Wives, submit to your own husbands,
as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of
the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body,
and is himself its Savior. Now, as the church submits to
Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their
husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having
cleansed her by the washing of water and with the word. so that
he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot
or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without
blemish. In the same way, husbands should
love their 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 Christ does the church because we are
members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave
his father and leave his mother and hold fast to his wife, and
the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound. And I am saying that it refers
to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you
love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects
her husband. As we start here today, I want
to draw your attention to a couple of things. First, as I want you
to understand Not all scripture is so perfectly established because
of the way in which the apostles wrote. In other words, they wrote
in patterns and they wrote rhetorically where they would build an argument
that was sometimes sandwiched in such a way that it's all.
Let me let me back up. It's important to see the whole
as well as every piece to see the whole. And so we see every
piece and then we see the whole of that piece and then piece
of that piece and then the whole of that piece and the piece of
that piece and the whole of those pieces and the whole of those piece
pieces. And the next thing you know, we've just got a big old
mess. It's like a jigsaw puzzle unwound, but it's not chaos.
And so what I mean by that is that if we're not careful, like
I mentioned last week, we'll sweep the dust into the wind
instead of dealing with the dust. And I don't want to say that
it's dust as an insignificance, but friends, it's very easy to
continue to move on without really seeing the fullness. And so what
Paul I'm going to do today is show how Paul has a larger argument,
which is that the marriage is the typology of the gospel in
its original intention. that God created the world and
created man and said, it is not good that man be alone. So out
of man He took woman and then He brought the woman to the man
and He says, now this is good. And the two became one flesh.
God did that to display the redemption of His people before there was
the fall. Do you see that? And so the full argument there
is, as we look at it, we're going to have to pick out some pieces
of Ephesians 5 here to show you how this works. Specifically,
these terms, these words, as we see, for the husband is the
head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. Now,
also, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives submit
in everything to their husbands. And then we get to verse 25 and
we start seeing a comparison, but not necessarily a comparison
in that husbands are Christ. But husbands are a picture of
Christ. Wives are a picture of the church,
but the husband and the wife both are brides. They're part
of the body, they're one flesh with Jesus Christ. So then also
then the husband and the wife separate or one flesh and therefore
the marriage is to depict the gospel. That's what it was called
for. That's what it's that's what
it was created for. That's what marriage was ordained for. There
have been arguments recently that people would say, well,
marriage is for procreation. That's not true. It's not true. It's not true. Procreation comes
out of marriage, but it's not the reason God created marriage,
the reason God created marriage, the end of marriage is to show
Jesus. And his love for his people.
Not procreation. And so we need to understand
that the picture of that headship and that submission and the picture
of the gospel is perfectly seen. And this argument here then begins
to unwind. But at the same time, there's
an intricate argument that's woven into the larger argument.
And in verse twenty five, we see as Christ love. Like and
as, we know that in our literary devices as a simile. Something
is like as this is like. Husbands are like Christ as Christ
loved the church in the same way husbands love your wife as
Christ. Not as don't be Christ. The scripture
isn't saying what most people would read into it here. Let
me show you what I think some people see and then we'll move
into seeing the focus of today. Husbands love your wives. As
Christ loved the church. And now we see the point. The
point is not to see how husbands ought to look, but to see how
Christ looks. And then as I closed last week,
we love our lives in light of how Christ loves. But what we
don't want to do is take a theological comparison when it's actually
a typological comparison, a typological comparison. is that if I have
a miniature Mack truck right here, and I say, this is like
a Mack truck. It looks like a Mack truck. It
feels like a Mack truck. It opens up like a Mack truck.
The horns blow like a Mack truck. Beep, beep, beep. But it's not
a Mack truck. You can't put chickens on it. You can't put a rock on
it. You can't put anything on it because it's too small. It's
insignificant in itself, and it has no real value outside
of the fact that it looks like something that is actually useful.
And I want you to understand, husbands, that that's the really
bit about how we look. And apart from Christ, the actual
anti-type, the true husbands are useless. And so we love our
wives as Christ loved the church. So the point is that in the marriage,
the husband continually looks to the love of Jesus toward himself. And then in that sense, he then
emulates that same love inside of his marriage. By not doing
that which God, which Christ did, but emulating the affection
and the atoning affection. And there's three affections
that we'll look at here. The affection, atoning affection, the sanctifying
affection and the glorifying affection. And I alluded to them
briefly last week. Last week, I didn't want to get
into this sermon, but it's just so interspersed. It's hard not
to bleed there. And so look at verse 26. Now
we're talking about Jesus, not the husband. And in Jesus, He
gave Himself up for her so that the outcome of the giving of
Christ for His bride is that He might sanctify her. Number
one, cleanse her by the washing of water with the Word. Number
two, and three, verse 27, that He might present the church to
Himself in splendor, glory. And then the qualifier there,
or the explanation of what that means, spot or wrinkle or any
such thing, that she might be holy. So there's the full outcome
of why Christ gave Himself for the church. That she might be
holy without blemish. And then in verse 28, in the
same way, husbands. Husbands. And so what we have
here is we have several different sermons inside the same message.
The first one is understanding what Paul is relating to us,
husbands and wives and future husbands and wives, as how Christ
loved his church. And then we look at the contrast
that's not supposed to be measuring husbands against Christ, but
it's supposed to be measuring Christ against his immeasurability
and that there is no comparison between husbands and Christ.
But in the same way, husbands love your wife. that people look
at it and know that you are looking and loving in light of how Christ
loves. And so there's several actions
here. Christ cleanses and sanctifies and washes and presents. And then in verse 28, husband
should love. For he who loves loves himself,
for no one hates, so we should not hate. But we should nourish
and cherish Just as Christ does the church. So now we see an
exact illustration, an actual application of what Paul is saying
that we should do as husbands. We should nourish and cherish
our wives as Christ does the church because we are members
of His body. What is that? We are members
of His body and because we're the members of His body, He cherishes
us and nourishes us. Happy Mother's Day. Verse 31,
Therefore, a man shall leave his father and a man shall leave
his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become
one flesh. Verse 32 says, This mystery is
profound. And I am saying that it refers
to Christ and the church. So what we need to do as we open
our minds up is to, for some sense, remember that Christ's
love last week is a unique love and an eternal love for a unique
people and an eternal covenant and where Christ loves His church. And the second way we see Christ's
love is that Christ's love is displayed in the giving of Himself
in order to present His wife beautiful. So as we come here,
let me give you those three things that I talked about and then
let me see. Here's where we're going to be
today. I'm going to plant these things in your head and they
are not going to function at absolutely perfectly because
what's going to take place is that a shift in your paradigm
is going to take place. You're going to you're going
to have a problem with what you hear because it's going to be
still filtered through what you think, you know, and then that
what you think, you know, and then that what you hear that
you're filtering through what you think, you know, is going
to collide a little bit. Have I lost you yet? Good. And
so Then when it's colliding and on fire and running off the track
and falling down the cliff, then God, by his power, will let it. It'll come together. So what is an atoning affection
that he might sanctify her, that he might what? present her, that He might glorify
her. And atoning affection is this,
in that Christ wanted to become one flesh with His church. The
at-one-ment. The word atonement means at-one-ment. It's a transliterated word that's
come from being at-one with God. Then it became at-one-ment and
then became atonement. So we created a new word. That
happens in language. There are new words created every
day in the English language. There was no Internet 100 years
ago, that's a new word. The word Peugeot was not around
300 years ago, I know what a Peugeot is, it's a car made in Germany,
you know, so that's not even an English word, how silly. But
we use it. The same thing would be with
the atonement. This too becoming one flesh. This is not just a
revealed love, but a redeemed love. Christ not just saying,
hey, look at me, please come. Christ coming in and effectually
bringing people to him. That is a redeemer. Christ is
not just a revealer. He's a revealer who redeems.
And so Christ saves those to whom he reveals himself to. Important. Secondly, a sanctifying affection.
So we have an atoning affection and a sanctifying affection and
the affection that sanctifies means that it makes one pure. So what is the atoning illustration
in marriage? And this is all sort of to get
our thinking straight from last week. The atoning illustration
of marriage is that we are one body. We were separated. See, God put Adam to sleep. He
took the woman out of him, made the woman, and then brought the
woman back to Adam. So then even Adam were atoned,
and they became one flesh. They were one flesh. Out of that
one flesh came another whole flesh, which was of his flesh,
came back to her. They were atoned. And then the
sanctifying affection. Christ loves, and because He
loves, He presents and prepares His bride to be holy. And not
only just to be holy. But also to be glorified, the
third way in which we see in this text that Christ loves with
a glorifying affection to be made perfect now with that being
said very lightly. I want you to focus on one phrase. One flesh. I want you to think
about it. And I want you to understand
that this is one of those things that people just sort of sweep
over. Don't miss it, because what we
are learning here in this text, friends, is one of the most magnificent
pictures of the Gospel found in Scripture. In Genesis chapter
2 where it says, "...and the two became one flesh." It had
nothing to do with Adam and Eve and everything to do with Jesus
and the church. Where do I get that? That's what Paul says.
This mystery is profound. Do you see the problem? Do you
all of a sudden see the problem? For so many people who claim
to be in Christ, the mystery is still a mystery. That's the
problem. And so as I talk, And as I try
to teach this, it's very discombobulating at times because it's so it leads
itself to so many things that need to be dealt with. There's
a lot of presumptive things. We presume that everyone already
is established in certain aspects of doctrine. And so that when
the phrases are used in Scripture, people then sit back and they
look for the commentary, but it's not the way it works. For
it's not the commentary that will give you understanding of
the Word of God. It is the Spirit of God alone. For if you come
to faith under the commentary of Scripture, you come to a knowledge
of things that you recognize cognitively in the brain. That
is not salvation, friends. Satan has more right answers
than you do, and he will not see eternal life. Liberal theologians
for the last two millennia have had right understanding of doctrine,
but they are not saved because they know the right answers.
You must be born again. Do not sit there with a false
hope and that you understand because you understand the reality
of truth, that you actually have been saved by the truth. So I
say that to say this, is it still a mystery to you? If it is, it
doesn't mean that you are lost because there are some things
that are hard to grasp. You can come, you can be born again and
still not know much, but you can in most certain ways know
much and be lost. So with that, one flesh and those
three loves. And this is just this is just
preamble to introduction. I promise you in these three
ways that we see Christ love this atoning affection of Christ. He brings the church that is
severed from him as his body back to him. So he is one flesh
with his body. In His sanctifying affection,
He takes this body that is so diseased and dead and not of
His flesh, and what does He do? He gives His flesh for them to
present them holy and blameless. Do you see this? So they become
one flesh with Jesus. The only hope we have, friends,
is to be married to Jesus. That we become His flesh. And
that's why in John 6, when it's so bizarre, You must eat of my
flesh and drink of my blood. See, that's marriage. Your consistency in your existence
and your sustenance must come from my body. You must live from
my body. You must be of the nature of
my body. You must be holy and born of
me. You must be out of the growth
of that which you eat, which is me. This is what Jesus is
saying. This is what Paul is showing.
And then he's saying, and the marriage is supposed to look
just like that is supposed to point straight to that. This
is the greatness of the gospel. It's a mystery, but it's so profound
that we supposed to go, wow. Whoa, that's my God. That's my God. I can't grab it,
but I see it, but I can't say it, but I know it. I can't explain
it, but I feel it. It's my God. This is the gospel. You see that? I pray you do. I pray you see it. Now, with
that glorifying affection, Christ then took upon Himself the sins
of His people and then was punished, punished. Therefore, now there
is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But
those who are not in Christ, there's what? What does Hebrews
say? But a fearful expectation of judgment. And then John says
in 1 John, there is no judgment for the church because perfect
love drives out fear. So the love of Christ perfectly
in His flesh became one flesh with His people, so there's no
fear, there's no judgment, there's no condemnation, but beautiful
unity. One flesh with Jesus. And then
Christ who became human, to die the death for those who were
His flesh. Then He raised from the dead.
He was raised from the dead. And then out of that, He was
glorified with a new body and promises that His body, His bride,
will be of the same thing. We await, what does John say?
We await, we look, we are not like Him, but one day we will
be like Him when we see Him face to face. We will be glorified
like Christ as one flesh in the body of Jesus. We are His body. He is our head. The fullness
of Christ's perfect, absolute fullness is when His church is
redeemed fully with Him. But yet, Even though we're not
all in yet and we're not all there yet, we still lack nothing
because Christ is everything. So, it's really hard. This mystery is profound, but
Paul says it's here. And this isn't the first time
he's said this. He's closing out the argument of Ephesians.
He's closing out the reality of it. And friends, as you learn
this, as God establishes this in your heart and in your mind
and in your soul, The power of God will evoke things in you
that will cause you to filter out the garbage that exists that's
the anti-gospel and how we relate to one another and that exists
in our lives that relationally just makes a mockery of Christ
and his church. And then the spiritual warfare
comes in and just swallows us all up and we don't know how
to deal with it. Well, how we deal with it, we stand firm against
the schemes of the devil. We'll see that in some short
weeks we get there. This glorifying affection. It's
because we are the body of Christ, Christ is glorified, we too are
glorified, we're the body of Christ, the sanctifying affection,
because we are his body, his body is pure and holy, so we
are holy. Jesus is one with the father, was he pray? I pray that
they be one like you and I are one. So we're one with Jesus, the
atoning affection, the sanctifying affection, the glorifying affection.
Now, that's the preamble to the introduction. And then let's
look at what we want to see today, the one flesh. And how does the
husband love the wife as one flesh? Well, there's some acting words
and see, there's so much to do here. There's too much to do
here. I want to I want to just. Relax, but there's no time for
me to relax. And I pray by God's grace that
you, as the flock, get what He needs you and what He wants me
to share with you. And so pray for me as I continue
to teach this, because it's not easy, because there's so much
more than I can deal with. You understand that teaching
is not about lecturing that which comes through your brain. Preaching
and teaching the Word of God as you shepherd the flock is
about that which you have to run yourself through first. So if I'm going to teach you
what the love of Christ looks like, husband, then I most certainly
have to reflect on my own life well before I stand up here and
say, love like this. If not, God will kill me. I firmly
believe that. I hope that he would. And if
I die tomorrow, he wasn't right. Maybe he just killed me because
he loves me so much and takes me home. But let's look at some
of these words. Verse 28, Husbands should love
their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes
it. Loving and nourishing and caring
for and cherishing. You know what cherishing means? What do you do for that which
you cherish? You die. What do you give up for that
that you cherish everything? What do you expect out of that
that you cherish? You're just glad to have it,
that it's with you. You're glad that it's there,
that you might cherish it there with you. Husbands, love your
wife. You cherish your sight, don't
you? Husbands, you cherish your lungs. I was cleaning dust this
week in my home that came from the sheetrock that was sanded.
And the first day I was in there, I had a blower in one hand and
a vacuum cleaner in the other. And it was awesome. And when
I left, I had pain in my lungs. Because the little piece of paper
with a rubber band around it just doesn't cut it. And I lay
down that night and my whole body hurt because I couldn't
breathe. At that moment, I was cherishing my lungs. Oh, God,
I miss my they don't work. And then I started freaking out
about it. I'm going to die in the middle of sleep and I can't
breathe in the hyperventilate. You know how it goes. Just one thing
leads to another. But then the next morning I could breathe
and I was excited. I cherish the ability to breathe. When I can see that we cherish
our eyes, you know what someone does when they cherish their
eyes, they take care of them. No one pokes their eye out if
they cherish it. How about your legs? And your
mouth? Some of us may think, well, I
wish my spouse didn't have a mouth. You don't wish that. We cherish
that which we've been given because it's important to our being.
Husbands love your wife. Be very careful not to hear what
I'm not saying. The church is important to the being of Christ.
It's not vital to his being in perfection, for he's perfect
without her, but he chooses to be complete with his people.
Because he cherishes them. He's not in need of his people.
He's not lonely. Jesus is not in some sense of
suffrage because he's just so out of whack with his people.
No, Christ's purpose before the foundation of the world to create
a people for himself. And therefore, because he decreed it, he desires
it because he desires that it will come. And so Christ cherishes
his church. Husbands, do you cherish your
wife? Why does Christ love us? Because
we are his body. And that's what the picture here,
therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and
hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Paul
says this is Christ in the church. Think about it. Christ left the
father. He'll fast to his wife. and the
two became one flesh. Christ took on the sin of the
bride and died at the hands of the Father to satisfy the judgment
against His bride. One flesh. So this comparison then is a
picture of Christ's love versus not the picture of The husband's
love. See, we missed that. This picture
is not a comparison of Christ's love versus the love of the husband.
Because what it really is, is a picture of Christ's love in
comparison to the heart of the husband's love. But it's all
about Christ's love. So the heart of the husband's
love is not going to be measured by Christ's love. But love through Christ's love.
love as Christ love. For example, husbands don't save
their wives. Christ's Christ saves their wives. And so because of that, then
husbands must ask, do I love in light of Christ saving me? As well as my wife, do I love
in that power, do I love in that essence, do I love in that view,
in that shadow, do I as a type, Show that love. And what it does not mean is
that husbands are Jesus. That's an improper comparison,
no man can be compared to God, no, no, no time is there ever
opportunity for God to be put on trial or to be compared to
anything else. God is not true except that all
truth is of anything that agrees with the mind of God. You see
that? We don't argue fallaciously,
erroneously, wrongly by saying, see, husband, you're like Jesus,
so wife, treat husband like Jesus. Worship him. He's Jesus. I think
even if we went there, it'd be better. than what it is now in
the world, especially within the church. But that's not what
Paul's saying. Paul's not saying that husbands
are Jesus. Paul's not saying that husbands
are like Jesus in their value and their power and their authority.
Grow up, men. What does Paul say in Philippians?
Jesus, who was God, did not take that as a card to be played on
the table. There's the Tiffins version. submitted in obedience unto death
as a criminal for his bride. So Jesus. Submitted to the father,
the church submits to Christ in the same way the wife submits
to the husband, who's the head of the wife. Christ is the head
of the church. It's not an equal parallel, it's
a shadow and the truth. It does not mean that husbands
are greater than their wives. How is it that which arm is greater? Which eye is greater? Chop off
your little toe on your right foot and see how well that works.
Well, I wouldn't want to. He's just so little. He's so
insignificant. Chop it off. You will not be
able to walk. You will have to relearn to walk. Your whole balance
will change. Poke out your eye, your other
one will have to change. You won't be able to see the
way you see now. So the husband's not greater
than the wife. The husband and the wife in the marriage are
from the same body. They become the same body. Well,
this body is better than this body. That's schizophrenia. That's
crazy. We put people in institutions
for walking around talking in different voices. They have to
sometimes get help. and medicine and prayer, but
yet we treat our marriages in the Church of America like schizophrenic
fools when we think that husbands are greater than wives. Well,
this shoulder is better than this one. This body is better than this
body. It's nuts. And it makes perfect sense when
we see it like that and we go, yeah, that's right. But yet we'll
go home and we'll apply our lordship. Not Christ's. Christ is the Lord. Wives submit to your husbands
as to Christ in all things. Husbands love your wives as Christ
loves you. Husbands are not greater and
nor and ultimately and obviously they're not savior. We have a
misogynistic. Extremely misogynistic error
in the world today that says that husbands are the head of
their wives, for wives are sinners, and they're too easily misled,
and they're too silly, and they're too stupid, and they're too ignorant,
and they're weak and fragile, and all these lists of things.
And nobody would ever say that, but by the way we treat and talk
about women in this world, friends, it is of the pit of hell for
men to think that way about women. especially their wives. It's
from the bowels of Satan who whispers into the ears of
husbands through the culture and through the example and through
their own parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and what
they see on television. And tables are turning, friends.
Tables are turning. If you look at primetime TV,
you'll see that the husband is getting his day. No longer is
it the wife who walks around and is asked to leave the room
when talk of business comes because she's not able or worthy to sit
in there with the men. Now it's the stupid idiot, real
ridiculously, absolutely immature husband who walks around breaking
wind, falling over tables and can't hold down a job. And the
wife who's standing strong. What else do you think is going
to happen? That. That's what's going to happen.
When the church of Jesus Christ and the marriage don't show the
equality of the same body and love and cherish their wives,
what are wives going to do? The culture is going to rebel
because it's wicked. Husbands and wives are both brides. Husbands and wives are the same
body. Husbands and wives need salvation,
particularly, separately. Husbands and wives are a picture
of Christ's love. They're not actually Christ in
the church. They look like it. They're to
remind us of it. The example that that I gave
someone just past week about the burden of sin and how insignificant
Brother Jesse's even told me, and it's happened several times
they've been in my presence, but that there's this mindset
when you're talking about sin with people who profess to be
Christ in the community. And they go, well, what is sin?
Is sin really that bad? Well, friends, we have a small
view of how serious sin is. And I remember being in Virginia,
in Roanoke, in our office, our church property, we were renting
an old building next to a manufacturing company that manufactured parts
for large machines. And I always used to think, and
I'd hear the forklift backing up, and it'd beep, beep, beep,
beep. And I'd look out the window, and there'd be this man that
weighed 300 pounds, and muscles this big around, and sitting
on that forklift, and backing up that forklift with something
on the end of the hook of that forklift about that big. And
I thought to myself, how lazy. And he'd pick one of them up.
Beep, beep, beep. Put it in the back of the truck.
Boo. And he'd go over there and he'd go get another one. And
for two hours he'd load these little tiny things and he'd load
about eight of them in there. And another truck would come.
He'd put eight more in there. And another truck. And one at a time,
one blade at a time, he'd put it on there and put it in. And
I finally walked out there one day after months of watching
this. I'm like, this is, I just got to find out what is that,
number one. Number two, why don't you just pick them all up, put
them in a box, put them on the truck? And I walked out and I
said, what is this? Why are you doing this? And they
laughed and he said, pick it up. And this one little thing
that big weighed 600 pounds. 600 pounds. What weighs 600 pounds? It looks that small. That thing.
Pick it up. What is it? I don't know. We
just make them. I don't know what it was made of. Compressed
dinosaurs. I don't know what was in that
thing, but it was huge, but it was small. We often look at sin
that way. We don't see the big picture,
the weightiness of that. And that Christ took, in order
to make one flesh with His bride, the fullness of the wrath of
God for every human being that is His, who is to believe, He
took the fullness of eternal wrath for everyone on His flesh
and He died. There is no way to hold that
weight. There is no way to hold the weightiness
of marriage in that picture. And so what happens, we've got
this really heavy, weighty thing and we're looking at it like
it's just a gear for a bicycle. Like it's some kind of a deck
of cards that we're too lazy to pick up. Friends, even if
we see it huge, we're not seeing the fullness of it. I want you
to understand that. And when husbands Think of their
wives as lesser people. They're hating themselves. Verse 32, this was a mystery. Now I'm over here in Second Corinthians,
how did I do that? This was a mystery. And Paul saying that it is profound. And I am saying that it refers
to Christ and the church. So the mystery of this marriage
refers to Christ and the church. Ta-da! No longer a mystery, but
yet it is profoundly mysterious, even when we see it and hear
it and look at it and think about it. Do you think about it? You
know why I've never been bored a second in my life? Because
when I'm quiet and still, I think about stuff. I love to think
about things. I pray that you would think about
things. Not worry about them. Process them. Think about them.
Pray about them. Look at the heaviness and the
weightiness of the picture of Jesus. And stop looking for that
spoon-fed, baby-fed, nursing attitude of like, give me, give
me, give me, give me. Why don't you go get? Why don't you take
that which you have been fed and take it back out and let
it go back in and digest a little bit. Digest it. Keep it there
for a second. Believe it or not, it's our discipline
that establishes our doctrinal maturity, as we're disciplined
to go and just let it mull over. But we'd rather be entertained
in the world. This was a mystery. It is not
a mystery. It's a mystery made clear. If you flip over just
a couple of chapters, in chapter 3, verse 6, excuse me, verse
4, He says in verse three, rather,
how the mystery was made known to me by revelation. God's grace
was given to me for you. How the mystery is made known
to me by revelation, as I have written briefly for when you
read this. You can perceive my insight.
Listen, church, when you read this, you can perceive my insight
into the mystery of Christ. which was not made known to the
sons of men and other generations, as it has now been revealed to
his holy apostles and the prophets by the Spirit. And then he explains
it. He said, you want to know what
it is? Read what I'm writing. And here it is. The mystery is
that what the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body
and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus to the gospel.
It's good stuff. Are you seeing marriage? See,
the mystery is that Gentiles, and you go, you know, over there
in chapter 2, you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which
you once walked. You're dead. You're gone. You're cut off.
You're alienated from the covenant of promise. You're done with
no hope and no God and no mercy and nothing. You're done, dead,
decrepit, and you're gone. You're born like that. And Paul
says, here's the mystery, folks. God has brought you out of darkness
into light, and now you are alive in Christ. You have been given
the promise of the covenant of God. Enemies of God are now one
flesh with God in Christ Jesus. You are the flesh of His Son
who has died, and you are alive in Christ. This is the picture.
Paul's saying the mystery is revealed in the marriage of man
and woman. And now we see that it referred
to and pointed to typologically to Christ and his church. Your fellow heirs, you are a
son and not just one of many sons, but you are of the essence
of the one and only son of God. See, you are his body. So you're an heir of Christ as
the body of Christ. You're one flesh. God is pleased
with his son. And his son's body. The church. You don't want to be measured.
You don't want to be judged. You don't want to have Christ
standing in the room and going, no, no, no, no, no, he's cool,
he's with me. Now you want to be in Christ.
See how this imagery plays itself? In Christ. Not near. In. You're in Christ. You are in him. You are in his
atonement. You are in his sanctification.
You are in his righteousness. You are in his wisdom. He is
in you. You are in him. You are one. Members of the same body, partakers
of the promise in Jesus Christ through the gospel. So then let me ask you. Let's
break out for a second. And now we're going to do a little
thinking. If I don't do some thinking right now, I'm going
to go scatterbrained. So let's do some thinking. I'm going to think
out loud with you. Let's think out for a second. Think about
how you approach Scripture right now as it's unfolding to you. Think about how you approach
it. Think about how you approach the will of God in your life.
Think about how you approach the revelation of God and the
understanding of the Scriptures. Think about this. Consider the
arguments that reveal truth through the pages of the text and ask
yourself, do I know this in my head or is it fully realized
by faith in my whole being? It's one thing to say, yes, that's
a Mack truck and it's a toy and I know what a real one looks
like and I said, but are you in it? Oh yeah, I see that that looks
like Jesus. Jesus did this. The husband's
supposed to love her. That same kind of attitude. Yeah,
yada, yada, yada. Boom, boom, boom. Here we go.
Got it. Got it. Check. Move on. Or do you just look at it and
you see it and you understand it and it affects you? What difference
does this make in your life? What difference? So what that
Jesus loves the church? So what that He died for the
church? So what that you're the body of Christ? So what that
you're the bride? So what? Who cares? What difference does it make?
Most Christians, most professing believers who say they're in
Christ live powerlessly apart from Him. I know Him. He doesn't know you. Do you know Christ? Does He know you intimately? One flesh. Do you understand
it? If this remains a mystery to
you, wake up, be born again, see the gospel. And if you are
born again, then press hard into Christ and pray that God will
give you understanding that makes a difference. Not just walk around
with the right answers. Please, oh God, for Your soul's
sake, understand this. One flesh. You want some basic
revelation? You want to see how God just
paints it for me? So what, James Tiffins? You say
you've got it? Then show me what you've got.
Here it is. When you see this reality of
Christ loving and becoming the sacrifice to take me on as his
own body, and you look at who I am and what I was and what
I was born as, and you say, you know, I didn't look for a wife
like that. I looked for someone who looked
good. I looked for someone when I saw her. I'm like, yeah, she's
beautiful. I didn't look out for a rotting
corpse, messed up mug, ugly person that everybody ran and children
screamed for mercy when they walked around. I looked for a
beautiful bride. Christ does not. He doesn't look for the beautiful.
He doesn't look for the holy. He doesn't look for the righteous.
He looks for the dead and decaying bride. And he says, that's my
bride and I'm going to decay my flesh to subject to the judgment
of God so I can make her beautiful. You see that? That's what difference
it makes. Recognizing we are not worthy
of the love of God in Christ Jesus. We are not worthy. of
the atoning sacrifice of Christ. We're not worthy of the sanctifying,
purifying, washing with the water and the Word, love. We're not
worthy for the living Word of God to lay His life down so that
we might become the righteousness of God when we were dead in our
wickedness and rebellion as enemies of His Father. Because we're dead and decaying,
Jesus can't take us. He can't say, oh, that's my body.
That's my body. There's my bride. He can't take
wicked and decaying and rebellious and sinful and satanic just bodies
and make it him. He has to clean it. He has to
purify it. How? How does Jesus purify his
bride by becoming sin that they might become righteous? So in some sense, and I want
you to take this theologically, though it could in some sense,
Jesus, as Paul says, became sin. Cursed is any man who's hanged
on a tree. The Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted
up the snake in the wilderness, the curse that caused the death
Christ had to become. So in some sense, Christ became
not some sense in the sense Christ became sin in his body. And then he took the punishment. One flesh. Let's look at some practical
ways of just, not necessarily practical, let's look at some
simplistic ways of seeing how the one flesh, now that I've
given you the big picture on that, let's look at some simple
ways of seeing how people take it and they're right, but I want
you to see that it's more than this. One flesh on the surface is sexuality. For the husband and the wife,
it's sexuality. The two became one flesh. They
cooperate as one body. They cooperate as a creative
order. They cooperate. That's why so-called
gay marriage cannot be. It makes no sense. burning ice,
fiery ice. How do you do that? How do you
take the gospel, one fleshness of the gospel of Jesus, and put
it into unbelieving marriage or gay marriage or whatever other
kind of so-called marriage that you might have to put out there? One flesh is a sexual union in
marriage on the surface. Primarily, when we think of it
in the world today, that's what we think. And we're right. But
it goes more than that. Marriage is not only about one
flesh. Physically, it's about one flesh
socially. The order of society relationally
is built upon the marriage. Why do you think Hebrews says
hold marriage in high honor? Why do you think God says I hate
divorce? Well, we live in a different
time. Divorce isn't that bad of a stigma. Anyone else? No, it's
almost common. And people go into marriage. Doesn't work. Not just divorce. But for us who are in Christ,
we grow. And there's some Christians do
get divorced and sometimes it's inevitable. It is forgivable. But where are we now in our understanding
of that? Do we grow wise in those things? It's not a permanent
scar. The only permanent scars of sin
in the body of Christ are the ones He bore on His own body. So marriage is the building block
for all social order. The husband is the head of the
wife, and the wife submits to her husband in all things. He's
not her boss. He's a picture of her Savior
who died for her. Marriage, then thirdly, is a
covenant. It's an act of covenant. It's
an act of promise that cannot be broken. What God puts together,
no man separate. When I do weddings, I talk about
that. No man can tear apart what God
has done. It's a covenant. for better,
for worse, for richer, for poorer, sickness and health. Those are
the standard vows. The wedding that I'm doing in
June, we're writing vows out of Ephesians 5. It's from scratch. They're going to sound a lot
like what you already... We're going to just do it. We're
going to rewrite them and they're going to be the standard. So
if you want me to marry you, that's what we do. We're going to use
those vows. It's going to depict the covenant of Christ and his
church, because that's what marriage is. So then the vows between
a man and a woman are no matter what. Jesus didn't get on the
cross and say, I'm going to pay for your sins, except you do
this. I'm going to cover your sins
and atone for your sins, except for that one. Well, maybe unless
you do it six times and then it's over. Jesus walked the walk to Golgotha
as a piece of hamburger. Undescribable. Unrecognizable. And that wasn't even the fullness
of what he felt. But the judgment of Almighty
God. Marriage is a covenant act. And no matter what, Christians
ought to strive to hold on till death. So marriage then is a human relationship
that depicts the fullness of Christ in his church through
covenant and supernatural power. The end of marriage is not sex
or children or order or even joy, it is the fullness of Christ
displayed. Christ loves. by giving of Himself in order
to make a bride ready for Himself. Christ finds His bride in a state
of decay, not beauty. Christ places His glorious beauty
into decay in order to unite with His bride as He atones for
her sins. Now, turn to Ezekiel chapter
16. And let's look at verses 3-9
for just a moment. I'm not going to talk about it
much. I just want to see it. God, speaking to Ezekiel, says,
say this, thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, your origin
And your birth are of the land of the Canaanites. Your father
was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. And as for your birth,
on the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you
washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor
wrapped in swaddling cloth. No eye pitied you to do any of
these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out
on the open field and you were abhorred on the day that you
were born. And then God says, And when I
passed by you and saw you wallowing in your own blood, I said to
you in your blood, live. I made you flourish like a plant
of the field, and you grew up and became tall and arrived at
full adornment. Your breasts were formed and
your hair had grown, yet you were naked and bare. When I passed
by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love.
And I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered
your nakedness. I made my vow to you and entered
into a covenant with you, declares the Lord, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water
and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil." You see that? So you're thinking, where in
the world does He talk about decaying and bloody? That's where it comes
from. And what God has done in Christ
Jesus is He finds His people who were born of wickedness,
wallowing in their uncleanliness, dead, drowning in their own blood,
and He sheds the blood of His Son to pay for the penalty of
their death. And because we are His, He washes
us. Because we are His, He plants
us. Because we are His, He grows
us. So, Christ loves with an atoning
love. Those who are far off, He makes
them His by calling them His own. Then Christ loves with a
sanctifying love. He cleanses and prepares and
presents And then He loves with a glorifying love by taking His
bride as His own body. Do you see that? Christ has joined us to Himself
as His body. Husbands, love your wives like
that. Love your wives like that. Let's pray. God, there is no word that can summarize the power of Your Spirit working
in us to change the way we think. Lord, even as I say these things,
You open my heart wider and my eyes are more focused. My affection
for you grows deeper. God, there may be some who hear
these words and are not yet redeemed. There are some who hear these
words and are significantly still wallowing with their cord attached
to the death of their birth in this world. Father, through hearing your
word, bring them to life. that they might see and cherish
and believe and fully receive the pardon of sin that's only
in Christ. Father, wives in the room who
failed to submit, let them see that Christ submitted to you.
Husbands in the room who failed to love, let them see your love
for them. Let there be a difference. in
the Gospel in our lives with power, not just pathetic indifference. Lord, forgive us of our apathy
and our low-mindedness and our myopic lack of zeal,
focusing on such insignificant things in life that cause us
to quarrel and fight Lord, help us to look at each
other as redeemed of God. Gloriously bound to a new life
in Christ because of the great love for which you've loved us
and with which you've loved us. And help us to see, as John has
proclaimed, see that love that you have for us, that we should
be the children of God, and so we are. Father, help the world
see and be amazed. As we proclaim the Gospel with
our mouth, let it forever be before us with our lives. And we thank You for the love
of Jesus. It is in His name that we pray. Amen. Thank you, Church. If you have opportunity, please
fellowship together. God bless you.