Love as Christ loved
A teaching for husbands · Ephesians 5:25–30
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her 26to sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to Himself as a glorious church, without stain or wrinkle or any such blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29Indeed, no one ever hated his own body, but he nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. 30For we are members of His body.
Context
Paul is writing to the churches of Asia Minor, where Roman law gave the head of the household almost absolute power. The passage begins in v. 21, with everyone submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. When he gets to husbands, Paul doesn’t hand them rights: he hands them a cross. The measure of a husband’s love is Christ, who gave Himself for the church, and his own body, which no one hates but feeds and protects.
What the Bible teaches
Notice what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell husbands to make their wives submit; there is no command for them to demand it. The only verb aimed at them is love, and the model is astonishing: “just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” In the culture of the day, being the head meant having privileges. In Christ, it means going to the cross first. Leading the home means taking the initiative to serve, to ask forgiveness, to carry the heaviest load.
Verses 26 and 27 show the goal of this love: Christ gives Himself so the church can flourish, to present her glorious. Every husband can ask himself: is my wife freer, more whole and more like the person God made her to be because she is married to me? Or is she smaller, afraid, faded? Love that diminishes the other is not the love of Ephesians 5.
In v. 29, Paul uses two concrete verbs: nourish and cherish. It’s the vocabulary of someone who feeds and keeps warm. To nourish is to offer what makes her grow: listening, time, encouragement of her gifts. To cherish is to shield her from the cold: from lonely exhaustion, from public criticism, from the overload no one sees.
In practice
Ask her: what can I take on this week so you have more rest or room for something you love? Then do it, without needing to be reminded.
To talk about
When have you felt most cared for by me, and when did you feel I was thinking only of myself?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you gave yourself for me when I didn’t deserve it. Teach me to love my wife with that same love, which doesn’t demand but gives itself. Take from me every desire to control and give me the courage to serve first. May she flourish by my side. Amen.