Husbands, Love Your Wives, Part 3
Question #3: Why am I supposed to love my wife?
Or, rather, what is the point of loving my wife? What are we, as husbands, working toward when we set about to love our wives with Christ’s Love? Since we are to love our wives as Christ loved the church, we should have the same goal in mind that Christ has regarding the church. Christ’s goal in loving the church can be summed up in one word: sanctification. Vine’s Concise Dictionary says, “Sanctification is that relationship with God into which men enter by faith in Christ, and to which their sole title is the death of Christ.” Christ gave Himself for us so that we might have a relationship with Him. Read Ephesians 5:25 & 26 again. It says, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” Christ gave His life for the church, for you, so that He could sanctify the church, so that He could have a true relationship with the church.
God wants us to have a true relationship with our wives. Why? Again, what’s the point? The point is that, together, you and your wife might experience an earthly relationship so loving, sweet, pure, and strong that it is analogous to Christ’s relationship with His church. God didn’t institute marriage so that we would be bound like slaves to live out our morbid existence in misery. God never instituted anything that would destroy life; but, rather, His institutions are only ever for the creation and preservation of true Life. God wants you to have Life in your marriage. Jesus said that He is “come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (Jn. 10:10)
How is this Life achieved? How can I bring this Life into my marriage? By submitting to one another, like Ephesians 5:21 says. That commandment is to you. You need to take the first step. You need to lovingly submit to your wife. Then, it’s up to her to decide whether or not she will reciprocate your love. Why do we love Christ? “We love him, because he first loved us.” (I Jn. 4:19) As an emulator of Christ in His relationship to the church, you should love your wife, so she can love you in return. Then, through submission one to another in the fear of God, love will grow and Life by love.
In the next part of this series, I’ll begin to get into practicalities. I’ll begin with: Question #4: How can I submit to my wife?
