HUSBANDS LOVE
YOUR WIVES
Ephesians 5:
25: Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave
himself for it.
When husbands
are taught how to be head of our wives, even as Christ is Head of the church, it
is not as a tyrant ruling with harsh demands, but by love as Christ loved the
church.
The love of God
is in Christ Jesus alone. (Rom 8: 39) Christ’s church—every elect child in
particular—is Christ’s own body, “the
fullness of him”, “members of his body of his flesh and of his bones.” (Eph
1: 22; 5: 30-32; Ro 12: 4-5) When God made the first wife for the first man,
God patterned their union after Christ and his church. (Is 54: 5) God gave us a
spiritual lesson in that creation. He made every beast, even the first man, out
of the ground. (Gen 2: 19) By our first birth we are of Adam, the cursed
ground. But showing that Christ’s bride is made of Christ and is one with
Christ, God made woman out of the man. (Gen 2: 21-24) The Holy Spirit declares
the reason a husband shall leave father and mother and be joined unto his wife
is patterned after the inseparable oneness between Christ and his church. (Eph
5: 30-33) Christ and his church are one flesh. Therefore, Christ loves each
member, nourishing and cherishing his church, as an extension of himself, his
own body, his own flesh and his own bones.
Thus a husband
is taught how to be head of his wife—by loving her as his own body—“Nevertheless let every one of you in
particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she
reverence her husband.”