Jesus the Light 15: Christian Home 2
Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the church -Eph.5:25
The Christian home is to be like no other home. The believing man will love and care for his wife and the wife will submit to and help her husband like she was created to do from the beginning.
Eph.5:23-29: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. He died so that He could give the church to Himself like a bride in all her beauty. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they love their own bodies.
“The man who loves his wife loves himself. No one ever hates his own body, but feeds and takes care of it. The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the Head of the church.”
The Christian husband is to love his wife by self-sacrificing giving for her. He is the leader and head of the home whose responsibility is to direct his family in godliness.
Eph.6:4: “Fathers, do not make your children angry, but raise them with the training and teaching of the Lord.” Deut.6:6,7 says: “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”
He is to answer his wife’s spiritual questions at home as 1 Cor.14:34,35 says: “As is true in all the churches of God’s people, women should keep quiet in the church meetings. If they want to learn something, they should ask their own husbands at home.”
He is also responsible to feed and clothe them. She is not a slave to feed and clothe the man and children. 1 Tim.5:8: “If any man does not provide for his own, especially those of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
Even though he is the head and leader, he is to be kind and respectful, not harsh and cruel. The Bible commands him, “Husbands, love your wives and be gentle with them” -Col.3:19.
The husband is to love his wife as his own body as Eph.5:28 commands. What would you say about a man who angrily slaps and punches himself in the face? Or what would you say about a man who stands in front of a mirror and shouts abuses at himself? Would you not say he is a madman? Yes, you would.
What would you say about a man who slaps and punches his wife while raging abuses upon her? Is he not also a madman? Yes, he is. He is hating his wife, his own flesh; he is abusing his own body; he is not like Christ.
The wife is to be honored, understood, and not mistreated since she is weaker. 1 Pet.3:7 says: “Husbands should understand and respect their wives, as the weaker partner and fellow heirs of the grace of life. Do this so nothing will hinder your prayers.”
If the man is not kind, gentle, and respectful, if he does not sacrificially give himself for her in genuine love, then prayers will be hindered. And if prayers are hindered, his belief in God has become an empty form only having no reality or power.
His wife is his God-given helper, not an animal used as a sexual object for pleasure and to simply provide children.
A Christian man is not a king and tyrant in his own home. No, that behavior is like an unbeliever who is still under the curse of God. When God said to Eve in Gen.3:16 that the man “will rule over you,” this was judgment upon her, not setting the standard for a Christian home. The Christian man leads by love, not by force.
The Christian man and woman are one. They are not to live isolated and separate lives. They are to share one home, one purse, and one bed. They share freely together and she is not excluded from the man and all his concerns; no secrets are covered up. They discuss and proceed with the affairs of their lives with oneness of mind. Her thoughts and desires are welcomed for consideration in making decisions as his helper.
Gen.2:25 tells us: “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” There was openness, honesty, and trust. Nothing was hidden and kept from the other. This is a parable of how the marriage relationship should be.
Theirs is an intimacy and oneness like no other. The man and his wife have become a new and separate family unit, not to be shared or intruded upon by others. Adam declared before God this about Eve in Gen.2:23: “This is now bone of bone, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.”
The Lord responded and said this about this first marriage and every marriage thereafter in Gen.2:24: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”
Therefore, this new family unit is not under the authority of the extended family or clan. They have no rights over the wife of their male relation. They should not interfere with this new marriage. They may give advice, but they have no authority to direct or compel either the man or his wife. This new home is directly responsible to God alone.
Since the wife is one with her husband, divorce becomes an act of self-destruction. It will leave one wounded, scarred, disabled, and possibly even dead. Divorce is a great evil that God hates. Mal.2:16 says: “I, the Lord, hate divorce.”
Religious men asked Jesus whether it was lawful to divorce a wife for any cause at all. Jesus replied: “They are no longer two, but one flesh; what therefore God has joined together, let no one separate” –Mt.19:6.
But like those evil men, people do not like this answer. They want to find some excuse to divorce. Jesus went on to say in Mt.19:8,9: “Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not this way. Now I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Barrenness is no cause to divorce. There may be many reasons for a wife not conceiving. It may even be the man who is barren. The blessing of God upon His obedient people in Deut.7:14 says: “There shall be no male or female barren among you.”
If the wife has not given birth, it is not cause for divorce but for prayer, as godly Isaac did in Gen.25:21: “Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived.”
Abraham did not divorce Sarah for being barren. Neither was Hannah divorced, but rather loved all the more. Zacharias did not divorce Elizabeth though she bore him no child even to old age. Let us follow these godly examples.
Sometimes out of desperation for a child, a man takes to himself another woman. This should never be done. From the beginning, God provided one woman for the one man. He did not bring multiple wives to Adam. Polygamy does not have God’s approval.
Jesus said: “A man shall be joined to his wife, and the TWO shall become ONE” –Mt.19:5. Marrying more than one wife is a departure from the Lord’s way. Deut.17:17 commands that “the king shall not multiply wives to himself.”
Dear Listener, let us glorify God in our homes. Let there be a bright testimony of the love, purity, truth, and grace of Christ seen in how we treat ourselves as husbands and wives. Then the world will know that truly the living God abides in our midst.
Copyright Steve Phillips 2020