He Died for His Wife

My Grandparents, Edward and Helen Losli

My grandparents had a wonderful, yet interesting marriage. The last decades of their lives they had what seemed to be a well-timed trade off.

My grandmother had many serious heart ailments and multiple heart surgeries from the time I was old enough to know what those terms meant. But as far as I know, my grandfather was in great health, but that changed as they aged. When my grandmother’s health failed, my grandfather was strong; but when he became ill and incapacitated, she was surprisingly strong.

My grandfather lived for my grandmother, but he didn’t die for her.

The Bible describes the relationship between Christ Jesus and the Church as like that of husband and wife. Yet there is a vast difference between Him and the Church and earthly husbands and wives. Jesus suffered more for the Church than any human husband has ever suffered.

Jesus suffered the loss of all He possessed, surrendering His splendor as Heaven’s born Prince to shelter in the womb of a servant girl. The King became a pauper by choice.

The Glory of God became a helpless Babe, a rough-handed Carpenter, a Suffering Servant and Man of Sorrows. He was humiliated, despised, and crucified between thieves. The Creator who adorned the blackness of space with flickering stars by the word of His power, was crowned with bloody thorns. The Friend to sinners died to make us friends of God.

Without concern for His own welfare, Jesus, the Bridegroom plunged into the ocean depths of the Father’s wrath to become the rescue for His bride.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5:25).

Men Don’t Cry

Sarah lived one hundred and twenty-seven years … and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her (Genesis 23:1-2).

I’m certain Adam and Eve cried when they were cast from the Garden of Eden. They also shed tears when their son Cain killed their other son Abel. But the Bible doesn’t record any of these tears. The first time something is mentioned in the Bible it is always vitally significant. The first tears are Abraham’s at the death of Sarah.

Sarah wasn’t a perfect woman, but she’s portrayed in a positive light across the pages of Scripture. God called her princess (Genesis 17:16), Paul used her to illustrate spiritual freedom (Galatians 4:21-31), listed among the men and women of faith in Hebrews 11:11, and an example of a godly wife (1 Peter 3:1-6). Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a great woman, but she is nowhere in the Bible specified as an example of anything; but we are told twice in Scripture to make Sarah an example to follow (Isaiah 51:1-2; 1 Peter 3:3-6).

Sarah is also the only woman in the Bible whose age we know, and her death after more than 75 years of marriage, was met with weeping from her husband. The man God called the father of faith in Romans 4:16, is also the first man to cry in the Bible. We will continue to cry until God wipes away our tears in Heaven (Revelation 21:4). Tears are not a sign of unbelief, but of sorrow, and even as a man of faith, Abraham still sorrowed.

We don’t read Abraham cried when he left everything behind in Ur or when his father died, or Lot was captured. We’re not told he shed tears when he sent his eldest son away or God told him to sacrifice his only-begotten son Isaac. Yet when he knelt beside the lifeless body of Sarah, he wept. He must have loved her deeply, even after she died. Death is the last enemy. Grief doesn’t last forever. Life goes on for us left behind.

So husband, love your wife.

And father, we are diligent to teach our sons that men don’t cry. However, we should be more diligent to teach them to love the woman they marry in such a way as to never make her cry but with tears of joy.

Sin is the Ruin in Every Marriage

But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God (1 Corinthians 11:3). Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them (Colossians 3:18-19).

Marriage is not a contrivance of the patriarchy or government or culture. Marriage was created, defined, and instituted by God in the Garden of Eden.

Sin is the ruin in every marriage, and Genesis 3 reveals how marriage is corrupted by our sinfulness. By their disobedience to God (sin), Adam and Eve, the first human couple, went from being naked and unashamed, to hiding from both God and each other (Genesis 2:25; 3:7-8).

In the curse God put upon His sin-ruined creation, God described how sin would affect the marriage relationship. To the woman He said … your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you (Genesis 3:16).

Sin creates divisions; divisions especially between God and humanity, but also between nations, people of various skin colors and cultures, parents and children, and of most importance to this discussion now, between husbands and wives.

The curse of sin stirs up within every wife the desire (the word means literally control) over her husband. The curse of sin also stirs up within every husband the longing to rule or dominate his wife. Marriage creates people with very different agendas working against one another.

Every married person knows first-hand that division makes living together and functioning as one impossible. It is only in Christ that marriage becomes what God intended, a representation of Christ’s relationship with His Church (Ephesians 5:25-32). Faith in Christ inspires, empowers, and commands the husband and wife to lay down their own desires and wills to the perfect will of God. It’s what we call submission. In marriage, the husband leaves the governing authority of his parents and submits his desire and will to that of God (Genesis 2:24). In marriage, the wife submits her desire and will to her own husband under God.

This is why God commands the believer marry only another believer. When marrying a non-Christian, that believer dismisses the blessing of a marriage submitted to the will and glory of God. Instead you end up with a lopsided relationship without interest or intent of honoring God.

Love the Brotherhood

Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king (1 Peter 2:17).

Christians honor all people as a good work in Christ. Every life has value and matters, but we are to especially love the brotherhood. 

The word love (agapao) is deeper and stronger than honor. This love isn’t based in feelings, but in sacrificial commitment to the betterment and welfare of the one who is loved, independent of affections.

Agape is the love Christian husbands are to show their wives in the same way Jesus demonstrated it to the Church by His death to redeem us from sin (Ephesians 5:25).

The Apostle John wrote, Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him (1 John 5:1). If you love God, you will love other believers no matter their outward appearance or station in life.

Love for other believers is non-negotiable and an action rather than a feeling. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16). John doesn’t suggest we show our love by dying for each other; sometimes the greatest (and most difficult) love is living sacrificially for another person!

While in prison in Rome, Paul wrote one of the most significant personal letters in the Bible. He wrote to his close friend Philemon, a wealthy believer and possibly pastor of the congregation in the city of Colosse. While imprisoned, Paul was joined by a runaway slave named Onesimus.

A staple of Roman society, there were upward of 60 million slaves in Rome. Onesimus was Philemon’s slave! He’d come to faith in Jesus while visiting Paul, and now Paul was sending him back to submit to his master (Colossians 3:22-25). By law, slaves were non-persons without rights, due care, concern, nor respect; Philemon was legally allowed to kill Onesimus, but legal doesn’t mean right. Christians honor all people and love the brethren. 

When Onesimus returned, Philemon was to receive him as a beloved brother (Philemon 16). The agape-love that Jesus demonstrated by saving Philemon, Philemon was to demonstrate toward Onesimus.

As Christians, we don’t have to like one another. Frankly, some of us are hard to like, I being chief among them, but we will sacrificially love one another as God loves us.

* Come back tomorrow for part 3, “Fear God.”