Husbands, Love your Wives

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her... Ephesians 5:25

Wow! I am to love my wife JUST as Christ also loved the church. He gave Himself for the church. I am to give myself for my wife.

Self sacrifice? But, what's in it for me? Isn't she to bow and bend to my vision and life direction? Don't women realize that men must chase vision, accomplishment, goals, financial and physical? Don't wives know that men plain and simply get short with women by nature? Don't wives know that they are simply to put up with our shortness or short-comings in general?

Husbands giving time to consider their wive's needs? Unnatural!

Ah! But Christ was totally focused on the church!

Consider:

Verse 26 goes on..."that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word". The word is the agency. We hear the Word, believe, and are saved. As saved people we are washed from our sins. The word also has an ongoing cleansing effect in our lives as well. This all comes about because of the sacrifice of Christ for His Church.

Oh, the Focus of Christ as He set His face for Jerusalem. That final trip, knowing full well what the prophets had written, what was indeed in store for Him there. The spitting, the punching, the whipping, the crown of thorns, the nails.

He came, and He gave Himself.

"that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish". verse 27.

Husbands, do we really love our wives so as to do our part to present her to Christ glorious, spotless, without wrinkle or blemish? When we see something unChristlike in their lives, do we pray earnestly. Do we regularly teach them the word for them to be cleansed thereby?

These are matters I wish to consider in the days ahead.

Mark Pierson