Men aren't off the hook - loving her so she can't help but love you back!!

I remember feeling, as a young wife, that it was all on me –this marriage thing.  I was to take care of the house and the kids and myself, of course, and it seemed like the church never mentioned a husband’s responsibility.  And honestly, I fear I could count one hand the messages I have heard about the husband’s responsibility.

But in Ephesians 5 Paul says a lot about the husband’s role, kind of prefacing his remarks to husbands and summing them all up in verse 25: Husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it…He develops the idea further in verses following:  28 So ought men to love their own wives as their own bodies……29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it even as the Lord the church.

Paul used the Greek word agape here for both the husband’s love and Christ’s love for the church.  We translate it love, but that sort of short circuits the meaning of the word. I fear the word love has become a cliché since we use it to say that we love pizza, we love the shore, we love chocolate.

Thayer’s lexicon says that, as it is used here, it has the sense of having a preference for, wish well to, regard the welfare of.  Furthermore it denotes to take pleasure in the thing, to prize it above other things, be unwilling to abandon or do without it.

Husbands are to so treat, and communicate with their wives, yes communicate, in such a way that she knows she is prized above other things,  that her husband is absolutely unwilling to do without her. And when you look further at the example of Christ’s love, husbands are to give themselves for their wives.

Wow, can you imagine how easy it would be to love and obey such a man? The kind who makes you feel that secure, that loved, that precious or valued?

My husband told me about a couple of professors he knew, from different schools, who so loved their wives, that they abandoned their careers for the time necessary to take care of ailing wives.  One woman was dying of cancer, the other became seriously incapacitated due to alzheimer’s disease.  These men could have passed on their care of their wives to their children or hired care-givers, but both lovingly, humbly took on even the meanest or most humbling roles, loving their wives to the end. 

The interesting thing is people observed in both men, after the homegoing of their wives, a change of their personality, to men of grace and compassion.  The men, both of them referred to how much they learned as they loved and served their wives as Christ loved the church.

I’m not saying that wives are off the hook if their husbands fall short here, but men, taking an active role in loving her as Christ loved the church will bring great dividends to your relationship.  I am thankful my husband is an Ephesians 5 kind of guy.

Oh, if your hubby hasn't, can't read this - read it to him and tell him I told you to.

 image is from http://safeguardyoursoul.com/the-god-fearing-man/