Marriage Helps # 16
Paul instructs husbands in the faithful practice of marriage.
Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).
To husbands God has assigned the role of the head and leader of the home and family, a headship that is to be exercised “just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” The husband’s headship is to be modeled after Christ, who loved His bride, the church. Headship ought not to go to a husband’s head, but should be exercised with a heart like Christ’s. His loving leadership is our pattern. Three times in the passage (verses 25, 28 and 33) Paul tells husbands, “love your wives.” The love of your life is to have the life of your love. Loving your wife is to be the “soul” of your leading her. Your love must be like Christ’s. “Nothing less than the deep love of Christ towards his own is to be the measure of [our] love to [our wives] (A. N. Martin).” The “metric of a marriage” for a husband is not the question, “How well is she submitting?” but “How well am I loving?”
The husband, who is the head of the wife, ought to love her with sacrificial love. This is not love of the greeting card variety but love marked by “an unceasing and unconditional commitment to selflessly act for your wife’s highest good.” Sacrificial love is an active grace, an attentive grace, an initiating grace, a creative grace, a giving grace, an excuse-killing grace, a grace that “does not seek its own”
(I Corinthians 13:5).
The husband, who is the head of the wife, ought to love her with self-giving, selfless love, “just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” Christ Himself was what the church needed, and He gave Himself wholly for her, leaving nothing in reserve, not reluctant or stingy but willing and generous. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He did not love the church by doing what He wanted but by doing what the church needed (Hamilton). He laid down His very life for her. As the wife’s duty to submit is all-encompassing, the husband’s duty to love is all-consuming, demanding the self-denying sacrifice of his life. There should be nothing “beneath” you that you would not legitimately do for her highest good. It may well require you to swallow your pride, subordinate your preferences, strengthen your patience, change some diapers, clean some toilets.
A marriage conference speaker once asked the men in his audience how many would, upon seeing their wife’s car stalled on the train tracks only moments from impact, ram her car with his own to knock her safely off the tracks. All raised their hands. However, when he asked how many would go to the grocery store or empty the trash for her, only a few hands went up—and their wives were present at the conference! Our wives do not need “one-shot heroes” full-time givers.
