What can we learn from Christ and the Church?

Jason Dohm explains in this video that marriage is a picture of the sacrificial love of Christ for the unsaved and how He laid down His life for us. The husband is called to be like Christ.

Husbands have to be aware and humble that they are sinful and will sin against their wives. They are not infallible and must be quick to apologize and repent. Accordingly, so much grace is needed within a marriage. A husband and a father can do much harm to his family and to his children if he acts in an ungodly, prideful manner in his marriage.

Ephesians 5:25-27 (NKJV) - "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish."

So, Ephesians 5 tells us the most about marriage, which is that marriage is a picture. It's a picture of the sacrificial love of the Lord Jesus Christ for a people that He's actually laid down His life to purchase. And that the woman in this picture is the church. And so This affects how the woman is to respond to her husband and how the husband is to respond to his wife. Here's the tricky thing.

The husband is playing the role of one who is perfect, but the husband isn't perfect. So there are different points at which the picture breaks down because though we're charged with acting like Christ in our marriage, there are many points at which we don't actually act like Christ in our marriage. So husbands have to be aware of that. Husbands have to be humble knowing that they have this duty and this job, but they're not infallible like the husbands that we're picturing. And So, so much grace is needed in marriages.

Wives towards husbands, husbands towards wives. This has such a great impact on our children as well. They are watching. And a husband and a father can undo everything he's trying to do with his children in his marriage with how he relates with his wife. If he's not a humble man, if he's a proud man, if he's a man that can never be wrong, the gospel that he's preaching is invalidated through his conduct in his marriage.