Husbands -- It's Our Role!

If you’re like me, we like being reminded that Jesus nourishes and cherishes us. The entire New Testament repeats that promise again and again. That truth lifts our head when depression seeps into our thoughts. It gives us confidence when hard times come to our families, our health, our finances, our communities, our nation.

It’s comforting and emboldening to know Jesus loves us above His own life; that He is quick to forgive us when we apologize, and that His forgiveness throws our sins – every one of our sins – as far from Him as east is from west.

And that is why His word to men in Ephesians 5 is so instructive for a healthy and successful marriage. Here is what He says: "Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma . . .”

But don’t stop there. Read on:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her . . . ²⁸ So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself . . . just as the Lord does the church. . . . ³¹ “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

The next verse elevates the marriage relationship of a man with his wife to an extraordinary and transcendent spiritual plane:

³² This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Men, we ought to do more than merely wonder how many fewer divorces we’d see among us if husbands obeyed this text of Holy Scripture. We ought, rather, to diligently seek His help to “Be imitators of God as beloved children,” and obey this Scripture.

Don’t you think?

And oh, by the way – men, if we loved our wives like Jesus sacrificially loves the Church, I suspect our wives would find it easier to follow the next commandment in verse 33: . . . [A]nd let the wife see that she respects her husband.”