Behold the Bridegroom

It has been over four months since I last wrote here. My sabbatical has been a season of rest, reflection, and a great deal of writing. I am deeply appreciative to my consistory, congregation, and family for giving me the space to rest and refocus. I spent most of my time sitting here and in long walks along the river that slowed me down enough to hear. Out of that season, a book took shape, "Behold the Bridegroom."

The book grew out of the same pastoral burden that drives these meditations and letters: to see Christ more clearly, to know Him experimentally, and to live in the light of His covenant faithfulness, discipline, and love. Since many of you have walked with me here on B2G, I wanted to share with you the preface. It sets the tone of this project, written for my flock and family. I hope it serves you devotionally, whether or not you ever hold the book in hand.

Unknown Makes Unloved

I was recently introduced to a Dutch proverb that struck me: Onbekend maakt onbemind. Literally translated, “Unknown makes unloved.”

In the Christian life, saving knowledge is always experimental and affectionate. One cannot truly love Christ without being intimately acquainted with Him. It is not enough to know of Him, or to admire His Person and work objectively. One must come to know Him in the marrow of the soul. “And this is life eternal,” Jesus prayed, “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

That is the great burden and boundary of this book. Husbands must love their wives as Christ loved the church, which is to say, with a love that springs from grace, is sustained by grace, and ever returns to grace.

If Christ is unknown, He will also be unloved. And if unloved, all that follows will be stiff, joyless, and legalistic. Trying to imitate Christ without intimacy with Christ is like David trying to fight Goliath in Saul’s armor: “I cannot go with these,” he said, “for I have not proved them.” And David took them off (1 Samuel 17:39). So must the reader do with every piece of armor that is not tested in the fire of true communion with Jesus.

If you have picked up this book hoping for a clear and concise manual, something easily implemented to improve your marriage, something to sharpen your mind, strengthen your will, and fortify your home, then I would encourage you to set it down. There are many better books written by abler men. That is not what this book is.

This book is not about something¹,

It is about Someone.

It is about the Bridegroom of every believing soul, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a heart-cry for holiness born of love. Because if He is known, He is loved, and if loved, He becomes the striving of every man who longs to reflect Him. And to reflect Him, a man must first be ravished by Him.

If your heart has been captured by the love of Christ, if He has called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9), then we can walk together a little as broken men, in the light of His face, learning what it means to love, even as we have been loved (Ephesians 5:2).

A Confession

This book springs from a polluted well.

I am, without question, a man of sorrows, sown by my own hand. Fallible, sinful, conquered by too many foes to take up a pen with any authority. Yet I am not alone. The Lord hears the cry of the poor and needy (Psalm 34:6). He walks beside those who say, “Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth” (Psalm 12:1). He stoops low to lift up those who have fallen beneath their own weight (Psalm 145:14).

Look through the Old Testament. Which of the saints did not come from the dust? Which man of God was not first undone, so that he might be remade? Abraham, deceptive, afraid, and faltering (Genesis 12). Moses, tongue-tied and angry (Exodus 4; Numbers 20). David, lustful, repentant, and broken (2 Samuel 12:13). The Lord is in the business of hollowing men out so that He might fill them with His Spirit.

If the tone of this book sometimes groans, let it groan in hope. For He who stoops to raise sinners is also the Bridegroom who binds up the wounded and clothes them in white (Isaiah 61:10; Revelation 19:8). He has taken what is polluted, and in His mercy, made it pour forth something clean.

The Best of Men Are Men at Best

Where should we look when we desire to walk in uprightness as a husband?

In my years of counseling men who struggle to be godly husbands, one truth has become painfully clear: we are hard-pressed to find even a handful of men in Scripture who exemplify what faithful, sacrificial husbands look like. The patriarchs, those revered men of old, were wonderful examples of faith, but poor examples of husbandry.²

Abraham, twice, endangered his wife Sarah by passing her off as his sister, placing her in harm’s way to protect himself (Genesis 12:13; Genesis 20:2). Jacob married two sisters, one by deceit, the other by desire, and neglected the first with a coldness that shaped her entire life (Genesis 29). David, a man after God’s own heart, multiplied wives in disobedience to Eden’s pattern, and modeled little of husbandry. What did David leave for his son? Solomon, with all his wisdom, gave his heart to foreign women and was drawn deeply into idolatry (1 Kings 11:1–4). These are men to imitate in faith and wisdom, but not in marriage.

But what are we to do with this? Are we left without a scriptural pattern? Without a prototype?

Thanks be to God, we are not.

When we lift our eyes above these fallen fathers, we find a Bridegroom who personally entered our low condition (Philippians 2:7–8). We find, that from the very beginning, marriage has been on His mind. After all, He is the One who gave the first woman to the first man (Genesis 2:22). He is the One who often used nuptial language, calling Israel His bride in the wilderness (Jeremiah 2:2; Hosea 2:19, Ezekiel 16). And He is the One who came in flesh and blood, to win His bride by flesh and blood (Ephesians 5:25–27).

The Lord Jesus Christ is the singular example of the art and craft of husbandry. He is the Divine Protos, the chief Bridegroom. The One who loves to the uttermost (John 13:1), Who gives Himself for her cleansing, Who never forsakes, never wounds for ill, and never leaves us to ourselves (Hebrews 13:5). If we are to learn what it means to be a Christian husband, we must begin and end with Him.

Does this make this target too lofty? Of course it does.

Who among us can ever perfectly walk in the footsteps of Jesus? What man can truly say, “I have loved as Christ loves”? None. And yet, that is precisely the point.

Patterning ourselves after Christ in marriage is not given to discourage us, but rather to direct our hearts. It may feel at times that it mocks our weakness, but in that deficiency, we feel our need. Striving for conformity to Christ does not need our perfection in order to be meaningful. Just as our stumbling obedience to God’s Law does not nullify its holy requirements upon us (Romans 7:12). So too our feeble attempts at Christlikeness in marriage does not make the striving less worthy. The point is not that we attain, but that we attend, press on, endeavor, strive. The pursuit itself, weak, broken, and often failing as it is, is the fruit of inward grace, the evidence that the Spirit of Christ dwells within.

“Till we all come… unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). That is the pilgrim’s destination.

“Unto a perfect man,” and “unto the measure.” I find great comfort in the word “unto.” My failures as a husband only deepen my need for my Bridegroom. My imperfections drive me back to His perfectness. The gaps in my love for my wife only show me the depth and constancy of His love for me. In the spirit of John Newton’s confession, I am not yet what I long to be, nor what I one day shall be, but I am not what I once was. And when at last I stand before Him, I shall be measured only by His own fullness. So again, this book is not a manual for self-improvement, nor a primer of what a husband should be. It is a contrast. A contrast between the earthly and the heavenly, the imperfect and the Perfect, the sinner and the Savior.

And that should be freeing, my friend, not discouraging.

Because it means this: my weakness does not disqualify me from the school of Christ. It is my enrollment (2 Corinthians 12:9). It is in my weakness that He is made strong. It is in the honest confession of “I cannot” that the Spirit begins to work “yet not I, but Christ in me” (Galatians 2:20). I live every day in the tension between what is and what ought to be. I know the echo of that canyon. But the cry itself is holy. It keeps me looking outward, upward, striving for Him.

So, if you read this book and feel your own inadequacy, that is good. I feel it in writing. It means we’re listening. It means grace has not passed us by. Let the sorrow of what is lead you to the hope of what ought to be, and will be, in life everlasting. The Bridegroom has not come for a perfect bride (of which every believing heart is a part). He has come for failures with a new heart and a new name (Revelation 2:17), and He will not rest until we demonstrate something of His image.

Are You a Romantic?

All men are not created equal.

Some are steel-spined and steady. Others are quiet, observational, tuned to the emotional undercurrents of others. Some wear their strength on their sleeves, others keep it sheathed in silence. Many of us fall somewhere in between. This is not a criticism as much as a necessary observation. God made men different in temperament, expression, and personality. But the pattern that all Christian men are being conformed to is not a personality type, it is a Person (Romans 8:29).

Jesus Christ was, and is, the whole Man.

For instance, He weaved a leather whip to drive men out from the temple in righteous fury (John 2:15). He silenced the pharisaical mouth of the lions, “who sought to devour widows’ houses”, with boldness that shocked their hypocrisy (Matthew 23:13–36). He told the disciples to get a few swords before submitting Himself to the bloody, painful cross without flinching (Luke 22:36, 38).

But He also wept at the grave of Lazarus (John 11). He let a sinful woman wash His feet with her tears (Luke 7). He gathered little children in His arms and blessed them (Mark 10). He looked over Jerusalem lamenting, “How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!” (Luke 13:34). He called His disciples “friends” (John 15:15), spoke peace in storms (Mark 4:39), and took Peter’s mother-in-law by the hand to raise her from sickness (Mark 1:31). He's the author of the Song of Solomon, the inspiration behind David’s sweet psalms. And one day soon, He will return in fire and thunder, sword drawn, eyes like flames (Revelation 19:11–12). Yet He still speaks in Revelation as the Bridegroom coming for His beloved (Revelation 22:17). Our Lord is as strong as He is gentle. He is as bold as He is tender. He is the Lion and the Lamb (Revelation 5:5–6).

So then, yes, it is no stretch to say that the Bridegroom is, in the purest and most powerful sense, a Romantic.

Now I know some men will pick up this book and say, “This isn’t me. I’m not built this way. I’m not the romantic type. I don’t write love notes. I don’t think in flowers and feelings.”

That was me, early on in many ways. I believed love was proven by strength, not language. I worked hard, protected well, and kept my vows, but I was often oblivious to the deeper needs of my wife. Not cruel. Not careless. Just unaware. Blind to the unspoken. Deaf to the nuance. Many wives live in that quiet deficit. Loved in structure but overlooked in heart. Their husbands are good men, but they simply do not see.

Obliviousness is not evil. But it is costly.

To be conformed to Christ means learning to see. “And Jesus, seeing her, had compassion” (Luke 7:13). He did not pass by the bleeding woman (Mark 5:34), the lonely Zacchaeus (Luke 19:5), the grieving widow (Luke 7:12–15). He saw. He paused. He spoke into the void no one else really could fathom.

What do you think it means to be conformed to the image of Christ? Seriously, what?

Whatever else it means, to follow Him is to be changed, my friend, not by the erasure of our distinct personalities, but by transformation into Him through engrafting, in both doctrine and affection, in both duty and desire.

Consider building a sturdy house for your wife. This desire is praiseworthy. To shelter, provide, protect, and keep are noble things. But to surround that house with rivulets and gardens, green hedges, a white picket fence and koi pond, a stone path and a custom mailbox, this beautifies it and makes it her home. So a godly man is not only strong in arm, but handsome in heart.

Brother, if you say, “This is not me,” I urge you to ask yourself a serious question: Why? And more than that, bring that missing part of yourself to the Lord. A good man does not choose between strength and sensitivity. True strength admits its own weakness. The follower of the Bridegroom is a well-rounded man, bold as He is soft, gentle as He is strong. This is the image into which the striving man is being remade.

May this book help us all to mature into that perfect Man (Ephesians 4:13).³

The Way to Read This Book
This is not a book to rush through. It was never meant to be finished in a sitting, or consumed like a sermon series binge. It’s more devotional. Following the pattern of Augustine, each chapter is broken into smaller portions (1.1, 1.2, 1.3), meant to slow you down. My hope is that you’ll take one section at a time, maybe three quiet minutes a day, and let it steep. Truth settles deeper when it is not rushed. Look up the bible passages. Roll these chapters over in your mind. Speak it aloud. Argue with me over it. But pray over its contents. Let it become part of you before moving on.

1 Being a better husband.

2 The term “husbandry” is chosen over “husband” to emphasize the active, ongoing nature of our calling. I will not use it often, but I will use it. Biblically, husbandry refers to cultivation and care, like a vinedresser or farmer entrusted with something living and precious (cf. John 15:1). A man fulfills his role in marriage by faithful tending. Just as an apple tree requires knowledge, labor, patience, and sacrifice in order to bear fruit, so a wife is to be tenderly nurtured. This book is thus not about bearing the name of husband, but practicing the art and craft of husbandry.

3 This book intentionally avoids excessive quotations or academic footnoting in the body of the text. The goal is readability and personal engagement, not scholarly display. However, the content is deeply shaped by the voices of the past, the early Church Fathers, the Reformers, and the Puritans. Especially Augustine, Chrysostom, Rutherford, à Brakel and Goodwin. Their insights have formed the theological and pastoral backbone of this work, even when not explicitly cited.

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This is how the book begins. My hope in writing it was never to provide a manual, but to point men (and all of us, really) to the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ Himself. If He is known, He is loved. And if loved, He becomes the great striving of our lives.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share more from my sabbatical. Lessons learned in silence, in study, in reading, and in prayer about my own heart. But I thought it best to begin by letting you read what I’ve been writing.

It is good to be back.

If you’d like to learn more about Behold the Bridegroom, you can find it here.