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INTRODUCTION

Over the last couple of weeks we have been talking about the fact that there is a masculinity crisis in this world and nowhere is that felt more profoundly than in marriages. You can think about it this way: if healthy marriages are the bedrock of a community, and healthy communities unite together to form vibrant cultures, then the best way to topple a society is to attack its marriages. If you break that grand institution down, if you spoil the marriage, then you will cripple the nation. And there is no better place for Satan to begin an all out war on marriage, than to focus on the one God called to lead in the home, and that is man. 

And, I want you to think about it this way, if manliness, godly masculinity, and a man’s role in the home is a targeted attack launched consistently by Satan, then what we really need to know and understand is how to fight back. And we do not fight with swords and shields… We do not fight with domination and aggression… We fight by orienting our life to what the Bible says, by doing what it tells us to do, and by refusing to be moved when the fiery arrows of Satan come! That is our warfare, brothers. To know and understand what the Bible says about Biblical manhood, to orient our lives in that Godward direction, and refuse to be moved from off that spot. 

The enemy may attack and he may win a ground back in this culture. But we must be resolved that he will not win in this arena. He will not move us from our purpose as men. And there is no better passage to teach us about this than Ephesians 5:23-33, where we learn 5 ways that we must love like men! 

And the first is that we must have a Shepherding kind of love. Ephesians 5:23-24 says this: 

SHEPHERDING LOVE (Eph. 5:23-24)

23 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. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

The first aspect of manly love is godly leadership. Men have been called to lead in their homes in the same way Christ provides love and leadership to His church. And this is not a suggestion. 

Think about it like this, the Church is blessed because of the leadership of Christ. We do not moan and groan under His sovereign rule; we flourish under it. And that is the case because we are no longer wandering in the valleys of the shadow of death, we have been brought into His strong, life-giving, stabilizing love, and we are infinitely better off because of it. We joyfully follow Him out of death and enjoy the life giving benefits of His rule without a whimper of objection. 

Well… In the same way, men, God has called you to diligently lead in your homes. He has called you to bring your family together under your leadership. He has commanded you to bring life into your home through your godly care. He has called you to provide the same kind of benefits Christ brings to the church, albeit in a temporal way. 

Suffice it to say, your family ought to flourish, spiritually speaking, under your consistent, godly, Christ honoring, active leadership. If you are leading correctly, your family will thrive. If your family is spiritually weak, emotionally sickly, relationally at each other’s throats, experiencing interpersonal decay, chaos, in-fighting, rampant immorality, or is declining in any perceivable metric, then your leadership needs adjusting and repentance. 

It is not enough to point the finger at your wife and kids like Adam. And you certainly cannot succeed as a husband and family head if you adopt Adam’s passive care. You just can’t. 

You have to stand up, buck up, grow up, man up, and lead. You have to take a look at your family and ask some hard questions about yourself. Are they struggling because of my failed leadership? Are there things I need to stop doing? Things I need to start doing? So that I can be more like Jesus, a better head over this family, and so that my clan can more faithfully honor God? 

These are hard questions, but the buck stops with you. You did not marry into a democracy where everything is decided after spirited debates on a senate floor. You are a God appointed King, called to rule with the love and affection of Christ, for the good and health of your family. If you fail, the family will suffer. If you repent, the family will grow. 

The first aspect of loving like a man, is having the guts to lead like Jesus. To shepherd like Jesus. To have a shepherd’s love. 

The second aspect of Loving like a man, is to have a Sacrificing kind of love. Look at verse 25 of this incredible passage. 

SACRIFICING LOVE (Eph 5:25)

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 

Here the love that Christ has for the Church is qualified in His desire, and joy, to give Himself up for her. His love was demonstrated by His willingness to give His life for her, and her life, health, and vitality, would be impossible without His sacrifice. These are wonderful and glorious truths of the Gospel that we celebrate and say amen to each week… 

But what we as men often forget about is that these things have been required of us. Paul begins with “husbands love your wives”. And just in case you are not clear on what that means, it means being like Jesus and giving yourself up for her. 

This means that your leadership cannot be used to advance your own agenda. You wake up for your family, go to work for your family, provide for your family, serve your family, go to sleep protecting your family, repeat and die in honor like a man who sacrificed for His family

And not just in those ways… Think about what Jesus did. He went to the cross! He gave His life for the spiritual well-being of His bride! 

That means manly love sacrifices everything to make sure the people around us are thriving spiritually. It means praying with your wife. It means leading family worship with your kids. It means making them go to church when they do not want to go. It means modeling Christ like leadership when others want to cut corners. It means pointing to Jesus in the way you discipline… It means comforting your wife and children with the Gospel. It means putting yourself second so that someone else can benefit! 

Being a loving leader of your home means being sacrificial to the ones you love! You sacrifice so that your family can see Jesus, know Jesus, love Jesus, and follow Jesus. You show your boys how to lead by serving. You show your daughters who to marry through serving. Like Jesus, you rely on the strength of your Father, to joyfully care and lead the ones He has given to you! You don’t complain about it. You don’t slack off. You don’t take off days. You fight that sinful selfish man inside of you, slay him, bury him, and serve your family like Christ has served and cared for you! 

That is the second aspect of manly love. You lead. And you serve. 

The third aspect of masculine love for your family is a sanctifying kind of love. And this builds off of what we just learned in verse 25 and continues into verses 26-27. Notice…

SANCTIFYING LOVE (Eph. 5:26-27)

In verse 25 Paul tells us to pattern our sacrificial love off the perfect archetype, Jesus! He says

25 just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 

Why? Why did He do that? Paul continues. 

26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 

You see men, we not only love her enough to lead her like Christ, with sacrificial leadership… We also have a God-defined vision for her life. You did not marry your wife for who she is today. You married her for the woman she will be in eternity with Christ. You married her with the goal of getting her ready to meet her true husband, the Lord Jesus Christ, who you both will worship with all joy when you arrive on that celestial shore. And one of the greatest privileges you get this side of heaven is contributing to her growth in Christ, while Christ has made you caretaker over her soul. 

Just as Jesus gave up His own life to sanctify His bride, your self-denying leadership ought to be leading your bride towards greater sanctification. And by that, the word simply means set apart. Which tells us that under your leadership, your bride ought to be growing more set apart unto God, more holy, more sanctified under your care than the opposite. 

Under your royal servant care, she is to grow to be more like Jesus. And this does absolve her of her own responsibility in the same way that we are also responsible when we spurn the gifts of Christ. Your goal, brother, is to give her rich Gospel soil to grow in, water her in the Word, pray with her and for her, study the Scriptures diligently so that you can answer her questions and point her in the right direction, develop a robust Biblical worldview so that you can make wise choices in tough seasons that you will face as a couple, take her to a faithful church where she can hear the Word preached faithfully and regularly, let her see you meeting God in His Word, leading your children, praying often, and growing in wisdom and maturity so that she feels secure in your leadership. Help her to learn what it means to follow Jesus in all of her life and let her see you doing that in yours. Love her like Christ loves His Church. And trust me brother, your bride will flourish under than kind of care! 

Again, if you can take an honest look at your wife, and identify that she is not growing, or that she is growing in the opposite direction, then before you pass the blame on her, look inward at yourself. Ask yourself some hard questions: Am I leading her? Am I taking an active role? Am I making excuses for myself? And if so, when am I going to stop? Ask your wife what areas she would like to grow in, in the days ahead, and then begin praying for that, helping her in that, and encouraging her in that. 

As a leader, you set the pace for your family and the buck stops with you. And let me just say one more word about that. We live in a society that likes to treat men as imbeciles who can’t find themselves out of a wet paper bag. If that were true, you could be a whiny loser who shirks responsibility and let’s your wife shoulder a burden she was not designed to carry. But since you were made to lead, I am calling you to the Biblical standard and reminding you that God made you for this. Submit to His vision. Trust in His plan. Do what He has called you to do. And you will get the rare opportunity of watching everything around you flourish! 

That is the third aspect of masculine love, that you love her enough to lead her, lover her enough to sacrifice for her, and love her enough to participate in her sanctification. You have a Shepherding love, a Sacrificing love, and a Sanctifying love.

The fourth aspect of manly love in this passage is a synthesizing kind of live. You are the one who is responsible for bringing together, holding together, and maintaining the unity that God has supernaturally given you. Look at verses 28-31.

SYNTHESIZING LOVE (Eph. 5:28-31) 

28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 

As we have already mentioned, a husband’s role is to love his wife selflessly, even as he loves his own body. And the reason this is true, first of all, is because in the miracle of marriage, he really is loving his own flesh. Because, in marriage, God weaves together two human bodies into a single one, united together under His Lordship, bound to one another for a lifetime, and joined together by unbreakable covenantal bonds lest great damage be committed. 

In the same way no one hates his own flesh, but feeds, clothes, bathes, and provides for it, so too the husband is called to provide for his bride in the way he would even care for himself. That is the first reason that this is true. And I pray all of the men listening to this will let that sink in. 

As consistently as you take care of yourself, you must take care of her. For instance, when you drop everything to use the bathroom, when you prioritize you when you want to go to sleep, when you drop other things to eat, when you save up your resources to buy that thing, whenever, however, and in whatever you tend to provide for you, you must be the kind of man that provides for her! Is this beginning to sound like a high calling? Good. Loving her like Jesus loves the Church will be the hardest and most rewarding thing you will ever do. You will never do it perfectly. But to the degree you grow in this, will be to the degree you and your family thrive under your care. Of course there are no guarantees, but if God commanded it of you, we can believe and trust that this is what He wanted for you, your wife, and your family! 

That is the first reason you have a synthesizing love, because you love her like you love your own body, knowing that she has become your one flesh partner in God, for you to love and care for until death has parted you. 

The second reason you do this gets deeper down into the Gospel. Which Paul takes up in our final section, that I am calling Sacred Love. This is what Paul says in verses 32-33. 

SACRED LOVE (Eph. 5: 32-33)

32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 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.

The second, and even more important reason that you love her enough to lead her, and sacrifice for her, to sanctify her, and bind her in loving unity with you, is because all of these things are a demonstration and a very beautiful picture of the Gospel! 

From heav’n He came and sought her - the Church - to be His holy Bride; With His own blood He bought her, And for her life He died. He sought her. Saved her. Sacrificed for her. Is Sanctifying her. And Synthesizing her into His own body, so that the church has become members of His own body, just like a wife becomes unified members with her own husband. 

When you lead your wife, you reenact the Gospel. When you pursue her, you reenact the Gospel. When you sacrifice for her, you reenact the Gospel. When you labor for her sanctification, you reenact the Gospel. When you provide a loving home where she and you and all your children can live in peace filled unity in Christ, you reenact the Gospel. 

Your job, brother, is not to love her with carnal, unbridled, romantic, sensate, emotional, effeminate kind of love. You are to love her like Jesus. You are to give of yourself for her, provide for her, and act out the Gospel to her! That is what it means for you to love her like a man. And that is the Biblical vision we all fall short of, but we all must strive towards! 

Do not let the enemy win in your marriage. And do not let the enemy win in your season of preparing for marriage. Repent when you fall short. Stand up, trust the Lord, obey His Word, and repeat when you miss the mark. 

That is all I have for you today gents. Until next time, go love a woman like Jesus, and we can change the world one household at a time.