Reflection on God's Word

MARRIAGE (PART 2)

by Tim Thomas

March 19, 2007

Ephesians 5:21-30

Since this is such a long passage (and commentary), I decided to break it up into two separate reflections. In this second half, I focus on the role of the husband. I feel more at ease in discussing this part, perhaps because the command for a husband to love his wife is not terribly controversial, but also because, being a man, I am more comfortable talking about a man's role than I am in telling a woman what her role is to be.

Paul establishes a standard for the husband that is impossible for the husband to achieve, at least not completely. The standard in verse 25 is that the husband is to love his wife as Jesus loved (and loves) the Church. Who can really love another to the same degree as Jesus loves? The kind of love that Paul focuses on in Jesus's example is a self-sacrificing love. The passage in Philippians 2 which focuses on Jesus's sacrifice is pertinent here: Jesus stepped down from heaven, putting on an earthly, human body -- and that initially being of a vulnerable new-born baby -- lived a life of obedience to His Father in heaven, and then willingly suffered the brutality of the cross. God becoming human is probably like a person becoming an amoeba. It's hard to get your mind around how big a demotion it was, and what a shock it would be to take on the form of something inferior -- but love can drive you to do extreme things.

It surely is an extreme thing to suffer the beatings that Jesus did on his way to the cross and to bear the agony of hanging on the cross, held there by nails driven through the flesh of the feet and hands. But while on the cross he experienced separation from His Father -- something he had never before experienced, perhaps feeling like the rending of his very being. AND, he bore the punishment of the sins of the entire world, not just in his generation, but all generations. That's love!!! And that's why it seems to me to be a standard I can never reach, though I can strive for it.

Verses 26 and 27 say that the purpose of Jesus's sacrificial love was to make the Church holy, so that the Church would be His radiant, pure, and spotless Bride. It is hard to imagine that we could ever be a suitable eternal partner for God, and yet that is what we as the Church are called to be -- it is what we are. His action on our behalf makes us holy, clean, spotless, and blameless. In practice, we don't seem to reach that standard, I know, but in terms of what Jesus accomplished by his actions, he declares it to be so. We appropriate for ourselves by faith what he accomplished, we don't rely on what we can accomplish.

How are husbands meant to be like Jesus in all this? When many of us think of giving up our lives, we think of making a great sacrifice protecting our wives from criminals, say, or defending our country from threats, maybe, or pushing her out of the way of out of control cars. It's the thing of movies and great novels. While that is heroic, admirable, and part of the correct idea of sacrificing ourselves for our wives, it overlooks the fact that Jesus's sacrifice was not just upon the cross, but his entire time on this earth. In that sense, we are to daily sacrifice ourselves out of love for our wives. Just as we are to daily carry our crosses for Jesus, we are to live lives of sacrificial love for our wives.

What does that look like? For each of us it will be different, but it means keeping her needs as equal to or better than our own. A lot of us tend to get overly focused on one area and neglect others. Just as I mentioned the idea of heroicly rescuing our wives when her life is threatened, some of us have a tendency to lock in on our role as provider, and neglect other important needs, like cultivating a safe and emotionally intimate marriage relationship; like encouraging her social, physical, and intellectual development; like relieving stress by doing tasks for her that would normally be hers to do. This, of course, is not an exhaustive list. The challenge to each husband is to not only ask ourselves what bases should we be covering, and what specific changes in our own plans and habits ought we make to start moving in the right direction?

It is probably worthwhile to pause and consider whether our objectives as husbands ought to be similar to those of Jesus, as recorded in verses 26 and 27: make her holy, blameless, and without blemish. This is not necessarily implied by the passage: it is what Jesus does for the Church, not necessarily what the husband should do for the wife. On the other hand, it doesn't mean the parallel that Paul has been drawing between Christ and the husband shouldn't go this far. I think that it may be suggesting that the husband ought to be concerned about the wife's spiritual well-being and development. Having erred in how to do this many times in my marriage, I would like to state plainly that nagging or trying to structure spiritual disciplines into one's wife -- apart from what she desires to do -- will not bear the kind of fruit we hope for. One positive thing to do: it is always good and wise to pray daily for one's wife, that God would draw her an woo her to a greater intimacy with him. Second, from my military days, we often would speak of "leadership by example". That means that if we believe that there is something that is good for the spiritual development of our wives, then we probably ought to be practicing it ourselves. The reader should spend time thinking what other things that might do to encourage spiritual development in those that they are close with.

Many women would say that one of the things that they desire most is to feel cherished by their husbands. This is what Paul is saying in this passage, and especially in the close of this passage in verses 28 to 30. We are called to love our wives as our very selves. We are called to nurture them. It is then -- given time and patience -- we will see our wives revealed more and more as the radiant and vibrant women God made them to be.