Well, with Christ's love for the Church providing the typological pattern or the archetype

for a man's love of his wife, it's no surprise that we get a lot of emails from husbands

who don't know if they're on the right track here.

What does Christ like love look like in the life of a husband's daily life?

It's the question today from a listener named Zachary.

Pastor John, this winter, I will be married, and I have little to no experience with

men in my life leading their wives well.

What are some general parameters for me and for all new husbands to know whether we

are leading our brides in a way that honors and reflects Christ's love of the Church?

Okay, Zachary, here it is in a nutshell, make Ephesians 5, 25 to 33 your lifelong charter

of how to love your wife and what it means to live in the covenant relationship which

God designed in order to show the world the beauty of his own covenant love for the Church.

Make it your life-long charter.

It is an inexhaustible passage.

It will break you down.

And then build you back up again and again as you discover more and more deeply the wonders

of the mystery of marriage.

Very few people in our day, even in the Church, think of marriage as deeply and seriously

and gloriously as God intends.

We have, by and large, it seems to me, absorbed the world's superficial views about marriage

and its glories and we've utterly neglected what it is really about.

And then add 1 Peter 3, 7, 1 verse to this lifelong charter.

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