A Theology of Husbandry Part II: Sanctification
We saw last week that a husband is called to agape love his wife. We distinguished that from eros love—physical, romantic love—and phileo love, which is built on shared experiences. Those two come fairly naturally and do not need a command. But agape love, which we saw is primarily concerned with seeking the well-being of the one loved—as God defines well-being—this love must be commanded. It does not come naturally. It means the husband is first concerned for his wife’s salvation, then for her sanctification. Verses 26 and 27 make that clear and point the way to true agape love. We can all learn from this! From Ephesians 5:26-27.
Christ Our Model
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
As I said last week, most people read verse 25 and stop, as if that’s all that applies to the husband. Ephesians 5:26 and 27 are seen as a distraction, embellishing what Christ has done for us. It’s just Paul getting distracted by the power and glory of the Gospel to change people—it’s sweet, but off point.
Only it’s not off point. It’s very much on point! This is the goal of the sacrifice that Jesus made to redeem the Church; it illustrates, describes and defines the purpose of the husband’s sacrifice for his wife. He doesn’t give up his wants and wishes to satisfy hers. He gives up his whole life to the Father, and lives now to know Him and walk with Him and teach and lead others to know and walk with Him. Just as surely as a husband requires of himself to die to himself and live for Christ, so also he calls his wife to die to herself and live for Jesus. Because there is nothing of higher value or benefit to a woman—or anyone! So this is the greatest thing a husband can do for his wife! It is the greatest thing any one of us can do for another!
Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:7-8, NIV)
There are so many things we think are important. Health, wealth, family—this list goes on and on. Look how popular physical training has become! Men want to get muscular. Women want to be fit and strong. Paul spoke to this 2,000 years ago! There’s nothing inherently wrong with physical training or eating healthy or avoiding health-damaging habits and adopting beneficial ones. But all of that is rooted and focused on maintaining a body that we’ll all eventually lay aside. We’re not taking this with us into eternity!
But there is something we can bring with us! Godliness! Godliness has value for the present age—and the age to come! You want to invest your time, energy, thought, treasure in something that has real, lasting value? Invest in godliness. Grow in godliness. Learn who God is, what is important to Him and emulate it! That’s worth everything!
Jesus came and worked countless miracles (John 21:25), but He didn’t come primarily to heal people and fix all our health or material problems. He came primarily to call people to repent and believe in Him and the Kingdom He is bringing about (Mark 1:38). He came to teach people how to live as citizens of that kingdom. And when He left, He commissioned His Apostles to carry on that work.
Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20, NIV)
You notice He didn’t command them to heal everyone or fix their worldly problems. Rather He commanded them to disciple—teach, train—all who followed them in everything they had learned from Jesus. They were to take over from Jesus—not coming up with their own new teachings—but faithfully teaching all that Jesus had taught them.
Each one of us is supposed to diligently learn these things and put them into practice. We’re to imitate God (Ephesians 5:1) and become little replicas of Jesus. And God intends for each one of us to learn to exercise the Great Commission first in the lives of the individuals or groups closest to us.
Gentlemen, you and I are appointed to be a replica of Jesus to our wives, to stand in His place and carry out His commission in her life. We need to be asking ourselves, what does Jesus want for us? What does He want for our wives? And as we’ll soon see, what does Jesus want for our children? That’s all on us.
Cleansing Her
26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
Follow me now. Let’s put these two verses together: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”
Jesus agape loved the Church. He saw that she needed to be made holy; she needed cleansing by the Word. The only way He could do the first was by laying down His life in payment for her sins and rising again to provide new life to her. You can’t die to pay for your wife’s sins and you can’t rise again to give her new life. That has been done; it is a work finished by Jesus and Jesus alone.
By now you understand that we have been given a new nature, holy and righteous. Yet there’s also the continuing work of putting off the old nature and putting on the new, again and again, until we finally live fully in our new nature and no longer in the old. That’s what Paul talked about in the previous chapter (Ephesians 4:22-24).
You and I, by faith in Jesus Christ, have been made holy. But you and I know full well, we still have a lot of growing to do. That’s why we come to church! That’s why we have Bible studies! That’s why we read our own Bible daily! There’s still a lot to learn and put into practice! That’s been the focus of every verse we’ve looked at from the beginning of Chapter 4! And we’ve seen again and again that each one of us plays a part in the growth in Christlikeness of everyone else in this room!
Guess what, husband? You have been designed and appointed by God to be the primary “shepherd” or pastor of your wife. Not me. I’m your “over-shepherd,” though I’m still an “under-shepherd,” under the Lord Jesus Himself. The idea is actually woven into the entire fabric of Scripture! Did you ever read this offensive instruction?
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:34-35, NIV)
We have so much wrong in our day and age that these two verses offend both men and women. But Paul’s right; we’re wrong. It is disgraceful for women to speak up, ask questions, even teach in the church. It’s a disgrace because it means the men aren’t doing their God-ordained job—and we should be ashamed of that and get busy fixing the situation. We don’t fix it by shutting all the women down. We fix it by becoming husbands who can answer their questions! We fix it by getting serious about knowing and walking with God. We fix it by taking responsibility for our family, for their understanding and obedience to Jesus Christ!
Did you see that? If a woman wants to ask a question, she should ask her own husband (I’ll add father for the unmarried) at home. That means a husband needs to know God well enough to answer his wife’s spiritual questions. It’s not my job to answer the questions of every wife in here! It’s yours, husband! But if you can’t answer it, that’s what I’m here for—to help you answer her questions.
There is a structure of discipleship. Just as Moses couldn’t bear the weight of all the problems of the Israelites when they came out of Egypt, so he appointed lesser judges, some over a thousand, some over a hundred, some over fifty and some over ten (Exodus 18:13-26). There was a structure. You went to the guy appointed over you. If he couldn’t solve the problem, he went to the guy over him or sent you to him. If he couldn’t handle it, you went further up the chain, until perhaps you finally reached Moses. Moses then checked with God and gave God’s answer, which was then recorded in the Scriptures for all of us, including those first judges, to learn from.
It actually began with each man being head over his own family. If he or his family came in conflict with another, he would go to the judge and that started the whole process. The husband is actually the judge over his own family, and he is just as responsible as all the other judges to learn and do “the decrees and laws, and show them the way to live and the duties they are to perform” (Exodus 18:20, NIV).
Ladies, if you want to humbly “encourage” your husband to recognize his responsibility and grow in it, then ask him your spiritual questions. When he tells you to go ask the pastor, tell him I said she needed to ask him. Let him also know that I’d be glad to help him with the answers, so he should give me a call.
You unmarried ladies, no longer living at home, are of course free to come to me for answers, though I’d prefer you connect with my wife first.
Husbands, when your wife comes with questions, be careful you make sure you know what God’s answer is—whatever you do, do not make up your own answer based on your own or worldly wisdom. Go to God, understand His heart and will, and answer accordingly.
But if you wives go and provide for yourself the answer to your question, well, you prove you don’t need him to step up. In which case, you shouldn’t complain that he knows little or nothing about God. And if you go looking for answers on your own, I know that means you’ll be casting about for answers from whatever source you can find, and there are a whole lot more false teachers out there than true. Who knows where you’ll end up?
It’s one thing to study and discern what you believe to be the right answer, so you know whether your husband is leading you well. But if you come up with a different answer than what he gives you, that’s not the time to debate and argue. That’s how you undermine the whole system! You’re not submitting yourself to his leadership, and you’re showing him so! So why should he bother trying to lead you?
A couple of things to consider in such a case. It would be better for you to gently and respectfully encourage him to check with me to make sure he’s on the right path. What if he’s wrong and won’t check with me for confirmation? If you follow his lead, could things go badly? Maybe. Depends on the question. If it’s a point of theology that won’t affect how you live day-to-day, then it probably won’t matter. If it’s a real-life, actual circumstance that you’re facing, then yes, a wrong answer could make a mess of things. That’s when fear comes in and encourages you to rebel. But that’s also fertile ground where your trust in God can and should grow! Remember Abraham’s wife Sarah (1 Peter 3:1-6)?
Consider this: Do we only learn from the things we get right? Or do we also learn from our mistakes? Are you committed to going through good and bad, sickness and health, riches and poverty with your husband? Then it’s okay if your life gets messed up! The result will be growth in your faith and obedience and submission and honor for your husband, which will encourage your husband to grow in taking responsibility and learning from his mistakes. You’ll become a better wife and he’ll become a better husband.
Unless you tear him down over the temporary, insignificant, earthly suffering he led you into. You need to understand, wife, that whomever you married, he’s your God-given husband. He’s tasked with leading you. And you’re tasked with submitting to him and respecting him, whatever comes your way, and why-ever you got into the situation. Your submission is not just for when he has things right in your estimation. It is without condition, and the only limit is: Do not sin against God. So if you believe in God, then ultimately, God has ordained for you to go through those hard circumstances for both of you to grow, if you’ll each respond as God directs to those circumstances. If nothing else, you’ll learn not to put your hope in earthly things, but in God and in His promised and coming kingdom.
Washing with the Word
So, husbands, we can’t die for our wife to make her holy, but this verse shows us what we are given to complete her holiness!
Jesus sacrificed Himself in order to cleanse the Church by His blood, but also “by the washing with water through the word.” His blood cleanses you and I from all sin and makes us new, but as we saw in Chapter 4, in the process of putting off the old and putting on the new, there is a renewing of our minds (Ephesians 4:22-24). We were steeped in the thinking of this world and the god of this age, so we have a hard time recognizing what is truly good and right, and what is a sick distortion of God’s truth. We don’t always recognize the deceitful desires of our flesh or the right instructions of godliness. So God has graciously recorded everything He wants us to know in the Bible.
He has given clear commands and instructions for how we should live. He has recorded the lives of individuals and His interactions with them, as both good examples and bad. The laws and rules give us a framework to evaluate who is a good example and who isn’t. His righteous decrees give us the tools to discern which behaviors and deeds in a single person’s life are worthy of emulation and which are not. As Peter said, we have been given everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).
God has done His part by making us new and putting His Spirit in us and writing and preserving the Bible for us today. We need to do our part by reading the Bible, studying it, memorizing it, meditating on it and doing what it teaches!
God intends for His Word to wash our minds and hearts, to cleanse away all the wrong ideas and attitudes, and to build into us faith and right behaviors and beliefs. We do need apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers, who are living by the Word of God, to teach us what it says and model how we should practice it (Ephesians 4:11-13)! And if we were meeting daily, as the early church did, and devoting ourselves to the Apostles’ teaching, then we would be a dramatically different people (Acts 2:42-47)!
What we lack in meeting times can be made up by our personal daily reading, study, memorization and meditation. We have something that most in Paul’s day didn’t have: We have literacy! We can read the Word for ourselves. We’re not wholly dependent on someone else teaching us what the Bible says!
Each one of us—men, women, married, single, young, old—needs to be regularly, frequently, daily learning from God’s Word and being changed by it.
Husbands, you and I need that. But we also have the added responsibility and privilege of leading our wives in that. You don’t have to be an expert in everything God teaches. You don’t have to understand all the historical and cultural background, you just need the Spirit of God dwelling in you and a teachable heart. You can read a chapter with your wife, talk about what it teaches us to be and do, then plan together how to implement the changes God calls for, in each of you individually and in you both as a couple.
Husband, you need to take the lead. And if your wife is submissive, she will be easy to guide in that. If not, you still need to be devoting yourself to the Word of God, to reading all of it, growing in your understanding of God and conforming your life to His likeness.
Ladies, some of you think you know the Word of God better than your husband. If that is so, then it will show in how you submit to, honor and respect your husband. You won’t belittle him when he reads God’s Word. You won’t criticize his understanding or evaluation. You’ll rather listen to what God desires to say through him to even you. As James says, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom” (James 3:13, NIV). Godly wisdom shows itself in humility and godly behavior.
Husbands, your sacrifice for the good of your wife will be to die to your schedule and personal priorities, to die to those things that fill your heart and mind, so that you can build in a regular time of reading God’s Word, meditating on what you read and putting into practice what God tells His people to do and be. That will set you up to know God and know Him well. That is what prepares you to lead your family in God’s ways; they’ll just need to follow you as you follow Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1)!
Then you can add into your schedule as the highest of priorities a time when you and your wife read the Bible together, talk about what God is teaching and discuss how to put it into practice! Now you’re washing your wife with the water of the Word, just like Jesus Himself!
Now you’re doing what brings your wife the greatest of benefits: Knowing and walking in Jesus’ ways! True agape love!
But wait, there’s more! And here, it’s going to get a little weird, but bear with me. I think you’ll see how it all fits together.
Presented to Jesus
27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
When we add in this last verse, we realize that Jesus didn’t save us just for our own benefit. I mean, we gain a tremendous benefit. But Jesus saved us for Himself, for His own purposes, to bring us to Himself as a glorious, flawless, holy Bride!
Did you hear that? It wasn’t for us that He saved us, but for Himself!
More than that: He didn’t look on us before He chose us and say, “Wow, she’s awesome! I want her!” On the contrary, this is what He saw:
The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!”’” (Ezekiel 16:1-6, NIV)
We were birthed and left to ourselves. No one cared for us, no one cleaned us up. No one had compassion on us. We were despised and left to die. But then God came along and announced the Gospel, by which He offered us life, true life, eternal life. As He continues in Ezekiel, He then provided everything we needed to make us glorious and beautiful in His eyes. And He naturally expected we would then be knitted in heart to Him forever, in gratitude and amazement. Instead, we became impressed with ourselves because of His gifts, as if we earned them or deserved them or brought them about by our own power! He honored us and we thought we were worthy of the highest of honors. But then He required some things of us that we didn’t so much like. Loyalty. Faithfulness. Obedience. So we went looking for a better husband, who would put us on a pedestal and worship us, serve us, and do our every bidding!
You see, Jesus didn’t choose us because we were perfect to begin with. He chose us out of His mercy and compassion—because no one else wanted us! And in His choosing, He determined to make us an object of His love and delight by changing us and conforming us to the likeness He desired!
So many of us think that God chooses us because He loves us just the way we are! That couldn’t be further from the truth! Remember? We’re objects of wrath before coming to Christ! He detests who and what we are! But in His mercy, He chooses to clean us up and make us radiant, holy and blameless! That is a work both of a moment (salvation) and of a lifetime (sanctification). Hear Hebrews 10:14 (NIV): “because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” We were made perfect by one sacrifice—Jesus’—but we are also still being made holy.
If you’re looking for a god who will love you just the way you are, and ask nothing of you, no change, no nothing, just be yourself and enjoy your own life, well, there is one. There are many, actually, but they are all masks of one fallen angelic being: Satan. He cares nothing for you. He only wants to you join him in Hell for eternity. He doesn’t care for you; he just hates God and you’re the pawn in his war with God. That’s why he asks nothing of you. He couldn’t care less who you are or what you are. In fact, the greater the distortion of God’s holiness you are—the further from His ways—the better!
But if you desire a God who truly loves you and cares what’s best for you and wants to give you life and an eternity of joy and peace, well, there is only One, and that is the God who made the universe. He knows what’s best for you and what you need, and He gives you everything you need: a new nature, guidance and His own presence and power to conform you to the likeness that He delights in.
So Jesus is self-serving in saving you and me, but we gain an incredible benefit by being brought into His household. It’s just that we need to make some changes. A lot of changes, if we want to remain in His household. We need to submit to His instruction and direction and training and transforming. He intends to make us the help-meet that is truly a suitable helper for Him.
We don’t come to Him and figure out what ways He needs help and then insist on serving Him as we see fit. We come to Him and ask how best He would like us to help Him, and we do it.
Do you hear what I’m saying, husbands and wives?
A husband chooses a wife for his own selfish benefit. That’s true and right; nothing wrong or sinful in that. But the wife he chooses gains benefits that come from being and growing as the wife he delights in. Now the typical husband has lots of ideas how best his wife can serve him, how she can be the best help-meet for him. And he makes those desires known, one way or another. He may or may not have a clear vision at the outset, but over time, if the wife understands her role and responsibility, she will become that wife he truly delights in! The redeemed husband, however, doesn’t merely look at what he wants his wife to be for him, but he also looks at what God wants his wife to be for him and for God! He may have to give up some of his desires in order to grow his wife into the woman God wants her to be.
And here’s where it gets really weird: Husband, you and I are ultimately preparing our wife for Jesus! We only temporarily possess our wife. Remember, marriage is only for this age (Matthew 22:28-30).
When we all get to heaven, each one of us will stand before God and dwell in His eternal presence as individuals, no longer bound to our earthly spouse. That should be a huge wake-up call to all of us who are husbands! We are stewards, temporary guardians, trainers of our wife. Our wife is ultimately Jesus’, and we had better recognize that and recognize our duty to prepare her to be holy and blameless, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish—in His eyes!
Again, that’s why we need to know and live by the Word of God. He tells us everything He wants us to be and do—in His Word. He tells us everything He wants our wives to be and do—in His Word.
Just like we want our wife to become the perfect wife for us, of higher priority is to make sure she becomes the woman God wants her to be! You are in charge of one of God’s chosen people and tasked with preparing her to be His holy and blameless child.
Though we are a husband, we are also a matchmaker of sorts. Is that weird enough for you?
Conclusion
- A husband prepares his wife to walk in God’s holiness
- That requires the husband to know and walk with God himself
- The Word of God is God’s standard for husband and wife
- A husband teaches his wife what he desires and what God desires of her
- The wife submits and conforms herself to the likeness presented to her
If you think no person should have such authority and responsibility over another, think again! That’s the role of apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers! To train the whole body to walk in Jesus’ ways! That’s why He gave them authority to teach and to discipline—for the good of all the members!
Paul said it this way, in regard to the Corinthian church: “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him” (2 Corinthians 11:2, NIV).
He told the Colossians: “We proclaim him [Christ], admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:28-29, NIV).
What Paul says about himself as an apostle for his churches is the very same thing God says here about husbands for their wives. Though our wife does belong to us, it’s only for this age. In reality, we are commissioned to prepare her to stand side-by-side with all other believers, perfect, holy, exactly as God desires.
So again, to accomplish that we have to know God first. We can call our wife to be the woman we desire, because we know our own wants and wishes well. But to further train her to be what God is looking for, we need to know God ourselves, what He wants, what He wishes, what He instructs. In fact, in regard to what we want our wives to be, we need to change and adjust and conform our own desires to match Christ’s.
In the likeness of Jesus Christ, we husbands surrender ourselves to the Father’s will and ways, and we work to train and develop our wife into a bride we delight in, and even more, one that Jesus delights in.
That is why a wife needs to submit to her husband: to learn and model that flexibility and that humility that Jesus Himself desires from every one of us, and so that she can become the woman God intends.