August 5, 2010
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. Eph 5:25
Has any husband loved his wife like this? To love your wife EVEN AS Christ also loved the Church!
Is Paul asking an impossiblity? Is this simply Christian idealism and wishful thinking? Has Paul forgotten that men are selfish and domineering by nature?
How joyful it is to read the Scriptures simply as they are written. To accept them in simple faith that what is being stated is what God wants to give to us. How then can a man love His wife EVEN AS Christ also loved the Church? Paul answers simply:
Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
1 Cor 2:16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
The joyful truth for the Christian husband is that when he daily submits to Christ, takes Him as His Saviour and believe he is forgiven for his sins, then the mind of Christ is given to him freely. Therefore, it is the Spirit of Christ in the husband that loves his wife. Christ is enabled through the husband to show the love and affection of the God for his precious children.
It has always been the privilege of the Christian husband to reveal the love of God to his wife more than to any other person on the planet. In that intimate relationship, expressions of tenderness, thoughtfulness, affection, service and protection are able to be most powerfully demonstrated.
As the prophet says:
God has bound our hearts to Him by unnumbered tokens in heaven and in earth. Through the things of nature, and the deepest and tenderest earthly ties that human hearts can know, He has sought to reveal Himself to us. Steps to Christ page 10
God seeks to reveal Himself through the deepest and tenderst ties the human heart can know. What is the deepest tie a human heart can know other than marriage?
What a joy to know that a husband is in fact the most powerful channel for Christ to share His Spirit of love and tenderness. We do not need to muster the ability to replicate it, we need only to die and let this mind be in us which was also in Christ Jesus.
Headship as a husband means knowing that your primary role is to bless, to give and to protect. Many men enter marriage with an understanding that they will firstly receive; receive food and marital privileges. Such a man is no better than a beast, with no conception of true Christian manhood.
The world tries to teach us that equality means, an equality of position, an equality of power. But heaven teaches us that one power flows through a system of headship and submission.
1 Cor 11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
To all Christian husbands I would say. if you feel your wife is not giving you what you need or want, assess carefully what is your true identity. Do not seek to draw from your wife that love and affection you did not receive from your parents, she can never fill this for you, you will always be disappointed. Draw your love and affection from Christ that you may have an abundance to give to your wife. She is to draw from you (your well) and not firstly you from her. This is the the essense of headship.
Have you prayed this morning that you might share Christ with the world? Look to your most important mission field; your wife and let the love of Christ fill your heart and be expressed to her in words of tenderness and grace. Let her know the Spirit of Christ through you. For he that does not know how to take care of his family, how shall he take care of the church of God (1 Tim 3:5)
For more thoughts on this. See the Video Series - The Family Kingdom
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