Further Motivation for a Husband’s Godly Love For His Wife
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for 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.” Ephesians 5:28-31 (NIV)
The love of husbands for their wives is to be modelled on the love of Christ for His church. The love of Christ and His desire for His church are pictured as the preparation of a bride for her husband. Paul continues, ‘In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives’ (5:28). The love of a husband for his wife is not just because she is beautiful but to make her even more beautiful. Christ sees the church in all her weakness and failure and yet loves her as His body, and seeks her ultimate sanctification. ‘In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies’ (5:28). He who loves his wife loves himself (5:28) Paul probably realises how hard husbands would find it to apply this standard to the realities of everyday life and so brings the parallel down to a more mundane level. We all know how we love ourselves and how Jesus said we should treat others the way we would want to be treated (Matthew 7:12). The word for ‘love’ is again ‘agapao.’ Paul assumes a Christian husband wants to reach the mark of the highest spiritual stature for himself, and if he loves his wife as he loves himself (and that loves spus him to reach that mark for himself), he will want the same for his wife.
Paul develops this a bit further. ‘After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church’ (5:29). ‘Feed and care’ are words used for the nurture of children (6:4; 1 Thessalonians 2:7). It is natural to look after ourselves. From one perspective it is the law of life, and the extension, to similarly care for our life-partner, is the law of marriage. ‘As Christ does the church’ (5:29). Again, Christ is taken as the perfect example. He makes perfect provision for the church. In God’s purposes, the wife becomes part of the very life of her husband, and he nourishes and cares for her, even as Christ does for us as members of Himself, part of His own life that He has joined to Himself.
Previously Paul used two analogies for a husband’s love for his wife: Christ’s loving sacrifice for His bride, the church, and the husband’s loving care of his own body. Now he has fused the two. Christ’s bride and Christ’s body are the same (5:23) ‘for we are members of his body’ (5:30). He has incorporated us into Himself, made us part of Himself in an indissoluble union. This leads Paul to quote Genesis 2:24 ‘“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”’ (5:30) and to declare that ‘This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church’ (5:31). The ‘one flesh’ experience of a husband and wife is describing their sexual union when the two become one.
Look after and care for your wife, Paul is saying, as you look after and care for yourself. Do you do that?
Husbands have the obligation of loving and caring for their wives the same way they love and care for their own bodies, for to love your wife is to love your own self. No one abuses his own body, but pampers it – serving and satisfying its needs. That’s exactly what Christ, our example does for his church! He serves and satisfies us as members of his body – his flesh and bones.
For this reason a man is to leave his father and his mother and lovingly hold to his wife, since the two have become joined as one flesh Ephesians 5:28-31 (the Passion Translation)