Christ's Love: The Model for Marital Relationships

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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, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she might be holy and without blemish. [00:01:22]

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. [00:03:27]

Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church is a specific example of human Christians loving other a particular other Christian, the way we're all supposed to love each other. Now Paul's right there and say what would you respond if a person said well that's not very special. [00:03:16]

A husband dare not set his standard of love toward his wife lower than the highest standard in the universe, like it doesn't get any higher than love like Christ loved the church and gave himself. This is the highest standard for how you treat somebody that can possibly be conceived. [00:04:12]

In the same way as you find yourself loving your wife like Christ loves the church, in the same way husbands love your wives as your own bodies and you might say ah maybe that is unique, maybe that's unique so here's where the peculiar kind of relationship between a man and a woman comes out. [00:05:06]

This body right here is not the body of Christ, this is not the same argument as 425 where it says we're all part of one body and therefore when we mistreat another we're mistreating ourselves. That's not the argument here, this is the husband's own physical body. [00:06:36]

This husband has a physical body and he is to love his wife the way he nourishes and cherishes his own physical body. He doesn't jump off cliffs, he doesn't walk out in front of trucks, he doesn't skip meals for 50 days at a shot, he feeds himself, he shaves himself, he bathes himself. [00:06:57]

Therefore man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh, so this one flesh is the ground for this statement husbands love your wives as your own body because God in a way that nobody can fathom, nobody can plumb the bottom of this mystery. [00:07:46]

God in marriage has ordained to unite bodies as one flesh, Noel my wife is my body in a way that no other woman and no other man is and she is such till one of us dies. Don't rend asunder what God has united, that's not a small thing this one flesh here is a miracle wrought by God. [00:08:23]

Christ love the church is a model for all Christians loving all Christians but don't lose sight, it's a model that is infinite, you can't set a higher model or goal of love than Christ gave himself in his infinite worth for an unworthy sinful rebellious church you can't and so. [00:09:11]

Husbands make sure you set the highest possible love standard for loving this woman but if you want to get specific about the peculiar relationship you go here and husbands are to love their wives as their bodies because that body and her body are one flesh. [00:09:42]

When you nourish yourself or when you nourish her and cherish her, you are nourishing and cherishing yourself in a most profound mysterious and wonderful way. [00:10:08]

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