Husbands Love - Eph 5:25-33

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; ...let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

God’s Design For Husbands

Husbands Love Your Wives. Once again Paul brings the marriage into direct alignment with our relationship with God and Jesus Christ. He says husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. Specifically, what Paul is say is that husbands are to sacrificially love their wives. They are to give themselves up for their wives and also for their children.

In Matthew 19:5, the husband sacrifices his self-identity, “And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?”

In Colossians 3:19, husbands give sacrifice their rights, “Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.”

If you sacrifice your identity and your rights as a man or as an individual outside the union of marriage, you then begin to understand love as God intended it to be for you wife.

Think about Paul’s use of Jesus as the model for the husband’s love. When Jesus was dying on the cross wasn’t he still Lord of All? Of course, he was, yet he willingly died. He did this because of agape love, self-giving, sacrificial love.  Now this is the same kind of love and the same example that Paul says husbands should have for their wives.

He says that a man loving his wife is like loving himself. This is true, spiritually, because of the emotional, and spiritual bonding of the husband and wife. The two separate persons have now become one identity.  Therefore, the husband is loving himself, he and his wife are one inwardly.

It is also true practically, the husband who loves his wife is doing the best thing possible for himself.  He is stronger emotionally, healthier physically, sharper mentally in a loving mutually sharing relationship.

How then can a husband best love his wife?

Husbands you best love your wife, by being willing to sacrifice your rights, your way, your time and anything else that you may call yours, for the good of your wife. You show that love in your words, in your actions and it is proven as authentic by what you are willing to sacrifice for your wife. That is what Jesus did for us, that is what you must do for your wife.

 When a wife submits herself to her husband as the leader of the family and the husband sacrifices himself for his wife, there can be no conflict in a family. No arguments about who is the boss, or who is smarter or my feelings or my rights. The marriage just works and will keep on working because that is the way God designed it.