As many of you know, yesterday was Rachelle and I's 7th anniversary. This morning, I was reading my daily devotional, and it fit perfectly. It reminds me of my duty and obligation to Rachelle as a husband. This devotional is definetly worth sharing, and it reads as follows:
For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.
Ephesians 5:25
Gentlemen, it looks like we have it easy. After all, our wives have to “submit” (v. 22), whatever that means, but we just have to “love.” What could be simpler than that? Flowers from time to time. Chocolates on strategic occasions. Perhaps even a power tool or two she can claim as her own even though we use it most of the time. And if the situation is just right, we might manage a mumbled “I love you” just to make it clear. Submission sounds hard. It involves giving way to someone else. That someone would be us husbands. Does that mean what it seems like it means? We’re in charge? We call all the shots? We give the orders? Well, that would be something!
We’d better check our source again to make sure we’re not jumping to conclusions. Let’s see. If we go back to verse 21, uh-oh, something here about “submit to one another.” That could be a problem. But verse 22 does tell wives to submit. Verse 25 doesn’t tell us to submit; it tells us to love.
That little phrase “just as Christ loved the church” does show us several things. First, it tells us that our examples of loving above don’t really apply. Jesus never sent flowers to the church. He never picked up a box of chocolates on the way home from work as a peace offering. He never mumbled “I love you” through a mouthful of hamburger. Jesus loved by dying. He loved by suffering, hurting, and sacrificing. His kind of love sounds hard—almost as hard as submitting. Maybe even harder.
A dying kind of love that doesn’t leave us dead turns out to be quite a challenge. It might just take everything we’ve got. But here’s the deal. One of the primary reasons our wives struggle with submission is that they often have little real confidence in our love.
Genuine love paves the way for submission (not the other way around). Jesus died for the church before the church was around to submit.
Real love (like dying) doesn’t come naturally for us. If you want to learn to love your wife as Christ loves the church, you are going to have to ask questions, observe reactions, and experiment persistently in the area of love. Ask Christ to make you like him so that your wife can experience the kind of love that brings life to her! Figure out how to love her, and you probably won’t have to bring up the issue of submission.
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