Jeff, how you doing? I'm doing great, Scott. How are you? I'm doing really well. So this is Jeff Pollard.

You've got, if you don't know already, Chapel Library has some of the most wonderful resources. Jeff sends them all over to the world, into prisons and all kinds of places. Really a wonderful ministry, Chapel Library, and he's a pastor at Mount Zion down there in Pensacola, Florida, and a place I love to go, a place I actually have the privilege of going at the end of the year to be with you guys to do kind of your family camp. Our family loves coming down there. We love having you.

Well, okay, so here we are, Jeff. We're on the last chapter of this book on love. Gush decided to make love the finale of this thing. And it really is a remarkably structured chapter to me because he goes into so much detail about it. And I sent the guys out an outline a couple hours ago, but I'll, so I'll just kind of repeat what's on this outline.

But he says that there are two patterns of love for a wife. And the first pattern is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And it might seem counterintuitive or strange to most ears to think that the second pattern for the love of a wife is the man himself, the husband himself. You know, how does a husband become the pattern? Well, of course, Gogue gets it from Ephesians 5.

But what's really fascinating to me about the way he deals with this is when he talks about Christ, he just details all these different ways that Christ loves. The first way, by the order of the love, second by truth, by cause, by quality, by quantity, and number six by duration. So what we see Gush doing, what all good shepherds should do, and that is to apply the word of God, to take the explicit statements of scripture and then say, here's what they mean in real life, like, you know, in this kind of moment in your life or that kind of situation. And so, Gogue is going to spend an enormous amount of time here just talking about those different things. It's beautiful.

This chapter is wonderfully balanced. He strives all the way through for a remarkable balance, and I think he achieves it. I think anybody that reads it objectively has to come away seeing his love for Christ, his love for scripture, his love for marriage, and for his own wife. The biographies always speak about what a wonderful husband and father he was, and I think that that really shines through here. So he starts out here saying that the Apostle Paul lays out these two duties of a husband to know how Christ loved his church and secondly how a man loves himself and that that should help him figure out how to do this.

So let's start with the first one. He talks about the order of love. And the whole idea of this part is that God loved us first. That Christ loved his church first. Yeah, he's one of the most Christ-centered writers on this subject that I've ever read.

And At every point, no matter what he's talking about, he will ultimately either begin with Christ or get to Christ. And so that's the obvious thing to do, is to show that the first and most important order is that Christ loved us, his bride first. And that's the order that we should love our wives, that kind of order. You know, a few years ago, I did a conference called Gospel-Centered Marriages for a Glorious Church. And it's funny that he starts out with the gospel.

He starts out with, we love him because he first loved us. It really is the essence of a marriage that has the gospel at the heart of it. And then he says on page 258, he says, "'There is in us by nature no spark of love at all. "'If Christ by his loving of us did not first "'and still love into us, We could no more love him than a living bird rise out of a cold egg if it were not kept warm by the mothers sitting upon it. I love that imagery.

I do too. Yeah, we're marking the same things in the chapter. He was a master at grabbing examples that help us to get a hold of the glorious truth here. And of course, underlying virtually everything he says is good solid biblical doctrine. He's talking here about man's depravity.

And apart from the glorious grace and the eternal love of God for us from the covenant of grace and gloriously expressed in Christ. That's it. He loved us, and we would never have loved him if he had not come and opened our hearts in love. It's beautiful. Yeah, and he's saying you're nothing but like a dead bird and a cold egg.

And what's really amazing, he's saying, your wife can be like that. She can be like a dead bird and a cold egg, and what are you going to do? You're going to warm her up. You're going to bring her to life in the same way that Christ brought to life. I mean, you think about times when a wife might be languishing or going through something like that.

She might actually be like that. Her love might be cold. She might be almost dead. Men can do things to their wives. Things can happen to wives that can cause them to enter into some kind of a state like that.

And what's a husband going to do? Wine and complain about it? Wish he had another girl? What is he going to do? Well, of course, Gush says, you be like Christ.

You bring the warmth into that dead bird and that cold egg. Amen. In all of these chapters, at least it strikes me, He points to Christ more clearly and more powerfully than all of the chapters. Of course, for him, as we'll get to, this is the foundation. Even though he doesn't begin with it, he makes clear that this is what everything must flow from.

And so he sets the glorious picture of Christ before us and then says, all right men, here's the greatest love that's ever been shown to human beings. And as Christ has shown you that love, no matter what condition your wife is in, you need to show that kind of love to her. Yeah, yeah, and he's grounding this in the whole doctrine of redemption, and really of election, that the doctrine of election is so clearly spoken here that God is the initiator. This is the whole thing, God is the initiator in love. And he says on 258, he says, thus a husband must first begin to love his wife.

His place of high rank and authority requires that he should be to his wife a guide, which title is plainly given to him by the Holy Spirit to teach him to go before her and by his example to instruct her to do her duty. And it's really amazing, he quotes Proverbs 2.17, which is about a wayward woman, which really speaks of the reality that she's wayward because the guide of her youth was her husband, and he didn't lead her in the right way. Yeah, his use of Scripture throughout is remarkable. Again, my opinion, lots of the Puritans wrote numerous books on the family and this one stands out. But every one of them you read will begin at this place and point out that the husband's authority has been given to him to do his wife good.

He's never been given authority in order to have his own way. Yeah. But that authority has been given to him in order to love his wife as Christ loved the church, to do her good, and part of that includes being a guide in spiritual things. This does not assume that a wife knows nothing about Christ or about the scripture. In fact, she might know more than he.

But this has to do with the role of responsibility that he has in guiding his home according to the Word of God. Beautifully expressed. You know, he even becomes pretty rough on the husband. He says that it's a shame for a man, you know, who is in the image and glory of God and the head of Christ. This is on 258.

He says it's a shame when a man has to be prompted by his wife's love or by his wife's conduct. He shouldn't have to be prompted. He should be the prompter, the one who's provoking the love. By the way, he uses that word provoke in a number of places throughout these books where he speaks of a husband as being a provoker. He's supposed to provoke his wife to what?

To love. That's right. And it's this whole initiating thing. And also he goes back to this whole idea of the weaker vessel on 2-58. He says she's the weaker vessel, quote, under him, and so she should be learning how to love from her husband in that sense.

Exactly. And properly understood, this idea of love and this idea of a relationship between a husband and a wife utterly shatters the kind of notion that we live in today where people just have these feelings about each other. Here the husband, as Christ with the church, as you were pointing out with election, must take the initiative and because he is love, show that love. And It's the same thing with the husband, because he has chosen this woman to be his wife. He must now not wait for a feeling, but understanding what love truly is in Christ, he must begin to pursue his wife, guide her, encourage her, feed her with the scriptures, and so it's all laid out in that way.

Yeah. Hey, so I'm gonna ask you a pretty strange question right now. I've been thinking about it really for only about an hour, And I actually called my wife about it a little while ago to ask her opinion. But you have this picture where her husband is the initiator, right? And she is in that cold egg.

And it's a husband's design to bring her out of it. And it made me wonder why it is that generally, not exclusively, but generally, you find the pattern where the husband is the initiator in sexual intimacy. And again, generally, not exclusively, the woman is less likely to desire it, and the husband is way more likely. Is it possible that God created this in order to demonstrate the initiating necessity that's there to bring them together. The Apostle Paul makes it really clear, you should come together, and there's only one reason why you shouldn't come together, if it's prayer and fasting.

Other than that, do not deprive one another. So we know that there's this design of God, that the husband and I have come together when they're not, something's really broken. But he gives... Is it possible that he gives more desire to the man because he is the head, he is the initiator, and he's the one who's supposed to make sure this happens. Sure, I think that's possible.

Jeff, I'm sorry for springing a pretty hairy question without even telling you about it. But I'm only thinking about it for a short time. Here we are, live on the internet, sure. No, I actually don't think that that's a bizarre question. I think that's probably a very good and thoughtful question.

There is, first of all, in 1 Corinthians 7, as you're alluding to, there is a beautiful mutuality when it comes to the issue of sexuality. And you see the same kind of beautiful mutuality in the Song of Solomon. The scripture is actually very clear and sometimes very explicit in the way that it talks about sexuality and the intimacy between a husband and a wife. So I think one of the greatest errors in the church is either talking about sexuality too much or too little. And I think too little is the way it's been until recently.

And we have some now that talk about it perhaps too explicitly and too much, But the fact is the scriptures are very clear about this. And so I think that's probably really worth pondering is the fact that men generally are the initiators. And that can be prompted simply by sin. But at the same time, I think because it seems to be so universal, it probably is something wired into men. Yeah, and what is it that makes a wife not want to respond?

Often it's the sin of the man, the neglect of the man, the way he's treated her, and so she can't be ready because she's been hurt. And so a man can initiate in a wrong way, walking in sin, being ungracious to her, not caring for her, and then demanding intimacy. So I don't think we should conclude that a man should just go demand these kinds of things. But there's a context of love that really creates the desire in both of them. But perhaps you might find the wife be of a lesser drive in the whole matter.

So anyway, I've also often wondered about the menstrual cycle. Why is it that a woman goes through emotional cycles and things like that, or she feels bad. And perhaps that is like the Church as well. She has times of struggle, and who's going to see her through her husband? Who's going to see her through her cycle?

Well, the Church is like that too. Hey, we're pastors of churches. We know that churches go through various cycles. And do we abandon the church if they're having a difficult moment? I don't think so.

No, not at all. In fact, that's the time to shine with Christ's likeness. One of the things that he talks about beautifully here is loving your wife in her weakness. In fact, if you don't mind, let me share a quote with you from another Puritan. Yeah, please do.

Yeah, this is beautiful. First of all, I'm just going to share a couple, but this is from Richard Steele. This is from the Free Grace Broadcaster on Marriage. But there's a beautiful article by him on this and he says, first of all, Christ's love was real for he died of it or he died because of it. The husband must write after this copy, not to love his wife in word and tongue only, but in deed and in truth, that if his heart were opened, her name might be found written there.

So first of all, as Christ's bride was on his heart, Steele was pointing out that our bride should be on our heart. In fact, our love for her should be so real. If the surgeon were to open up our heart, he'd find our wife's name written there. That's just one of those beautiful images to me. Yeah, it's gorgeous.

Now, he also goes on to say this. He says, the ordinance of God hath made her one flesh with me, and the law of nature obligeth me to love my own flesh. Therefore, though her beauty be decayed, her portion spent, her weaknesses great, and her usefulness small, yet she is a piece of myself. Here the wise God hath determined my affection. When all is said, this is the only sure foundation and it holds perpetually.

Again, he says, she comes to that place where all these things that perhaps you once desired seem to have faded. It doesn't matter a lick. That love is to be perpetual. Christ has given you a command. God has determined what your affection is.

It's your wife. And so it is with us. We're weak, feeble as the church, and Christ's love for us is always there. It is always powerful. It is always strong.

And that's his whole point there in this first point, order. So the order of the love is that it begins with him. And then the second is truth. It's a love that is born out of real live fruit. In other words, he takes action.

And it's a truthful love. It's not just a verbally communicated love. What do you, what do you think about that? Oh, this is, this was fantastic. This was one of my favorite parts actually, because he says here beginning at the bottom of page 58, the 258, it was therefore not in word only, no, nor only in heart, but in action also.

So what he means by true, you know, is not true love in the sense that I really feel it, but it's true in the sense that it leads to action. True love for him means an active love that's actually doing something. And then he says, Soma's husbands love their wives in truth and in action. Such a love is required of a man to his brother, 1 John 3.18. Much more therefore to his wife, who is not only a sister, as the apostle expressly calls her, 1 Corinthians 9-5, but nearer than sister, mother, daughter, friend, or any other whatsoever.

So again, the idea isn't a gushy, syrupy feeling, but it is a love that springs into action. You know, it's from the heart and it begins to show itself by what he does for her. That's what makes it true love. Yeah. You know, one thing that really, really astonished me about this is he went off on a little rabbit trail on this and he talked about when a young man comes courting, this is on page 259, he says, men coming to court and woo a woman will promise mountains but not perform molehills.

In other words, that's sort of the illustration. The guy was like that before you got married, before you got married. Don't expect that he's going to do it after fathers. So fathers, take it from Gooch, 259, These guys that promise mountains but they're only performing molehills. They really don't love.

They don't do anything for other people. They're not taking action to care for other people. He talks about couples who'll snuggle and kiss and everything like that, but they don't really do anything for their wives. It's all talk and no action. Some things don't change, right?

Yeah, that's right. I mean, as pastors, we deal with this kind of thing all the time. We've got guys that love to snuggle and kiss, but that's it. So, again, this is their idea of true love, and Gooch is saying, no, back up, you've got this wrong, sport. It shows itself in a different way.

Yeah, my wife likes to do more than just snuggle and kiss too. She really wants me to do, she really loves for me to do things for her. She really does. And it's a blessing to her when I do, all too rarely. So then he talks about the cause, the cause of his love.

And that's the third illustration that he gives for the love of Jesus Christ and the love of a husband. And so he quotes Deuteronomy 7, 7 through 8, that God loved his people first, but there was nothing inherently deserving of the love. So now it's, what is the cause of the love? Well, there was really nothing there. They had to, you know, to be that cause.

In that section, you know, in Page 260, 261, what really stuck out to you, Jeff? 260 and 261, wow. Under the cause here, he's talking about in imitation of Christ, husbands should love their wives even if there is nothing in wives to move them to do so. Right. But only because they're their wives.

That's exactly right. I mean, I've got my mark right there on that very point. That's exactly what jumped right off of the page because he begins once again in wonderful fashion by showing God's love first. God didn't love us because he saw anything wonderful in us. That comes as hard news to some people, but God didn't love us because we were wonderful.

In fact, we were wicked, sinful, and deserve nothing but hell. But in his wonderful kindness, out of the fact that he is love, arose a love that came to conquer us in grace. Now building on that, then he says, if there's nothing in your wife, you know, to move you to love, that doesn't matter. Love her anyway. Love her powerfully.

Love her deeply. Love her abidingly. Pour yourself out for her. Is that not what Christ did for us? Yeah.

And then he goes into the next item, quality. There's a certain kind of quality of the love that he's identifying. He calls it a holy and pure and chaste quality of love. And of course he's quoting Ephesians 5, 26 and 27, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." So there's this quality of love. It's sort of the way...

It's the way that he does it, is kind of what he's talking about. Yeah. As he is, Gudge says, As He is, so is His love, as is evident by the effect of it. It moved Him to sanctify and cleanse His church, to make it a glorious church. Yeah, again, it's a love that does something, it is a love that is pure.

But let me share one more thought from Richard Steele. He says, true conjugal love, marital love, to a wife reaches her soul so as to see an amiableness in her mind and disposition, so as to study how to polish her soul more and more with wisdom and piety." So he says it's the kind of love that as Christ loved us and purposed to cleanse us with the washing of the water by the word, to change us, to transform us, and to make us like him. We should be doing the same thing. We should love our wives and study her, and study how, I love that term, to polish her soul, not in our image, but as he points out, with a true wisdom and piety, that the kind of love that we learn from Christ and the kind of things that we learn from the scriptures. You know, he addresses something that I think is worth bringing up.

He talks about that the quality of this love, he says, is not sinful lust and is made dirty. So he talks about the potentiality to have the relationship be sullied by even a kind of impurity with one another. And he talks about, you know, even the way that they talk together. He says, against this purity is not only adultery but also immorality, lewdness, and uncleanness with his wife. For many husbands without self-discipline or purity, giving the reigns to their uncontrolled lust, shows as much indecency and plain filthiness gestures and actions to their wives as others do prostitutes and harlots.

Now this is a big issue today for young men who've been raised on pornography and sadomasochism and things like that. And they begin to treat their wives like harlots. They actually want them to look like harlots and they speak to them as if they were, as if somehow that's stimulating. And he's really taking this on. It's interesting that he goes after this in the pre-internet age.

Right. Yeah, I thought that was one of the most powerful things that he said, and one of the things that is absolutely relevant to the kind of culture and the kind of mindset that our society presently is stewing in. And as you're completely right, one of the things that we're having to deal with, I don't know about you, but I imagine it's this way. One of the constant things that we have to deal with is pornography, both in young men and in older men, because of the ease of getting it. The same mindset that they couldn't click a mouse and get to that kind of wickedness.

They could still see it, they could see it in their cultures, and that's one of the greatest tragedies, because at that point a man is not loving his wife. He's acting out the lust that someone else has stirred up in him. Right, sure. And so he is actually defiling the marriage bed. He actually puts himself under the curse of God who will judge whoremongers.

He's become a whoremonger in his own house. Yeah. And simply substitutes his wife for the filth that he's seen. Sure. So that's very powerful and important that all the men that hear this understand how utterly destructive this is to a wife and to marriage, as well as bringing shame and dishonor to the name of Christ.

Yeah, I think all men should ask, you know, How am I treating my wife? Am I treating my wife like a prostitute? Am I thinking of her that way? Am I talking to her that way? Am I demanding to do things with her that I got from a filthy and corrupt world.

And who am I patterning after here? It's a really critical matter. And I know my wife is counseled with women who've really struggled with things their husbands want them to do. But it always, always, always, always goes down to one thing. They've been watching a bunch of pornography.

And so the love is just broken in that home. So men, pay attention. This is really critical. Our thoughts, the imagery that we have for sexual intimacy, where do we get it? There's one place we shouldn't be getting it.

And that is in these filthy places. And it'll destroy love. It really does. In fact, I would add to your admonition, I would say, men, your wife is not a whore, and she's not in competition with a whore, ever. She is to be loved, and to be loved as Christ purely loves the church.

So those of you that are watching this filth and then making your wives perform are actually doing nothing but self gratification. This isn't love. Sure. And it needs to be repented of and cleansed in Christ. This is such a serious matter.

And it'd be worth men sitting down and taking some time and asking how a man would treat a prostitute differently than a wife and is any of that type of thing happening. So that's this is all about the quality of that love and it's the quality of purity and beauty it's such a beautiful section here But he talks about filthiness and gestures and actions and all kinds of things like that. But then he goes to not just quality but quantity, you know, And he says on page 262 that the quantity of Christ's love for the church is, quote, above measure. That's in the middle of page 262. And again, he's quoting Ephesians 5.25, love your husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

So it's an immeasurable quantity of love. And then he quotes scripture all the way through this part. But what thoughts do you have, Jeff, about this matter of quantity? Yeah, the God who loves us never has been and never will be stingy with his love. He overflows with the love.

He immerses us. He overwhelms us with his love, his mercy, and his grace. And Gudge says, this may seem to be too high a stretch and level of love for a husband to attain to, a matter in which he is to leave his pattern and not to follow Christ. Yeah, it's such an extraordinary love, such a high love, such a supreme love, who can match it. But he says, but John writes that the love of the brethren should reach even this degree.

And so the answer in my thinking, Scott, because I, who is sufficient for these things? The answer in my thinking is that a man must immerse himself in the gospels. Right. He must read the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, read them over and again. See how Christ loves his church.

Amen. And be immersed in the love of Christ, and then begin to try to follow in that path. Yeah, you know, over and over again, I have young men come to me and they say, how do I prepare myself for marriage? This is one of the answers we should give them. Learn of Christ, see how he treated his bride.

That's how you do it. And go love that bride the way that he did. So he talks about the quantity and then he talks about the duration there on page 264 and 265, that it's unending. Top of page 264, he quotes John 13, 1, Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." Here, Gush, he does exactly what I just mentioned. He goes to a place in the gospels and he speaks of how it applies to a husband.

Amen. Yeah. He says beautifully, just in the next paragraph, His love is based not on what his church deserves, but on the unchangeableness of his own will. Our hope is the fact that God's love will never change because he never changes. His character is immutable.

He will never change. Therefore, his love never changes and therefore his promises, his eternal purpose in Christ never changes. So again, that's the kind of pattern that we have set before us. Christ didn't love us before the foundation of the world, because we were worthy of His love. We were worthy of nothing but hell, of wrath, and of fury.

But he purposed to overcome our evil with his great love. And while our love is weak, feeble, limited, and can change, His love never does. That's why we've got to be focused on his to know it and then to reflect it in our marriages. Amen. He gives this illustration of Hosea and his wife Gomer, who was, her immorality seemed boundless.

She had children born out of wedlock from her adulterous affairs. And here's what he says to her, Hosea 2.19, I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and in compassion." And this is this duration, it's unending. And I love what you quoted, that this is a love that's not based on what the church deserves, but just it's based on the unchangeableness of his own will. And, you know, so husbands can have love that's kind of like a weather vane.

It just moves according to the way that the winds are blowing. This is completely contrary to what Gooch is saying. He has a man, not like a weather vein at all, but like somebody who's just right on target, right on course, fixed on really the goal, and that is to love his wife regardless, even if she's like that dead chicken and a cold egg. I love the next quote. Again, next paragraph, he says, many whose love was as hot as fire while their wives were young or their friends lived, or while they pleased them, when those causes are taken away, prove in their love as cold as ice.

And that's exactly where we must know Christ's love. It never cools down. It never diminishes. As we get older, as we get more feeble, our flesh never gets better. But his love is always powerful, mighty, strong, unending.

And he says, you know, if you leave your wife late in life, you're just proving that you never really loved her anyway. Right. That's right. That's amazing. That's exactly right.

You know, Jeff, he admits something that is pretty obvious from this whole thing, that a pretty heavy burden is laid upon a husband. And It's the heaviest burden for sure. And if you just look at the quantity of commands in Ephesians 5, you know, for the husband or the wife, it's pretty significantly heavy on a husband. Why do you think that is? Well, I don't think we can ever escape the gospel picture that has been set before us in marriage.

That's why Paul says in Ephesians five, I'm speaking a great mystery here. But I'm speaking of Christ and the church. While both have vitally important roles, the husband has been given the responsibility as the head of the home to reflect Christ's love. And therefore it is the greater burden. And he says, and this is kind of controversial probably in most people's thinking, he says that the wife has the easier part.

He says in page 265, he says, "'I am sure the heaviest burden is laid upon the husband's shoulders. And it is easier to perform the part of a good wife than of a good husband. It's easier for her to do that. And, you know, a woman might say, well, no, mine is the hardest part because I have to submit. But Gooch is saying it differently.

What do you think about that? There was a movie a long time ago in which two men were standing in a movie line. And one man hears the other one talking about the film they're about to go into and he makes a comment about what the writer of the film meant and all that kind of stuff. The man standing behind him disagreed with him and said, you don't know what you're talking about. And the guy gave his opinion again.

And so the man arguing with him turns around, reaches behind a bush and pulls the author of the book out. And it says, now tell him. And the author says, you completely missed what I had to say. You missed it all together. I say that to say that I wish I could reach behind the bush and pull Guj out right now and say, Bill, what, how exactly did you mean this?

I'm going to just try to interpret. I may miss him altogether. I think the key is in the fact he doesn't say that it's easy for a wife to submit. He says that it's easier to submit to the husband than it is for the husband to attempt to fulfill the role of Christ. So I think it's a matter of degree, but I don't think it's intended to give the idea that somehow submitting to a sinful man is an easy thing.

I think it simply means that when we compare what is required, we understand that when we see the picture of Christ and the church, that the church is weak and feeble, needs the husband, and that Christ is the one who loves, supports, provides for the church, protects, etc., etc., and that a weak and feeble sinful man attempting to love like Christ, it's just out of the ballpark. It's impossible to do apart from the grace of Christ. Amen. Yeah, That's a great point. It's easier to be the church than it is to be like Christ, for sure.

Well, so hey, let's move on to the next illustration, you know. The two patterns of love. First, Christ, we just went over that. And then he says himself that's the second pattern and and chrissy he's quoting if he's inspired where uh... You know in in five twenty in the same time as well as ought to love their wives as their own bodies for he who loves his wife loves himself." And the whole logic is, if you want to know how to love your wife, look at how much you love yourself.

And go do that with her. Right, right. Yeah, I thought he made such a great point on page 266 in the first paragraph, where he says, for this is the pattern, or excuse me, for this pattern is more tangible and more easily discerned. It's hard for us to grasp the extraordinary, the superlative love of Christ, where it's a little easier for us to understand the love that we have for ourselves. So he says, for this pattern is more tangible and more easily discerned.

Everyone knows how he loves his own body, but few or none know how Christ loves his church. So I think he really makes a beautiful point. He says, this is why Paul gave us the two patterns. He gave us the pattern of Christ first because that's the blueprint. He says, but now let me give you something that's a little more clear for us as fallen and sinful people to understand.

You know how you love yourself, now love your wife that way. Yeah, I thought it was really funny that he brought out the point that a man's love for himself was without hypocrisy. You know, He is who he says he is and he does in accordance to what he thinks he is. He's perfectly consistent with himself, but not with other people. A man can be a hypocrite with his wife, he can be all talk and no action uh...

With his wife or with anything else but a man is pretty much walks and talks without hypocrisy toward himself he's consistent consistently in love with himself that's the idea and but then he says you know there are two aspects of how he loves himself. And he says that first of all, he's tender toward himself. In pages 265 and 266, he outlines all these different ways that a man is just so tender to himself. He says, no other man...this is on page 267, no other man will or can so tenderly handle a man's hand, arm, leg, or any other part of his body as himself. He is very aware of his own pain.

He nailed us, didn't he? Yeah. We're just so tender toward ourselves. But other people, you know, we can kind of say, do whatever we want, whether it hurts them or not. Yeah, yeah.

Gudge overflowed with Christ and his Word, and as a man who studied the massive amounts every day that he did, not only in the scriptures but in many other things, his mind was full of good things. He had very good examples, and he knew the human condition. So he could say, listen, Men, we know how to love ourselves. We know that when we're hurting, we take care of ourselves. He says, now, if you can't get a hold of that picture of Christ so easily, just stop and think how tenderly you take care of yourself and now do that for your dear wife.

Yeah, yeah. He nails it. What a great image. So he talks about tenderness as a way that a man treats himself. And then he talks about cheerfulness, how a man treats himself with such cheerfulness.

And he says in page 267, no friend, no parent, No other party will or can so willingly and cheerfully do any kindness for one as a man for himself. Whatever a man does for himself, he does much more cheerfully than for any other. That's right. Same paragraph. No other proof that experience is needed.

And of course the whole time here is he's making the case of why Paul used this image. So he says, let men take notice of their own mind and disposition when they do things for themselves and this, take note of this guys, he says, And this will be as clear as the light when the sun shines for the new day. It couldn't be more obvious. We love ourselves. Oh my.

So it's there. And with that, we should love our wives. We should pour ourselves out. Yeah, yeah. You know, he quotes Boaz in Ruth 3.11.

You know, he quotes Boaz who was anticipating the needs of Ruth who said, I will do for you all you ask. And that's sort of the spirit of this cheerfulness, cheerful desire to do, you know, to do things to help his wife. And I think that's one of the questions we should be asking, you know, do we have that tenderness toward our wives that we have to ourselves, do we have that cheerfulness about doing things for ourselves in the same way that we do for our wives? And I think it's pretty obviously we come up pretty short. On the matter of cheerfulness, what would be an example of this, how you treat yourself with cheerfulness?

What do you think that men struggle with in this area of treating a wife with cheerfulness? Well, there are probably far too many things for us to try to... Too many rabbit trails on that one to run down, but I mean just take the way a man happily and cheerfully goes and plops down in front of the television to watch a football game and then take the attitude with which he does something that his wife has been asking him to do for six months. Which one does he do most cheerfully? How does he do those kinds of things?

What does he like to do? He cheerfully gets up at 3 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning to go fishing. But if there's something that needs to be done around the house, a lot of times they can really drag around and gripe and complain. All of a sudden they're telling their wives how all the heavy things that they're going through etc etc etc but they pop out of bed really happy you know to go sit in a wet duck blind or go catch fish so yeah men do things for themselves quite cheerfully and willingly. And he's saying now, the same way that you do that, do those things for your wife.

Love her cheerfully, willingly. I mean, Christ does not do what he does for us grudgingly, angrily, poutingly. He loves us. He gave himself for us. And so he does it with joy.

Yeah. I wonder how many miles you'd have to travel to find a man that ever got up at three o'clock in the morning to do the laundry or the dishes. Long trip. Long trip. Okay, so in this final section here, he speaks of Christ's example as really it's the motive.

Again, Christ is central. He is the one around which all of this centers. And so in pages 268 to 273, he talks about the Lord Jesus Christ as the center, But he starts out this section and he compares the inequality between Christ and his church with the equality between the husband and wife. And it's a brilliant point, But while Goudge acknowledges that God has set a man as a spiritual head and the leader of a wife, at the same time he doesn't conclude that the man is like Christ and the woman is like the church in terms of inequality. He doesn't promote inequality.

He does speak of rank, and he does use, in the original he used the word inferiority, but he's talking about rank. But I think it's helpful that he makes it very clear that while you have a head, and you also have the one who submits to the head, we are talking about equality at the same time. And it's a really critical point that he makes there. He brought that out on page 269. Yeah, I thought it was the most striking balance in the whole chapter.

It's almost as if he knew, intuitively, probably knew by experience, that if he drew the lines of the vast disparity between Christ, the God-man, and the weakness and feebleness of the church, that Sinfulness in men would very easily become a crushing and oppressive headship. And unfortunately, in some that believe in male headship, that is exactly what happens. This is a terrible perversion, and it is sinful, and it is not the picture that the Scriptures paint. And so he takes quite a bit of time, and I thought, really with the craft of an artist, to say that, all right, now I've painted for you this beautiful picture of Christ in the church, but now let's bring it into reality and realize that there is also a biblical mutuality between men and their wives, and that we take this glorious image of Christ in our attempts to love our wives, but we also have to remember that together there is a beautiful mutuality in Christ that we must never forget and never lord it over our lives. You know, and if a man doesn't understand the principle of equality, then what happens to him?

Well, He doesn't find himself really able to reap the benefits of having a helper, one who's called alongside to help. He thinks he's so superior, he doesn't listen to his wife, he doesn't care about her feelings, doesn't care about her thoughts, which God gave her, Perhaps to rescue him from something. If you don't understand equality, you miss out on the blessing and the benefit of having someone who is comparable, someone who is different but yet complementary to you. And again, it's this whole idea of complementarianism. By the way, he uses this word complementary several times, speaking of the relationship with the husband and wife.

I don't know if Gogue coined the term complementarianism. He may have, but he definitely strikes this balance that we don't often see. Often what we see is falling off one side of the horse or the other in some kind of insane, self-obsessed patriarchalism where no one has anything else to say. On the other hand, you have egalitarianism where there's mutual submission and really no... There's really no head at all.

Both of those, you know, aberrations and distortions of biblical truth. Right. Yeah, he paints this glorious picture of Christ where he says, compared with the creator, he is not subordinate to him, but equal, Philippians 2.6. He is the brightness of the glory, the express image of his person, Hebrews 1.3, and that word of whom it is said in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God. So he is the very creator himself, eternal, infinite, incomprehensible.

Thus is Christ's greatness beyond our understanding. Had he left us there, there could have been real misunderstanding like the kind of extreme that you were pointing out. And of course, in the minds of some, just male headship is extreme. But he goes on then to bring in that balance where he says, but if man and woman be compared together, we shall find a close equality, both in the points of their humiliation and also of their exaltation. Regarding the former, they're both of the same mold, of the same corrupt nature, subject to the same weaknesses, at length brought to the same end.

And regarding the latter, the best and greatest privileges are common to both of them. Beautiful. That is. You know, down here toward the end in page 271, he gives different excuses that men dig up for why they can't love their wives. And men, maybe some of you are thinking, hey, I can't love my wife because of this and that and the other thing.

Well, he gives several excuses and then he refutes them. But I'll just itemize them there on page 271. He says, some husbands claim that their wives are a far lower rank than themselves. That's this whole superiority distortion. And then the second is, some husbands claim there's nothing in their wives worthy to be loved.

And he says, the simple fact that she's your wife makes her worthy, so forget that. Amen. And then he says, another excuse is that wives give their husbands good reason to be hated by reason of their irritability or their stubbornness or their pride or some other intolerable vice. And he says that there's no good reason that a husband should hate his wife. And he says that Christ never hates members of his own church.

And then the other excuse he gives, the final excuse, is that some husbands say, there's no hope that I shall ever receive any help from my wife or benefit from her. So, Gogue, he's chastising husbands, saying that Christ loves the church for her own good, not for his. And that's the whole point. And then he closes with these four conclusions on page 273. The husband who does not love his wife cannot avoid bringing sadness and trouble upon himself and then he says you know if these reasons aren't sufficient I don't know I don't know what is sufficient I don't know what else to tell you.

I have nothing more to give you. If you can't understand this, it's hopeless for you." I think that's kind of how he closes it. That's right. That's right. Because he made the point earlier in here of saying a greater and stronger motive cannot be given than the example of Christ.

Now that's it. He says if I can't spur you on to love your wife by sitting before you, Christ and this obvious thing of how much you love yourself, I don't have any other way to motivate you. Right, right. Isn't that interesting? That's the irreducible principle of marriage for a husband, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Learning of him sitting at his feet, hungering after his word, becoming like him, putting on Christ. How do you prepare yourself for marriage? Put on Christ. How do you love your wife? Through the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In a lot of ways, even though he walked through so many, I mean, brilliant and distinct and complex things in a lot of ways, it's really pretty simple. A man says, Oh Lord Jesus Christ, help me to reveal your glory to those you have given me. Amen. Jeff, any final thoughts on this for these men? What's kind of a final appeal you'd give when they're listening?

A final appeal? The first thing I would say is, make sure with all of your heart that you've been born of God's Spirit and know the living Christ, that you are indeed alive in the Spirit and in union with Him. And then, bask in the love of Christ, learn from Christ how to love, immerse yourself in his word and in prayer and learn how he loves and then start with with with everything that he teaches you. Learn how to lavish that upon your bride. It's not easy but it's worth every bit of dying to self that it takes.

It brings glory to God, it does good to your wife, it bears much fruit in the community and in the church of Christ. Amen. Well hey, let's go love our wives. Amen. Okay.

Hey Jeff, thanks a lot for joining us. What a great time. What a beautiful chapter. Beautiful. Thank you very much, Scott.

It's just been a privilege and an honor. Thanks. Thanks so much. Okay guys, we'll see you later.