Husbands, Love Sanctifyingly

True sacrificial love is sanctifying love. If you truly love your wife you will make her holiness a priority in your life. God chose us before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and blameless before Him in love. Husbands are to make their wives blameless and holy before Christ in love. It is an intentional, determined, particular, sacrificial love.

1. The cost of sanctifying love
   Wives will never flourish unless you give yourself up for her and her good. It is a continuous habitual practice. Husbands must lay down their lives to better the wife's walk with Christ. This is not literal, but it is about the everyday sacrifices.

2. The agent of sanctifying love
   Though we experience an initial washing, we need repeated inward washing (John 13). There are three agents: the Word (Eph 5), the Spirit (Titus 3), and the blood of Christ (1 John 1:7). The Spirit of Christ uses the Word of Christ, which declares the blood of Christ. Husbands must make sure their wife is washed in the water of the Word .

Husbands, sacrifice yourself for time with your wife in the Word. Be the one leading devotions and church attendance. Sacrifice your time so wives can spend time with other godly women.

3. The goal of sanctifying love
   Husbands are preparing their wife for her wedding to her true Husband. God gives us wives to make her the person Jesus wants: glorious, no spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish. It is the husbands role to take the initiative to make their wife beautiful for our King (cf. Haggai in Esther)

Finally, Jesus put our needs ahead of His own and died not cause we were holy, but to make us holy. Husbands, die to make your wife holy.