Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.  (Ephes. 5:25)

This command is unique in that it has no parallel in human relationships.  Wives are not commanded to love their husbands this way, or even at all.  Children are not commanded to love their parents.  But husbands are commanded to love their wives, and what’s more, this is not an ordinary love, but an extra-ordinary one.  We’re to use the example of Christ and His Church as the standard.  Think about that.  The Lord came down off His throne, confined Himself to a human body, and offered that body as a love gift to the Church.  Not because the Church had done anything to deserve it, but so the Church could see the extent of His love.

The Church is His consuming desire.  He lived so that she might come into existence and be set apart.   He longs for her to know how much He loves her. His every word and action brought her honor and expressed His devotion to her. He dedicated Himself to her and covered all her imperfections with His love. And He gave His life for her.

Truth be told, the Church has rarely if ever deserved or even appreciated such a love.  Within the lifetimes of the Apostles, the Church had already drifted off into a pattern of religious works, forsaking her first love in the process. (Rev. 2:4-5)

The Lord loves the Church because He’s decided to do so.  Day by day, moment by moment, He makes a conscious decision to love His Church.  Not just when the Church has done something to deserve it, but even when, as is most often the case, the Church has done something to prove herself unworthy.   He loves the Church because He’s chosen to, irrespective of merit.  That’s the standard.

Let’s Get Personal

My wife has to be one of the easiest women in the world to love. I know that a lot of you guys feel that way about your wives, but in my case it’s true. Beautiful, happy, and energetic, she lights up any place she walks in to.  When she enters a room, men and women alike are naturally drawn to her.  People look at us and see the relationship they would like to have, and I’m often asked to teach them how to have such a good marriage as ours.  I don’t know what I’d have done if I had been called to love someone who treated me the way the Church treats the Lord.  I guess He knows I could never do it and that’s why He’s given me Samantha.

But recently I’ve discovered just how much of a commitment is required to love even someone as easy to love as she is, and I’ve learned anew that love is a verb, not just a feeling or emotion.  Even the strongest marriage can come under attack if it’s taken for granted or ignored.  With our ministry requiring more and more time and attention, and with the ever present and often conflicting demands of family, I discovered that I haven’t been paying enough attention to my primary responsibility, loving my wife.

As I imagine is true with most men, I first noticed the problem when I began feeling a lack of love and affection directed at me.  I discovered that while I had become busy with ministry work, she had become more focused on our 4 year old.  Without realizing it or even intending it, each of us had found a new source of love.  We were living parallel, instead of interconnected, lives.  The two were no longer one, in violation of Genesis 2:24.  And as hard as this is to believe, it happened even though my office is in our home and neither one of us ever goes anyplace, or even takes a meal, without the other.  We’re always in close proximity, yet we were hardly ever together.  Believe me, it’s a real wake up call to realize that you’ve been ignoring the love of your life.   What would I ever do without her?

Cultivating A Good Marriage

I think a marriage is like a garden.  If you want a garden to sustain you, you have to continually nurture it.  You can’t just plant the seeds and then ignore it. Do that and you’ll get weeds instead of succulent fruits and vegetables.  Leave even a fruitful garden untended for very long and you’ll find it’s also vulnerable to attack by predators who want to steal the fruits of your labor.  And once in a while, a seed you didn’t know you had planted can begin to grow unnoticed until it blossoms into something beautiful but poisonous.  Every gardener knows that the work begins before anything grows and continues unabated until the harvest.

And so it is with marriage.  It’s a labor of love that begins before the wedding and ends when death parts us.  Most of us know how to do the first part pretty well.  It’s called the engagement.  It’s exciting to begin planning and preparing for a future together, taking something that exists only in our imaginations and turning it into reality.  But because we’ve been taught that the goal is to get married, it’s natural stop paying such close attention shortly after the wedding. We don’t realize that the real goal is to be married.  If we worked as hard at being married as we did at getting married there would be many more happy marriages.

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. (1 Peter 3:7)

And while we’ve been taught that marriage is the stable, permanent phase of a relationship, it’s really very transitional.  Left to itself, marriage is simply the phase  between engagement and divorce.  The way we prevent this from becoming true in our case to make day to day decisions to stay as close to the engagement phase of the relationship as possible.  That means we still date them, hold the door for them, compliment them on their wardrobes, buy them little things for no reason, listen to what they’re saying, ask their opinions and preferences, spend quality time together and in general put their needs above ours.  In other words, love them.  This not only pleases our wives, but according to Peter makes the Lord more attentive to our prayers as well.  Everybody wins.

Two Paths To Fulfillment

The Lord accused the church of being so busy doing His work that they had no time left for Him. We can become so busy building a life for our wives that we have no time for them.  And I’ve never met a man who wasn’t perplexed when his wife didn’t accept his excuse for being away so much.  “I’m only doing it for us.”  We don’t understand that while our path to fulfillment lies in personal achievement, theirs is in relationships.  If we’re to give ourselves up for them, that means applying our need for personal achievement to the relationship. That way we’ll both be happier.

Obviously, if you’ve built a lifestyle that requires 2 or more incomes to support it, you’re in danger of trading long term love and respect for short term material gratification.  There simply won’t be enough time or energy for both income production and relationship protection.  It’s another good reason to scale back while you have the choice. When the hard times come, as they’re giving every indication of doing, you’ll find that it’s much easier to get along with out a bunch of stuff that you won’t have time for any way, than it is to get along without having someone you love at your side to help you through.  Remember, love is not just something you feel, it’s something you do.  Love is a verb.

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Hebrews 10:11-14)

In the USA the average adult lives to about age 72, earns roughly $30,000 per year, gets married twice, has about 2 children … the statistics go on and on. While most of us find some categories we don’t fit in, the simple fact is that on the whole we’re average. And it’s also apparent that there isn’t any big difference between believers and non-believers. As a group, we’re not less educated or intelligent, and don’t earn less, as some secular “thinkers” contend. Nor do we behave any closer to the Lord’s standards, as some of us contend. We have about the same ratio of broken marriages, troubled children, and other dysfunctions as our unbelieving neighbors. We’re neither better nor worse than others; we’re just average. A bumper sticker I once saw declares, “Christians aren’t any better, we’re just forgiven”. Well said.

When it comes to normal it’s a different story. While we are average, we certainly are not normal. In truth the fact that we’re average automatically renders us abnormal. You see in all of history there has only been one normal man. He lived about 2000 years ago and is the only perfect example of the human race. To be normal is to conform to an established standard and only one man has lived the way our Creator designed us to live; only one has met the standards for the race. His name is Jesus. All the rest of us have fallen far short of His glory (Rom 3:23).

An Example from Manufacturing
In the manufacture of mechanical or electronic parts, a prototype is made first. The prototype is the perfect example of the part to be made and is the one to which all others are compared. Design specifications are then established and subsequent parts are compared to the prototype. Quality Control procedures assure that the specifications are met.

Sometimes the setting on a machine will slip and a flaw will be introduced into the manufacturing process. All parts produced from then on will fail to meet the specification. The Quality Control department alerts the machinist, who resets the machine to make the parts perfect again.

Throughout the manufacturing process a simple rule is followed. Parts conforming to the specifications are kept and those with flaws are rejected. A perfect part is normal; a flawed part is abnormal.

The Ultimate Prototype
The Bible makes three sets of claims about The Lord (Rev 22:13). He is Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, and the First and the Last. These aren’t just repetitious thoughts. Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek Alphabet, equivalent to our phrase “from A to Z” which means all encompassing. The Greek word translated beginning is arche and denotes an order of time, place or rank. End comes from telos, which means the ultimate result or purpose; the upper limit.

The word translated first is protos and means the foremost or best. We get prototype from this one. And last comes from eschatos, a superlative meaning farthest or uttermost. The term eschatology (the study of the end times) originates here.

And so Jesus is the all encompassing model for mankind. He’s the first in order of time, place and rank (Col 1:18), and the ultimate result or purpose of man; to be one with God (John 17:20-23). He is the prototype, against whom all will be compared (Rom 8:29), the uttermost or perfect example of the race (Hebr. 1:3) the only normal man ever born.

What Went Wrong?
Adam was created in the image of God, conforming to the specifications of the prototype Jesus. He sinned and a flaw was introduced into the procreation process. All his successors became flawed as a result of that sin.

Just as a machine that gets out of adjustment will not correct its self but gets worse until readjusted, so the sin introduced in the Garden was not self-correcting and has been compounded through time. This is demonstrated in the example of the first priest in the quote from Hebrews 10 above. No matter how many sacrifices are offered, our sins remain.

Man vs. Machine
In manufacturing, flawed parts are simply discarded, but our Creator loves us too much for that. He made it possible for us to be recreated with out the flaw. It took two things; the sacrifice of His Prototype and our willingness to be born again. With that He could recreate us in His own image and make us into perfect specimens, new creations, as righteous as God. (2 Cor. 5:17-21) He did this so we could become normal; conforming to our specifications. Among all of mankind, only Christians have the potential to become normal.

So What’s the Big Deal?
I began by saying that right now as a group we’re no better or worse than anyone else, when compared to God’s standards. But know this. Whether in the Rapture or Resurrection one day soon you will be changed. That which has been completed in eternity will be consummated in time. The corrupt will be made incorruptible; the mortal immortal, and you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. No longer average, finally normal. Because by His one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Hebr. 10:14) Thank you, Lord.