Husbands, love your wives
Ephesians 5:25-29 · Roger Henderson · Nov 11, 2018
Ephesians (2018-19), No. 42
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261912511987

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're going to continue on with the relationship between the husband and the wife. Actually, it's a little bit broader than that, certainly. Let's just look at this outline and we'll talk about it for a second here. When Randy taught back two weeks ago about the results of the filling by the Spirit or with the Spirit, it kind of set up this pattern. Actually, I got one that kind of...

Is there a spelling mistake somewhere? Yeah, mine's four. It can't be a sprite. It can't be... Oh, okay. Thank you, Tom. Yeah, spirit's spelled wrong up there. It's being filled with... Spell checkers are great. But if they spell a word that exists, you're in big trouble. You may think it's one word, but it's not that. OK, thanks Tom.

OK, so this section really, with the results of the filling by or with the Spirit, kind of sets the stage for these relationships between one to another, fellow believers, pertained to the wife, the wife to the husband, and the husband to the wife. What's happened here? Paul has addressed the wife's perspective with her husband. Now he's going to come back and look at the other way around, the husband to his wife.

And then we're going to see later on children and parents and slaves and masters. And the subjection is the idea to line up under. It's a military term. And we're going to see today We're not going to talk about subjection. We're going to talk about the flip side of that. What happens in terms of the husband and his role in relating to his wife? How would the Lord have the husband relate to his wife? And it's different than the wife to the husband. Okay, so let's read. Would someone like to read in chapter 5, verses 18-33? We're only going to cover down to 29. Let's read through the end of the chapter, 18 through 33 in chapter 5.

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with spirit. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord. Always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father.

And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word. that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own lives as their own bodies. He who loves his own life loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of his body.

For that reason, A man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Is it to the end? Yes, to the end. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife, even as himself. And the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

So the last part of that, 30-33, we'll cover. Actually, Bob's going to be teaching that. So this is another one of these. really incredible sections. So actually what I did, I kind of looked at the ones we're going to teach today, 25 through 29. If you look carefully at that, he starts off with his instruction to the husband. Husband, love your wives, and so on. Then he has this interlude where he really focuses on the body of Christ, the church, and then he comes back. You could actually, if you look carefully, you could read 25, 28, and 29. That would be a complete instruction for the husband, but he goes off on somewhat of a tangent, but it's an important tangent because it's going to enforce what the body of Christ, the church, the blessings that it has, and that parallels the relationship between the husband and the wife.

So I kind of marked it up a bit with the brackets. And then there's three, if you look carefully here, there's three purposes. It says, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, then there's a so that, a that, and a that. As I pointed out before, keep your eyes open for the that's and the so that's. That's a redundant sentence. It indicates that that's going to Right, exactly. It's going to supply the purpose. What's the purpose for Christ, Christ loved the church and gave himself for? So that, and that, and that.

So we're going to cover those. And then he's going to return down 28 and 29, more instructions for the husband. We're actually expanding on the instructions. Okay, so we'll start out with 25 then. Yeah, and this thing is a little bit off. Actually, Randy helped me the last time. It's almost like we could flip it down. I don't want to touch it. We'll just leave Roland up alone.

Okay, so husband, love your wives. And actually, I go to UIST a lot because it's basically a translation that tries to take into account the verb tense. And in this case, It's actually be loving. It's not that you just love her for day X, Y, and Z. This is to be the habit of your life. Present tense, continuous action.

Husbands, be loving your wives. I'll just start off right here. We've got two ladies and two guys here. That's not a dating game. Why do you think the Lord is focusing on husbands love your wives. And he has focused, we saw earlier, on the wives as lining up under, or submission. Why do you think that's the case? This lines up perfectly with a past experience, not of me, because I've been a lifelong bachelor, but I was the guardian and conservator of my mom and dad.

They were in a nursing home in Canyon City. I emphasize the word nursing home, not someplace else that is a nursing home. It was run by a different denomination and apparently I couldn't connect the dots as far as that one set of verses. So I told the nursing home staff, upon the advice of my dad, would you please connect the two beds together?

Oh, I see. That's neat. That's neat. They are not but brother and sister. And they got the point right away. They didn't hesitate. OK. And so that kind of lines up perfectly with this. OK. All right. OK. OK. All right. That's certainly turning red with embarrassment if I had to make some kind of. OK. All right.

Other thoughts. And actually, I think that we're going to see as we go through this part of the and actually, you know, you almost have to go back and actually this is a whole nother. Bob's going into a little bit when he starts talking about the oneness of the relationship and how that's God's design. God's design in marriage is to be a oneness between the husband and the wife. Now, that's not a perfect... They each have sin natures and they each have other things going on, but that is God's design for the oneness in the marriage relationship. So there's a parallel verse.

Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them. And actually that word, actually, Vani looked at that and said, what does embittered mean? And it actually is the idea of being bitter or harsh. And so you can kind of, you know, not that the women can't be bitter or harsh too, but I think that maybe the husband, you know, errs more in that than the women. I don't know. I'll give you another example.

My mom decided on her own to just start attending the non-denominational service at the nursing home instead of the Catholic one. Not anything she said out loud or any kind of feud or anything. She just wanted to give it a try and see what it had. Dad never said a boo to me about it. I get the feeling he might have even been taught a little It never became an issue. In fact, that issue that I just told you about before succeeded that one that I'm relating now. So the Lord worked all things together. OK. All right. OK. All right. OK.

So and then at 33, 33 talks about Husbands loves his own wife even as himself. So we're going to see that. That's going to be one of the primary analogies, or primary focuses, is that a husband is to consider, since there's a oneness between, in a Christian marriage, there's a oneness between the husband and the wife, that's to affect the way he treats her. He treats her as himself, as he would treat his own body. Okay, so Macaulay points out what I mentioned before here. As the duty of the wife is submission, and we saw that back in the previous verses, so the duty of the husband is to love that answers to the love of Christ exhibited in the giving of himself. So he's going to make this comparison here. We're going to see right now. So the comparison he makes is a pretty astounding comparison.

I know that Mike and Vern have done the majority of marriage counseling here at Holly Hills. I've done very little. Maybe Randy's done some too. I don't know. But when you tell a guy, a prospective husband, this is your job description. If he doesn't shake his boots, then he probably doesn't understand scripture or is a fool. So his job description is pretty amazing. So he makes a comparison.

Just as we saw that with the wife. The comparison that the Lord uses both for the wife to be in submission or line up under and for the man is Christ and his church. That's a constant example he uses over and over again. First of all, Christ also loved the church. So that's number one. And so Wyss renders this with a love, self-sacrificial nature in the manner in which Christ also loved the church.

And you could go through just a tremendous number of verses. How did Christ love the church? When I was studying this, I found there are a lot of truths that are talked about individually for believers. And then there are also ones that are corporately for believers. Will this be one of them here? I think maybe. Hopefully I can show you this. Yeah, this is good here. It'll come down in the next statement here. So, I put down 1 John 4, 7. Could someone read that?

Just speaking about Christ's incredible love. I like that there's a whole series of songs that It uses, Beloved, let us love one another. Go ahead. It says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Okay, so that's God's love, and you guys are pretty savvy Biola students here. Everywhere you see love, don't ever, there's a few very few cases where you have other words for love, but it's agapato or agape. Agape love is always in view. It's Christ's sacrificial love. It's never, almost never, it's highly unusual, and I used to try to point those out, whether it's Philadelphia love or eros. In fact, I'm not sure eros is even in scripture. Maybe. I may be wrong about that. It's like once or twice. Very unusual. Love is by definition God's love. It's from God. He's telling the husband that this is your job to love your wife as Christ loved the church.

He doesn't stop there. He says, I only have to do that. Now he's going to ask you to do one more on top of that. So pretty soon you find out you're not doing this. You're not going out there and making up your list and checking it twice. It's not going to work. You know what my first name is. Oh, that's right. I forgot that. No message to S. Claus. You're okay. Okay.

So I inserted, this is an and statement, so I just put Christ also gave himself up for her, the church. And this is where we see that scripture teaches us that Christ gave himself up for her, the church, and then we see and gave himself on behalf of it, the church. But the parallel verse, let's read that. And it's going to talk about individual believers too. Ephesians, we covered it earlier. Ephesians 5, 2.

And walk in love, as Christ has also loved us, and has given for us an offering and a sacrifice for a sweet-smelling savior. Okay, good. So basically there it says, and loved you, what we have here, he loved you, and gave himself up for us. So scripture has that Christ giving himself up was for the corporate body of Christ and individually for individual believers.

So that's pretty common in scripture. You'll see that phrase. If you think about it, Christ's body is the collection of believers. So why would he treat the collection of believers any differently than he treats individual believers? Okay, so here are the two admonitions to husbands.

How are we going to do this? I thought about this. The first one, how does a husband love his wife sacrificially? And I thought, boy, you know, I'm on a slippery slope here. So I defaulted to scripture. What a concept. Now, you guys got to help me out. Make sure I got the right verses here. Okay. This is what occurred to me. Okay.

Galatians 5.22. It can't be us. That's probably a given. If you realize that it can't be you, I think you're on the right track. I know you're on the right track.

But the fruit of the Spirit, so God's Spirit working in the life, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. There's another one I kind of slimmed up a little bit. So as those who have been chosen of God, and every believer is, holy and blameless, holy and beloved, and we are, beyond all these things, put on love, which is a perfect bond of unity. If you notice, put on has been added, so let's just read it without the put on. Behold all these things, love, which is a perfect bond of unity. you know, so well with the fact that the oneness of the husband and the wife, love is the bond, the perfect bond of unity. And it's God's love, not man's love.

And then part two here, how does the husband give himself on behalf of his wife? And this one came to mind, and like I said, and this is just, boy, I read this and I just, it just knocks my socks off and I realize, you know, anyway, You know what I found good in reading this? I got this from my brother Hal. Love is God's love, right? So replace love with Christ's love. I'm going to read it that way.

Christ's love is patient. Christ's love is kind and is not jealous. Christ's love does not brag and is not arrogant. It does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked. It does not take into account. a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." And it says, Christ's love never fails.

Let me go on with that. So this is my attempt at answering those two questions. Any other verses you want to add in there or think about or comments on this one? God in his wisdom as He created a man and a woman. And the woman was created for man. That's the other part of this incredible thing. And maybe to some women, that's insulting. I don't want to be created for a man. I'm my own person. And you are your own person.

There's no doubt about that. But God's design in marriage is that the wife is for the husband. And it's to benefit both. And that's what Scripture teaches us. So if you go off on some of the tangent and try to define marriage as something else, So you're in trouble. Go ahead, Randy. First, quick tangent.

I looked up and arrows is actually not used, but storge and... I didn't think so. I didn't think so. So anyways, but the thing that's important about this, looking at this, and we talked about sacrificial love, agape is sometimes described as a benevolent or an unmerited love. observed and I'll just throw my own marriage under the bus. This is about husbands, this is about my feelings.

What I found is that if I come into my home and I behave in a selfish way, My children don't want to be under me. My wife doesn't want to be under me. And the idea of giving yourself up or being sacrificial is not a thing that you can do in the flesh. The flesh doesn't want to do it.

If you're doing it from the flesh, it's to manipulate for a given outcome. But if I come in and the Holy Spirit is directing my words, and he's directing my actions and I'm moving along with that, then my wife will want to respond in that way. But the thing that I found to be most fascinating about this is that he tends to husbands approach this with, what do I got to do to get this outcome? And that's what I have to do at work, right? When I go into work, it's an autocracy. If you don't deliver the code, you don't get the paycheck, you don't get the paycheck, you don't take care of your family. So I've got to make sure I deliver the code. But in this case, there is no... No, you read Christ's love, and it's just mind-boggling. It's just, you say, wow.

The other element of this that I've seen, so I don't know how many people in the room are familiar with the Five Love Languages book, but it got really popular over the last 30 or so years that people heard about this Five Love Languages book. And they're like, sweet, I'm going to find out my love language. And there's several of them. It's written by some Christian authors, so it's pretty popular in the broader church. The thing is that when we look at love in Ephesians, we go back to chapter 3. What is Paul's description of love in chapter 3? It's not five love languages. It's this infinite thing that we have to learn together.

And we're not doing this manipulation of one another. Oh, I'll find your love language. And I'll know what it is, and you'll know what it is. And I know when I'm doing this that everything's OK. Your marriage is stale. The Holy Spirit is not directing it. It's not a God thing. Right. That's good. That's good. Okay. Great. Thanks Randy. Thank you. Okay. So now, as I mentioned when I started this, we're going to take this little aside. He's going to talk about, because the last part of this verse just says Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. So he's speaking about the church here.

But obviously in this context, he's comparing it to the husband-wife relationship. But now he's going to take it aside. It's like people have characterized Paul. It's like if I was talking about something, all of a sudden I say, oh, by the way, have you heard about... and you kind of jump out of that and jump into another topic. That's kind of what he's doing here. It's certainly related.

So now he's going to talk about the so that's with the church. I apologize for being cut off. "...so that he might sanctify her." So that's the first part. This is what I mentioned before. In these two verses, 26 and 27, Paul digresses from the subject of marriage in order to dwell upon the purpose for Christ for the Church.

So that, that's what I keep pointing out to you. with a purpose that so here's the first one He Christ so it's his first purpose is to sanctify the church it means to set apart usually for a particular purpose and in Hebrews 10.10 it says by this we will have will have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all so for the church So the rest of the verse, he says, one of his first purposes is to sanctify the church. So how is he going to do that?

And he's going to use this phraseology, which is, it's a tough one. It's a tough one. So, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word. So, a very, very picturesque phraseology. And the question is, what does that mean? Literally, it's having washed her. Having cleansed her is to make clean in a moral sense.

So let's look at, could someone read 1 John 1.7? But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, in fellowship with one another in the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son cleanses us from all sin. Okay, so if you apply that back to what we're talking about here, having cleansed her, the body of believers, his desire is to cleanse them from sin, using the 1st John passage.

So now we have this phrase, by the washing of the water with the word. So, a couple of verses that have somewhat similar, using the idea of washing, But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of our God. And the other one is, He saved us according to His mercy by the washing of regeneration and the renewing by the Holy Spirit. So the question comes up, what is the washing of the water with the word?

I looked at a bunch of different people, and I chose this one. After choosing it, I might share it. This is by Constable. You know how it is. You think, oh, this looks really good. And then you study a little bit more, and you think, well, maybe he doesn't have exactly what I'm looking for. But anyway.

Constable says, the Word of God cleanses us in the sense that when we believe the Gospel, it washes our sins away as water washes away dirt. I don't know, I don't, that, you know. Our sins were paid for, so that's a problem I have with that. This washing is a metaphor of redemption.

Anyone else have thoughts on washing the water with the word? If you don't, that's okay too. It's an interesting phraseology. Go ahead. I don't have a scripture hit to go with this, but washing the water by the word. I guess that puts it back together again. The word does the job. Well, it's obviously a descriptor of God's Word. We know that. How does God's Word wash us?

And then we have some ones here that kind of allude to that. Washing and regeneration. So there's a case where it's used in terms of regeneration as a washing. It seems to have something to do with salvation. Renewing. Renewing. So it's certainly salvation. So anyway. So this is the first so that the first purpose that he died on the cross for the body of Christ in terms of sanctifying them by the washing of the water with the word. We don't have to belabor this.

Let's go to number two here. Here's the second. If you read the verse that he might present to himself in all her glory. So that's the second that. So the purpose here is presenting her. He wants to present the church. And he wants to present it. Weiss kind of brings it out really well. He might present the church to himself. It's like, I want Vonnie, I want to present her glorious. I want her to be the most fabulously looking wife They'll be careful here.

In the figurative sense, he's presenting the Church in all her glory. She's been cleansed. She's been sanctified. In all the things that Christ has done for the body of Christ. So he presents the Church glorious. And actually, I have the parallel verse there. He's presenting every man complete in Christ.

And it reminded me of the fact that in Ephesians 2.6 it says we are seeded with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. He presents the believers with Him. It's like He's showing God the Father, here are my blood-bought children. Here they are. Aren't they beautiful? They've been cleansed. It's a beautiful picture. I'm not sure I'm doing justice to it.

In all her glory, metaphor for a glorious church signifying the church adorned in pure and splendid arraignments as a bride. Someone read the Revelation passage, Revelation 7 and 8. It talks about Christ's bride. Revelation 19, 7 and 8. Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

And there's another whole picture, you think of God's design in marriage, well the ultimate expression of that will be in the heavenly scene that's described here, where the body of Christ, now called the Bride of Christ, So the picture starts in Genesis with the wife being suited out for the husband and carries on until we go to glory with Christ and his church.

So that's the second purpose. And the third one Actually, it keeps going. Having no spot or wrinkle. So this is an extension of the second purpose. So it shows the cleanliness, as it says in Revelation there. Bright and clean, fine linen, bright and clean. Having no spot or wrinkle. And then Chafer, this is pretty cool. Chafer thought this was good.

Of the church it is said that each and every member of the glorious company will be conformed to his image. And when those who are His own see Him, they will be like Him. So the future of us as part of the body of Christ is phenomenal. It's glorious. And we've been cleansed. And then it keeps going. That she would be holy. This is the third one. The third purpose.

But that she, the church, would be holy and blameless. Separated from sin. consecrated to God, sacred, blameless, without spot, without blemish. So a parallel verse to that is early in Ephesians, one of the marvelous truths of His choosing us, just as He chose us in Him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we will be holy and blameless before Him in love. So our destination as part of the body of Christ is just incredible.

So he's taken this interlude to kind of focus on that. And he's going to come back to the husband and wife here in just a second. In fact, actually this is it. So that's been the digression here a little bit. So any thoughts on the digression about the church? It's pretty amazing. And actually we get a lot of good information just about what the Lord is about with the body of Christ just in this little interlude here. I'm going to ask you a question rather than make a statement. I don't want to put you on the spot.

Do you think that related to chapter 4 where God has provided a structure for growth within the body, so looking back at chapter 4 where he's given some to be apostles and some to be And for the equipping to the mature man, the mature believer, that this is part of that, the sanctification of the marriage is taken back, not just in the church, but in the home. And that's part of the spiritual leadership in the household? Or am I reading too much into that? How do you see that? I'm not asking because I have an agenda or an opinion. No, no, no. I'm not taking it that way at all. Could you just rephrase it one more time? I apologize.

So in chapter 4, and building into chapter 5, we see this idea of the body building one another up. But then in 5, starting at this marriage section in 22, he starts making these parallels between Christ and the church body with the marriage relationship. And this idea, I can't make my wife holy or blameless, sanctified in my own accord, but I can wash her with the Word, so to speak, and bring up spiritual things and constantly be bringing those things to the front of our mind. Okay, so what you're saying is, he's presented some truths about the Church. He's already made the analogy between the husband and wife and the Church, Christ and the Church.

Can I take some of these things here and try to Do they apply? Do they apply? You know, I thought about that a little bit. I think there are things that that do apply. I mean, but I don't I found it hard to connect them up. without having a verse to do that. So how do I apply... I can't make my wife holy and blameless like you said. I can't do that. I can't do that.

I think you're right. You can encourage your wife, you can encourage your marriage to be focused on God's Word. That would be one way. But these things, I thought these two verses really speak of just a tremendous accomplishment of Christ and his death on the cross and his sacrificial death and how that establishes the body of Christ in its glory.

And there are some parallels but I had a hard time exactly how to connect those up. I think it's a case where by and by the Holy Spirit will connect the dots and make it clearer. It's not like you get it all in one big lump or something. Well, I found it, to be honest, I found it challenging enough to just look at 25 and look at 28 and 29.

We're going to get to the other part of this here. The next part is going to tell me about how I view my body. I'm getting kind of personal here, right? Okay. Okay. I'm trying to be funny. I'm too good at that. Okay. So the husband also So the husband ought also to love his own wives. I'm sorry. I read that and said something's wrong here. Something's wrong. I'm reading that wrong. We're preaching multiple whys here. Husbands and whys. Okay. So the husbands, plural, ought to love their own whys as their own body. Okay. So let's look at that.

So, as I pointed out, he's returning now to his husband and wife teaching. Ought also to love their own lives as their own bodies. So he's setting up the analogy, if you care about your body, you should care about your wife, right? So how do we love our own bodies?

You go to the gym, you can just go on and on and on. We take care of ourselves. Most people, unless you're a bit strange, you want your body to be humming, right? You want it to be in good shape, doing what it's supposed to do. He talks about how this is to happen. He who loves his own wife loves himself. This has occurred to me too.

The husband's love is derived from the oneness of the marriage. How can loving his own body benefit his wife? If you see that God's design is this oneness in the relationship, then you'll see how that works. So what does scripture say about oneness in marriage?

Going back to Genesis, I kind of alluded to this earlier. If you look in Genesis chapter 2, can somebody read 224 in Genesis? For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So right out of the gate, so to speak, the Lord says, they shall become one flesh. And then if you look at Matthew, So let's look at Matthew 19. I'll read this one. Matthew 19. It's restated, and then he adds a few other comments, and then he adds a warning. Okay, Matthew 19, verse 5.

So Christ is answering a question, or some things here, and he says, And said, For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Consequently, they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." So this expands on what was related in Genesis and he says the Zion was one flesh. And that's God's plan, not man's plan.

I was fortunate to go to my son's wedding, and I was really excited. The pastor in that service mentioned that marriage was God's design, or God's plan, at least five times. And I said, man, this is great. This is outstanding. That's one of the most important testimonies of a marriage ceremony. It's wonderful for the husband and wife, the man and woman, but that's God's plan, and that's really something to get excited about. So it's God's plan, this oneness. How does this relate to what I'm talking about here? He who loves his own wife loves himself, because of the oneness. It goes on to point nine. For no one, for no one, no, for no one ever yet. Can I say that right? For no one ever yet. No, I can't read that right. For no one ever yet, right?

Hated. The next word is hated. Oh yeah, okay. Yes, I know, I know. I'm just going with it. So those five words, actually I added an extra word in there because literally it's for no one ever hated or no one ever, Anyway, he's pointing out here that this is an impossible situation, that a person would hate his own flesh.

I think that's what he pointed out here. But he would want to nourish it and cherish it. So nourish, actually two things, they're close in meaning. Nourish is the idea to feed. to rear, actually it's used later on, we'll see, and then cherishes the idea, literally it's warmth, to have heat. So three points.

It's unnatural not to nourish and cherish your own body. You try to take care of your body. Since you are one flesh, loving your wife is loving yourself. And the last point I got from Macaulay, since this is the case, a man loving his wife as his own body, A man who does not love his wife does as much damage to himself as he does to her.

I thought that was a pretty insightful thing. So the analogy he's making here is, if you go from the top, the last chart I have here is just as Christ also does the church. But maybe just step back for a second. So we found at the very beginning that he commanded the husband.

Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. So if we jump past the digression there about the church. So the husband ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. And for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourished and cherished it. So we just stop there. So the example of He makes it personal. He says it's as important as taking care of yourself for loving your wife. That's how he expands the discussion here.

And then lastly, just as Christ also does the church, so how does Christ nourish and cherish the church? So here I had a difficult time exactly finding verses that taught But we do have verses that talk about the believer and God's nourishing and caring for the believer. And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

And I take this to be both spiritual needs certainly and physical needs. And notice it's needs, not wants. That's often pointed out. It's needs, not wants. And this verse, one of my favorites here, is talking about the role of the Holy Spirit. And this is nourishing and cherishing His body, because when Christ left, He told them that He was going away, but the Spirit of God was coming. And this was the Spirit of God's mission.

When He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify me, for he will take of mine and disclose it to you." So Christ desires that his body, the body of believers, be taken in as the Holy Spirit enlightens us, says take of mine, of the Lord Jesus, and disclose it to you. So Christ does also cherish the church, nourish and cherish the church.

Okay, so last thoughts or comments? I was saying he does that by providing scripture and gifts to the church. Good, excellent. Actually, there's one I could have brought. Thank you. There's one I should have put in there. What did she say? I didn't hear what she said. I'm sorry.

I said, well, the Lord has provided scripture and he's provided gifts to the church. So we have pastors and elders and teachers and so forth. Right. Yeah, actually, there's a lot more I could do here. Randy, you had some thoughts? Well, you asked about the washing of the Word. Okay. I've been trying to ad hoc research, which is never a good result. Because I feel like I should have about six more hours of time into this.

But the thing that's interesting is that I can't find Jewish ceremonies where they would wash except for one place. When Moses in Exodus 29, God tells him, then you should bring Aaron and his sons to the doorway of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. It's this idea that if you're going to have interactions with God, you've got to be pure. And only Christ can do that.

But that's the closest thing I find. I thought maybe there'd be some kind of Jewish wedding ceremony. There isn't. There's nothing recorded where a husband would do this in a Jewish ceremony. Well, and what's the story where Jesus is washing someone's feet? He takes his disciples and he washes them.

And it's very loving. That's true. It's a very loving gesture. And then actually that's really good. He goes on and he says you're already clean. And he explains to them, you know, you're already clean. I have made you clean by my death. I'm going to die on your behalf. So that's good. That's really good.

So actually what's left in this little section about the husband and wife are the verses that kind of focus back on the oneness of the marriage, the oneness of the flesh. And the last part is really cool, and Bob's going to get to cover that, where we talk about the mystery. So the verses remaining will be, Because we are members of his body, Christ's body, for this cause, what we just read earlier, for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great. It's interesting, this mystery is great.

But I am speaking with reference to the church, to the church, I'm sorry, to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each individual among you love his own wife, even as himself, and let the wife say to it that she respects her husband." And then from that we're going to transition to the children and the parents. And you're planning to bring your kids in, right? You're going to read the riot act?

I think the reason there aren't Jewish ceremonies about washing is that they covered things. They didn't get clean of them. They were missing the buckets. Go ahead. It's interesting. This word came up before he might say to five. Oh, it was this discussion about whether it would be. I think it's really nice that you brought up this 611 system. Not that you might be.

I know. I know. And it seems almost troublesome when you read things that you might be sanctified. I know. I know. And there are some cases. Well, some cases, if it's, you know, depending on the class of the you know, whether it's a first class or whatever, it can mean it can mean it's true. You are has been accomplished. But a lot of times I'm not sure I can answer why it why it's stated that way. But but we are washed. I thought it was a Greek tense thing or something.

There's four classes of ifs, if statements. First class is it's assumed to be true and so on. The reason why it's translated in my instance as subjunctive, but the subjunctive has to do with the potentiality. He had to create the potential to wash the bride of the church. Christ had to do this so that it was possible. And subjunctive has to do with possibility.

So he needed the possibility, which was... Which we've already verified is successful. Okay. Yeah. It was impossible before. Yeah, that's a good point. Okay. All right. That really clarifies it. Yeah. It's the proper translation, but it does reaffirm it. I know. It is wild. I know. And it's good when you can see it's stated. He did do this. It's affirmative. Okay. Dear Father, we thank you for our time today. Thank you for the blessings we have, Father. In Christ's name, Amen.