Husbands, Love Your Wives As Christ Loved the Church

Minister:
Date: AM
Text: Ephesians 5:25-27
Psalters: 88, 330, 124, 125
Sacrament of Baptism
  1. The love.
    1. The love God commands is NOT first and primarily emotional feelings of attraction and the desire to be near.
    2. The great duty of the converted man who is a husband is to agape his God-given wife.
      1. Agape is the love which excels, for while it includes/assumes powerful fondness and physical/sexual desires, it is more.
      2. It begins with knowledge, first of God’s love for His own in election, in redemption (justification) and in sanctification.
      3. Then it is the determination to see myself and my wife the way in which God sees me, i.e., in Christ.
      4. Because of this knowledge and determination agape is the great desire to be with in sweet fellowship.
    3. Husbands learn to love when they know Christ’s great love for them.
  2. Marital agape is to reflect the love of Jesus for His church.
    1. Jesus’ love for His church begins with:
    2. Jesus’ love for His church is an obedient, returning love to God which gives Himself in love for those given Him of the Father.
      1. His headship is rooted in His sacrificial love for His people. He stooped down and humbled Himself to show us His love.
      2. She did not attract Him to herself, for she was a filthy sinner; He loved us while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8).
    3. So the believing husband is to love his wife.
      1. Agape knows her as a fellow-saint, as bought with Jesus’ blood, as clothed with His righteousness, as bound for heaven.
      2. Similarly a husband’s headship stems from his sacrificial love for his wife.
    4. He knows that, if he does not love her, he is disobedient to the Lord.
  3. Love’s purpose is to sanctify and cleanse her – not simply to satisfy her nor just to keep peace, but to make holy or godly.
    1. The purpose of Christ’s love is to make her perfect, individually and as a whole.
    2. A man sets his love on one woman, sets her apart for himself, to be his own unique treasure.