Scott Brown explains in this audio message that husbands are to love their wives as their own body. This involves affection, understanding her needs and her desires. It involves a dying to oneself and an expression of true love towards his wife -- a love and an unselfishness that only Christ can give.

Ephesians 5:28 (NKJV) - "So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself."

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is pleased to present Gospel-Centered Marriages for a Glorious Church. This message is entitled, A New Kind of Couple, Oneness in Marriage, by Scott Brown. Well, this is a wonderful, wonderful subject for us to consider. Today we've been speaking about the grand design of the Lord Jesus Christ for marriage. And we read from the first section about a new kind of woman who trustfully submits to her husband as unto the Lord, throwing her upon the sovereign hand of God, believing that God has given her a husband sovereignly and Christ is the head of her husband, and to submit to him is to submit to Christ, and that Christ is said to be the savior of the church and of the body and he becomes that same Savior.

Then we read the second section in which we spoke about a new kind of man and a different definition of love And speaking of how much we need that kind of man today in the world, every wife needs a well-functioning head. And then we turn to this great text here, verses 28 through 33. I would like for us to stand in honor of the reading of Holy Scripture. Ephesians 5, 28-33. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery. But I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Oh Lord, I pray that you would come and open up our eyes to see wondrous things from your law. Amen. Please be seated. In this third section, in this great text, We come to a principle that really makes the mind bend. You might say it really is mind blowing in a sense because it's almost impossible to describe because it encompasses so much.

And Paul actually calls it a great mystery. And it was a mystery even to him. It was a mystery that was kept secret until the time of this writing. In many ways, this mystery, it's like the Mount Everest, it's like the pinnacle peak of the whole matter that we've been dealing with line by line in this text. It's as deep as you can imagine, It's as deep as the Mariana Trench, 35, 000 feet deep.

So it's very high and it's very deep. This section contains a principle that is so wonderful, it's difficult to understand, but we're given language to help us grasp it in some way. And it is the mystical union of Christ and His church, and husbands and wives, and how they are a living picture of this mystical union. I want to read something to you by A.W. Pink.

As he tries to grasp this and put it in some kind of package that we can understand, the most wonderful thing of all, he writes, And yet the greatest mystery in the natural world is a union, namely that conjunction that God has made between mind and matter, the soul and the body. What infinite intelligence would or could have conceived of the joining of an immaterial spirit and a clod of clay? What so little alike is the soul and an organized piece of earth. Who ever imagined that such a thing as inanimate and thinking dust could be joined to spirit. Or that a spirit could be so linked and so tied to a carnal body that while that is preserved in health, it cannot free itself.

Yet there is a union, a real union, a personal union between the soul and the body. But that is only a natural mystery and falls immeasurably below the sacred mystery of the union between human beings and the Lord of glory. I think Pink gets the depth and the breadth and the height of what we're grappling with here. There is something so profound about this inseparable union of body and spirit. This text is about the body, of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

The first part of the text was about the headship and submission. The second part of the text was about the love of a husband. This part is about union, about bodies being unified with spirits. So it's very profound. I don't know if you heard last week of that Iowa couple who'd been married for 72 years.

He was 94 and she was 90, and they left their house and pulled out in front of a car and were hit. Both were taken to intensive care. They didn't separate the bodies. They kept them together, and they were holding hands. He died and they were holding hands.

And he was dead for quite some time. The wife was still alive. And the daughter noticed that the heart monitor was still going on her father, even though he had quit breathing. He was dead. He was not breathing anymore.

But the heart monitor kept documenting the heart activity. And so she asked the nurse, What's happening here? My father is dead. He stopped breathing. But his heart is still beating.

How is that possible? And so they checked it out, and as they were holding hands, the wife was still alive, her heart was beating through the heart of her husband. It's an absolutely stunning picture. And so they died together on that bed. They were holding hands.

Now, the holding of hands, the beating of hearts doesn't even get near what this kind of union is all about that we're speaking of in his passage. Now, there's something that's revealed here that was not known until this time. And the focus of this text is on the body of the husband, the body of a wife, and the body of Christ, and the mingling of those bodies. And every verse about the body here has a double meaning. And that's clear from just the natural reading of the text.

So in verse 28, there's something that ought to be that's stated. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. So he's speaking about something that ought to be, but not always is. For a husband to love his wife as his own body.

This is a challenge for men on the one hand, but it gets even more thorny than that, than it just being a challenge. But we know that men fall short of loving their wives as their own bodies. And this is all part of the charge that a man loves his wife as himself. This is affection. This is understanding what she's going through, walking with her enough, knowing her enough, to know what she needs.

And what he's saying is that the way a man cares for his body is the way that he should care for his wife's body. And so Paul is just assuming that men take care of their own bodies. I know that that's true in a relative sense, but men feed and groom and make comfortable their own bodies. And that's a picture of Christ. Christ does that for himself, and he does it for his bride.

He does it for his own good. And so every husband who feeds and grooms and takes care of himself is doing what Christ does for the Church. And so he should learn from himself, as a husband, how he ought to treat his wife. So that's the whole logic. And so when she needs help, he gives help.

When she needs encouragement, he gives it. As the Lord does the Church, He sends his spirit, he gives his word, he sends his prophets. He says, I will never leave you or forsake you. He's constantly at work to nourish and cherish his wife. And so the logic is, you know what it's like, men, you take care of yourself, and so you ought to do the same thing for your wife.

You often find men who look very sharp, well-groomed, put together for themselves, but their wives are a wreck. And that's the condition that is being considered here. And how did Christ treat his body? It was his own body. He owned his own body, and he owns his own body, the Church.

And so he takes care of it very, very carefully. Now, then, In verse 29, we learn more about nourishing and cherishing. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. So the apostle now comes and just speaks of the absolute absurdity of a man not taking care of himself. As if it's just so self-evident, no one ever hated his own flesh.

And so the only real logical conclusion that a man should come to is that, Because he takes care of himself, he should take care of his wife. And then a husband is charged to do two things, and he's given very specific things to do to nourish and to cherish. And the word nourish has to do with looking after, caring for, providing for, feeding, clothing, all those kinds of things. They focus on the physical being and then cherish. This is a term that means to keep warm, to hold dear in affection, appreciation, tenderness.

This is a word that's only used twice in the New Testament, the word thalpe, but it means it has to do with heating, to heat, to keep warm. It's very clear, the role of a husband is no hyper-patriarchal domination. It just doesn't exist in the Bible. It's something very tender and very careful. And that's why Peter says, likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, for she's a weaker vessel.

And so, how do you as a wise husband treat your wife like yourself? Well, I'm going to go back to William Gogue again because he has so much to say about this. I'm just going to give you some of the points that he makes regarding the way that a husband takes care of his wife in the same way that he takes care of his own body. Here's one. He accepts what she is willing and able to do.

She may have different kinds of limitations, he says. When a husband does not allow any failure in willingness or ability, he crushes his wife. But when her weaknesses are graciously accepted, it quickens the spirit of his wife. And it's pleasing to her. Second, it takes notice of her goodness.

Gouge says, husbands who lightly regard their wives' sacrifices do so at the expense of love. His lack of love makes her repent of the good that she does and how she wearied herself in doing it. In other words, he's saying a husband who does not take notice of the goodness of his wife makes his wife repent of the goodness that she does. I've actually done that to my own wife and had the same effect. He grants her requests, says Gouge.

A husband who does not bless her shows the world that he has no affection. Gouge takes it to a whole other level. He says he cares where she lives, that she ought to dwell in a good place. And he should be careful to move her from place to place too often. He says he limits entertaining guests.

Though she should entertain guests, her husband brings to the house, Gush says, it should not be grievous or burdensome to her. He should give her the desires of her heart in ordering her house and she should not have to ask permission to do everything in the house. One thing I love about the Puritans, they just tried to detail every possible application that could be imagined. He says a husband should not be over busy and prying into the affairs of the house to set his wife free. So he says, you need to know the capacity of your wife and deal with her in mildness.

When you use your authority, use it rarely and use it kindly. He says, authority is like a sword. If you use it too often, you blunt the blade and it does no good. He says some husbands neglect reproving their wives. And they sin against them.

He quotes Leviticus 19, seven, you shall not hate your brother in your heart and shall rebuke him. And he says it should only be weighty matters that a husband should rebuke his wife. And if he does, it should be in private and at the right time, and using soft words. So there are ways that a husband loves his wife as himself, so that's the point. Now, then in verse 30, We get into a deeper understanding of this whole matter of the union of the bodies.

Verse 34, we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. Now, God gives many images in scripture about the unity of Christ and the believer. He gives the vine. I am the vine and you are the branches. He gives the imagery of the household, that we are members of a household, we are living stones built into a house.

He gives various images. There are a number of unions in scripture that are spoken of. There's the union of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Then the second kind of union is the union of God and man and the Lord Jesus Christ. Somehow God was able to co-mingle man and God together.

It's absolutely impossible to figure out with your own mind. It just bends it to such a degree that you can't really understand it completely. And then thirdly, the union of Christ and his church. He is the head, and yet the members are communing with one another and with him all at the same time, husbands and wives having a very special communion. This is this great mystery.

And here in verse 30, it's this union of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. Absolutely nothing is left out. So there's this very profound intertwining of the husband and the wife. It's Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is putting on Christ.

Like 1 Corinthians 6.17, that he is joined to the Lord is one spirit with the Lord. These are just absolutely marvelous principles, but at least my mind just completely breaks down to understand the depth of it. And then, in verse 31, the whole matter of becoming one flesh is brought into the discussion. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Now, this is a direct quote from Genesis where the woman is taken out of the man, the Lord causes a deep sleep to come over him, and woman comes out of the man, and he says, Now this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

And then God says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. They are one in every way. They are co-workers together. They share everything. There are so many facets to this, this whole principle here.

And then it unifies them. They leave, verse 31, and they cleave, leaving, establishing a completely new jurisdiction. Everything changes in terms of the authority structure of that wife. And she now has a new head, and the headship of her father is now gone. And also a son leaves and cleaves and establishes an entirely new government.

And so his wife is not under the headship of his father. He's under his headship. So there's an entirely different jurisdiction that's created as a result of this mystical union that's taking place. And then it's unbreakable. They are joined.

The word kind of implies the gluing of two things together. You know, when you glue something together right, and you pull it apart, it breaks the wood. It actually destroys the structure of the wood itself, because it's so inseparably connected. So it's an unbreakable covenant. And it is a covenant that is meant to last forever until one of them shall die.

Now, when you think about the commingling of bodies in a marriage, you have to think of all the different problems that happen with two bodies. And the things that happen with the bodies of a husband and wife help us to understand more about the gospel. I'll give you an illustration. Have you ever thought about why God gave women PMS? Have you ever thought that somehow what's happening in a woman's body somehow has to do with this mystical union?

It has to do with the idea that a marriage is a theater of the communication of the gospel. Well, even the way that God has arranged the cycles of a woman's body declares the glory of the gospel and forces a gospel kind of response from the husband and the wife. Under the Old Testament ceremony of law, a woman was unclean during her cycle. So she would go from clean to unclean, clean to unclean, in her life, why is that? Well, it's nothing less than a picture of the Church.

The Church is also that way. The church also goes through cycles. But the church has a faithful savior, a high priest that understands and lives through the cycles of the church as the church goes through her ups and downs, her periods of hotness and coldness. And a husband has to grapple with that somehow. And how is he going to grapple with it?

In order to grapple with it rightly, he has to see the church in the same way that Jesus Christ sees the church, because his wife is not functioning the same way during the time of her cycle. And particularly during the time when her emotions are running so strangely. And what is he going to do when the church is acting that way? So the whole configuration of a woman's body forces an application of the gospel. It forces a man to rise above the occasion and to see what's really happening in his wife, who is a picture of the church.

And it shows him his responsibility to love her in the midst of her cycles. It's the same way with menopause. These things are created by God. They're universal among mankind. Is PMS a mistake?

Is menopause a mistake of God? Is it just some strange, warped feature of evolution? We're now in this terrible evolutionary moment that somehow we have to grapple with this, but sometime this will be worked out. I don't think so. This is part of the creation of God in the configuring of marriage in order to glorify himself, so that when a woman's body is going through these things, there is a savior of the body.

There is one who is nourishing and cherishing her, even in her time of depression, in her time of low spirits, maybe her times of anger, whatever it might be. When a woman moves in to PMS, she loses desire. And all kinds of other things happen that are different and maybe even seem worse. And the world is constantly just trying to overcome PMS. But it really can't be overcome.

There are drugs for it, there are all kinds of things that you can do for it. But we have to recognize that this is the way that God has created the body, but he did it for the sanctification of the husband and also the sanctification of the wife. So she is there in her weakness. She recognizes how subject she is to these forces that have come upon her body. She has no control of them.

She did not bring them about. They came from the hand of God. And she cannot fix them. She might try with medications, surgeries, all kinds of things, but God has done something to her for the purpose of his own glory. That's why becoming one flesh is so important and that is the heart of this text.

Two bodies becoming one And then how do you deal with that? So there's the sanctification of the husband, and then it challenges the wife to love her husband, even though she may not feel like loving him. And this, too, is the glory of the gospel. If our salvation was dependent upon our feelings, we would be lost. And so the love of God toward his bride is expressed in so many ways.

And one of those ways is I will never leave you or forsake you. In the time of your cycle, out of the time of your cycle, in the time of your menopause when you're old and gray and you lose all the form that you used to have. God has designed even the aging process to glorify Himself. When you marry your wife, if she's young, she's in one way more beautiful than the way she is when she's very, very old. And that too gives a man an opportunity to declare the glory of the love of Jesus Christ for His bride.

And so, we are made partakers of Christ. We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. There is a communion and a union and inseparability that creates the opportunity to declare the greatness of the love of Jesus Christ for His church. We learn in this passage, marriage was really only created anyway to tell you about Jesus Christ's love for His church. That was the reason.

Of course, there are so many marvelous things about it for us who are married. But God has something far greater in mind than just our marriages. But that something would be transmitted in the world as a result of our marriages. So we are in Christ. We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

Now, in Christ's high priestly prayer we see this communicated so beautifully. Where Jesus prays, He says that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in Me, and I in you. And then He says, I in them, and you in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know that you sent me, and have loved them as you have loved me. That the love which you loved me may be in them, and I in them. And that's the purpose of your bodies.

Flesh, spirit, all mingled in together, incomprehensible to us, but permanent. And then the apostle says in verse 32, this is a great mystery, But I speak concerning Christ and the church. And then this final admonition in verse 33. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. And so the apostle, in one way, he ends in the place that he begins.

If you look at verse 22, it has many of the qualities of verse 33. That it speaks of the role of both, with just a very dense summary of the way that their relationship should operate. So in this passage, what we've seen is the submission of a wife to her husband. And a wife has to understand something about the husband that God gave her. Whether she married him out of passion, or he her, or out of rebellion, or out of some wrong reason.

Whatever it might be, what she needs to recognize, that her husband is her head by an act of sovereign will. And her husband, who is her head, has a head, Christ. Now whether that man is self-consciously submitting to Christ, Even if he's an unbeliever, he is still subject to Jesus Christ because all things happen after the counsel of his will. A man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. So a man's life, even if he's an unbeliever, is driven by the sovereign hand of God.

And he has a head, and his head is Christ. So a wife has to realize that in submitting to her husband, she's also submitting to Christ, and Christ submits to God. So in the very act of submission, she is submitting to her Father in Heaven. One of the greatest problems in a wife's life is that she doesn't understand the sovereignty of God. And that's the source of so much of her upsetting feelings and questions about everything, is that she hasn't reconciled herself that God is sovereign over every single molecule of the universe.

That not a leaf falls to the ground, not a hair falls from the head, not a thought goes into the mind, not a step is taken except God knows and governs it all because he is summing up all things in Christ, even your rebellious husband. So that's the first section here. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife as Christ is also head of the church. These are fixed realities. And then the second section that we dealt with has to do with the love of a husband and what it looks like.

And there are all these beautiful words that show you what love looks like. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word. Every one of those words is critical for the explanation of love. 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 that's love.

Love has to do with pouring something out on someone. It's not a feeling. Many of you single people are completely lost in your whole perception about love. This is a description of love here. And love must be pursued in the engagement of marriage as a single person.

And then finally, the unity of the husband and wife. The actual unity of their bodies, how you get spirit and a clod of clay together. This is a miracle of God. He does this in a marriage. And then we see that love is proven by what it accomplishes, because a husband has something to accomplish, to sanctify and cleanse her.

Why? So that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or ankle. That's a husband's agenda when he gets married. He marries a sinner, and he has been given a wife, and then he is given a lifelong calling to nourish her, to cherish her, to work out the spots and the wrinkles and any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish. So his life should somehow have a sanctifying effect on her.

He should be making her better. I mean, you should always ask yourself, is my wife better now? Is she better because she married me? Now, she may not because of a rebellion, but she may not because you've not been nourishing and cherishing her. Those are two completely different things.

But either one, whichever the Lord sovereignly delivers to you, they are both opportunities for the expression of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the purpose of marriage. So here we learn in this final section that love cannot be measured by feelings, but it's measured by what it accomplishes. It shows that marriage is not an end, but it's a means to an end. It's to show the way that Christ loved his body and sacrificed his body for her body. Remember this passage is all about bodies, right?

The Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed his body and he hung on a tree and he bled for the sins of his wife. And so, until we understand the cross, it's almost impossible to understand marriage. Because at the center of marriage is the cross. That's why Paul says, this was a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. What he's saying is that I'm speaking of the cross.

Marriage is meant to display the glory and the accomplishments of the cross. On the cross was the ultimate sacrifice. It was also the ultimate accomplishment. As he won from every tongue and tribe and nation, those who hated him who were unlovely. That's why Paul said, God forbid that I should boast on anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul said in Romans 5, 6 and 8, Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And that, brothers and sisters, is the meaning of Ephesians 5, 21 through 33. You thought for a moment that it was about marriage, then you thought it was about a husband being ahead, and then you thought it was about a wife being submissive in earthly terms and being nice to one another and things like that.

But then when you get to the end, you realize it was about the cross of Jesus Christ and the centrality of his sacrifice for sinners. And that husbands and wives are the recipients of that grace, and they receive it into their souls, in their body, in their flesh, and in their bones. They are members of one another. They are members of the larger church and they have one single mission in life as a husband and wife. Only one thing matters, only one thing was meant by the creation of marriage, and that is that the cross of Jesus Christ would be boasted about in the world until Jesus Christ comes again.

That is the purpose of marriage and not only that, all of history is driving to a marriage ceremony. The marriage supper of the Lamb, which is why we can read in Revelation 19 verse 7, let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready. And to her was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright. For the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he said to me, right, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

So when you read wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. When you read, husbands, love your wives as also Christ as head of the church. When you read, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Here's what you ought to think about. The cross of Jesus Christ and its power, and it is your only hope to have any kind of marriage for the glory of God.

And that's the message of Ephesians 5. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we pray that you would help us to walk in all these things that we've heard, that you would so demonstrate your glory through our oneness, our love, so that there would be, in this world, offspring who declare the glory of the cross of Christ, never being ashamed of it, but boast about it and be here. And the Church of Jesus Christ. Of Scripture for Church and Family Life, and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches.

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