“As the Scriptures say, ‘A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.” (Ephesians 5:31-32 NLT)
In yesterday’s post we looked at how God’s desire for us as husbands and wives is to reflect in a physical sense what it looks like in a spiritual sense for Christ to love His Church. We left off with Paul’s directive in Ephesians 5:33: “…each man must love His wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” I closed yesterday’s post with the question? “What if our spouse isn’t deserving of our love and respect?” And I would follow that with another one: “Who is deserving of Jesus’ love and respect?”
The Amplified translation adds clarity when it says: “However, let each man of you [without exception] love his wife as [being in a sense] his very own self; and let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband [that she notices him, regards, him, honors him, prefers him, venerates, and esteems him; and that she defers to him, praises him, and loves and admires him exceedingly]. [1 Peter 3:2.]
Please don’t lose sight of the fact that Paul is writing to those he believes are seeking to model a life of Christlikeness, evidenced by his words in Ephesians 5:21: “And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The standard is high for both husbands and wives as seen in verses 22-23: “For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of His body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up His life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.”
This all sounds too radical for most 21st century married Christian couples, right? But why? Why would it be any different than to those who read these words for the first time. Times were MUCH harder then than they are now on many levels, but in many ways, at least as it pertains to husbands and wives, not a lot has changed.
Those words must become our Biblical mandate today as they’ve been in every generation from then until now. But how? One husband, one wife at a time. One devoted couple at a time. Perhaps this is as good a time as ever to confess that I’m not nearly as good a husband as I desire to be, and I suspect, you’re not a model spouse either.
Every day I fail miserably at being the Christ-honoring husband I want to be, in much the same way as I too often fail at being the godly man I long to be. What’s the problem? Sin! My desire to love my wife is too often superseded by my desire to love myself, to put myself – my plans, my preferences, my problems – ahead of my wife’s plans, preferences, and problems.
And it’s not any different for my wife, or yours. We’re all sinners saved by grace on a path to heaven that leads us along very bumpy and sometimes painful paths. We’re learning how to navigate, but to the extent we can learn to navigate together, we’ll do better in our treatment of one another.
As I understand the process, it begins with desire and determination to allow the Holy Spirit to so direct us we not only learn to “seek first the Kingdom of God,” but to also seek first the welfare and benefit of our spouses ahead of our own. The better we get at that, the more our marriages will reflect our love for Jesus.
Which raises a question we’ll look at in tomorrow’s post: “What if my spouse isn’t a believer?” I’m so glad you asked!
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 