Caring love, Bonded love, Eph, 5:28-31

Good morning. We're privileged to be able to continue in this study of Ephesians 5. And as we look at this passage here, one of the things that I thought I'd bring up was last week I talked on the husband loving sacrificially. Well, a number of the men took note of that. And so as we go through that, we'll step into the next part. But one of the things that came out was A lot of the husbands thought that I ought to start by being crucified myself, but anyway, for having said such things. We will get on to the next couple of verses, though. We're proceeding through Ephesians 5, 21 through 33, and we're here in verses 28 through 31 of that passage, one more week in this passage.

As we've been going through it, we've been noting that there are four kinds of love that this passage conveys that are to be from the husband, and sacrificial love, sanctifying love, and as we'll see here this week, a caring love and a bonded love. Those are the four kinds that are described as coming from and through the husband. And we show them this way.

The sacrificial love is portrayed as the love that Christ has for the church. A sanctifying love is the love that the husband has for the wife displayed in his concern for her spiritual welfare and well-being and walk with the Lord. And finally, as we'll get into today, a caring love and a bonded love. And so those are our concerns as we look at this passage here this morning. As we look at it here, one of the things we'll be doing is then dividing it up into those two kinds of love. 28 through 30 being the caring love and the bonded love being focused upon in verse 31.

The comparison relationship that we've been using since the beginning that defines for us the relationship between husband and wife is that of Christ and the Church. And that gets spelled out as we saw in verse 23, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is also the head of the church. He continues to draw upon that relationship as he goes through this passage here, and we'll see that continue. One of the ways it shows up in the passage, we're looking here, it says, at the end of 29 into 30, just as Christ also does the church because we are members of his body. The comparison relationship, the husband is to the wife as Christ is to the church, continues on through the passage.

All right. I'd like you to think about the past. No, not that past. No, no. Farther past. OK. Farther. Not that one. OK. I'd like you to think about the past, think big about the past, even bigger and farther than that, this far. Think about it, no matter, no people, no stars, anything to measure time, that far back. This is before there's anything here on planet Earth or anything else created in the universe. All you have is a relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three persons, as Scripture defines it, one God.

You have on your handout this chart. I'm not going to go through it in detail other than to have it for reference for your purposes. And by the way, if you're a guest here this morning, welcome. We want you to know that you can look to this number in the corner to track with us in the slides that are on your handout. That's the page number on your handout. So here is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. They have a relationship into eternity past, if the word past even has any sense to it.

And in that relationship, they are saying, let us bring about the church. That wasn't all that they discussed, if discussed is the right word, but that wasn't all they communicated about. But one of the things they said is, let us bring up the church. Let us create and bring about the church. Let's gather these people from those who are on this earth that we're going to create. And we know, of course, that these people who are given the opportunity to do so will choose to sin and disobey. Yes, we know that.

You know, of course, that the Son will have to be born as a man. Yes. Yeah. We're all willing to go along with that. We know, of course, that the Son will have to pay the price for the sin of the man and the woman in the garden and all the sins of the people from that time up to time yet to come. Yes. And they all agreed to that. And the Son said, yes, I'm willing to pay the price. And they said, the Son will be buried bodily in his human form, but he will be resurrected. And they said, yes, we'll all agree to that. And so the relationship between the Son and the Church was set in place before it ever happened. Christ was crucified from before the foundation of the world.

And so the Church was exactly what the Lord had in mind. And it's that relationship between Christ and the Church that is the example that is being lived out between husband and wife. Now, let's step back into our passage here. So the relationship between husband and wife is that between Christ and the Church. which is something that the Lord didn't suddenly come up with and say, oh, heavens, we've got this church, what are we going to do? But something that the Lord had in mind from the very beginning. And so as we step into the passage, here's how it looks.

So husbands ought also to love. Now, this is a combination of words that isn't explicitly, as we had said before, an imperative, but it has that sense. The husbands ought to, where does the ought come from? The ought comes from the relationship that we've talked about. Just as Christ is to the church, so ought husbands to be to their wives. Now, in what way?

That's where we get into next year. What he's laying out is this. The circle of caring for a man starts with himself. This is the starting point of what he's laying out. A man loves, nourishes, and cherishes himself. That's what he's saying in this passage. A man's care for himself meeting the basic physical needs of his body. That's the beginning point.

So what is this marriage relationship? It's a man widens that circle to include his wife. That same love and care and nourishing that he has for himself, he widens the circle to include her. She is now within that realm of care that he once had just for himself.

She is included in that. He cares for her in that way. At the point of being married, the man is declaring that he is ready to step into that. Yes, I am ready. When I say I do, I am ready to step into widening my circle of care, so to speak, to include her. He cares for her as he once only cared for himself. The word loves, we've talked about in times past, and if you haven't been with us before, there's some handouts where we've described that pretty well. It is an unconditional love, let's just say that.

Nourishes, here this is interesting, it has the idea of providing for physical needs to the point of bringing to maturity. How about that? Providing for physical needs to the point of bringing to maturity. The husband is to provide for the physical needs of the wife, The next one, cherishes. Now, it isn't just a feeling of cherishing, but it is also a providing of the physical needs, the things that are necessary just for warmth and clothing and protection. This is the circle of care that a husband is widened out to include the wife, that she is involved in his every thought of care, not just himself now, but her also. I want to sidestep for a minute a purposeful detour.

The Jews had a two-court system that they established just prior to the New Testament era, okay? And oddly enough, now this would be interesting in our culture if you could pick which court you operated with, but that's the way they did it, and especially for marital and family relationships. The Jews could choose to conduct their affairs under one or the other court. Real interesting, huh? The way it worked is this. There was a rabbi named Hillel, grandfather of Gamaliel, who was Paul's tutor. Hillel, who said that a man could divorce a woman for any reason whatsoever.

I didn't like the way you prepared the matzo balls. That's all it takes. You're done. Shemaiah said, no, if I look here at the scripture, I say it's only for unfaithfulness or for abandonment. or for lack of support or denial of affection. Those are the only valid causes. Now, so here's the law. Jesus said the court of Hillel is wrong. You cannot divorce a woman for just any reason. He said, therefore, that a man should be faithful to his wife and provide material needs and affection. But, here's the key thing.

Paul, while he's certainly saying that you ought to provide those things, he's not giving a legal definition here, is he? He isn't saying the law is what we need to depend upon, because the law is, what can I get away with? The law is, where's the absolute minimum that I have to perform? He's not aiming for that here. He's talking about a marriage that is vibrant and overflowing and describing in day-to-day life the character of the relationship, the eternal romance between Christ and the Church.

That's not law. That's not, what can I get away with? What's the bare minimum I have to keep going in order to still stay married? See? That's not what he's trying to do. He's looking for overflowing blessing between the husband and the wife, not just, what can I get away with and how far can I go? Now, Paul was not appealing to the Mosaic Law, was he? Okay? The Mosaic Law comes with threat of punishment. Do you see threat of punishment in here? Anyway, beware of speeding donkeys.

Instead, Paul is providing believers with this profoundly positive message. You notice there isn't a whole list of don't do this and don't do that in this passage. Instead, we have this incredible model of the love that Christ has for the church, where for a turn He passed, He said, for the joy set before Him, Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. Do you mean I have an eternal romance with the church? A bargain. I'll take it. I'll pay the price. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. It's that kind of relationship with eternal significance. That's the model that he's using.

He said the law just isn't even in the picture. Not even radar guns on donkeys. So what does he say? No one ever hated his own flesh. Now, as you see that little line there, does that cause you to kind of scratch your head? What's he talking about? Have you ever known anybody that kind of hated their own flesh? You may have felt that way yourself at times. Things like scales and mirrors and things like that have a way of getting us to feel that way even. But here's what he's talking about. At first that might be a little puzzling.

If you look at the assumptions in scripture, and this was the assumptions that start out from the very beginning chapters of Genesis, God is the creator of everything and the giver of life in this body. He was the one that put breath into it. He was the one that designed it. He was also the one that put husband and wife together.

But, it would be assumed that anyone contemplating marriage wouldn't even be in the picture here. Self-abuse and self-neglect were looked upon in the Old Testament and the New as idolatry. So that person, when it says no one ever hated his own flesh, the person who did hate their own flesh would not be considered material for marriage or even in consideration here.

Let's take a look. 1 Kings 18, 450 prophets of Baal, what did they do? They cut themselves. Self-abuse. Now, is that person a candidate for marriage? No, you just say you're not even in the picture. Take another one. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, fell into animal behavior and diet. Certainly that's not the example he's looking at, and the Jews and the readers of Paul's letter here would have assumed that person's off the picture, not even being considered. And finally here, there are even some in the New Testament era who would claim various kinds of self-abuse and neglect would also be spiritually beneficial, and Paul sets that aside as the teaching of demons. So anything that was self-abuse and self-neglect, the hating of the body, they would not even be considered marriage material. They would be considered as one having a serious spiritual problem.

So when he makes this statement, that's what he's referring to. Then, he says, "...and the two shall become one flesh." He is quoting in verse 31, from Genesis 2.24.

Now Paul also quotes a portion of this in 1 Corinthians 6.16.

And Jesus quoted as we see referenced here in Mark 19.5 and Matthew 10.7 and 8.

So both Paul and Jesus quote this passage here in Genesis 2.24.

Marriage between the husband and the wife, notice something, it is across all times, it is beyond some limitations as to which people group or anything else. It is not impacted by the fall. It is something that God established to be for all peoples and all times, regardless of cultural background, regardless of even when it took place. The first marriage took place in the garden with Adam and Eve. Okay? Subsequent marriages are during this time after the fall. But the Lord set it in place for all times, all peoples. No differences and exceptions in that. Then he says, for this reason. I want to make it clear, it's not for this raisin. Not at all. For this reason.

For the reasons and purposes in marriage that were founded by God from the very beginning. That's what he's laying out. From the very beginning, God had reasons and purposes set in place. For this reason, he's laying out the things that he spells out here, quoted from Genesis 2. God, in initially chapter 1, said, let us create them, male and female, created them in the image of God. It was God's idea. God created them in a certain sequence, and we see that, and Paul makes reference to that in 1 Timothy chapter 2.

God let the man recognize his need for the woman. Now, some guys you'll wonder, duh, you know. He let the man see his need for the woman and say, and notice Adam's response just prior to this passage here that's quoted, this at last, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones, this at last is one that corresponds to me. He let the man recognize the need, and He went through that step. He didn't just create them, bang, here's the man, here's the woman. He went through that sequence and considered it essential, including letting the man come to a place of saying, you know, there's something missing here, there's something missing. God creates the woman. He says, that's it! That's it! You did it! That's what was missing. Okay?

God made them male and female to complement each other, and the Lord Himself stated that. He made them male and female to complement one another, and yet be one in that expression. The other thing is, for this reason, it's pivotal to Paul's point here, the Lord made the woman from the flesh of the man, so they were of one body, then made two, Then he says, it comes full circle because the physical union brings them back as one. The oneness that was made two is now restored to oneness. And the two shall become one flesh, what we see quoted here in Genesis, Matthew and Ephesians. Now notice here, The next part, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife.

That passage in Genesis, Genesis 2.24, starts off with, here's the creation of Adam and Eve and the Lord brings the two together.

There is no father and mother situation yet. And yet what he's saying is, this is the starting example, it's the forming of a new union that he's underscoring here. Summarized well as leaving and cleaving. Leaving of the home of the mother and father for the purpose of starting a new family unit.

A new oneness. A new oneness. That's what's happening there. What began by God creating the woman from the body of the man is brought about so now that we have this new oneness, these two are now become one. It's come full circle. You have the oneness principle in marriage. That's a key thing. That's a key thing. Because a lot of folks don't get it.

It isn't two remaining just as two separate people that happen to clunk around in the same environment. It is a oneness that God is creating. The oneness principle is not insignificant or secondary. Now, he says that they were joined. Let's take a look at that. Joined is proskalo, to glue is in joining two pieces of wood together. It's actually a fairly unusual word in the New Testament.

Acts 11.23 has a joining to the Lord. We'll take a look at that in a minute.

And several passages, including this one here, including also the Greek version of Genesis 2.24, uses that word. to describe the husband and wife together. So you see, most of the usages of that word are to describe the husband and wife being joined.

And the major exception being this one in Acts 11.23, the hearts of the people in the church were joined to the Lord.

So, kalao, it's a compound word. Kalao by itself just means glued together. And pros, so it's proskalao, is an intensifier. Super-glued, okay? Super-glued. Now, I want to be careful about that. I don't want anybody having husbands and wives getting super-glued together. That's not what we're talking about here, okay? That could be dangerous, so not that, alright? We're talking about super-glued marriages, okay? The Lord has indeed used this word uniquely and rarely in any other context except for describing a marriage. The Lord intends this to be a strong and nearly unparalleled bond, okay?

Literally, it had this idea. You would glue two pieces of wood together so that they, from then on, were inseparable and no longer acted as if there were two pieces but one. Even had the idea that if you tried to take them apart, you would tear chunks out of each one. That kind of a gluing.

That kind of a bonding is what he's pointing at here, okay? This Acts 11 passage here is, here is Barnabas, he comes to the church and he exhorts them that with purpose of heart they would cleave to the Lord, that they would proskalao, they would be glued to the Lord, glued fast, glued as one. That kind of a unity is what he's talking about here.

So the Lord didn't intend post-it note marriages, okay? The Lord didn't intend to stick, stick, unstick, stick, unstick, you know, post it here, stick it there. And in bringing that up, I'm not trying to make light of those who have been through some kind of a painful past. I'm not trying to be superficial with that at all. But just simply to say God's design and intent in marriage is that we not have these post-it note marriages, but superglue marriages, if you will.

Marriages that are really together. That oneness is not just a euphemism in God's thinking. It's not just a nice picture that's an ideal, but it doesn't really happen. It is precisely what God intended, that oneness, that unity. So, what a man and a wife have established together is this unity with God at the center, is now independent from the parents. That unity is exactly what God had in mind. And one of the things that comes out of that, this new unity, this new couple has the opportunity to take what they each saw in their parents' relationships and say, you know, that was a good thing. Let's do that. Let's continue that.

So they have the chance to do that. But they also have, likewise, the chance, and sometimes to parents' distress, to set other things in place. The chance to look at it and say, no, that thing that I saw in my parents' household, I don't think we want to do that. Matter of fact, we may even decide, I want to do quite the opposite of that. And they have the opportunity to do that. They're establishing something new. They have a oneness that is unique.

They, by God's advice, should look to scripture as to how they go about doing that. It should not just be their own decision saying we have a right to, but certainly they look at it as I've described it here, Scripture is God's inspired ultimate marriage manual, okay? It is the ultimate description of what God intended, so that even though there's latitude in many things to set something new in place, that ultimately that couple is well advised to look to Scripture as to how that ought to be done. out of regard for what God has set in place. Because you notice, this was like Genesis chapter 2, and Jesus repeats it, and Paul repeats it. This is not an incidental relationship the Lord is establishing. It is a relationship across all times, across all cultures, across all people groups.

So marriage is something that needs to be well respected by others. And others need to be supportive of it but not interfering of it. They need to be respectful of it. And whether that's parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, friends, relatives, next-door neighbors, there needs to be a respect for what God has put in place. And it is important for people to recognize that there's a place to keep our nose out of it, okay? That there's a place, because it's what God has put in place, to recognize This is what God has ordained, and I need to respect that, and to look at, you know, alright, this is what God's put in place, regard that, I have a place of support, by invitation I can be involved inside that circle, but not invasively. By invitation, but not by invasion.

Now, God's the one that designed the relationship here, But everything in the relationship is centered around God. Do you notice that? The relationship between husband and wife is centered around the Lord. It also puts a priority in the relationship. The relationship with the Lord comes first. The relationship between the husband and wife comes second. Some marriage ceremonies will have, you know, what God has put together, let not man put asunder. It's recognizing the priority of the relationship. Relationship to the Lord is first.

Relationship with one another is second. Everything else comes after that. The two shall become one flesh. You see, what happens, this not only points to physical union, it certainly means that, but it goes beyond it. What happens is the physical union is an expression, a living illustration, if you will, of the unity that God intended in the marriage relationship at all levels.

Haven't we seen that? We've seen an expression of things that are spiritual. We've seen an expression of things that are at a soul level in what Paul has described. And finally, we see an expression of what is physical. The physical is the living illustration of the unity at all levels.

Our culture, of course, comes up with all these different things, variations on the marriage theme God designed, and it gives them some qualification under the word preference. Oh, you have a sexual preference. And what the Lord designed in place here, certainly we have preference within what He designed. But preferences by no means are going to improve upon what God has designed. I'm going to skip past something here, so this may seem curious. Don't worry about it. All right. Boy. All right. Joined in one flesh. Now notice the unity that he puts together here.

The differences are the basis for living out the complementary oneness between the two of them. What often happens when things get rough in a marriage is that the differences end up being the basis for underscoring two-ness. God says, I want the complementary differences to define the oneness. See the difference there? If we look at the differences being primary, that will drive a couple apart. If we look at the differences being designed by God so that there is a complementary oneness, some of those things are things that are essential, we must insist upon them. Other things are things that may depend on the particular couple. It's also one of the reasons why each couple has a place to choose, we're going to do this and not that. In our household, one of the things that happens, and it isn't just because of custom or something of that sort, Nancy does the cooking. I don't mind even cleaning up, but Nancy does the cooking.

Let me tell you why. Because when it would be proposed that Dad would do the cooking, you can't imagine the look of terror in our kids' faces. It would get out, just leak out of our mouths that mom was going away on a little trip or something to visit some family, and the eyes got huge. The look of terror and awe, that's the term, shock and awe, on the kids' faces were phenomenal, remarkable.

And so we decided a good thing to do is that Nancy does the cooking and I'll be glad to clean up afterwards. Just don't let dad do the cooking, okay? The differences are intended to be complimentary, okay? And the kids are far more complimentary of her cooking than mine. Okay.

Now, what happens here is Paul is quoting and Christ is quoting from this point in Genesis because this Complementary oneness, this two becoming one, is very simply stated, but profound for the rest of your married days. We have love interwoven as threads in this passage again and again. He keeps bringing it up, and next week we'll get back to it again. Love is what is being conveyed here, and unity between the husband and wife at every level. Body, soul, and spirit. Everything that each spouse does is to be consistent with that love and that complementary oneness between the two of us. Let me suggest something else.

If I am caring for my wife because I have widened the circle of love to include her, and to look upon her as part of my complementary oneness, does it make any sense that I would even say something that would injure her at heart? Does it make any sense? No. So we need to give some thought to that. Consistent with what God has laid out here, there is no place for injury of heart, for me to say things that will be in conflict with that complementary oneness. that fabric of love that God has woven into the marriage relationship through and through.

Now, we've got these four kinds of love here, and I'd like to look at some priorities, if you will, some principles. The first principle, and you have this on your handout, page 5, I think it is. I sure hope so. Anyway, you notice as you go through this, there is a progression from the spiritual to the physical.

What happens in our culture, and what has happened for centuries, is human beings have tried to just zero in on the physical aspect of the relationship, and they'll glue themselves to that, and forget that it doesn't get anywhere unless you start with the spiritual aspect of the unity and the love. See that? It begins with the spiritual, and that's what this world offers in the way of marriage, in the way of relationships, between husbands and wives and everything else that's supposed to substitute for that. The world's ideas are vacuous. They have no proper foundation. It is physical relationship without content. It's empty hulls moving between one another. It proceeds from the spiritual to the physical. The description of the four kinds of love moves in that direction. The next thing, it goes from being to beginning. Isn't that interesting?

You would say, why didn't he start off with how it begins? A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. And what's interesting is he says, first, before we talk to you about how this starts, let's talk to you about how it's supposed to look like every single day. And so, he says, before you say, I do, let's talk about what does this look like when a husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church.

That's the being to beginning principle. First we're going to talk about what it is like, then we're going to talk about how you step through the door to get there. Interesting sequence. The next thing is it goes from internal relationships to external relationships. This is what it's like at heart. This is what it's like between us in the spiritual sense. It's parallel to the spiritual to physical.

And now external relationships, relationships not just between the husband and wife, but how do we relate to the rest of the family and the rest of the world? He doesn't talk about that until the end. He starts off with, what's the relationship between the husband and wife going to be like? Now let's talk about how it fits with everybody else. How do you get there?

So this is a priority too as husbands and wives deal with things in their marriage relationship. First, they need to deal with things between themselves. If somebody on the outside of the relationship appears to be causing a problem, the place to start is the inside of the relationship. How are we doing between ourselves and the Lord and between each other? Now, the unconditional love is foundation principle. We've spelled out now the four kinds of love.

This unconditional love, Agapao, as a sacrificial, sanctifying, caring, and bonded love, that foundation for the relationship is sitting on what we've already seen throughout the book of Ephesians. The energizing of God, Ephesians 3, 20 and 21. By the life of Christ in and through the believer, by faith in Him, Colossians 3, verse 4. And the relationship between Christ and church is the ultimate model. We've seen that throughout this passage.

That's the foundational soil, if you will. The foundation of the relationship is the unconditional love of four kinds. On top of that, and you notice that Paul has actually not underscored that or really directly addressed it at all, is companionship love. On top of that is romantic love. The reason that this world falls in and out of love is because they're trying to rely on the top one or maybe two to hold the relationship together.

Suppose I took you to my place and I said, I've got a brand new house, you've got to come see it. And you go there and all there is is a roof. No good. You have to have the foundation. You have to have a solid material that it's founded upon. This does it.

And the world knows nothing of it. Don't expect the world to be able to fix it. Even a secular marriage counselor hasn't got a clue what this is about. You're talking about a relationship that was established by God before the foundation of the world that He's revealed in Scripture that special. The world has not a single idea how that fits in with anything. I'll leave the expanded and explained to you to read. But I think this thing comes across here. We have got a definition of the marriage relationship that is phenomenal. There is room for growth and depth in the relationship that is mind-boggling. Because you have, for a period of whatever length of time the Lord allows you on this planet, to live out the depths of that.

Is not the relationship between Christ and the Church infinite? Are you going to reach the end of the potential for the marriage relationship? Nancy and I sat down with a longtime friend of ours, who's still a single fellow, and he says, after we've been married for about five years, haven't you just kind of seen and done everything? Both of us instantaneously and simultaneously laughed.

Because there is a recognition here, as we look at the depth of what the Lord has laid out, there is infinity in which we have to grow and to express that marriage relationship. If you've reached The block wall, if you reach the brick end, it's not there because the Lord put it there. The Lord has put infinity in the depth of possible expression in a marriage relationship. For whatever length of time He's put it together. Let's pray.

Lord, what a tremendous thing you've done here. Oh, fantastic. And Lord, how marvelous. This world has nothing but jokes about marriage and weddings and husbands and wives. But far to the extreme, Lord, You've made something so marvelous, so deep, with a love so infinite, that it will take a lifetime for us to begin to scratch the surface. We thank You for that depth. We thank You for that wonderfulness. We thank You for the marvelous character that it has, and for Your tremendous love that You have for us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.