Unlimited Grace

Bryan Chapell: God is putting us together for a purpose. And if that union is perceived, then if you damage one, you actually damage both, because we are meant to be one. If I am diminishing my wife, I'm actually damaging the wholeness that God intends for my own life. She is intended by God to be part of the sanctification of my own heart.

Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today's episode, Pastor Bryan shares the second half of a lesson on biblical headship from Ephesians 5.

Dr. Chapell points us to the model that Christ has provided for us as a guide for loving and leading a household. You can find this lesson and many others when you visit UnlimitedGrace.com. And while you're there, look for Pastor Bryan's commentary on the book of Ephesians, which he wrote for the Reformed Expository Commentary series.

Dr. Chapell reveals how when we lift our eyes beyond ourselves to share Paul's expansive vision, then we too will join his doxology for God's amazing grace that transforms the world. Let's hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the second half of the lesson, "Sacrificial Head."

Bryan Chapell: Today we're doing something special. We're beginning a series on marriage and family. And for that reason, I'm going to ask that you look in your Bibles at Ephesians chapter 5, beginning at verse 22. In your Grace Bibles, that's page 978.

And our goal is, of course, to think about how our marriage is supposed to work and families come together. But if that's all we're thinking about, your marriage is too small. Think where we are in the book of Ephesians.

The apostle Paul began by saying that Christ loved eternally a people that he is calling his body, the means by which he is going to ultimately transform the world until Christ fills all in all. He by his spirit is going to fill the church so that barriers are broken down, that we come together in unity.

And then, as every person does their part, living in purity to reflect Christ, worshipping to proclaim Christ, and finally living in families as he designs, showing the face of Christ to family and world. The design really is for our families to make the invisible kingdom visible to the world. Did you know that?

The goal of the family is to make the invisible visible, to be the face of Christ to one another before the watching world. Let's stand in honor of God's word and say how, how are we going to make the invisible visible for Christ's sake?

Verse 22 of Ephesians chapter 5, Paul says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."

I've tried to be honest with you in the past to say, at least in my teen years, my family was coming apart. And the consequence of my family coming apart for a kid who is kind of artistic and sensitive was just to go numb. And the consequence of that went far into my adult years.

And I recognized it after a year and a half or so of being married to my wife. I can remember I went off to work one day and going off to work one day, I said to Kathy, "The washer is broken. Call the repairman. Get somebody to come in and fix the washer." She said fine.

I came home that evening. Repairman had not been called, had not come. Next day, "Remember to call the repairman." "Okay," she said, "I'll call." I got home that evening. "Did you call?" "No." And then suddenly, the flood of tears. "I can't do that. I'm just not capable. I don't know how to do it. I'm not capable of doing it."

Now when I tell that to you, I will tell you it is embarrassing to Kathy for me to tell you it was devastating to me, because of what I knew about my wife. You know her now too. My wife Kathy is one of the most intelligent, capable people I know.

Her grades were far better than mine in college. Kathy, don't listen. She was the outstanding musician of all musicians in her university for two years running. Not just flute players, all musicians, she was the outstanding musician.

She is simply one of the most intelligent people I know. And here was my wife telling me she could not call a repairman. And while that was embarrassing to her, what went in my brain was this: My word, Kathy, what have I done to you? That after only a year and a half of being married to me, you feel so little about yourself that you can't call a repairman?

And it began a journey in our lives of my saying, how am I echoing my father, my parenting, my experience in ways that I don't even recognize? Why is it that my wife is a perfectly capable driver until I get in the car and then she gets nervous?

Why is it that she's articulate in any conversation until I would join the conversation and then she would begin to get hesitant and question herself and stumble? What is it about me that's actually destroying you? What evil math is going on in me that somehow seems to say as long as I diminish you, I gain something myself?

And yet it's so typical of us we have to think it through carefully. Is my headship doing what Christ did for the church to make the church understand her splendor before God? I will not tell you that I had that solved quickly, but one of the things that just began to play in my brain was a picture.

This is not sophisticated, okay? It was just a picture that was in my grandmother's home years previous. And you'll recognize it, some of you as I describe it. It was just this old Victorian print of a boy at the wheel of a great ship.

And as you look at the ship, it's at storm at sea, and the waves are crashing over the bow and the sails are all ripped. And yet the boy's face is just completely confident and calm. And the reason for it is also depicted in that picture. It is an image of Christ behind the boy with his hand on the boy's shoulder. And the subtext: Jesus is my co-pilot.

The message that when Christ is present and real in our lives, we never feel more confident, we never feel better than when we know Christ is near. What happened in me that when I got near to my wife, she felt worse, not confident, not courageous? She actually felt questioning herself when I was close.

It was the beginning of a journey of saying, if Christ is treating me in such a way that I'm to be mirroring to my spouse and to my family, what does that look like? And to begin to question words and actions and thoughts that gave me authority, but not for her sake.

What does authority look like if it's meant to glorify one's wife? She begins to recognize her ability. Just the end of the story, just a few years ago, our washer was on the blink again. Said to Kathy, "Call the repairman." She didn't do it again.

No, she took the part out of the machine, looked up the number, called the store, told them the part number, ordered the part, got the part, and installed it herself. What a woman!

I know it seems silly, but it's the journey we all have to think about. Are we adding or subtracting, glorifying or diminishing? And the question has to be answered not simply for our spouse's sake, because our responsibility is not simply to glorify our spouse. Do you recognize it is to sanctify ourselves if we are the head of a home?

After all, do you recognize the difficulty of these words? I mean, if you just read them selfishly, you won't get the point. Verse 28: "In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church."

There is this sense that if I'm taking care of my wife, if I'm building her up, then I'm actually helping myself out. Why is that? Well, the reason for it is verse 31. Paul says, "A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."

Now surely that's a reflection of the sexual union, but it's saying far more. That God has called us from different backgrounds, from different homes, from different places with different personalities and gifts and put us together.

Because except for those who are gifted for celibacy, who are complete in it if it were their marriage to God alone, that the rest of us are actually made whole, made complete, made all that God intends us to be as we become one with one another, as the complimentary relationships are building on one another, refining one another.

God is putting us together for a purpose. And if that union is perceived, then if you damage one, you actually damage both, because we are meant to be one. If I am diminishing my wife, I'm actually damaging the wholeness that God intends for my own life.

She is intended by God to be part of the sanctification of my own heart. Because of those difficulties in my family in my teen years, I would have to tell you just as I went numb in order not to be hurt, not to be affected by the pain in my family, I took that sense of emotion into my marriage, into my family, into my ministry.

If the Lord had not put Kathy into my life with her sensitivity, with her love, with her tenderness, with her being willing to say to me at certain times in our lives, "Brian, you know when somebody hugs you, you don't just have to freeze up. When somebody gives you a gift, it's actually okay to say thank you."

Because I was so separate from my emotions, I so desperately needed her to change me. And you and I know these people. You and I know men who have so diminished their wives that to their own demerit, the man becomes more like his base self every day.

Because he has so diminished his wife that she is not helping him become all that God intended for him to be. He is actually meant to sanctify himself by glorifying his wife, that she is playing the role and the purpose in his life that God intends.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. The apostle Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians to declare God's plan that the gospel of Jesus Christ would reach the world through weak and sinful people like you and me.

He writes that God has redeemed us to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. When we lift our eyes beyond ourselves to share Paul's expansive vision, then we too will join his doxology for God's amazing grace that saves individuals, empowers the church, and transforms the world.

Yes, such grace really is possible, and Pastor Bryan's commentary on the book of Ephesians clearly teaches the details of this amazing truth. As a thank you for your support of our ministry here at Unlimited Grace, we would like to send you a copy of Dr. Chapell's commentary, which he wrote for the Reformed Expository Commentary series.

You can request your copy of the commentary on Ephesians when you donate online at UnlimitedGrace.com or by calling 844-41-GRACE. That's 844-414-7223. And now, more from Bryan Chapell on today's Unlimited Grace.

Bryan Chapell: He is actually meant to sanctify himself by glorifying his wife, that she is playing the role and the purpose in his life that God intends. I think of it maybe as a silly example when Kathy and I were working at Covenant Seminary and there was a time that we invited a young couple over to our house one night and after supper we were playing the card game Uno.

You know Uno, where you put the numbers in order and you know before you get the last card in order, lest you win without being able to be challenged, you're supposed to say something before you get your last card in order. What are you supposed to say? You're supposed to say "Uno!"

All right. And the wife of this couple, she kept almost winning, but she would not say "Uno." I mean, it just got embarrassing. She could win, but she wouldn't say it. And so she just kept going. She'd almost win again, she wouldn't say it. Finally we said, "What gives, guys? Why won't she say Uno?"

Well, her husband told us. He said, "Well, a few weeks ago my wife embarrassed me in a public conversation, and so we agreed that she would not speak in public until I give her permission." Well, our first thought of course was, "Well, you can't play Uno that way."

No, that was not our first thought. How sad, we thought. But the sadness of greatest intensity was yet to come. Some months later, as that particular husband struggled with issues of depression, he had to leave school, and I tell you, I've never heard from them again.

But as we reflected upon their lives, what we recognized is God had given him this wonderfully capable, intelligent, loving wife, but he had so undermined her that when it came to the point in his life he needed her, he had no support. He had nothing to lean on, because he had so undermined her that she could not help him, which of course is her divine design as well.

That God intended him to build her up because it's just as he says there: if we are one, then a man who nourishes and cherishes his wife as Christ does the church, actually is nourishing and caring for himself. He needs her to be built up because it's part of his own spiritual growth as God in fact intends.

We become what God intends as we are helping our spouses become all that God intends for them. It's the building up. It's the use of authority for the sake of another. Where do we get the resources? I mean, if our responsibility is to be using authority for the sake of another, and if the sake of another is ultimately meaning we want to glorify them, and ultimately through that to sanctify ourselves, that we may be all before the Lord that God even intends for the husband to be, where do we get the resources to do that?

Well, actually it's right back where we were beginning, verse 25. "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." We are being told what it means to be the Christian head of a home by being reminded what Christ has done for us.

Men, what's that saying to us? But that you cannot reflect the face of Christ if you don't know the face of Christ toward you. As we understand what his forgiveness, what his encouragement, what his support, what his pardon is, then our tanks begin to fill up with grace.

And it's really out of the overflow of the grace that we know that we're able to minister in our families as God intends. I recognize that what that may mean for us even today is that you have to drink deeply of that grace again. Listen, I cannot talk about husband and wife relationships without thinking about my own failures and faults.

I trust that is true of every sensitive head of a home here. That I'm saying things that you recognize are beyond you to some extent apart from the grace and mercy of God, which means we have to drink of it again. To say this is the very same apostle who said that Jesus can redeem the days, right?

That Jesus can restore the days that the locusts have eaten. That if we say, "I haven't lived up to this. I'm not even sure where to begin now," that part of our understanding of the grace and mercy of God is that he is able to forgive and strengthen and start us anew.

That once I recognize that what God has called me to do is to be a husband who glorifies my wife, that somehow as God has put us together in this union that is divine, that I myself would be sanctified as God intended. That when that happens, there is beauty that I know because I have experienced the grace of God in my life and I just want somebody else to feel what I have felt.

Ultimately the resource is the sacrifice of Christ in our behalf that we show to others. Leadership in the Bible is always found on the path to the cross. I think of one of the best examples in my life, some of you will know, it's J. Robertson McQuilkin, long-term president of Columbia International University, who right at the peak of his ministry and reputation had the experience of his wife being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

And as the Alzheimer's began to progress in her, she became so desperate for her husband that even though the distance from their home to the president's office at Columbia was a half mile away, she would walk to his office to be close to him. And he would have somebody to walk her back home, and she would walk again, sometimes as many as ten times a day, not even remembering she'd already made the journey.

Until one night, after one of those ten-mile days, he and getting her dressed for bed, took off her shoes and found her feet bloody. And in washing her feet, discerned that even more Christ-like act to which he was being called.

As the leader of his home, who would use his position, his understanding, even his authority for the sake of another, he resigned from his position of prestige in order to care for his wife. When that was put out in an article and later in a book form, some of you will know the book called Muriel's Blessing, people just overwhelmingly responded to this man who gave so much for his wife's glory.

People called him, they wrote him, they renewed their vows, some of them restored marriages that had long been broken. And McQuilkin, who was at that point suffering with cancer himself, said to his oncologist one day, "I don't get it. I want to care for my wife. Why is caring for my wife so moving to other people?"

And the oncologist said, "It is no mystery to me. In my profession where I care for so many couples, it is not rare at all for a wife to give herself to her husband's care. But," he said, "it is actually quite rare for a husband to give himself for his wife's care."

It should not be so in the church. What God has called us to do is to recognize the great grace which we have received, and having received it and understood it, not walk away from it, not say it's not my responsibility to make sure my family knows this, but to use my authority to see that love and justice and mercy are known in this place because I have known it.

And in making sure that my family knows this, I lead. I lead in the gospel. That my wife might know her glory, and I might know more of the grace because I have shown it to another. May Christ, men, make you a mirror of the grace that is in Christ Jesus, for a glorious home, a glorious spouse, and a blessed marriage.

Guest (Male): That's Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace. You can find a collection of more valuable resources at UnlimitedGrace.com. When you visit, you will find today's message and many others from Pastor Bryan.

Also be sure to request a copy of Dr. Chapell's commentary on Ephesians. We'll send you this book right away as our way of saying thank you for your most generous financial support. Please be sure to join us next time as once again we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by his unlimited grace.

This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace Media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.