Biblical Marriage – The Husband’s Role (Part 1)

One of the most direct passages on being a husband is Ephesians 5: 25 – 33:

²⁵Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰for we are members of his body. ³¹“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³²This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

We husbands tend to read this and get stuck on one of a couple points. One is “gave himself up for her”. We puff our chest and proclaim that if anyone ever came into our house we’d die to save our wives, and rightfully so. However, I think that doesn’t go far enough given the context surrounding that statement. The other point we focus on is in our providing for our families. We like to think that going to work every day and bring home the bacon as it were is some kind of giving up of ourselves for her. That we sacrifice in that way so she can have a new couch and nice clothes. These things are not bad things, and obviously that is part of our responsibility, but it only scratches the surface of fulfilling our role as defined in this passage.

Much of the surrounding text talks about service – Christ’s giving of himself and purifying us through his word, how the husband feeds and cares for his own body, and how these concepts apply to his responsibilities to his wife. So, taking a bullet for your wife is one thing, giving up yourself to a lifetime of service to your wife is something else altogether. We should feed care for our wives, just as we look after our own bodies. Obviously this is more than just the physical; this implies (given the reference to Christ and the church) a spiritual nourishing as well, with the ultimate goal being purification.

We should not do these things conditionally, or with any expectation of returned favors from our wives. Just as Christ does not conditionally love the church, and he did not only give himself up for her as long as we are blameless, neither should we only fulfill our responsibilities as husbands if our wives treat us a certain way.

More to come on this…

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