The Godly Home - Part 5 — Paul Washer

The Godly Home: Christ-Centered Family Life

I started becoming more and more concerned about family, not just because of my family, but one day I was getting ready to do a sermon on missions, people wanted me to preach on missions, and I started going down the list and I said, okay, what part, I thought I'd ask myself this and everyone else, what part of the gospel, what part of your gospel ought to be exported to another country and what part ought to be quarantined?

And then I said, okay, what part of your piety, your godliness, would you want exported to another country or would you want it quarantined? Okay, your relationship with your wife, would you really want that exported to another country or should it be quarantined?

I mean, there are people that say, I wouldn't want my worst enemy to go through what I go through in my marriage. Well then, why are we doing missions? And that's when I began to understand, okay, everybody talks about missions, what part of your life ought to be exported and what part ought to be quarantined?

That's a hard way of looking at it, but it's true. So the quarantine part we need to fix locally, and the exported part, well, we export. Yeah, but it's a process, you know, I mean, for all of us. All of us.

The Cost of Building a Godly Home

Most people really don't have a clue. They just think, they basically do in their marriage what was done before them, just that it's a little bit cleaner or maybe a little bit more dedicated and don't realize that some radical decisions have to be made.

Radical decisions. And hard decisions. Costly. I was teaching in Fort Worth, I mean, Dallas a couple years ago, and I'm looking at all these guys who are, you know, they're up to their ears in debt, just big houses and mortgages and two new cars and all kinds of stuff, and their wives are working like mad.

They're like working 14 hours a day, and I'm teaching for like two days on the family, and finally I looked at all of them and said, you know, we just need to cancel. I mean, we need to stop this. This is crazy.

I don't need to be here because none of you can even do any of this without literally selling your homes and quitting your jobs. I'm not saying that people can't be successful. I'm just saying that they were, you know, the rat race.

They were, 16 out, bringing in big bucks just to keep their head above water. You know, it's insane. I said, you can't even take, you know, you couldn't take a couple evenings out for your children to save your life.

Sure, but at the same time you and like Scott Brown and Bodie and others, you know, have done almost like a call to reevaluate that because sometimes, yes, you do have to sell your big cars to do that, and you do have to downsize, and that's the truth, and if you want to do it and gain your family, you can, and if not, keep at it, you know, it's your choice.

My favorite thing to tell people when they come to me with their financial stuff is I look at them and go, you know what your problem is, don't you? And they say, what? I said, you didn't go to, you didn't go to med school.

And they said, what do you mean? I said, you didn't go to med school. See, we live in a world that thinks they're entitled. So if you've got one guy who busted his hind end all his life in high school and college and goes off to study some sort of medicine and this and that, he's working 75 hours a week, 85 hours a week, and he's doing all this, he comes out to the end of the tunnel, and he may be a prosperous man.

The problem is the guy who barely graduates from high school and gets a job in the oil field or gets a job in a factory somewhere thinks he ought to be living the same way. And it's insane. But you think about it.

You go out to some guy who's never really strove to be anything, and you ask him, and he'll say, yeah. I mean, something's wrong with the world. I should have what that guy has. And that's one of the greatest problems.

Wealth, Stewardship, and Biblical Wisdom

You see, the Bible is not against wealth. The Bible is if you have to break biblical principles to get it. I mean, if we're sitting here right now in Canada or America, unless you're on a reservation somewhere, you are wealthy.

I don't care who you are sitting in this room. You are wealthy. We're all wealthy. So the key is not to all of us sell everything we have and go live in a hut. The key is to be good stewards of what we have received and then also not to lower ourselves to third world standards but to teach godly principles to the third world that their standards might go up.

See, one missionary has written an article on the righteous rich, and what he's talking about is like Job or Abraham. I mean, no one came to Job's house hungry or orphaned or anything. He didn't take care of them.

Same way with Abraham. You see? So it's not about, you know, if you're wealthy, you're somehow in sin. But if you're breaking principles to have stuff you can't afford, you are in sin. You never hear people talk that way.

That's the problem. I think God's people perish for a lack of knowledge. Because even when you know what to do, then it's still hard because you don't even do what you know. How bad is it when you don't even know what to do?

Learning Christ Rather Than Merely Principles

I think that Paul hits it right on the head when he says in 4 .17 of Ephesians, he says, So this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind.

And then he goes on. They've become callous, given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. And then he says, and here's the key, But you did not learn Christ in this way.

If indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him just as the truth is in Jesus. He's not pointing them to the law. He's not even pointing them to biblical principles. He's pointing them to Christ.

Because let's just look at it. Okay, giving themselves over to sensuality. If we just took serious, okay, avoid sensuality. How many problems would that eliminate? I mean, just think about how many. And this is the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

Yeah, it covers it. And he says, and then he goes on to lay aside the old self, be renewed in the mind and put on the new self. But my favorite thing this week, I was reading. You did not learn Christ in this way.

If indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him just as the truth is in Jesus. You talk about redundant. It's just pointing them to Christ, pointing them to Christ, pointing them to Christ. And I mean, even like a great example of this in the negative.

And this may offend some of you, but I don't know if you've ever heard of Bill Gothard. Have you ever heard of Bill Gothard? Some of the stuff, the principles that he pulls out, some of it's wonderful.

Some of it is pure inference. It's not scripture. It's based upon his inferences that he's made into scripture. But the whole point is when you meet a Gotharite, you meet a person that's full of principles.

It's all about principles and principles of character and this and that. But you start talking, you don't hear much about Christ. You really don't. It's all principle. These principles. That's just not the way it is.

You see, the Puritans were not all of them. Some of them were mistaken because they said the law leads us to Christ to be justified. And Christ sends us back to the law to be sanctified. That is absurd.

Now, the law leads us to Christ. When we see we can't keep the law, we go to Christ. He doesn't take us back to the law to learn how to be godly. He says, look at me. There's nothing wrong with the law.

The law is perfect and holy. But I can nail you to a wall if you're going to tell me the law is a greater revelation of what it's like to be righteous, that it's greater than Jesus. That's why if you look through the scriptures, it's be led of the spirit, follow the spirit, hear the spirit, do not grieve the spirit, do not offend the spirit, do not quench the spirit.

You see, it's all about just following this person. And let's just face it. If a guy and a girl got together and they knew nothing about principles, they listened to Jesus, it would be okay. You know, I can't honor my, I can't dishonor my Lord.

Forgiveness and Love in Marriage

It's good to work in that realm that, you know, living the gospel. You know, in Ephesians, another thing that, the most beautiful, you know, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

Every marital fight in the world is found right there. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor and slander be put away from you. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other. Isn't it amazing?

He never tells us that the way our relationships are going to work is by both of us being perfect. He says the way our relationships are going to work is by both of us forgiving each other just as God and Christ also has forgiven us.

Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love. Just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us in offering a sacrifice to God as a fragrant. Malady or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints.

It's just, it's as if we're loving one another. You see, in the New Covenant, love isn't like one of the characteristics you need to have. Love isn't even the supreme characteristic of what you need to have.

Love is everything. And you say, well, that's kind of not defined very well, though. What does that mean? It's defined very well. In this, we know the love of God. That he sent his own son to die as a propitiation for our sins.

Love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. So it's constantly putting the other person first. First. First. It's constantly forgiving as Christ forgave you. I mean, just think about that.

I mean, love does not steal a neighbor's wife. It doesn't. Love doesn't lie. Love doesn't hurt his mate. I mean, everything you do is a lie. Every sin you commit is a lack of love. It's self-love over love for God and love for people.

That's why it's amazing. You have a theologian who literally has written a, let's say, 2 ,000-page systematic theology. He knows as much as anybody on the planet. Correct theology. You have a guy beside him on the day of judgment who is illiterate, but knew how to love his wife.

The one is approved over the other. Now, think about that. This guy's invested tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe, of hours studying scripture and condensing truth and systematizing. This person can't read, but he loves.

He's on the day. It's the royal law. He's kept the law. He's kept all the commandments. All the commandments and the prophets are summed up in this. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's how you say it.

If you were just to concentrate on love every day, you'd have enough repenting. You wouldn't have to worry about repenting from watching something on TV you shouldn't watch or anything else. You'd be so preoccupied with just bailing in one area, love.

Returning to Christ After Sin

I'm always considering how people feel condemned and unable to go ahead because of not knowing the next step. But what you just quoted in Ephesians, well, it's always coming back to Christ, always coming back to Christ.

It's like, as you read it, I just felt hope. I just felt, I can do this. I have the hope from hearing that. A bunch of rules really is full of condemnation. Just think about it. If all you're supposed to do is follow him, and every time you fail to follow him, all you're supposed to do is run to him believing that he will forgive you and start all over again.

That's it. That's it. But see, the devil, the moment you sin, the devil is basically like in hockey. You're going into the penalty box. Don't you even think about coming to God right now. You know, like a guy who has sin in a certain area in his life, it's like he hates it, but every day he's like doing it, doing it, doing it.

He hates himself, hates it, and he just keeps going away from God. And he thinks that if he goes to Christ and asks for forgiveness, it's hypocrisy because he hasn't truly repented. That's a lie. You constantly go back to Christ, constantly go back to Christ, constantly go back to Christ.

And if the devil were to appear in your room and say, you're just a hypocrite. You go, okay, and then run back to Christ. I mean, just nothing should keep you from Christ. There's a teaching out there that kind of says yes, but, yes, but, and yet he reconciled all things to himself.

There's nothing that's in the way of a clear path back to Christ. I mean, completely. The yes, but comes from the fact that our gospel is so poor that there are so many people that are in the church that aren't really Christian that live in sin all the time and really don't care and then go back to Jesus and ask for forgiveness.

And not really to Jesus, they just go through some evangelical rite. Now, the true Christians look at that and they say, I don't want to be like that. And so when they sin, they put themselves in a penalty box.

They make themselves something. What they've got to realize is there is a vast difference between that carnal church member who is sinning all the time and just nonchalant, doesn't even care. He doesn't even care.

He just laughs and goes, Jesus, forgive me. There's a great difference between that person and a person who may be sinning and have cords of sin wrapped around their neck and they're hating it. They just can't seem to set themselves free from it.

There's a big difference between those two people. You know, the guy who, you know, and this happens all the time. Every Saturday night, all the youth are out, tailgate party, getting drunk and fornicating and go to church on Sunday just in their best ropers and wranglers and just having a good time, you know.

Jesus is grace. Well, a Christian could fall in amongst that, but on Sunday morning, you have to pour him out of the car to get him to church. All you have to ask yourself is, not am I able to conquer my sin, not am I able to set myself free from this.

The only thing you have to ask yourself is do I have a broken contrite spirit? When I sin, does it hurt me? Do I hate it? Then, you know, and I keep, but you've got to keep coming back to him, keep coming back.

See, it magnifies how great he is. I mean, he's seven times seven, 70 times seven. He just keeps going, keeps going. When you think that lovelessness is the greatest sin you can commit, it's the root of all sin, lovelessness.

Christ-Saturated Rather Than Legalistic Religion

All right? Not fornication. Fornication is a result of lovelessness. Now, I want you to think about it. You do lovelessness every day of your life. Every day of your life, you do not love God as he ought to be loved, and you do not love others as God has commanded you to.

When you look at it that way, you go, wow, yesterday when I got mad at somebody at work and told them off and everything, I need to go back and apologize, and I need to ask for forgiveness from the Lord.

But that's not some great sin that's going to set me back, because the greatest sin is lovelessness, and I commit that every day. But I think you're right that we should have, that it needs to be Christ-saturated, not principle-saturated.

Because I've noticed here in Canada, not so much in, I don't know this area as well, but when I was in British Columbia, there was so much darkness and so much waywardness in the church that many of the people who were really serious about Christ became very principle and law-driven, very legalistic, and very kind of hard.

And that's not what we want to put forth. We want to put forth the gospel, Christ, and grace. For example, the thing that really, I guess the thing that convicts Charles and I the most is, you know, by God's grace, I mean, divorce is not even in our mind.

I mean, it's really not. Now, everybody says that, but I mean, it's almost like we know we're in it for the long haul, and then we almost feel like, well, therefore, we get away with things. You know what I'm saying?

It's like a guy who thought, if I don't do this, my wife will leave me. Well, I know my wife, by the grace of God, is not going to leave me. I know her character. And it's like you almost think you can get away with things because she's so trustworthy that you don't have to watch your P's and Q's.

And we were talking about, okay, so we've got all these, you know, we know we're not leaving each other, and we know we're going to do certain things in our home, and we know that our finances are going to be a certain way, and we know we're going to be doing discipleship with our children and homeschooling.

But when you walk into our home, is there a fragrance of Christ? Is there love and joy, peace and righteousness in the Holy Spirit? Is there the fruit of the Spirit in our home? And if you say, well, there is between us and our kids, but not between us as husband and wife, then I've got to call you on it.

You're just not right, and you're deceived. You know, that love, you know, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, goodness, self-control, all that, it's something that really...

And here's the thing, if you look at your kid, like when Evan today picks up a gun for the first time, not the first time shooting one, but picks one up for the first time to shoot at an animal, and he nails the thing right in the head twice, you know?

And there's like a little... I look at my boys, and there's like a twinkle in my eye. I look at my little Roey, and there's a twinkle in my eye. And I'm sure all of you say the same thing when you look at your kids.

Here's the question. Is there a greater twinkle in your eye when you look at your wife? See, that's really got to be there before things are really going to take off. And that's the thing that, you know, Chardo and I have discussed a lot, because, well, it's an area where we really need to work.

Husbands' Responsibility to Invest in Their Wives

And this is work, guys. This is not... Don't think it's going to happen. You know, that's another thing we get on... You know, we're so like, okay, we know our kids need this help, but it's like, it's almost like I think at times Chardo looks at me and goes, well, you know, I don't need to help Paul with his discipleship.

I don't need to teach Paul the Bible. And I'm like, well, Chardo is independent and strong, and then days go by and weeks go by, and you haven't ministered to one another. You're pouring your life into your children, her homeschooling, teaching them stuff about the Bible, me teaching them at night, but you totally neglect each other.

And it's just not going to work. You can't put the one before the other. And that's probably our greatest sin. And especially when you have a wife that's strong. Then that's going to be your sin, is neglecting her.

If you're not praying with her, reading the Word with her, talking with her, develop... You know, how many men... I think it was Luke Priolo did this, and it was amazing. He said, look, I've done this every time when I've sat in a room with godly men.

He said, not wayward dads, but godly men. And he'll take like a blackboard and he'll put... He'll put a line like this and a line down the middle. And he'll put wife here and children here. And then he'll ask the men, I want you to take the number 10, and I want you to divide it with regard to how much you invest in your wife and how much you invest in your children.

Take the number 10. So I've divided 5 -5, 4 -6, 7 -3, whichever. He said the best average he has ever gotten is 3 -7. 3 for the wife, 7 for the kids. I think about that. He says, it should be just the opposite.

Do you see that? I mean, I don't know, you guys might think I'm nuts, but that fairs me up. I mean, look, how much do you invest in your wife? We expect our wives just to, you know, go for it, but they're not made to do that.

They're not made to do that by themselves. They're not made to do it. Even though they may be more intelligent, even though they may be more spiritual, they are not meant to do that by themselves. They are to grow from their husband and with their husband.

That's convicting, isn't it? Isn't it? You wormy guys, you need to be crawling under this rock right now. I have a question. When you say permanently, what do you mean? There is a sense in which, well, we see this in Ephesians, because we don't want to just be saying stuff that just sounds good but isn't really biblical.

Look what it says. It says, first of all, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her. So how's the husband supposed to love his wife and lay down his life?

It doesn't mean he does everything his wife wants him to. It means he makes decisions regarding his wife and his family that's going to lead to her sanctification. Okay? So sometimes he's going to say no.

He's always giving. He's always giving himself. He never makes decisions based on what's best for him or what's best for his family. But his decisions are based on what will sanctify my wife. Then it says, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

So many men will take this and say, I need to teach my wife the word. Well, that's true. But in this context, look what it says. Cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. Usually in this type of language, the word is referring to the gospel.

You're washing her in the gospel. Not necessarily principles from Proverbs 31. Now, how do you wash your wife in the gospel? Well, you do it by teaching her the gospel, for sure. But you do it by demonstrating the gospel.

A guy who may be good to come up here, Norm Wakefield. Man, I was with him in a conference in Wisconsin, Minnesota or somewhere. I don't know where it was. And he said, when I come home from preaching and I'm wore out and I've been fighting dragons and everything else, he goes, as a man, I'm expecting my wife and even my family to say to themselves, you know, the hero's coming home.

The guy who's been out there working, fighting God's battles, everything. And he goes, I kind of have this in my mind, you know, they ought to be meeting me at the door, putting slippers on my feet and not saying anything to me other than trying to calm me and help me and nurture me.

He goes, I'm beat up. He goes, but I can always expect. He says, even though my wife is godly and everything, she's going to meet me at the door? She's hardly going to ask me how it went? Or if she did, even before I can answer, she's going to start telling me all the problems she's had at home, all the things that are going on.

And he goes, immediately, it makes me mad. And he said, until I learned. God could have given my wife at that moment grace. He said, he could, he could have done that. He didn't. Why? He is, God is setting me up.

He's giving me an opportunity to be like Jesus toward my wife. To walk in that door, even though I'm wore out totally, but not expecting to get anything from her, but to give to her. To give to her. And he says, look, when you look at it that way and you say, okay, no excuses now.

She's not, you know, she doesn't meet me at the door. She's, she bombards me with problems and all these different things. It is my opportunity to be like Jesus. Man, when he said that, it just killed me.

Because, I mean, he just described me. And I think other men, you know, we come in and we, we're tired, we're wore out and everything else. And we think that ought to happen and it doesn't happen. But many times it's God not wanting it to happen.

And then it says, so washing of water with the word is, is, you remember how I shared how my, our wives can break our hearts if they'll just have a gentle and quiet spirit. If we're acting like jerks and they respond to us by just a gentle and peaceable and quiet and respectful spirit, it'll kill us.

We'll go out and beat our heads with a two-by-four. We'll feel so bad. Well, it's the same way. If our wives, you know, are having their bad day and all that other kind of stuff. But we act like Christ toward them.

Then that's washing them in the gospel. They're actually seeing. And then he goes on, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

He is working to present his wife to him in a way that's pleasing to him. And here's the question. You want your wife to be a certain way. How many countless thousands of hours have you invested in your wife so that she would be that?

I failed. Might as well get it out in the open. Okay, on a scale of one to ten, how much devotion time around the table, wife included, matters versus hands-on matters? Well, when we get to Deuteronomy 6, we see it's hands-on.

We do that. And we can extrapolate from there that it ought to be the same with the wife, which I think may be your meaning, just as we live throughout the day. Right? Yeah, I think that's a big part.

But I've never seen anybody who really learned how to pray who just said they prayed as they went. You know, I pray as I go. I've never seen anybody develop into a great prayer warrior that way. It's always through time of set prayer.

I think that the same can be said for husband and wife. This is a conscientious washing the wife in the Word, and we're going to see that in a minute also. The whole idea is when we disciple a person, we say, you know, the church needs to be doing more discipleship, one-on-one discipleship, we always think in terms of meeting with that person, sitting down with that person, teaching that person, investing in that person.

If anybody on the planet is going to feel neglected, it's going to be a wife. And that's just all there is to it. And the only way I think that that can be avoided is that there has to be specific time.

I mean, if we spent two times a week just sitting down with our wives, drinking coffee or whatever, and with the Bibles open, and listening to her and teaching her, I think it would go a long way. So I do believe that there is the teaching in the midst, that is, as we're going throughout the day, but there's also...

Just think about it for a moment. Most men who work outside of the home, we're conversing with other men, we're doing all kinds of things with them. Our wives, many of them who are homeschooling, it's all day homeschooling, home, this, that, you know, Bob and Larry, VeggieTales.

I mean, they're about out of their mind. You know, they want to be able to... They married us to fellowship with us. They married us to be with us. And sometimes it's good for the family to be together, but our wives need time with just us.

I know some guys go out on dates, you know, every two weeks, things like that. But when Chardo and I have done it, the best times have been just sitting down before the kids get up, or before they go to bed, and just talking.

Wives were also made... Think about the wife in the role of the church. The church, when she's truly walking with Christ, she talks to Christ. She wants to commune with Christ. She wants to hear from Christ.

An intimacy. That same intimacy is what we need with our wives. If you also look, the reason why you married her, and she married you. I mean, she probably had seen better looking guys and all kinds of things, but when she saw you, something clicked.

It was more than just your pretty face. There was something there. There was a fellowship. There was communion. There was a getting along. But after we get married, that kind of seems to get set aside.

And kids replace it. And then it says here, So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh. What he's basically saying here is, no sane person hates his own flesh.

No sane person bites himself. There are people like that. They have this thing in which they literally try to rip their flesh off their bones and bite their tongues out of their heads and everything else, but we don't call them sane.

And he's saying in the same way, it's just as much insanity to devour your wife or to not seek her prosperity. Like, if I say, okay, I'm going to really start working out, and I am going to make sure that these two legs are as strong as they can be, and this arm and this chest and these shoulders and my neck and my lower back and everything, and I'm going to do nothing for this arm, it just turns into a freakish sort of thing.

In the same way, I'm going to invest time in my kids, I'm going to invest time here and everything, but even if you say you want to invest in your children, you know that, come on, your wife is going to be with your children probably more than you are.

So you need to invest in her. But here's the part that I dearly love. It says, No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church. Now, notice, if you see over in Ephesians 4, it says to do this.

It says, lay aside the old self, then be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self. It never tells you to lay aside a vice, and that's all. It always says lay aside a vice and adopt a virtue.

Okay? In the same way, he's doing the same thing here. No one ever hated his own flesh. Don't hate your wife, your own flesh, but it's not good just to be... Okay, let's say you're not tearing your wife to pieces.

Okay? And so many times we say that's good enough. I think, you know, because the world, I mean, marriages, for the most part, at least like 65 of all marriages, the husband and wives are killing one another.

They're eating one another. They end up in a divorce. So when we as Christian men say, well, you know, I'm not tearing my wife apart, we think, okay, I'm doing a good job. But look what he says. No. Once you've got to the point where you're not hating, if you're not hating, if you're not tearing apart, that's not even half the job.

Now, here's the second half. Nourish and cherish it just as Christ does the church. Now, the word nourish, if you go over to 1 Timothy, we can see this idea of a person nourishing. Listen to what it says.

And pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following. The nourishment here comes from sound doctrine and the words of faith.

That's 1 Timothy 4, 6. And the same basic word is used here, but nourishes, but nourishes. And then, let's see, I don't know if I can find the text. I think it's... Now, look at this. He says, and cherishes, the word means to warm, like the word is often used of a mother breastfeeding.

There's nothing considered more tender or cherishing than a mother breastfeeding her child. Alright, so he says, not only should we nourish our wives, and in 1 Timothy 4, it's with the word and sound doctrine, but also to cherish our wives.

And he says here, but we prove to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. And there's a sense in which a husband should have this tenderness that a nursing mother has for her own children.

He should have that toward his wife. Now, we always think, don't we, that the closest relationship is a mother and her child. But the mother and child is supposed to be a result and a reflection of the relationship between a husband and a wife.

She's supposed to learn how to love her children by the way her husband loves her. That's bad. Think about that. Isn't it kind of warped that our society, the mother is just, she's the center of what love's supposed to look like?

In the Scriptures, it's the husband. Go to the Christ. Does the Scriptures brag about the bride's love for Christ? No, Christ's love for the bride. As a matter of fact, if someone says, if a guy comes to me and says, my wife doesn't love me, and there can be a lot of problems with his wife, but we ought to keep in mind this, not that we love Christ, but that he loved us.