Ephesians 5:25-27 25Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
Paul next turns his attention to the husbands in the home. His direction is simple but all encompassing: love your wives. Again, the example is Christ. This fits well with Paul’s earlier thesis that those who are “in Christ” are being transformed into the holy and righteous image of God, which is most perfectly seen in the person of Christ. We can come to know what love is by the work of the Holy Spirit within us who will help us to know the love of Christ and experience God’s fullness (3:19).
Loving one’s wife means having the willingness and action to give up oneself for one’s wife. Christ loved the church so much that he gave himself for her. This “giving” meant death on the cross. There was no condition for this love. This is one of the “whosoever” ideas of the Bible (see John 3:16). Husbands must love in such a way that the wive’s needs are put ahead of his own. This type of love is also a form of submission and should come as a result of being filled with the Spirit. The number one goal of a husband ought to be to help his wife be holy. The way God has set this is up is for a husband to give himself totally to his wife and love her unconditionally. The husband is the wife’s number one fan.
Christ gave himself for the church, the people of God. The spiritual growth of the church is a key theme in this letter. The focus of this growth is to become like Christ in loving one another in a strong bond of unity. Christ is the one who unites the church. If anything else is at the focus and common bond of a group of people, it is not functioning in the best way as a church. It might even be said to not be a church but a social club. The focus of our worship is the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. We experience this sacrifice through our relationships of love with one another. The place this must start is with those in our closest relationships. For a married couple, this would be with one’s spouse. The type of love Paul is urging here for husbands is not exclusively a human love, which tends to be only emotional, but a divine love that is the gift of God’s grace through the Holy Spirit. If we want strong marriages, we must show this type of love to one another. Paul puts the responsibility here on the husbands, who were viewed as the stronger and responsible person in marriages of that time. If a husband will take the initiative in unconditional, self-giving love, the wife will respond with the same type of love.
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