will lay down my desires and live for her.
For example, are you willing to overcome the sin in your life? Are you willing to suppress hateful attitudes and the arguments? Can you lay down your dreams and embrace hers? Because that’s the husband God is calling us to be.
Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones once said, “the most destructive cause for the failure of a marriage is always self.”[i] In fact, selfishness is the most destructive thing in the universe. It is like a ticking time bomb in a man’s life, always on the verge of exploding, and the only remedy is Jesus Christ.
So, Christ’s sacrificial love for the church is an example of how a husband should love his wife.
# 2 It is a sanctifying love. Just as the love of Jesus has set apart believers, for His purpose. So also, the love of a husband should be set apart for his wife. Notice Vs. 26 “so that He might sanctify her.”
This speaks to the absolute perfection of a woman in her husbands eyes. She is sanctified and holy to him. In the same way as Christ forgives our sin and changes our life a marriage is changed by the love of a husband.
The word “sanctify” means to be set apart for the purpose of God. And every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has been set apart for God’s purpose.
In the same way when a man asks a woman to marry him, he is saying I want to live my life for you, and he is asking her to live her life for him. The promise of marriage is symbolic of sanctification. It says, from hereafter we are dedicated to each other.
#3 It is a purifying love. Vs. 26 says, Christ cleansed the church by the washing of water with the Word.” The moment we become saved we are washed by the blood of Jesus and cleansed of all our sin. That is the picture here.
It is a picture of a husbands love purifying the marriage. What an incredible responsibility. Husbands are real quick to command the head of the household but due they live up to the duties of love required by God.
And while the washing of water by the word typically speaks of baptism, I don’t think that is what Paul had in mind. There are two possibilities. He may be referring to the marriage ceremony of God and the nation of Israel described in Ezekiel 16:8-14.
God washed off her blood, anointed her with oil, and clothed her in beautiful garments and jewelry, so she looked like a queen. In the same way Christ has cleansed us of our sin and made the church His bride.
Or Paul may be thinking of the ritual bath of a Jewish bride before her wedding. She was a ceremonial cleansed as an act of purifying herself for her husband.
Either way, the point is He should love her in a way that will help her to grow in Christlikeness. So,the question we need to ask ourselves: “Is my wife more like Christ because she’s married to me? Or is she like Christ despite me?”[5]
#4 It is self-love. Vs. 28-29, “So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church.”
The church is the body of Christ, and we are being taken care of by the Son of God. Jesus said, not even the gates of hell would prevail against it. Well in the same way a husband is supposed to care for his wife.
In the age of selfishness, and disregard, where all we ever think about is our own needs, most men don’t know how to care for their wives. Paul gives us two words; nurture and cherish. To nurture means to sustain and provide for. And to cherish is to treat with tender affection. 1 Peter 3:7
The final thing I want to show you in this passage is the origin, Vs 31-33. Here we have the origin of a husband’s love for his wife. It was proclaimed by God from the beginning.
Vs. 31 is a direct quote from Genesis 2:24 because from the very beginning God ordained the sanctity of marriage. He ordered that marriage would be between a man and a woman and it would be a relationship so intimate that the two become one flesh.
31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
The love a man has for his wife is deeper than any relationship that exists in his life. Notice he leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife. The intimacy they share is so great that it can only be described by one word; “one.” It is the same word God uses to describe Himself to the nation of Israel in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O’ Israel the Lord your God is One.” Well, that is the word used to describe a marriage; “one flesh.”
I can’t help but think about how shockingly easy divorce has become in our culture. We celebrate divorce. We celebrate infidelity. We have television shows and movies about it. But the Bible teaches us in Malachi 2:16 that God hates divorce. That’s why Jesus taught so clearly about it. He said, “what God has joined together let no man separate.”
We need to understand that when we become married we become one flesh. It may be invisible but it is a reality. Now I am not recommending that anyone remain in an abusive, unhealthy, or unfaithful marriage. But I am recommending that more consideration go into a decision to become divorced. And that men own up to their responsibilities to love their wives.
Marriage is a powerful picture of God’s relationship with His people. And in Vs. 31 Paul says this mystery is great, but he is speaking in reference to Christ and the church.
You see when we come to know God through Jesus Christ we become his bride. And the expectation is that we will faithfully live for Him. We do that by obeying His commands and being the men and women of God He has called us to be.
I trust this is the way you are conducting yourself in your marriage today. If not I am glad you are here because there is time for you to make it right and act in a way that conforms to scripture.
And if you are unmarried today this message should serve as an example to you of what God wants for your life. His desire is for Godly men and women to become Godly husbands and wives, and to raise Christian children. We can only do that by making Jesus Christ the center of our lives and following the example He gives us.
What we learn from this passage is husbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church.
[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Eph 5:25–33). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[2]Cole, S. J. (2017). Lesson 49: Do You Really Love Your Wife? Part 1 (Ephesians 5:25–33). In Ephesians(Eph 5:25–33). Galaxie Software.
[3]Phillips, R. D. (2016). Ephesians(p. 409). Mentor.
[4]Cole, S. J. (2017). Lesson 49: Do You Really Love Your Wife? Part 1 (Ephesians 5:25–33). In Ephesians(Eph 5:25–33). Galaxie Software.
[5]Merida, T. (2014). Exalting jesus in ephesians (p. 141). Holman Reference.
[i] Lloyd Jones, Life in the Spirit, (Baker) pg. 211
