Bible Basics

Husband, Love Your Wife

Paul writes, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it . . . So men ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself” (Eph. 5:25, 28). These passages vividly illustrate the way the husband ought to love his wife. The first example points to the sacrificial love that Christ had for the church; a love that prompted Him to die for us “while we were still sinners” (Rom. 5:8). The second example is reflective of God’s teaching from the beginning concerning the union between husband and wife, even as Adam said of his wife Eve, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23), and Jesus said, “So then they are no longer two, but one flesh” (Matt. 19:6). The husband is to nourish and cherish his wife just as he does his own body, for after all, they are now one flesh. How many marriages today desperately need this teaching? How many failed marriages could have been saved if the husband had put his wife first and loved her as Christ loved the church? How many homes would not have been destroyed if the husband had just realized that by hurting his wife he was hurting himself? How many men will be lost because they did not obey the command: “Husbands, love your wives.”

                                                                                                               -- Clark Dugger

Bible Basics