Introduction

Marriage has a way of bringing theology out of the abstract and into ordinary life.

It is easy to speak about loving God, serving Christ, showing grace, and laying down one's life when those ideas remain comfortably theological. Marriage, however, places another person directly in front of us—someone whose needs, weaknesses, preferences, disappointments, and failures cannot remain theoretical.

What happens when our devotion to God encounters the person closest to us?

I. Part 1 - ❤️ When Love Becomes Misaligned: Lovers of Pleasure or Lovers of God

❤️ From philēdonos to philētheos

2 Timothy 3:1-2, 4 - But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

Paul describes the problem with two competing loves:

• philēdonoi: lovers of pleasure
• philotheoi: lovers of God

The contrast is more profound than simply “people who enjoy pleasure versus people who enjoy God.”

Both terms describe what a person is drawn toward, attached to, and devoted to. The issue is therefore one of allegiance: What has captured my love? What do I ultimately organize my life around?

John addresses the same question from another direction. The issue isn't just whether someone claims to love God, but whether that invisible love becomes visible in relationship with another human being:

1 John 4:20 - “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

The unseen God is tested by the way we love the person standing in front of us.

👁️ The unseen God and the visible brother

There is an interesting progression here.

God is unseen.
My brother is seen.
God is the object of ultimate love.
My brother becomes the concrete arena in which that love is demonstrated.

John is essentially refusing to allow love for God to remain abstract.

Someone can say, “I love God,” while simultaneously treating the visible person made in God's image as an inconvenience, rival, tool, or object of contempt. John says there is a contradiction in that claim.

This fits beautifully with John's larger theology, the invisible God has made Himself known through what can be seen. Earlier in the letter, John says:

1 John 1:1 - “That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands...”

John 1:14 - “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And John's Gospel begins with the astonishing claim that the unseen God has been made visible in Jesus. So Christian love follows the same trajectory:

God → becomes visible in Christ → Christ's love becomes visible in His disciples → disciples embody that love toward one another.

🍷 Pleasure creates a competing object of love

Paul doesn't just say that people will pursue pleasure. He calls them “lovers of pleasure.” Pleasure has become an object of affection. And pleasure itself isn't inherently evil.

Scripture contains abundant good pleasures—food, marriage, friendship, celebration, rest, beauty, Sabbath, creation. The problem arises when pleasure becomes the thing toward which love is ultimately directed.

Do I love something because it is good, or do I call something good because I love it? That is a profoundly Genesis-shaped question. The problem wasn't that the fruit was ugly or intrinsically evil. The problem was that desire became detached from trustful allegiance to God.

Genesis 3:6 - The woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

The heart said, in effect: “I want this” therefore, “I will take this.” God's word was displaced by appetite.

🌿 John gives the opposite movement

1 John presents the restoration of that distorted desire. Instead of:

• I love what gives me pleasure → therefore I take
• I have received God's love → therefore I give love is the way of Christ.

1 John 4:19 - “We love because he first loved us.”

That is crucial. Biblical love isn't fundamentally the self generating sufficient affection for God. God's love comes first. His love reorders our loves.

✨ Once God becomes the center, the love of God cannot remain vertically oriented. It necessarily moves horizontally: ✨

Love of God → love of brother. John makes this explicit:

1 John 4:21 - “Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

The invisible God is therefore not an escape from the visible human being. Love for the invisible God sends us back toward the visible person.

🪞 The brother becomes a test of what we love

This gives us an illuminating way to read Paul's phrase. The opposite of being a lover of pleasure isn't merely being someone who experiences less pleasure, it is becoming a lover of God.

And 1 John tells us what that love looks like when it encounters another person.

• A lover of pleasure asks: “What will this give me?”
• A lover of God increasingly asks: “How can God's goodness move through me toward this person?”

That doesn't mean Christian love has no joy. Quite the opposite. Jesus says:

John 15:11 - “These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

The transformation isn't pleasure → no pleasure. It is:

• pleasure as master → pleasure as gift.
• self as center → God as center.
• taking → giving.
• consuming → abiding.
• “What satisfies me?” → “How can I participate in God's love?”

🔥 And this exposes a subtle form of idolatry

The deepest contrast in 2 Timothy 3:4 may therefore be not pleasure versus God, but competing loves. Paul isn't describing people who necessarily hate God. They can possess “the appearance of godliness” (2 Timothy 3:5) while their actual loves reveal something else.

That makes the passage remarkably compatible with John's warning. Confession can say “God”; conduct can reveal another object of love. John's test is concrete: What happens when the love of God encounters another person?

If my supposed love for God continually terminates in my comfort, my pleasure, my advantage, my reputation, my desires, then John forces me to examine whether my love has actually reached the unseen God—or whether I have simply attached God's name to a life still centered upon myself.

And that brings the two passages together beautifully: The lover of pleasure asks what can be consumed. The lover of God learns what can be given. And the brother standing before us becomes the visible place where that invisible love is made real.

That is very close to the movement of Jesus' own life: He did not treat people according to what they could give Him, but gave Himself for them. In Christ, love of God becomes visible precisely because it becomes love poured out for others.

II. Part 2 - 👁️ The Visible Test of an Invisible Love

✨✨

❤️ 1. Love her as a person, not as a source of pleasure

“Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:4) gives the husband an important diagnostic question: Do I love my wife, or do I primarily love what I receive from my wife?

Those are radically different orientations. A husband can enjoy his wife's affection, companionship, beauty, sexuality, cooking, encouragement, emotional support, or partnership—and there is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying those gifts.

But if his love is fundamentally transactional, his wife gradually becomes a means of satisfying himself, while the lover of God learns to say: “My wife is not here to complete my appetite. She is a person entrusted to my love.”

That changes everything. He begins asking not merely, “What do I want from her?” but “What does love require of me toward her?”

👀 2. Let the visible person interrupt invisible religious abstractions

John's first letter is quite confrontational:

1 John 4:20 - “Whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

The principle applies powerfully within marriage. A husband can spend hours thinking about God, studying Scripture, praying, serving at church, or discussing theology—and then become impatient, dismissive, controlling, or emotionally unavailable toward the woman sitting beside him.

John would not allow him to separate those things. The wife standing in front of him is part of his discipleship. The question is more than: “How much do I know about loving God?”

It's much closer to: “What does my knowledge of God's love cause me to do toward the person God has placed closest to me?” Marriage therefore becomes a remarkably concrete theology laboratory.

🌿 3. Replace consumption with stewardship

This connects beautifully with the priestly dimension to Ephesians 5.

If the husband understands himself as entrusted with the stewardship of his wife's flourishing before God, his posture changes from consumption to cultivation.

That doesn't mean managing her or deciding what is best for her. Stewardship is not ownership. It means taking seriously the sacred responsibility to protect, encourage, nourish, honor, listen to, and serve the person entrusted to his love.

Paul's language is striking here:

Ephesians 5:25 - “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Christ's love is fundamentally self-giving rather than self-consuming.

🫶 4. Learn her rather than merely expecting her

A lover of pleasure tends to focus on the gratification of his own desires.

A lover of God becomes increasingly attentive.

So a husband can practice something surprisingly simple:

Pay attention.

Learn what makes her feel safe.
Learn what exhausts her.
Learn what delights her.
Learn what she fears.
Learn what she hopes for.
Learn how she experiences affection.
Learn when she needs companionship and when she needs space.
Learn what makes her feel honored rather than managed.

This is not manipulation.

It is knowing the person you love.

Peter's command to husbands to live with their wives “in an understanding way” (1 Peter 3:7) fits beautifully here. Love doesn't merely have good intentions. Love seeks understanding.

🕊️ 5. Become gentler, not more controlling

If the husband's goal is to love as Christ loved, then strength cannot mean domination.

Jesus describes Himself:

“I am gentle and lowly in heart.” (Matthew 11:29)

That gives a husband a remarkable model.

When disagreement comes, he doesn't have to win.

When his wife is emotional, he doesn't have to immediately fix her.

When she disagrees with him, he doesn't have to establish his authority.

When he is misunderstood, he doesn't have to retaliate.

When he has power to pressure, he can choose patience.

Gentleness is strength voluntarily placed under love.

A husband can therefore ask:

“Am I using my strength to make my wife smaller, or am I using my strength to make room for her to flourish?”

🧎 6. Repent quickly

One of the most loving things a husband can do is become increasingly easy to correct.

If his wife says:

“That hurt me.”

The first response doesn't have to be:

“I didn't mean it that way.”

It can be:

“Tell me what happened for you.”

That doesn't mean automatically accepting every interpretation or abandoning discernment. It means valuing the person enough to listen before defending himself.

And when he is wrong:

“I was wrong. I'm sorry. I want to understand how that affected you, and I want to do differently next time.”

That is profoundly Christlike.

The husband isn't diminished by repentance.

He becomes more trustworthy.

🍞 7. Give without keeping score

The contrast between philēdonoi and philotheoi becomes especially practical here.

A pleasure-centered marriage can quietly develop an accounting system:

I did this, so she should do that.
I sacrificed yesterday, so now she owes me.
I gave affection, so I should receive affection.

Christlike love refuses to turn sacrifice into a bill.

Jesus washed feet knowing exactly who was going to betray Him.

That doesn't mean a husband should tolerate abuse or abandon healthy boundaries. It means love isn't fundamentally a negotiation for reciprocal gratification.

He gives because love gives.

🛡️ 8. Protect her freedom rather than possessing her

This may be one of the most important applications.

If the wife is a person created in God's image and entrusted to the husband's love, then she ultimately belongs to God, not to him.

A husband therefore shouldn't confuse:

“I am responsible to love her”

with:

“I am entitled to control her.”

Love protects without possessing.

It encourages without coercing.

It offers wisdom without demanding compliance.

It creates safety in which the other person can genuinely say yes or no.

That is particularly important because genuine love requires freedom. A coerced response may produce compliance, but it cannot produce the kind of relational love God desires.

🌱 9. Help her become more fully herself in God

This is where your Ephesians 5 / Romans 15:16 connection becomes especially rich.

Paul describes his ministry in priestly language:

“the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”
— Romans 15:16

Then Ephesians 5 describes Christ's relationship with His people in remarkably similar sacrificial and sanctifying terms.

That suggests a beautiful principle for marriage:

The husband's calling is not to make his wife into his ideal woman.

It is to love her in such a way that she can increasingly become the woman God is forming her to be.

That requires humility.

He must be willing to discover that God's purposes for his wife may be larger than his preferences for her.

🔥 10. Let his love for God become visible through his love for her

Ultimately, 1 John 4:20 gives the husband a very practical spiritual examination.

He cannot point toward an invisible God while neglecting the visible person entrusted to his care.

So perhaps the husband's prayer becomes:

“Lord, teach me to love the woman I can see as evidence that I love the God I cannot see.”

Not because his wife replaces God.

Quite the opposite.

Because loving God properly changes the way he sees her.

She becomes not an instrument for his pleasure, not an obstacle to his freedom, not an extension of himself, and not someone beneath him.

She becomes his neighbor, his covenant companion, God's image-bearer, and a person whose good he has been entrusted to seek.

And that brings us back to the central contrast:

The lover of pleasure asks:
“What can I receive from this relationship?”

The lover of God asks:
“How can God's love become visible through the way I love this woman?”

That is a profoundly different vision of marriage. It turns “husbands, love your wives” from a command about marital sentiment into a calling to make the unseen character of God increasingly visible through self-giving love.

III. Part 3 - ✝️ When “They Aren't Jesus” Becomes the Excuse

✨

🪞 The wife's excuse: “Jesus is worthy; my husband isn't.”

The reasoning can sound spiritually sophisticated:

“Jesus is perfect, trustworthy, and always right. Of course I will submit to Him. But my husband is imperfect. Therefore, I will decide when his leadership deserves my submission.”

The problem is that this quietly changes submission from an act of discipleship into a reward for performance.

If submission means “I will follow when I independently conclude that you are right,” then it isn't really submission. It is agreement.

And Ephesians does not establish the husband's perfection as the prerequisite for the wife's posture. Paul first says:

“submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
— Ephesians 5:21

That is crucial. Her ultimate reference point is Christ, not her husband's performance.

So the question isn't:

“Has my husband become worthy of my submission?”

It is:

“How can I honor Christ in the way I respond to my imperfect husband?”

That does not mean obeying sin, surrendering conscience, tolerating abuse, or treating every decision of a husband as divinely authoritative. Scripture never gives a husband permission to become an intermediary between his wife and God.

But it does challenge the idea that his imperfections automatically cancel her calling to practice humility, respect, cooperation, and self-giving love.

🫶 The husband's excuse: “Jesus is easy to love because He never hurt me.”

The husband's version sounds different but has the same underlying structure:

“Jesus sacrificed Himself for me. Jesus never mistreated me. Jesus is perfectly loving. My wife has hurt me, disappointed me, frustrated me, and failed me. Therefore, loving Jesus and loving my wife are fundamentally different things.”

Yet that is precisely where Jesus' command becomes difficult.

Jesus doesn't merely say:

“Love people who love you.”

He says:

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
— Matthew 5:44

And Paul grounds marital love in something even more demanding:

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
— Ephesians 5:25

Notice the direction.

Paul doesn't say:

“Love your wife because she has loved you perfectly.”

He says:

“Love your wife as Christ loved.”

Christ's love isn't produced by the recipient's perfection.

It flows from the character of the giver.

✝️ And this is where the two spouses meet at the cross

The wife says:

“I would submit if he were worthy.”

The husband says:

“I would love if she were worthy.”

The gospel answers both:

“You are not being asked to respond merely to the worthiness of the person in front of you. You are being asked to respond to Christ.”

This is exactly why Ephesians 5:21 is positioned where it is:

“submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

The husband doesn't love his wife merely because she has made herself lovable.

The wife doesn't honor her husband merely because he has made himself perfectly worthy.

Both are ultimately responding to Christ.

🌿 But there is an important distinction

This should never be turned into:

“Because marriage requires submission and sacrificial love, therefore you must tolerate anything your spouse does.”

That would distort the very Christ whom the commands are supposed to imitate.

Jesus' love was not permissive.

He confronted hypocrisy.

He rebuked His disciples.

He withdrew from hostile crowds.

He refused Satan's demands.

He spoke truth even when people rejected Him.

And He never confused love with enabling someone's destruction.

Likewise, Christian marriage doesn't require either spouse to pretend that sin isn't sin.

A wife can say:

“I love you, but I cannot participate in that.”

A husband can say:

“I forgive you, but we need to address what happened.”

A spouse can establish a boundary without withdrawing love.

Truth and love belong together.

🪶 The deeper issue: conditional love

Both excuses ultimately make love conditional upon the other person's performance.

The wife's version:

“I will submit when you lead well enough.”

The husband's version:

“I will love when you treat me well enough.”

But Christ's love is different:

“I will give because this is who I am.”

That doesn't make Christ's love naïve. Jesus knew exactly whom He was loving.

Peter would deny Him.

Judas would betray Him.

Thomas would doubt Him.

The disciples would abandon Him.

And yet Jesus washed their feet.

That is why the husband's calling to love his wife as Christ loved the church is so weighty. Christ didn't wait for His disciples to become consistently lovable before He served them.

He loved them while knowing their weaknesses.

🧎 And this brings us back to “gentle and lowly”

A husband who understands this won't use Ephesians 5 as a weapon:

“The Bible says submit, so you need to do what I say.”

That would be almost the opposite of Christ's model.

Instead, he hears:

“Love your wife as Christ loved.”

And immediately asks:

“Where must I lay down my life?”

Similarly, a wife shouldn't weaponize her husband's failures:

“You're not Jesus, so I don't have to respect you.”

She can instead ask:

“How can I honor Christ in the way I respond to this imperfect man?”

The two spouses are therefore being called into two different expressions of the same cruciform posture.

The husband lays down self.

The wife lays down self.

The husband gives himself.

The wife yields herself.

Neither is asked to erase herself.

Neither is asked to become passive.

Neither is asked to call evil good.

Both are being trained to say:

“My response does not have to be controlled by what the other person deserves. It can be governed by the One I follow.”

❤️ And this returns us to 1 John 4:20

This may actually be the deepest connection to your previous question.

John says:

“Whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Marriage gives that principle an unusually close-up setting.

The husband cannot say, “Jesus is easy to love because I don't have to deal with His imperfections.”

Jesus is invisible; his wife is visible.

The wife cannot say, “Jesus is worthy of submission because He is perfect, but my husband isn't.”

Jesus is invisible; her husband is visible.

The visible spouse becomes one of the places where love for the invisible Christ must become embodied, tested, refined, and practiced.

And perhaps that is why marriage can be such profound discipleship.

Your spouse will eventually encounter the parts of you that strangers never see.

They will disappoint you.

They will misunderstand you.

They will fail you.

You will fail them.

And precisely there, the gospel has somewhere to go.

Not merely into our theology.

Not merely into our worship.

But into the kitchen, the bedroom, the disagreement, the apology, the decision, the exhaustion, the forgiveness, the ordinary Tuesday morning.

The husband learns to love the imperfect woman in front of him because he follows the perfect Christ he cannot see.

The wife learns to honor the imperfect man in front of her because she reveres the perfect Christ she cannot see.

And neither spouse's failures become an excuse to abandon Christ's character.

Instead, their failures become opportunities for both to practice it.

Conclusion ❤️‍🩹✨

Marriage becomes more than a relationship in which two people attempt to make each other happy. It can become a place where the character of the unseen God is made visible through ordinary acts of love.

The husband and wife will both encounter moments when the other person's imperfections make love difficult—and those moments can expose whether love is ultimately governed by what the other person gives us or by the Christ whom we follow.

The calling is not to pretend that failure does not matter, nor to surrender truth and wisdom, but to refuse to make another person's imperfection an excuse for abandoning Christ's way of loving.

The unseen God is loved through visible lives—and marriage gives that invisible love somewhere very concrete to become visible.