Marriage

HUSBANDS LOVE YOUR WIVES

by GLENN PEASE
01/15/22
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EPHESIANS 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

A happy marriage depends not only upon finding the right person but upon being the right person. Fortunately, God has not left us in the dark as to what we musst be as husbands to experience the best of what married love can be. Paul sums it up in this simple but subllime word-husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. The road to wedded bliss is the same road we must travel for God's best in any realm of life-it is the road of Christlikeness.

The husband who loves his wife as Christ loved the church will not only be a wonderful husband but a wonderful man who will reach out beyond his home to touch a dark world with the light and joy that only CLhrist can bring., A truly loving husband will be a blessing to many as well as his wife. That is why good Christian marriages are so vital to the total ministry of the body of Christ in the world.

So for your wife's sake, for the churches sake, for the needy world's sake, let us focus our attention upon just what is involved in loving your wife as Christ loved the church. If there is one word that could describe the love of Christ it would be the word Sacrificial. It was with great personal sacrifice that Jesus Christ loved the church. The cost of his love is staggering. It is beyond calculation. The Christian faith revolves around the cross because it is there where we see best of all how much our Lord loved us. He laid down his llife for us, he bore oour sins for us, he took upon himself the judgement that we deserved.

Certainly Paul did not expect us as husbands to go to the cross and die for oour wives. His point is -you cannot sacrifice too much for her. A love that costs you nothing is not a Christlike love. Only a sacrifical love is Christlike. Love that never suffers for the other becomes immature and self-centered. Jesus gave himself that his bride might fulfill all of her potential and become a bride worthy of his everlasting adoration. A good wife is not free. She will cost you more than an arm and a leg-she will cost you a body and a soul. If you want the best wife that life can buy that is what you will have to give-life. Yoour life will no longer be your own but in its totality it must be shared with her-body and soul.

Ten or twenty years from now the degree to which you love your wife will be determined by the degree to which you have been willing to invest your life in hers. You will get what you pay for. If you love her sacrifically as Christ loved the church and give yourself, your time and your resources to enrich her life, she will be the treasure of your life and the source of your own feelings of being richly blest.

Some who listen to Paul and obey, love so deeply that they fear idolotry. There is no need for noone can surpass the love of Christ. There is no danger in loving your wife too much. There is only the danger of loving your Lord too little. When a husband drifts away from loving Christ supremely he loses the motivation to love his wife and others as well. The only way you can fulfill the ideal that Paul portrays here is to love Jesus Christ and let his love frow through you. In plain language, this means the better Christian you become the better lover you become. Your Christian growth, therefore, is a key factor in your marriage. It costs to grow in Christ also, and this is another aspect of the sacrificial obligation of a husband.

The world is ever calling our attention to the high cost of living. Do not be so wrapped up in that aspect of reality that you neglect this call to the high cost of loving. You will never regret the sacrifices you make to love your mate, for the one teaching God has given us all through the Bible is this-It pays to love. Marriage is no gamble-it is a sure thing to cost you plenty but those who are willling to pay the price of loving as Christ loved will discover they have llife's best bargain-a wife who will also gladly obey God's Word and be respectful and submissive to her husband.

Silver and gold cannot purchase that, but only sacrificial love. This love is ever striving to be sensitive to the needs of the other-especially those of your mate. Jesus loved us so much he lliterally walked in our shoes. He got into our shin and lived life on our level, with our needs and emotions. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. For a husband to love his wife as Christ love d the church their must be the constant effort to feel what she feels-both her joys and her pains. To become one involves the sensitive sharing of total personalities. You do not fall into such love as this-you grow into it and aften you must climb into it by determined effort. It is hard work to love as Christ loved. He was often exhausted and on one occasion he even sweat drops of blood in his determination to love the church. There is both ecstasy and agony when you love as Christ loved.

When you make it clear to your wife you are determined to grow in your awareness of her needs in order to meet them, you give her that security she needs to love you in return on the same high level. Sacrificial love is a secure love in that it gives a sense of security to your bride. We know that even though we fail our Lord, if we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Perfect love casts out fear and we do not have to live in fear because or our own weakness for Jesus has promised "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

A marriage where their is fear of being forsaken or not forgiven is not a Christian marriage. A Christian marriage is for better or worse, in sickness and in health. Their is a commitment to face all of life-good and evil together. This commitment gives a sense of security where there is freedom to grow so that mates can become all God intendes for them to be.

Of course, it is impossible for any husband to achieve this ideal on his own. Jesus said without me you can do nothing. The only way you can even begin to love you wife on this level is to grow constantly in lyour love for Christ. It is his love that will make you loving and thereby make it possible for your wife to be submissive to your loving leadership.