It’s mainly for husbands. I’ve noticed a few other things since last Sunday’s sermon on John the Baptist and his crazy happiness. I read this, for example:
It is possible (but not correct) for baptized believers to live their lives as if the gospel were not true. How many conservative husbands are outraged if a liberal preacher says that Jesus did not rise from the dead when the daily treatment they give to their wives says so?The liberal, at least, only asserts his heresy occasionally. (Douglas Wilson, Reformed is not enough, p. 168?Reformed is not enough?) Believing in the gospel leads us to treat our women differently than if we didn’t.
Now let’s go back to Jean-Baptiste
Remember, in John 3:25, someone asked a question about purification to John’s disciples. A discussion broke out between John’s disciples and a Jew about purification and then the question seemed to be dismissed immediately.
But I suggested that John’s reference to Jesus as a husband was related to purification, because, in his mind, Jesus’ role as “the husband”?He was bound to his role as The Lamb of God who dies to cleanse us of our sins. The link is seen in Revelation 21:9 😕 Come on, I’m going to show you the wife, the lamb’s wife.
So when John says, “What is the bride and groom?(John 3:29), he says something about purification. Christ dies as a lamb of God and as a husband of the Church, to purify his wife. “
Ardel Caneday showed me something I missed completely when I prepared my sermon last week. Returning to John 2, at the weddings of Cana where Jesus turned water into wine, he used six stone sculptures, which the Jews used [were intended] for purifications ?(John 2:6).
In this way, Jesus foreshadowed the wine from his blood as a means of purification. And he did it at a wedding where the teacher said to the groom, “Have you kept good wine so far?”(John 2:10). So Jesus (and John, author of the Gospel) had already linked the ”husband” to the blood of the Lamb and to the sins of purification.
And then Paul makes the connection with us, husbands
Husbands, love your wife, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her, to sanctify her, having purified her by washing the water with the word, to present it to himself as a glorious church, unspotted. , Or wrinkles, or something similar, but holy and impeccable (Ephesians 5:25-27)
We are not the saviors of our women; Christ is. We are not his sanctifiers; Christ is. We are co-heirs of the same grace of life (1 Peter 3:7) and we depend on the same sovereign provider of life.
But Paul said to their husbands, Look at how Christ loves his wife, look at the cost. And look at the finish line. Cost is your life and the goal is its glory, the glory of holiness.
If you aim for its glory from top to bottom, say, Mount Sinai, you will harden it; If you aim for its bottom-up glory, golgotha, you’ll let him taste the sweet taste of supreme glory.
The key? The Lamb of God and the Holy Spirit, I see you broken and bought by the blood of the Lamb, I see you filled with the Holy Spirit.
The angel said to John the Baptist’s father, “Will it be filled with the Holy Ghost, already in his mother’s womb?”(Luke 1:15). That is why John saw Jesus as the Lamb of God (John 1:29) and as the husband (John 3:29), and was glad when his own disciples left him and went after Jesus.
John’s mad joy at the loss of all his disciples was rooted in the supreme beauty of Jesus. When husbands know Jesus so well and love him so deeply that we can, diminishing to grow, then we will love our women. we will not contradecipher the gospel by the way we treat it.