Jesus, the Bridegroom, the Example of Manliness

 Epiphany 2| John 2:1-11; Ephesians 5:22-33| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church| January 19, 2025 

“This, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested His glory. And His disciples believed in Him.” His disciples believed in Him. What did His disciples believe? They believed that Jesus is the heavenly Bridegroom. When the master of the feast tasted the water, which had become wine, he called the bridegroom to tell him how good the wine was. Why did he call the bridegroom? Because the bridegroom is responsible for providing the wine for the wedding banquet. By providing the wine for this wedding, Jesus behaved as the bridegroom, and He foreshadowed how He would provide for His own wedding banquet.  

Scripture is quite clear that Jesus is the heavenly Bridegroom. In the next chapter, John the Baptist speaks of Jesus when he says, “The one who has the bride is the Bridegroom. The friend of the Bridegroom, who stands and hears Him, rejoices greatly at the Bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:29-30) And Jesus calls Himself the Bridegroom when John’s disciples asked Him why His disciples did not fast like the disciples of John and the Pharisees did, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Matthew 9:16) The Old Testament also prophesied that God Himself would come as the Bridegroom of His Church. God spoke to His Church through the prophet Hosea, “And I will betroth you to Me forever. I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.” (Hosea 2:19) 

So, Christ’s manifestation of being the heavenly Bridegroom is no small thing! It means that He is our God. He is our Savior from heaven. But what does the heavenly Bridegroom do? From our Epistle lesson from Ephesians 5 and from our Gospel lesson in John 2, I want to tell you two things that Christ does as the heavenly Bridegroom.  

First, St. Paul writes in Ephesians 5, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” The first thing the heavenly Bridegroom does is give His life for the Church. That is the type of love that Christ has for His bride, self-sacrificial love. Jesus tells His disciples in John 15, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Christ demonstrates the greatest love by laying down His life for His bride. His bride is the Holy Christian Church. And you are a member of that bride if you have been joined to His washing of water and the word and have faith in Him.  

St. Paul tells us that Christ laid down His life for His bride to cleanse her from sin. At the wedding in Cana, there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification. These stone water jars represented the Law, because the Law can only govern your outward actions, but the Law cannot change your heart. So, you can wash yourself on the outside, you can try to obey the commandments, but that will not make you clean on the inside. By turning the water into wine, Jesus shows how He fulfills the Law for us and makes us clean on the inside. He doesn’t simply wash us outwardly, but He cleanses our very hearts through faith. As wine is made through crushing grapes, so Jesus made atonement for our sins by suffering violence. Having paid for our sins with His blood, He offers us true cleansing on the inside and out, which the Law could never give us on account of our sins.  

And this leads us to the second thing the heavenly Bridegroom does. He provides good wine for His wedding banquet. Earthly wine is a gift from God. While it can certainly be abused, and Scripture warns that drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of heaven (1 Corinthians 6:10), it is not a sin to drink wine. Scripture says that God caused the plants to grow to make “wine to gladden the heart of man.” (Psalm 104:15) Yet, the benefits of earthly wine are very limited and short-lived. But our heavenly Bridegroom gives us heavenly wine which is infinitely better, the benefits of which last eternally. While earthly wine may make you glad for a moment, this heavenly wine gives joy even in the midst of sadness, and it doesn’t make you groggy or hungover in the morning. While earthly wine gives you the delusion that you are strong, this heavenly wine gives your heart strength to battle Satan and this world and be victorious.  

The heavenly wine our heavenly Bridegroom gives us is the Gospel, which offers free forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all who drink it. As wine is produced by the crushing of grapes, so this heavenly wine was produced by the Lord crushing Christ and putting Him to grief (Isaiah 53:10). We drink of this wine when we listen to the good message that God loves us, so that He has forgiven us for the sake of Christ, who made atonement for our sins on the cross. We drink this wine when we sing hymns and chant Psalms, which articulate God’s love and mercy for us in Christ. And we especially drink this heavenly wine when we eat and drink the very body and blood of Christ, which He provides for us in the Sacrament of the Altar. The water Jesus turned into wine amounted to between 640 and 960 bottles of wine. Certainly, that was more than the guests could possibly drink. And so, in Christ’s Church, which is the heavenly Bridegroom’s wedding banquet on earth, He supplies an inexhaustible supply of wine. As often as you repent of your sins and come to receive forgiveness, Christ has forgiveness for you. His blood will never run dry from His Sacrament, but He has an infinite source of strength, comfort, and pardon. This is what our heavenly Bridegroom does. He sacrifices Himself for His bride. And He provides her with the wine of gladness, that is, everything she will ever need.   

Yet, Christ as our heavenly Bridegroom is not only our Redeemer and Savior. He is also our example. And while He is certainly the example for every Christian, as St. Peter writes in his first Epistle, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps.” (1 Peter 2:21), as a Bridegroom Christ is also an example to men. It is most important to remember Christ’s humanity by which He redeemed humanity, both men and women. Yet, it is still important to remember that Christ is a male, and so, He serves as an example to men. As pious Christian women look to Sarah as an example of a good wife, to Hannah as an example of a good mother, and to Ruth as an example of a good daughter-in-law, so pious Christian men should look to the saintly men in the Bible as their examples. And there is no better example of Christian manliness than Christ Jesus. Christ is a better son than Isaac, a better brother than Joseph, a better warrior than David, a better father than Abraham, and a better husband than Boaz. Christ teaches men how to be men. I believe a major reason so many men are missing from the church is because we have forgotten that.  

By being the heavenly Bridegroom, Christ teaches men to be men. The world does a terrible job teaching what manliness is. It has spent much of the past century trying to convince us that there is no difference between men and women. And when the world does speak of manliness it often does it in either a superficial or degenerate way. But being manly does not mean to go fishing, hunting, to watch sports, to work with wood or on cars, or drink beer. Being manly certainly does not mean to look at pornography or sleep around or pay for an abortion to avoid your responsibility. Being manly isn’t about making lots of money or belittling other people. Being manly, as Jesus teaches men to be, involves self-sacrifice. That’s what makes a manly man. Self-sacrifice.  

In the Old Testament, it was the firstborn sons who were called holy to the Lord and required a redemption price (Exodus 13:13; Num. 18:15-16). And the Lord required all the males of Israel to gather three times a year to make sacrifices to the Lord (Deut. 16:16-17). Thus, the Old Testament established that God calls men to live lives of self-sacrifice. Jesus teaches men to sacrifice themselves for their brides, for their children, for their family in Christ. This self-sacrifice is the activity of love. The love Jesus teaches men to do is not self-serving lust, not infatuation. It is looking to the interests of others before their own.  

Scripture tells women to submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22), even to obey them (1 Peter 3). Most women today scoff at this instruction. But their incredulity does not come from a reverence for Christ, but from their sinful flesh, as God spoke to Eve in Genesis 3, “Your desire shall be against your husband, but he shall rule over you;” (vs. 16) and from the manipulation of Satan, who first stuck a wedge between man and wife; and from the wicked world, which in the last century has brought us increased fornication, divorce, children born outside of wedlock, abortion, same-sex so-called marriage, transgenderism, and general unhappiness by insisting that men and women have identical roles in marriage instead of the unique roles God designed for them.  

Yet, Scripture teaches that a woman should submit to her husband as to the Lord and that a man sacrifice himself for his wife. So, when a woman submits to her husband, she is submitting to his self-sacrificial love. She is trusting that his decisions are done out of love for her and for her children’s best interest in mind. Now consider, a woman doesn’t scoff at the fact that she must submit to and obey her  boss at work. If she doesn’t, she’ll get fired. But her boss doesn’t make his decisions out of love for his employee, but for the profitability of the company. And if the employee ceases to be profitable, he is expected to end her employment. Yet, our godless world teaches girls and women to submit to such a boss, and work hard to prove she is profitable, but to resent the very notion of submitting to her husband, whom God has commanded to sacrifice his very flesh for her wellbeing, to not consider her profitability at all, but to love and care for her in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, till death parts them, indeed, to care for her as for his own body. 

So, women and girls, don’t learn from the world how to be women and wives, but learn from Holy Scripture. And men and boys, don’t learn from the world how to be men, but learn from Christ, the perfect man. Sacrifice yourselves for your wives, for your children, and not simply for their physical care, but especially for their spiritual care. Step between them and Satan’s arrows by bringing God’s Word and prayer into your home and leading your family in it, and by taking them to church, by making decisions for your family with their eternal salvation in mind. Be the spiritual heads of your homes which God has called you to be. That is what a bridegroom is!  

And as Christ provides good wine to bless His wedding banquet, so manly Christian men provide good wine for their wedding celebration. People make too much of wedding receptions. They aren’t very important. The marriage is what’s important. It’s not so important what type of wine you have at your wedding reception, but rather that you continue to drink the wine of gladness at the family dinner table and throughout your marriage. That wine of gladness is the Gospel. Scripture says, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, but bring them up in the fear and instruction of the Lord.” (Eph. 6:4) And so, husbands and dads, not only ought you sacrifice yourself for your wife and children, but you should make sure that the cheering wine of the Gospel is always provided in your home. You do this by forgiving your children when they do wrong and encouraging reconciliation among them, by being gentle to your wife, forgiving her, and repenting to her when you do wrong. Let Christ’s Gospel dwell richly in your home, so that it is your constant drink. Let your home be a constant wedding banquet for the Lord, where the finest heavenly wine is always drunk.  

Men, Christ Jesus is your example of manliness. He is the Bridegroom after all. Yet, He is first and foremost your Bridegroom, that is, your Savior, who gave His life for you and provides you with the wine of gladness and salvation. Being a man is rough. In fact, most men are bad at it. They avoid sacrificing themselves for the good of their family, and instead think their family exists to serve them. Or they major in the minors and minor in the majors thinking that the temporary things of this world are more important than the eternal wedding banquet for which they ought to prepare their family to enter. This is why manliness has been redefined by very unmanly and ungodly people. In the end, there is only one good heavenly Bridegroom. That is Jesus Christ. He came to make up for your failures and to provide what you fail to provide. He can’t be your example unless He is first your Bridegroom, your Savior, and you are a member of His bride, the Church. Receive from Christ the wine of the Gospel, so that you may be strengthened to follow His example. Amen.