What I Would Do Differently
Genesis 2:24 ESV) — 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh
It seems that Paul has his mind on Genesis 2:24 when he urges the husbands to love their wives as they love their own bodies (Obrien, 427).9
Now listen carefully to this: look down at vs. 31 “that the two shall become one flesh”;
the two persons husband and wife before marriage are two separate individuals but when they unite in marriage this bond is so tight and it is in fact God ordained that those who were two now become one, one flesh (Obrien, 427).10
1. Paul is not calling husbands to love someone else in fact he is a calling him to love himself, because his wife is one flesh with him. Husbands love your wife as do yourself.
1.1. This is not a call to love someone more than yourself but literally to love your wife like you do yourself.
1.2. Because you indeed are one flesh, so just love her like you do yourself.
1.3. No one has to make you eat or take care of yourself you automatically do that.
1.4. In the same way look out for your wife’s needs just like you do your own needs, because listen husbands she is your flesh, (vs. 31 the two shall become one flesh):”
9 Peter Thomas O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 427.
10 O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, 427.
Sinclair Fergusson quote:
“If anyone hates his own flesh we regard him as unbalanced perhaps
psychotic. For a husband not to love his wife who has become one flesh with him is not only to be a poor husband it is to be a dysfunctional Christian.”
Getting Real:
• You know men let’s be real honest here: we don’t have any problem looking out for our own interests now do we?
• The Bible is calling us to love our wives just like we do our own bodies.
• The key is to view your own interests biblically by understanding your own interests to include your wife’s interests. Remember we are one flesh with our wives.
Husbands we like to look out for our own needs concerning food, rest, etc. and when you have an adequate amount of that you will experience a sense of as MacArthur calls it
“well being.”11 Husbands if you attend to the needs of your wife in the same way as you do your own you will likewise experience that sense of well-being.12
Excuses, excuses, excuses and that is exactly what they are excuses but we have to come to the realization that I can’t. It is impossible for me to love her as I love my self without the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
• Husband you can say, she is too hard to love.
• Have you met her,
• You try to live with her for 40 years
• We are nothing alike,
I have tried for 20 years to love her and it just hasn’t worked, I am done, I am finished, (by the way are you done and finished with Jesus too) because the Bible teaches that you are to love her as Christ loved the Church and as you do your own body,
What if Christ loved you the same way: like I have given him a million chances over the last 20 years and now I am done.
Or Do say to yourself, Bryan I have fed you for twenty years, enough is enough, go feed yourself….
• No husbands that would be -
1. Awful if Christ loved us in the same way (that he just quit loving us
11 John F. MacArthur, Jr., Ephesians, MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago:
Moody, 1986), 301.
12 Macarthur, Ephesians, 301.
after 10,000th sin.)
2. You would be considered psycho out of your mind if you refused to ever feed your own body again.
Marriage is no doubt difficult but what we are to do is not real complicated.
Listen to what pastor Alistair Begg had to say about it:
“Marriage in a lot of ways is a like a golf swing its not easy but its straight forward. Your supposed to turn away then turn back and have club head straight at impact. Turn away and turn back its kind of like marriage.”
A husband should so love and cherish his wife that he would not do anything to harm her or bring her shame (in the same way as he would be very unwise to want to bring harm or shame to himself).13
This is one of the ways that Christ loves the church, he cherishes it and nourishes it he doesn’t bring harm or shame to it.14
2. Leave and Cleave vs. 31
• 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
leave - you still love them and help them - but they are not your first priority you have a priority that is over them once you get married, your loyalty is to your wife.
Cleave - means to literally be cemented together (MacArthur, 302)
When you marry, you cut off the chords of your parents and form another chord with another. That chord of bond and relationship is a longer lasting than the bond that you have with your parents.
• NAS Malachi 2:16 “For I hate divorce,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, Listen to what John Macarthur has to say about the bond that a husband and a wife have:
“Just as the body of Christ is indivisible, God’s ideal design for marriage is that it be indivisible. As Christ is one with His church, husbands are one with their wives.
Therefore when a husband harms his wife he harms himself. A husband who violates his marriage violates himself. A husband who destroys his marriage destroys a part of himself. When a man and woman are joined in marriage, Jesus said, “They are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matt.
19:6). “15
13 Macarthur, Ephesians, 301
14 Macarthur, Ephesians, 301
15 Macarthur, Ephesians, 303.
Whenever you think you can’t forgive your wife remember Hosea and Gomer.
Hosea the prophet of God, wife Gomer who not only was unfaithful but became a prostitute: yet he was to continue to love her and forgive her which is picture of what God does for us when we act like Gomer and prostitute ourselves with the sins of this world.
Ephesians 5:33 (ESV) — 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and