Ephesians

The Glorious Gospel of Grace (CCD)

Christ Church on October 30, 2022

INTRODUCTION

The Reformation was a recovery of the Gospel of grace. Not by the merit of saints, or the good works which we or others have done, or the penance paid into the coffers, but by the free grace of God are you saved. But in every age, various attempts are made to cloud and obscure and bury this glorious doctrine. It is the church’s duty to proclaim and defend this Glorious Gospel through all ages.

THE TEXT

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace (Ephesians 1:3-7).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

In this prologue Paul gives us the Gospel message undiluted. The Blessed God has poured out heavenly blessings upon us in Christ (v3). This blessing is not haphazard, but is according to His eternal purpose, before the worlds began, that we should be holy (v4). All blame is lifted away from us, Satan’s accusation is answered with the simple, child-like answer: Jesus loves me (v4).

Our holiness & blamelessness is brought about by His predestinating our adoption by Jesus unto Himself (v5); all this is according to God’s good pleasure (v5), and results in praise to the glory of His grace as displayed by enemies & strangers being transformed into beloved sons (v6, Cf. 2:13). This Gospel can be simply summarized in this way: by the redeeming blood of Christ, our sins are forgiven (v7). Furthermore, God can forgive our sins because He is rich in grace (v7).

THE SCANDAL OF FREE GRACE

Grace is favor. But God’s favor is no intangible notion that lives in the realm of ideas. When we look at the story of Scripture, we see that God’s favor makes the barren woman bear a child in old age (Cf. Gen. 30:22, Rt. 4). It delivers a nation of slaves (Ex. 15). It gives revelation to the proper worship of the living God (Deu. 4:33). It sends down heavenly manna, and makes water spring from rocks (Ps. 78:16, 25). It routs armies of Giants. It topples Jericho walls.

When God places His favor upon either an individual (i.e. Noah, Abram, David, Solomon, etc.) or a nation (i.e. Israel), things are not left as they once were. God gives the Law to Moses, and then Moses asks to see God’s glory, and in that episode the Lord, the Lawgiver, declares His character: “And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation (Ex. 34:6-7).” God’s glory is declared in His graciousness to mankind; this is nestled in the context of God establishing His covenant mercies with Israel. God rearranges Israel, and this is because God’s favor has been set upon them.

God’s favor rests upon Jacob as he flees from his brother, and God promises at Bethel to protect him in his wanderings (Gen. 28:15); upon Jacob’s return, God comes to wrestle with Jacob. This, too, is a display of God’s favor. It is a grace to wrestle with God (Gen. 32:28). How else did Jacob get a new name, Israel? God’s favor rested upon Jacob, it upheld him, protected him, and came to define him.

The story of biblical history is God repeatedly coming in grace to mankind, and revealing His great purpose to restore man to the glory of His presence. But when God comes down, He does not come down to simply leave things put. God’s grace rearranges the furniture. The presence of God, His sweet favor being poured upon His people, brings about the great moments of redemptive, covenant history. His favor is set on Noah, and the world is flooded & remade. His favor is set on David, and the Philistine giant is toppled and the army put to flight.

SWEET GRACE

Grace is sweet. But not like a 2lb. bag of gummy bears. It’s like the sugar which activates the yeast in your dough. Apart from grace you are damned, you are dead. But when God, by His eternal purpose, shows grace to you, you are brought to life. You are justified. You are forgiven. You are reckoned as righteous in God’s sight. And that grace begets in you life. True life. Christ’s life, by His Holy Spirit.

That first sight of grace is the root. But the continued gaze upon God’s glorious grace brings about the fruit of holiness, the fruit of the Spirit. Grace opens our eyes, and grace keeps our eyes steadfast upon the Christ who sought us and bought us.

KIDNAPPING INSTEAD OF ADOPTION

John Newton once said, “Satan will preach free grace when he finds people willing to believe the notion, as an excuse and a cloak for idleness.” Paul warns in his famous rhetorical question, “Should we sin so that grace may abound? God forbid.” But regardless of such warnings many Christians continue to operate under a misguided assumption about what grace is.

Amidst the many ways that the clear glass of grace is clouded over with the doctrines of men, is a recent tendency in modern evangelicalism to absolutize the doctrine of adoption. Our text describes our salvation in terms of being adopted in God’s household (Eph. 1:6). But recent articulations of this doctrine turn this adoption from a glory to a grief. Being adopted as sons by the Heavenly Father is turned into being pampered by a heavenly wet-nurse who denies no treat to the spoiled heir.

Grace is not the indulgence of God the Father of our sinful lusts. Grace begets a new nature within us, because the Father has adopted us and made us partakers of His nature. Grace restores nature, it doesn’t indulge fallen nature. Our adoption into the household of God is not a permission slip to remain in sin, to remain as enemies of the Almighty. Our adoption is a change of generation, a change of Fatherhood.

GRACE IS IN A MAJOR KEY

Another common feature of many descendants of the Calvinist heritage is to think of the doctrine of man’s total depravity as a description of the Christian post-conversion. But this is not the Gospel which was recovered in the Reformation.

Instead of moaning over or coddling our sinfulness, the Gospel of grace gives us hope that we are not only reckoned as righteous in our justification, but we are empowered by the Spirit to walk in true holiness in our sanctification. We aren’t left as orphans. We are given a new nature. A new heart. A new Spirit is put within us.

This glorious gospel of God’s grace is in a major key. Attempts to play it in a minor key are just plain ugly. As Paul puts it in our text, your salvation results in praise to the glory of His grace. Or as he calls it elsewhere, it is the “glorious gospel of Christ (2Co 4:4);” it is “the glorious gospel of the blessed God (1 Tim. 1:11).”

The glorious Gospel of grace is this. God has set His favor upon you. Not because of anything good in you, but by the goodness of Christ in your stead. This grace will not leave you as you are. By grace your eyes are opened to see Christ. By grace the glory of Christ holds your gaze. By grace you shall one day say with the hymn-writer, “hope shall change to glad fruition, faith to sight, and prayer to praise.”

As Your Own Body (Biblical Marriage Basics #6)

Christ Church on October 30, 2022

INTRODUCTION

When God unites a man and woman in the covenant of marriage, they truly become one flesh. This is why divorce is always violent (Mal. 2:16). This is not merely a picture; it is a covenantal reality. Therefore, a man’s love and care for his wife is always simultaneously for himself. Like Christ, a man is always presenting his wife to himself, the only question is whether he is presenting glory to himself or not.

THE TEXT

“That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself” (Eph. 5:27-28).

A LIVING SACRIFICE

Christ’s love for us turns us into living sacrifices (Rom. 12). And here, the language implies that a husband should see his love as having a similar effect on his wife, making her spotless, holy, and without blemish, the sort of thing you would look for in a sacrificial animal (Ex. 12:5, Num. 19:2, 1 Pet. 1:19). While there was certainly a punitive element in Christ’s sacrifice, there is also an ascension and communion element to the sacrifices. All the sacrifices point to re-entering the Garden of Eden through the flaming sword of the cherubim (Gen. 3:24). But ultimately, to commune with God is to be changed from glory into glory, to be lifted up and transfigured (e.g. 1 Jn. 3:2). The High Priest in the Old Covenant pictured this in his garments of “glory and beauty” that matched the tabernacle (Ex. 28:2, 40), and he was anointed with blood and oil like the altar itself. The High Priest was a “living sacrifice” who communed with God in the Holy Place. This is what Christ has come to do for all of us, and it is was a husband is called to imitate.

This picture works in at least two directions: First, it certainly applies to loving your wife toward Christ and into greater and greater communion with Him. But second, the immediate context applies this communion directly back to the husband (Eph. 5:28). If the husband is to model Christ’s High Priestly love which has drawn us near to Him as living sacrifices, then a husband’s sacrificial love draws his wife near to himself. He that loves his wife loves himself. And we need not pit these two communions against one another. Because God is the source of all true fellowship, the closer you get to God the closer you get to anyone else. The inverse is also true: the further away from God you get, the further away from true fellowship you get. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7). Therefore, drawing nearer to God always brings you closer to your spouse, and a husband loving his wife nearer to the Lord is loving her nearer to himself.

AS YOUR OWN BODY

A man may think of his leadership of his wife in athletic terms. The best coaches push their players beyond what they think they are capable of because they have a bigger vision of what they might do and accomplish. All your favorite coaches and trainers pushed you harder than you thought was reasonable, and then you love them for it. Lazy coaches do not push you at all, and harsh coaches do not really love or care for you. Faithful husbands love their wives as themselves, pushing them as they push themselves for excellence and glory.

“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (1 Cor. 9:24-27). So men ought to love their own wives striving for the prize, striving for the crown of glory: “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones” (Prov. 12:4), just as wisdom crowns a man with her glory (Prov. 4:9). Do you think of her as your crown, your glory (1 Cor. 11:7)?

Likewise, in athletics, there is a “mental game” where you must listen to your body and yet discipline your thoughts. Your body may not want to get up and work out/exercise. Your body may protest another mile, but if you do not push your body further, it will not get stronger. On the other hand, if you don’t listen carefully to your body, you can harm your body. Husbands must love their wives as their own bodies. A man must lead and love with a mission of glory in mind, but he must lead and love with diligence and care.

CONCLUSIONS

It is not whether you are presenting your wife to yourself, the only question is: what are you presenting to yourself? Are you presenting a glorious crown to yourself?

“A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones” (Prov. 12:4). The word “virtuous” literally means “strength, might, excellence.”

How is this kind of crown crafted? By loving her like Christ loved the Church, giving yourself for her good, loving her as your own body.

Your covenantal union with your wife both underlines your responsibility but also a promise. By God’s grace, she is your responsibility, and by His grace, you can be assured that your love is what she needs.

A man who has failed to love his wife well or diligently really needs to understand the damage that can be done through his neglect or harshness. On the other hand, when a man repents and begins walking in love, you need to know that God has made the world such that your love, under God’s blessing, really is potent for healing and glory.

Sacrificial & Cleansing Love (Biblical Marriage Basics #5)

Christ Church on October 23, 2022

INTRODUCTION

The central command given to husbands for their duty to their wives is “love.” We live in a world that has willfully rejected God’s love, and substituted all manner of madness in its place, but it is the duty of husbands in particular to learn what God’s love means and embody it toward their wives, without any excuses or complaints. Here, we are told specifically that the action of love is sacrifice and the effect is holiness and cleansing.

THE TEXT

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word” (Eph. 5:25-26).

WE LOVE BECAUSE GOD LOVED FIRST

The Bible teaches that we do not love God and one another naturally; rather, we are naturally inclined to selfishness and hatred, apart from knowing the love of God in Christ (Rom. 3, 1 Jn. 3:16). So once again we must begin with the general principle, and press it to the particular. Husbands cannot love their wives like Christ loved the church, if they do not know the love of God in Christ for the church. And this love begins with the love of the Father: “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God… Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure… Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1 Jn. 3:1-3, 9).

Notice what the love of God does: it makes men sons of God (1 Jn. 3:1), that adoption puts a great hope in us that we are becoming like Him (1 Jn. 3:2), and that hope is what purifies us (1 Jn. 3:3). This adoption is so thorough that it can be described as being born of God and an imperishable seed is implanted that is so utterly opposed to sin, such that it can be truly said that we cannot sin (1 Jn. 3:9). This doesn’t mean no sin ever occurs, but it means that we are constantly and consistently confessing sin as quickly as it occurs and staying in fellowship with God and everyone around us (1 Jn. 1:7-9). A man who wants to love his wife like Christ must begin here, and therefore, there is no room for despair.

SACRIFICIAL LOVE

How did Christ give himself for us? He humbled himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, even though He was fully equal with God (Phil. 2:6-7). Not only that, but He humbled Himself even further, becoming obedient even to the point of death, and that death was the most humiliating, most excruciating, most cursed death of the cross (Phil. 2:8). And He did all of this for us while we were still ungodly, while we were still sinners, while we were still enemies of God (Rom. 5:6-10).

Notice that this love was obedient love. Christ loved us by doing what was necessary to take away our sins. He did not do what we thought He ought to do, and He did not do what He felt like doing. He did what had to be done. And secondly, notice that this love is efficacious love. He did not love us because we are lovely; He loved us in order to make us lovely. Likewise, when the love of a husband is obedient, it is efficacious. The obedient love of a husband makes his wife lovely.

CLEANSING LOVE

The central problem in this world is sin. And this is where the gospel collides with all other worldviews and religions. The problem is not personality. The problem is not background. The problem is not childhood. The problem is not health, bad habits, or chemical or hormonal imbalances. Although any number of those things can contribute to challenges, the Bible teaches that the fundamental problem is sin, and Jesus died to take away our sins. A husband cannot duplicate that sacrifice, but a husband must imitate it. A husband’s love applies it.

This is why the central goal of a husband’s love is to be sanctifying and cleansing (Eph. 5:26). Do you want a happy marriage? Do you want a joyful home? Do you want a home that is flourishing, productive, and fruitful in every way? Then you must love your wife obediently and efficaciously, washing her with the water of the word. The word here for “word” is interesting since it is a more general and generic word for “thing, matter, or word.” The Word of God is certainly in view (cf. 1 Tim. 4:5), but it also includes all your words, all your dealings, oriented by God’s Word toward cleansing your wife from sin and making her holy like Jesus.

CONCLUSION

In Colossians it says, “Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them” (Col. 3:19). Some translations say, “do not be harsh with them,” but it really amounts to the same thing. A bitter man will be harsh, and a harsh man is bitter. Remember, it was for the joy set before Him that Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame (Heb. 12:2). What was that joy? The church sanctified and cleansed. Is that hope in you – that you will be like Him? So what about her?

Wash your wife with the Word and with many good words. Tell your wife that you love her, that she is beautiful, sweet, gracious, attractive, and compliment her many times a day. God made us and is remaking us through His Word, and you get to imitate that with your words. God’s word is our food, and your good words are food for your wife, just like food and sex are food for you. This includes taking your wife to church, reading the Bible to her, and talking to her about it and praying with and for her regularly.

Husbands should also understand that one of the most important ways you love your wife is by loving her children well. When you spend time with them, pay attention to them, laugh with them, read to them, and pursue them, your wife feels well loved. Her children are her glory, and when you love and honor that glory, you love and honor her.

And all of this love must be driven by the love of the Father, the love that sent His only Son for you, so that you would be conformed to His image.

The Duties of Elders & Parishioners (King’s Cross)

Christ Church on October 9, 2022

HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— ⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. ⁷But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” ⁹(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? ¹⁰He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) ¹¹And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹²to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…” (Eph. 4:1–13 ESV).

QUALIFICATIONS OF ELDERS

The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. ²Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, ³not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. ⁴He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, ⁵for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? ⁶He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. ⁷Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil (1 Tim. 3:1–7 ESV).

RESPONSIBILITIES OF ELDERS

Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. ¹⁸And when they came to him, he said to them:

“You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, ¹⁹serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; ²⁰how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, ²¹testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. ²²And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there,²³except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. ²⁴But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. ²⁵And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.²⁶Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, ²⁷for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.²⁸Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. ²⁹I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; ³⁰and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. ³¹Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. ³²And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. ³³I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel.³⁴You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. ³⁵In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

³⁶And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. ³⁷And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, ³⁸being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship (Acts 20:17–38 ESV).

IMITATE YOUR ELDERS

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith (Heb. 13:7 ESV).

OBEY YOUR ELDERS

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you (Heb. 13:17 ESV).

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: ²shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you;not for shameful gain, but eagerly; ³not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. ⁴And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. ⁵Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:1–5 ESV).

PRAY FOR YOUR ELDERS

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. ³At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— ⁴that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak (Col. 4:2–4 ESV).

Authority & Responsibility (Biblical Marriage Basics #3)

Christ Church on October 2, 2022

INTRODUCTION

Again, we face the scorn and mockery of a world in rebellion to God, but we are not ashamed and we will not apologize for the headship of a man over his wife, since it is a glorious picture of Jesus Christ our Head and our Savior. In fact, we insist that as men repent and turn to Christ, this is one of the central places for the gospel is proclaimed and bears much fruit.

THE TEXT

“For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body.”

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The Bible teaches that the husband is the head of the wife, and this is both an anatomical image as well as a covenantal reality. This headship is to be understood and modeled after the headship of Christ for the church, where He has taken responsibility for the church and represented the church, becoming the savior of the church.

AUTHORITY & RESPONSIBILITY

This is not the first time Paul has referred to Christ as the head of the church in this letter to the Ephesians: “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:22-23). Notice two things about this: it is simply impossible to interpret Scripture’s teaching that the husband is the head of his wife as anything other than true authority. But second, notice what Christ did with that authority: He used His authority to take responsibility for us. He bled and died for the forgiveness of our sins (Eph. 1:7), in order to gather all of us together to receive an inheritance sealed to us by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:10-13), and God raised Him from the dead to be seated in Heaven as Lord of all, where He has raised us to sit with Him in glory (Eph. 1:20-2:7).

This is biblical headship. It is real authority, and it is authority that bleeds in order to bless. The authority of God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be adopted (Eph. 1:4-5), and it is that sovereign authority that accomplished everything needed for our salvation (Eph. 1:11). Human husbands cannot duplicate that salvation, but they are commanded to imitate it. This is what your headship means.

REPRESENTATION

In the Old Covenant, one of the principle pictures of headship was given in the sacrificial system: the elders laid hands on the head of the bull before it was sacrificed for the ordination of Aaron and his sons (Ex. 29:10-19), and usually whenever anyone came to offer a sacrifice to the Lord, he laid his hand on the animal before it was killed (Lev. 1:4, 3:13). The symbolism was clear: this animal represents me. Specifically, on the Day of Atonement, Aaron laid both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confessed over him all the iniquities of Israel, “putting them on the head of the goat,” and the goat would bear upon him all their iniquities into a desolate land (Lev. 16:21-22). Ordinarily, the idea of someone else bearing an iniquity would be unjust, but the hands upon the head symbolically identified the worshipper with the animal, like a head is identified with a body. So too Christ became our head by being born as a true man, just like us apart from sin. And he who knew no sin, became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). A husband becomes one with his wife through vows before witnesses and their one flesh union, such that every husband is the head of his wife, and represents her, whether he knows it or not, whether he thinks he is or not.

This means that God sees him as the official representative of the wife, the official spokesman of the marriage covenant. He may be a negligent or abdicating head, but he is still the head. In 1 Pet. 3:7, it says that husbands must dwell with their wives in an understanding way, honoring the wife as a weaker vessel, as a coheir of the grace of life, that his “prayers be not hindered.” The warning is clear: if you do not honor your wife and listen to her concerns, God will not listen to you or your concerns. But the implication is that God is inclined to listen to that man who listens to and honors his wife.

SAVIOR OF THE BODY

It seems utterly impossible that husbands are commanded to imitate Jesus like this. How can a mere man imitate the Savior of the Body? Begin with the grateful acceptance of this responsibility. Acknowledge the fact before God with thanksgiving. And ask the Lord to teach you: “Lord, I know that I am the head of my wife. Thank you for this tremendous responsibility. Teach me what this means. Help me be a faithful head like Jesus.” If Christ our Scapegoat is any indicator, God is also inclined to listen to our prayers of confession: “Father, forgive us for our sins…” It is true that you cannot “save” your wife from her sins yourself, but as her head, you are authorized to represent her to Christ our Savior.

When the birth of Jesus the Savior was announced at the beginning of Luke’s gospel, the universal response was thanksgiving (Lk. 1:46, 1:68, 2:13-14, 2:20). Let your presence in your home and particularly for you wife evoke similar joy. The thought of you coming home from work, the thought of you being home for a day, the thought of going out with you, being with you should be gladness and relief.

CONCLUSIONS

One of the central prophesies of the Messiah was Emmanuel – God with us. A husband brings security, rest, relief, and joy to his wife by merely being present, being present with joy, peace, kindness, grace. But you cannot give this, unless you have this. This means that Christ must be present with you, and you must be casting your cares upon Him. A godly husband is not a man who has no difficulties or trials; a godly husband is a man who is casting them upon the Lord as fast they arise, so that he is free to serve his wife.

The name “Jesus” means savior, and it is the same name as Joshua. Think of the work of Joshua and Jesus as works of conquest. You are called to study and know your wife well. Peter says that you must dwell with your wife in an understanding way, or according to knowledge. Joshua sent spies into the land; Jesus sent the apostles. Before you attempt to lead your wife, you must know your wife. Before you build, you study the land, you make a plan. Before you go to war, you number your troops, you study the enemy. In this case, you have an assignment from the Lord to lead your wife to Heaven, to do everything you can drive the darkness of sin out of her life and present her spotless.

Men, you cannot imitate the Savior, unless you know the Savior. So do you know Jesus?