Col No.31 The Christian Husband

And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him and help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them and whatsoever.

To see what he would call them and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found and help meet for him.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man.

And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and there shall be one flesh.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Ephesians 5.18 Paul is encouraging people to be filled with the Spirit, subject which commanded our attention for some 40 minutes last Thursday week. One of the outworkings of being filled with the Spirit is to be illustrated in our family life as husbands and wives.

Verse 22, wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, 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. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. 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, 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. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.

For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this course shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Nevertheless let every one of you, in particular, so love his wife, even as himself and the wife, see that she reverence her husband. Colossians chapter 3, verse 17, And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.

Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. I remind you, particularly for the benefit of friends who are here in the tabernacle for the first occasion, that we are looking through this very practical chapter of Colossians, realizing that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back again, appreciating that we have made our lives over to him absolutely. And as a result of that, as the fourth verse tells us, we draw our new life, our spiritual life, from Jesus.

We appreciate that he is to be the governor of every aspect of our day-by-day existence. He is to control every relationship within the Christian church. He is to take possession of our tongues, our mouth organs, so we don't lie one to another.

His spirit creates a spirit of forgiveness within our hearts, so that if relationships are strained, they can immediately be repaired. We do everything, ideally, says the apostle in the 17th verse, because we are Christians, in the name of the Lord Jesus, always giving thanks to God and the Father by him. But it doesn't just stop there.

The apostle wants to be more specific. So he tells us about this whole arena of family life, and the way that is to be held in control and offered as a piece of worship to the Lord God. Nothing to me is more wonderful than this, than to consider that on a Monday, maybe attending to my car, maybe as a housewife looking after the domestic affairs of the home, I can do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But to be specific, we're thinking of this relationship between the Christian wife and the husband, and indeed the husband and the wife. Now, you remember how the apostle leads off with the ladies in the 18th verse, speaking of them first, because he's introducing the notion of submission, and as far as submission is concerned, then it is the ladies who do come first, for the Bible makes no apology for asking wives, womenfolk, to recognize themselves as being complementary to their husbands. As far as leadership in the home and in the church is concerned, that leadership is to be shown by the men.

And there are reasons that I adduced last week, not exhaustively, I did not have time for that, but there are reasons as to why that should be the case. Adam, you remember, was created first, Eve came second, Eve came from Adam himself, Eve was meant to be complementary to Adam, a fact that I shall refer to and enlarge upon in a moment or so. You remember how sin, it says the apostle Paul came into the world, it really was a result of this orderly relationship, God's order, being out of skew, Eve taking the initiative, and as a result, the fall occurs.

The apostle Peter, still maintaining this idea of the leadership being entrusted to the men, refers to the wife, refers to the woman, as a weaker vessel, and you know, biologically, physiologically, this can be proven. But we were at pains to say that though the wife is to submit to her husband, there are limitations, Scripture is always perfectly balanced, and we are informed that this submission must be as it is fit in the Lord. And the apostle obviously brings in that qualification for the reason that if a woman were, say, to be married to a pagan husband, and he was interfering with her day-by-day walk with the Lord, if he was in some way impoverishing her spiritually, preventing her from being in attendance at the Lord's table, and that sort of thing, well, there is even within the marital relationship, a higher law, no husband has right to impose upon his wife something which will be spiritually unhelpful and unhealthy to her.

But I must hasten on, or else the women will say that I'm completely imbalanced and only concerned to emphasize some of the things that I was saying last week. And that is, again, the wonderful thing about Scripture, that it is balanced in its teaching. You see, there may be those who come along to the 18th verse and say, I told you so, it's all old hat, it's Victorian, it's the reflection of an era gone by, the apostle Paul, he's anti-women, you can see it throughout the whole of Scripture, he's a typical bigoted Pharisee.

But no, my friend, he's not. Scripture is delightfully balanced in all of its teaching. And you can't take the 18th verse without the 19th verse.

Indeed, you can't come to these two verses of Scripture and not slot them back in Ephesians, into Ephesians 5, where you've got a greater statement of Christian marriage and the relationship and responsibilities between each member of that marriage. So here in the 19th verse, this so-called bigoted apostle Paul, he turns his attention to the husbands and he says, husbands, if this submission you're asking of your wives, this loving submission is to be forthcoming, if it's to be natural to all womenfolk, then love your wives and be not bitter against them. Verse 18 becomes invalidated if verse 19 is not attended to.

I remember a man that I met years ago by the name of Joe Blincoe, who was an associate of the Billy Graham organization. He came to my home city in the north of England and he referred to an occasion when Dr. Graham on American television was preaching on the Christian doctrine of husbands and some unbeliever who didn't go to church apparently happened to switch on and he heard all that Graham was saying his wife should be like and so he dragged her out of the kitchen and plonked her in front of the television set and said, listen to that man, it's really great stuff. The following week when he tuned in expecting to get more tuition for his defective wife, he discovered that Graham had moved over from wives to husbands and started in on him and Blincoe said that in a fearful fit of rage, he switched off the television and said, can you be more stupid than Billy Graham is? Well, you see the point.

He didn't want the balance. He wanted to apply verse 18 just on its own without giving attention to the verse 19. Now verse 19 tells us what the husband is to do.

It also tells us what the husband is not to do and also by implication in one of the verbs as I shall show you, it directs us to where the husband is to take his example from what the husband is to do. He is to love his wife. Now it's obvious that this should be stressed because the Bible has given a great deal of emphasis to the leadership of the husband, but this leadership is not tyranny.

It's not the power of the dictator. It's not the power of the papacy. It's a power that is exercised within the context of love.

God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of love, of power and of a sound mind. There you see how love is related to power. Power on its own is exercised within the family circle is not a naked power.

The power of a tyrant is a naked power. Bokassa, that man in the Central Africa empire who did so many terrible things and mercifully has been removed from his authority. He was exercising naked power, but the Bible does not give the husband that right.

It twins to his power, agape, love. It is a power that is conditioned, which is controlled by love. So in this authority that he exercises over his spouse, he realizes that attached to it and it cannot be dislodged from it is the command of God to love his wife.

Now there are three areas in which the Bible opens up this subject of love in relationship of a man to a woman. It speaks about eros, erotic love, and that alas is very often where popular novel writers start and finish in telling us of great romances. This is the philosophy of Hollywood, erotic love taken out of its context with all its carnality and its sensuality and very often its selfishness.

Now the Bible, as I shall seek to show you, does not speak against the love of eros. What it does say is that when a man loves his wife in this way, it needs to be balanced by, it needs to be improved by. The quality of it shall stand out the more because there are two other types of love which are bound together in this package deal of the way a husband is to love his wife.

The second word is the word phileos, which really has more to do with the emotion, the heart, the affection. This word is used, you remember, when the Lord Jesus is in conversation with Peter. As recorded in the last chapter of John's Gospel, Peter is being questioned as to the measure of his dedication to Jesus.

And the Savior uses an absolute term for love to which I will refer in a moment. And Peter is not too prepared to say, yes, I love you in that degree because he's got the thought of his own betrayal of the Lord Jesus, his own denial of the Lord Jesus very much in mind. Do you remember how the Savior on three occasions puts the question to him, Peter, do you love me? And on the last occasion, he drops down to this word phileo.

And he's saying, Peter, even on this level, are you sure you love me? Are your emotions, are your affections towards me? Now, the reason for my bringing this particular aspect of the word love to your attention is to underline the fact that when a husband loves his wife, the erotic is by no means all that there is to this relationship. There is the idea of phileos, the idea of the heart, of the emotion, being always open to embrace the wife. From my pastoral experience, limited though it be, most marital problems do not come at stage one.

Some do and need attention, but most marital problems don't come there. They come at stage two. The idea of the heart being open towards the wife, the emotion, the affection, so that she feels enveloped and safe within the love of her husband at that level.

Husbands love your wives, eros comes in, phileos comes in, but then again, that grand concept of love, which only the Christian church really understands, therefore only the Christian can fully grasp the deep significance of marriage and understand the doctrine of Christian marriage. My friend, it's almost absurd for non-Christians to come into a church and be married when they don't understand the first thing about agape. In the marriage service, we talk about men and women loving their husband, their wife, as the case may be, as Christ loved the church, and they know nothing of the love wherewith Jesus loved his church, and therefore their vows are really extraordinary in the extreme.

They don't understand what they're doing. But here's the Christian husband, he loves his wife, eros comes into it, phileos comes into it, but so does agape, that great selfless love, which is personified magnificently as the father sends his son into the world. You see, eros and phileos, they have the idea of selfishness about them.

The reason for the pornographic trade is basically selfishness. It's the idea of just gratification at one level, and when that is not tempered by the other two aspects of love, then I say selfishness is the root cause of that relationship. Permissiveness, that really can be traceable to selfishness.

The young fellow, the young girl who anticipates marriage, they're not showing that they love one another, they're rather showing that there is selfishness within their makeup, because they're not prepared to have the covering of marriage, which is a very safe and a very secure covering, before they indulge in expressing their love one to the other physically. I know there are problems, I know there are emotional difficulties, and I will be the last person to condemn, but here is the ideal picture presented from the word of God. The relationship between wife and husband, husband and wife in the area of love needs a delightful combination of these three.

Eros on its own can be selfish, phileos on its own can be selfish, but tempered with the agape that comes from God, the shedding abroad of God's love in your marriage relationship, it brings the other two into correct perspective. Now, let me enlarge upon this, because I think it has been very much misunderstood in the Christian church, particularly 30 or 40 years ago. The Bible was never against erotic love.

You cannot read the Song of Solomon, you cannot read what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, and think that the Bible's got some hang up on physical relationship. Not at all. It was God who caused this to happen.

But the Bible, you see, is always balanced, because it gives us the regulations, the advice of the great creator who schemed the relationship of marriage up in the first instance. And it says taken on its own, it can destroy you. Taking on its own, it can be selfish.

Taken on its own, it can bring womankind particularly down to the level of the gutter, and she becomes just a plaything for a man. But balanced with emotional love, balanced with the love of God, with the whole security of wedlock, then each of the three strands comes into a marvelous perspective. And one can only feel sorrow at the sinful way in which people completely fail to understand the teaching of the word of God, and they get trapped in eros or phileos, and never have the balancing love of God to straighten out and make wholesome their marriage relationship.

Well then, this is what the husband is to do. He is to love his wife in every aspect of that word. What is he not to do? Well go on in the statement, husband love your wives and be not bitter against them.

What an extraordinary comment. You imagine me saying this at a wedding service, I don't want you to ever be bitter against your wife. And the person would wonder, well why is he advising this? Well let's not ask it of myself, let's ask it of the apostle Paul, who's inspired by the Spirit.

What do you mean Paul when you say, be not bitter against my wife? Well the apostle I think would reply, I don't want you to embitter her. I don't want you to irritate her. That's really what that terminology in the original implies.

Husbands, do not irritate your wives. How do you irritate your wife? I'm not asking for contributions publicly at this moment. You can come and tell me on Thursday.

But let me suggest in all seriousness, some of the ways in which irritation is caused when there's a lack of balance in the marital relationship and wives therefore do not submit to their husbands as they should. How is it that husbands sometimes can lose the confidence of their wives and embitter them? Well it seems to me that one of the statements that must be made as a deduction from Paul's teaching here and in Ephesians 5 is this. You embitter your spouse by seeming to be independent of her.

By seeming to be independent of her. I remind you that the first concept of one flesh is in Genesis chapter 2 and towards the end of that passage of scripture. The Bible when it talks of men and women coming together in marriage relationship refers to them as being so fused they are never to be considered as independent parties again.

In fact it's not even true to describe the wife's relationship to the husband or the husband's relationship to the wife in terms of a partner. You can have a successful business partnership but no way is it akin to a marriage. A better perhaps way of describing this, this interdependence is in that colloquial expression when sometimes you may refer to your wife or your husband as being your better half.

And though the scripture doesn't use that term it certainly gives it a warrant. It certainly gives it credibility. You're more than just a partner.

You have become one. One flesh. So the apostle when he's writing to the Ephesians on this wonderful subject says of the union of men and women he that loveth his wife loveth himself.

He is so related to his wife that she has become part of him. Now believe it or not this arm is part of my body. It would be absolutely absurd for me to try to act without it or for it to act without me.

Now this is what the apostle is saying and he's using that absurd analogy himself. When the husband and the wife are joined together they become one. One flesh.

So the man should not act independently of the woman. If he does so he irritates her and she's every right to feel aggrieved and bitter. Says the apostle in a stronger statement in Ephesians so ought men to love their wives as their own body.

You're not to act as though you're detached from your wife. This is one of the great causes I think of marital breakdown in the 20th century. We forget when we are married that we have lost every claim we ever had to act independently as a single.

We are linked together with our wife and she to us. You see you're just not complete without your wife. Let me give you again a historical excursion into Genesis.

Full marks to Adam that he didn't select one of the animals as a special favorite. And so God in his grace made someone who was purposely designed tailor made for Adam. He made woman.

How was woman made? Well you remember that surgical operation. Adam goes into a deep sleep. A rib is taken from him and woman is constructed to make up what is a deficiency in man.

So in the marital union the woman compliments the man. He's not full without her. He's incomplete without her.

As I shall show you in a moment or so Jesus is incomplete without his church. So those who have been brought into this marital union are incomplete without the wife on the one hand without the husband on the other hand. And it's when you forget that that abuse comes into marriage and the breakdown which leads me to my second proposition.

Not only is a man never to act independently of his wife he is not to abuse her. Now here I will at least allude to a political figure not wishing to be too much critical from the public from the pulpit but I think that when men go into the arena of politics and they pontificate morally upon certain situations particularly in Northern Ireland their own morality needs to be examined and questioned. You know that there is a strong contender for the presidency of the United States of America in the form of Edward Kennedy and he was who pontificated some while ago about what the British should be doing in Northern Ireland.

Well he's right to his opinion. But we also have a right to question some of the problems in his own family background some years ago when he found himself with his life at risk and that of one of his secretaries as a motor car spun off the road and fell into a river. You remember in the United States of America.

Now one asks what went wrong with the Kennedy marriage. What went wrong was this. This man was acting independently of himself.

He went to a social engagement. This was not a political thing. This was not something in which matters of state were being discussed.

He were a group of men with a group of women. They were not married. They were together having some social evening and I say positively from the word of God that was wrong.

Why was it wrong. Well because it led to many permutations which were completely unacceptable. And as a result of this this man has lost certainly in my book political credibility because back in his own personal life he has fallen foul of the teaching of the word of God.

He acted independently of his wife. He abused her and she has suffered some of the consequences incidentally of that abuse. I would go further than that.

I would say that a man who cannot control his own domestic situation who cannot control his own marriage is not a man who is a fit man to be in charge of a nation or to have position of authority within this country or any other country. Now get your letters written and send them into me on Tuesday or Wednesday and I'll be glad to respond from scripture with regard to that personal illustration. But you see it's so important that when men come before the public and they say look at me I can control a larger situation than my own family that we look into the family and say yes.

Well let's see you controlling that first. And then we will have confidence in you. A man is not to act independently of his wife.

He is not to abuse her. He is not to neglect her not to act as though he was single as though she could not be with him on specific functions. Of course there are occasions in business in professional life when it's not always possible for your wife to be with you.

In the role of counseling as an elder within a church obviously there are confidences that are given to you that you do not share with your wife. But she being a spiritual woman will recognize this. She will be praying for you for the wise counsel that you should give.

But in virtually every other area of your marriage it is possible to take your wife into your confidence. And because of the sensitivity of the woman it's very often the case that she can contribute something to you in an issue that you would never have thought about yourself. So I go back you see to the original reason for making woman to compliment man.

He's really acting deficiently without her if he's a married man. God has given this woman to him so that his life shall become one and she has a contribution to make. She has a mind to express a view which is to be considered.

Now if you fail in these areas if you act independently if you abuse your wife if you neglect her if you feel that she's just a zombie and her opinion counts for nothing at all. Then neither can you basically expect that she will offer you the submission that you are requiring of her. Husbands love your wives in every aspect of that love and make them feel as indeed they are a vital part of your family life.

And from where does the apostle take his example. Well he takes it from our Lord Jesus Christ and so in Ephesians he says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Do you know the church was born from the body of Christ as Eve was born so to speak from the body of Adam.

It was from the wounds of Jesus that the church came into being. His death on the cross his mighty resurrection was the very womb through which the church was born. And that church was precious in the sight of Jesus.

He loved her so much he gave himself for her. Now says the apostle in respect to husbands and wives the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. Did he love the church because the church was always attractive not a bit.

The church was defiled. You and I who constitute the church are sinners. There were things that we have done that were wrong ugly unpleasant well nigh repugnant and yet he loved and this becomes the most sacred part of the priesthood of a husband.

Love your wife as Christ loved the church. Spots wrinkles deficiencies all these says the apostle Paul in verse 27 of Ephesians five the church had but nonetheless Jesus continued to love. And you see it's that holy agape which keeps a marriage going when the erotic element has died down considerably and maybe the filial is not there as strong as what it originally was there still that divine love.

She's no longer 20 30 40 50 60 70 years is my spouse but to me she's still lovely and even the deficiencies that may be there I love her in spite of them as Jesus loves me in spite of my deficiencies to the extent he gave himself and assured my eternal salvation to be guaranteed. And the husband is always to be giving always expending himself for the security of his wife and the security of his children. That marital relationship is illustrated remarkably by the Lord Jesus and his death and his mighty resurrection and the only thing that will break that marital contract and cause responsibility to evaporate is if the marriage splits apart through an adulterous relationship and then the marriage may well be not necessarily so but it may well be killed stone dead.

But the apostle is not dealing with divorce he's not dealing with the breakdown of marriage here he's dealing with family circles and he's telling us how to conduct our affairs wife to husband husband to wife wife submit yourself unto your own husband as pleases the Lord husbands love your wives and do not irritate them show to them something of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and know happiness within your marriage circle. Amen. Now father as we've been dealing with the ideal picture of marriage relationship and by extension other relationships within our home within the church help some of us who confess immediately that we've got some things out of order to get them back into right perspective.

Help those who are husbands and wives here to find new depths of love and of relationship and bless and sanctify the homes of this tabernacle and those outside a marital bond. Lord we thank you that you're a husband and a wife to those who are single and even within the fellowship of the church there are more than adequate compensations so that all shall feel united and at home and a spirit of belonging one to the other help us to preserve not only marriages within the tabernacle but the family circle of our fellowship itself may be a security and a home for all who need solace and who need companionship for Jesus sake. Amen.