The Role and  Priorities of the  Husband (5:25-33)

23

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see to it that she respect her husband. (5:25-33)

Life is made meaningful by relationships, the most meaningful of which is that between a man and woman in marriage. Peter called it “the grace of life” (1 Pet. 3:7). Yet the fulfillment of that relationship is elusive. A marriage that continually gets better, richer, and more satisfying is rare today.

From many voices today comes the claim that the very institution of marriage has failed to meet people’s needs. But the fact is that it is not a matter of marriage having failed, since marriage has been increasingly avoided. Today, in place of exerting consistent effort and determination to fulfill the commitment it takes to make one’s marriage work, the solution is to bail out.

In his book Becoming Partners: Marriage and Its Alternatives, Dr. Carl Rogers writes from the view of a humanistic unbeliever,

It does not take boldness to predict what will happen, but only a look at God’s Word. “Realize this,” Paul tells us; “in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power…. Evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:1-5, 13).

In that awesome list of sins there are several—such as disobedience to parents, lack of love (the Greek term, astorgos, refers to lack of natural affection for one’s family), and brutality—that are directly undermining the home today. But every sin that weakens the individual also weakens the home to some extent; every aspect of ungodliness weakens the relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, and brothers and sisters. The home has become fair game for every deceiver, every sexual pervert, every exploiter, as Satan mounts his great attack on that foundation stone of society.

Because of the curse on marriage at the Fall and the inclinations of man’s fallen nature and of the world to oppose God’s way, the family has always had difficulty. In the western culture of our day, however, it is under an onslaught seemingly unlike any other in this society’s history. There is less chance than before of a family’s living together in harmony, love, and mutual respect apart from God’s provision in Christ. As every new corruption appears, a new philosophy arises to justify it. And those who persist in flouting God’s way are destined, as Paul prophesied, to go from bad to worse. Marriage, along with every other institution and design of God, will be more and more debased, as men go deeper into sexual perversion and selfishness.

Before the Fall, Adam and Eve lived in the beautiful harmony and satisfaction of a perfect marriage. When Adam first saw Eve, he immediately recognized her as his perfect companion. “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,” he said (Gen. 2:23). He saw no blemishes or shortcomings in her, because both her character and his attitude were pure. There was nothing to criticize in Eve and there was no critical spirit in Adam. Though they were both naked, they were not ashamed (v. 25), because there was no such thing as an evil, impure, or perverse thought.

Man was created first and was given headship over the woman and over creation. But their original relationship was so pure and perfect that his headship over her was a manifestation of his consuming love for her, and her submission to him was a manifestation of her consuming love for him. No selfishness or self-will marred their relationship. Each lived for the other in perfect fulfillment of their created purpose and under God’s perfect provision and care.

The man and woman were so closely identified with each other that God’s command was for “them [to] rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth…. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Gen. 1:26-28, emphasis added).

Marriage was instituted to procreate mankind, to raise up children to fill the earth (Gen. 1:28). It is also for the purpose of companionship, so that man would not be alone (2:18), and for the purpose of sexual fulfillment and pleasure (1 Cor. 7:4-5; cf. Heb. 13:4).

In the last chapter we discussed why the perfect marriage relationship of Adam and Eve was interrupted. The Fall itself involved a perversion of marital roles, and God’s curse because of the Fall also affected marriage. Eve sinned not only in disobeying God’s specific command but in acting independently of her husband and failing to consult Adam about the serpent’s temptation. Adam sinned not only by disobeying God’s command but by succumbing to Eve’s leadership, thus failing to exercise his God-given authority. Because of her disobedience, God cursed the woman to pain in childbirth and to a perverted desire to rule over the man. The man was cursed to toil, to difficulty, to frustration in wresting sustenance from the land, and to conflict with his wife over her submission. Both were cursed with death as the penalty for their sin (Gen. 3:16-19; cf. Rom. 5:15-19).

Marriage was corrupted because both the man and the woman twisted God’s plan for their relationship. They reversed their roles, and marriage has been a struggle ever since. Women’s liberation reflects the woman’s distorted desires, and male chauvinism the man’s. The unredeemed nature of both men and women is to be self-preoccupied and self-serving—and those characteristics are no basis for harmonious relationships. God’s way to successful marriage focuses on what husbands and wives put into it, not on what they can get out of it.

Throughout history the most dominant distortion of relationships has been on man’s side. In most cultures of the ancient world, women were treated as little more than servants, and the practice is reflected in many parts of the world today. Marcius Cato, the famous Roman statesman of the second century B.C, wrote, “If you catch your wife in an act of infidelity, you can kill her without a trial. But if she were to catch you, she would not venture to touch you with her finger. She has no rights.” That reflects the extreme of male chauvinism that comes out of the curse of the Fall and reflects the perversion of roles and responsibilities that God intends for husbands and wives.

Even in supposedly liberated societies, women are frequently looked on primarily as sex objects who exist for the sensual pleasures of men. Because modern man is inclined to view himself as merely a higher form of animal—with no divine origin, purpose, or accountability—he is even more disposed to see other people simply as things, to be used for his own pleasure and advantage.

As already pointed out, Satan’s initial attack on God’s supreme creation involved corruption of the family. Sin brought an alien, divisive influence into marriage and the family. The first murder was brother slaying brother (Gen. 4:8). A few generations later we see Lamech as a polygamist (Gen. 4:23), departing from God’s design for one-man, one-woman marriage (2:24). We are not told exactly what happened when Ham saw his father, Noah, drunk and naked in his tent, but it apparently involved perverted sexual suggestions or attempts on Ham’s part, because Noah cursed him for it (Gen. 9:25). When Sarah was not able to have children, she persuaded Abraham to have a child by Hagar, her maid, and thereby caused her husband to commit adultery (16:4). Because of their unbridled wickedness, especially in sexual perversions, God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (19:24-25). Since that day, Sodom has had the distinction of giving its name to a common term for homosexuality (sodomy). In Genesis 34 we read of Shechem’s fornication with Dinah, one of Jacob’s daughters (v. 3); and because the act was forceful, it was also rape. A few chapters later we read of another double sexual sin involving Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar, after she was widowed. Because she had no sons, she dressed up as a temple prostitute (which included wearing a veil) and enticed Judah as he passed down the road—who gave her the desired son, but at the cost of both prostitution and incest (38:13-18). In the next chapter we see the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife (39:7-12).

In this first book of the Bible we see the reversal of roles of husband and wife, fratricide, polygamy, perverted sexual suggestions, adultery, homosexuality, fornication, rape, prostitution, incest, and seduction—each of which directly attacks the sanctity and harmony of marriage and the family.

Yet in much of modern society those very sins are lauded. Young women who are virgins and husbands who are faithful to their wives are looked at askance and laughed at. Sexual purity and marital fidelity are standard fare for jesting in comedy and talk shows. It is difficult enough to make marriage work under the curse when most people recognize and seek to follow God’s standards for morality and marriage. It is immeasurably more difficult when most people mock those standards. The only ones who can survive such a wicked and perverse generation are Christians who are filled with the Holy Spirit. Apart from His divine resources, a couple has no more chance of making their marriage what God intends it to be than Ponce de Leon did of finding the fountain of youth.

Satan knows by experience that when the home is weakened, all of society is weakened, because the heart of all human relationships is the family. The curse hits mankind at the base of its most needed human relationship, the need for men and women to have each other as helpers suitable for living productive, meaningful, and happy lives on earth. The world, inspired and led by Satan himself, tells us that meaning and happiness are found in serving and indulging self, in being free to express sexual desire however one wants—though promiscuity, unfaithfulness in marriage, partner swapping, homosexuality, bestiality, or any other way. And when men and women take that deceptive bait, they join Satan in undermining and destroying every meaningful and truly satisfying relationship in their lives—sexual as well as all others. And they bring on themselves the destruction and disease that God has ordained as the consequence of such sins.

Popular entertainment goes beyond reflecting the normal, realistic inner longings that every person has for relationships that are genuine and permanent. The fantasy of the perfect woman, the perfect man, the perfect romantic relationship become more and more elusive as the fantasy satisfactions of immorality are chosen over the real satisfactions that come only from God’s standards of purity and unselfishness. The beautiful face, the athletic body, the winsome personality, and other such superficial attractions cannot hold two people together when their first priority in life is to serve and please themselves. The lie that no face is ever beautiful enough, no body ever sensual enough, no wardrobe ever glamorous enough, no physical pleasure ever fulfilling enough sends people on a path of self-destruction and emptiness.

Even when relationship after relationship proves disappointing, people continue to expect to find their fantasized satisfaction in the next person, the next experience, the next excitement. Because selfishness wants what it does not have, it therefore always wants more. Yet the more it possesses, the more it still wants and the less it is satisfied. As self is elevated above love, and immorality above purity, fantasy is inevitably elevated above reality—because reality becomes too disappointing to face. God destines the ungodly and immoral life to illusion and disappointment.

In Ephesians 5:25-33 Paul continues to describe the godly and moral life of the believer who is filled with the Holy Spirit and who is mutually submissive “in the fear of Christ” (v. 21). As he has already made clear (vv. 22-24), God has ordained the husband to be head over the wife. But the emphasis of the rest of the chapter in not on the husband’s authority but on his duty to submit to his wife through his love for her. Verses 25-31 explain the manner of that love and verses 32-33 reveal its motive.

THE MANNER OF LOVE

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. (5:25-31)

As just noted, the command, husbands, love your wives, continues Paul’s explanation of the mutual submission mentioned in verse 21. The husband’s primary submission to his wife is through his love for her, and the apostle makes clear that this is a boundless kind of love. Husbands are to love their wives just as Christ also loved the church. Jesus Christ loved the church before He brought the church into existence. He chose and loved His own even “before the foundation of the world” (1:4), because God’s love is eternally present, having no past and no future.

Obviously no sinful human being has the capacity to love with the divine fullness and perfection with which Christ … loved, and will forever love, the church. However, because a Christian has Christ’s own nature and Holy Spirit within him, God thereby provides for husbands to love their wives with a measure of Christ’s own kind of love. The husband who submits to the Lord by being filled with His Spirit (v. 18) is able to love his wife with the same kind of love Jesus has for His own bride, the church. The Lord’s pattern of love for His church is the husband’s pattern of love for his wife.

In this passage Paul mentions four qualities of that divine love that husbands are to exemplify toward their wives. Like the Lord’s, the husband’s love is to be sacrificial, purifying, caring, and unbreakable.

SACRIFICIAL LOVE

and gave Himself up for her. (5:25b)

When Christ came to earth in human form, He knew that He came to be mocked, ridiculed, maligned, rejected, beaten, and crucified. He knew from eternity past what would be demanded of His eternal love if men were to be provided a way of salvation. He gave up His prerogatives as God’s Son, not regarding “equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant,… He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8).

Because His sacrifice was determined in heaven before a single soul was created, and because every created soul became sinful in Adam’s fall and only worthy of death (Rom. 1:32; 3:10-11, 23; 6:21), Jesus’ sacrifice was purely of grace. Jesus loves and saves because it is His character to be gracious. “For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:7-8). Jesus’ love for His church not only was sacrificial but graciously sacrificial. No person deserves to be saved, to be forgiven, cleansed, and placed within God’s kingdom as His own child. He sacrificed not for the lovely or worthy but for the unlovely and unworthy.

The world’s love is always object-oriented. A person is loved because of physical attractiveness, personality, wit, prestige, or some other such positive characteristic. In other words, the world loves those whom it deems worthy of love. Such love is necessarily fickle. As soon as a person loses a positive characteristic—or that characteristic is no longer appealing—the love based on the characteristic also disappears. It is because so many husbands and wives have only that kind of fickle love for each that their marriages fall apart. As soon as a partner loses his or her appeal, love is gone, because the basis for the love is gone.

God’s love is not of that sort. He loves because it is His nature to love that which He has created and because the objects of His love need to be loved—not because they are attractive or deserve His love. If God loved as the world loves, He could not love a single human being. But in His marvelous graciousness, He loves because He cannot do otherwise.

God can command His own kind of love from those who belong to Him because He has given them the capacity to love as He loves (cf. Rom. 5:5; 1 Thess. 4:9) and because His commanded love must, therefore, be a matter of choice (cf. James 2:8; l John 3:7, 16-18, 23; 4:7, 11). It is an act of the will as well as of the heart. And it seems to be a principle that whatever we choose to love and practice loving soon becomes attractive to us. But a Christian’s loving with Christ’s kind of love is not based on the attractiveness of the one loved but on God’s command to love. Loving as Christ loves does not depend in the least on what others are in themselves, but entirely on what we are in Christ.

A husband is not commanded to love his wife because of what she is or is not. He is commanded to love her because it is God’s will for him to love her. It is certainly intended for a husband to admire and be attracted by his wife’s beauty, winsomeness, kindness, gentleness, or any other positive quality or virtue. But though such things bring great blessing and enjoyment, they are not the bond of marriage. If every appealing characteristic and every virtue of his wife disappears, a husband is still under just as great an obligation to love her. If anything, he is under greater obligation, because her need for the healing and restorative power of his selfless love is greater. That is the kind of love Christ has for His church and is therefore the kind of love every Christian husband is to have for his wife.

The Good Samaritan’s expression of love to the man who was beaten and robbed was based on his own generous character and on that man’s severe need. Whether the man deserved his care did not enter into the picture. Jesus washed His disciples’ feet because He loved them and sought to serve them, not because they deserved even that most menial of services. He loved them despite their selfishness, pride, ambition, self-indulgence, jealousy, and fickleness. No doubt He felt great sorrow and pain because of their continued selfishness after three years of being with Him in intimate fellowship. But He did not love and serve them on the basis of those feelings but on the basis of His own loving nature. He also washed their feet as an example of what every disciple of His is commanded to do. “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14). A short while later He said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (v. 34).

Where there is need, love acts, with no consideration of deserving or worth (cf. 1 John 3:16). God’s love is its own justification; and when we love as He loves, our love is also its own justification, because it is like His love. God did not love the world and send His own Son to redeem it because it was worthy of that love. It was totally unworthy of His love; and when His love came in human flesh, the world despised it, rejected it, and threw it back in God’s face. Yet Jesus Christ, as God’s incarnate love, did not flinch or turn away or become resentful. He preached and taught and bled and died, because that is what divine love demanded.

Love does whatever needs to be done and does not count cost or merit. It reaches out and helps, leads, teaches, warns, or encourages. Whatever is needed it gives. Whether its help is received or rejected, appreciated or resented, love continues as long as the need continues.

Therefore the Christian who loves because of what other people may do for him or because they are attractive does not love as God loves. The husband who loves his wife only because of her physical attractiveness or pleasing temperament does not love her as Christ… loved the church. The husband who loves his wife for what she can give him loves as the world loves, not as Christ loves. The husband who loves his wife as Christ loves His church gives everything he has for his wife, including his life if necessary.

If a loving husband is willing to sacrifice his life for his wife, he is certainly willing to make lesser sacrifices for her. He puts his own likes, desires, opinions, preferences, and welfare aside if that is required to please her and meet her needs. He dies to self in order to live for his wife, because that is what Christ’s kind of love demands. That is his submission.

The true spirituality of a church leader is not measured best by how well he leads a deacons’ or elders’ meeting, by the way he participates in Sunday school, or by the way he speaks from the pulpit—but by the way he treats his wife and children at home when no one else is around. Nowhere is our relationship to God better tested than in our relationship to our family. The man who plays the part of a spiritual shepherd in church but who lacks love and care in his home is guilty of spiritual fraud.

The world continually tells the man to be macho, to defend himself, assert himself, bring attention to himself, and live totally for himself. But God tells the Christian man to give himself up for others, especially for his wife, just as Christ gave Himself up for the church.

To regularly remind myself of the essence of this self-sacrificing love, I have on my desk the following words from an unknown source:

PURIFYING LOVE

that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless. (5:26-27)

For husbands to love their wives as Christ loves His church is to love them with a purifying love. Divine love does not simply condemn wrong in those loved but seeks to cleanse them from it. Christ’s great love for His church does not allow Him to be content with any sin, any moral or spiritual impurity in it. God tells His people, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool” (Isa. 1:18). He casts the sins of His forgiven children “into the depths of the sea” (Mic. 7:19), and He forgives their iniquity and remembers their sin no more (Jer. 31:34).

A believer is forgiven every sin the moment he trusts in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. After that initial and full purification from sin, as Jesus explained to Peter as he washed his feet, periodic cleansing is still necessary. “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you” (John 13:10). As we continue to confess our sins, Christ “is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The word is the agent of this sanctification (cf. Titus 3:5), the objective of which is a blamelessness and holiness that makes us fit to be presented to Christ as His own beloved and eternal bride, to dwell in His glorious presence forever (cf. Rev. 21:lff.).

Love wants only the best for the one it loves, and it cannot bear for a loved one to be corrupted or misled by anything evil or harmful. When a husband’s love for his wife is like Christ’s love for His church, he will continually seek to help purify her from any sort of defilement. He will seek to protect her from the world’s contamination and protect her holiness, virtue, and purity in every way. He will never induce her to do that which is wrong or unwise or expose her to that which is less than good.

On a popular talk show some years ago the host interviewed two ministers. When asked what they thought of Playboy magazine, one of them replied, “I think it is despicable. I wouldn’t read it or have it in my home. It dishonors God, it dishonors men and women, and it dishonors almost everything else that is good.” The other minister said, “I am an evangelical Christian, and I want you to know that my wife and I both read Playboy. In fact she gave me a subscription to it. After 18 years of marriage we thought we needed a little something to stimulate our relationship.” That man not only was defiling himself but encouraged his wife in the defilement. Whatever sensual desire motivated that couple to read such a magazine, it was not godly love for each other.

When a young man says he loves a young woman, but wants her to compromise her sexual purity before they are married, his love is the world’s lust, not God’s love; and it is selfish, not serving. That sort of love defiles rather than purifies. A husband who flirts with his secretary or a neighbor woman gives his wife cause to feel rejected and lonely—and perhaps to begin flirting herself. He not only jeopardizes his own moral purity, but his wife’s as well, and shares responsibility for any indiscretion or immorality in which she might be tempted to become involved.

In ancient Greece, a bride-to-be would be taken down to a river to be bathed and ceremonially cleansed from every defilement of her past life. Whatever her life had been before, it was now symbolically purified and she would enter the marriage without any moral or social blemish—the past was washed away.

In an immeasurably greater way Christ gave Himself up for the church, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless. His cleansing of believers is not ceremonial and symbolic, but real and complete.

The soteriological truth in this analogy is that saving grace makes believers holy through the cleansing agency of the Word of God, so that they may be presented to Christ as His pure Bride, forever to dwell in His love. It is with that same purpose and in that same love that husbands are to cultivate the purity, righteousness, and sanctity of their wives.

CARING LOVE

So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. (5:28-30)

For a husband’s love for his wife to be like Christ’s love for His Body, the church, it must also be affectionately caring—to the extent that he cares as much for her welfare as he does for the welfare of his own body.

Men and women have always been concerned about their bodies. But at no time in modern history have people more sinfully pampered, protected, nourished, and indulged the body as in our own day. The amount of money spent just to decorate, protect, enhance, comfort, and display the body is incalculable.

Because, as Christians, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, we should be take proper care of them—giving them the right food, maintaining reasonable strength, getting enough rest, and so on. When our body is healthy we have a sense of well-being; and when a husband meets the needs of his wife—with the same care and concern with which he meets the needs of his own body—he will also have a sense of well-being and pleasure as a by-product of his love.

The husband who loves his wife as Christ loves the church will no more do anything to harm her than he would to harm his own flesh. His desire is to nourish and cherish her just as he nourishes and cherishes his own body—because that is how Christ also does the church.

When she needs strength, he gives her strength. When she needs encouragement, he gives her that. And so with every other thing she needs. Just as God supplies “all [our] needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19), the loving husband seeks to supply all the needs of his wife. The blessed marriage is the marriage in which the husband loves his wife with unlimited caring. Something is basically wrong if she is looked at only as a cook, housekeeper, occasional companion, and sex partner. She is a God-given treasure to be loved, cared for, nourished, and cherished.

To nourish a wife is to provide for her needs, to give that which helps her grow and mature in favor with God and man. To cherish her is to use tender love and physical affection to give her warmth, comfort, protection, and security. Those responsibilities are primarily the husband’s, not the wife’s. As Christ provides for His church, so the husband provides for his wife and family.

Christ provides for us as His church because we are members of His body. Not to provide for His church would be not to provide for Himself. He shares common life with His church, and we are members of His body, His flesh and bones, His present incarnation on earth. Paul said, “The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17), and again, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20).

UNBREAKABLE LOVE

For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. (5:31)

For a husband to love his wife as Christ loves His church he must love her with an unbreakable love. In this direct quotation from Genesis 2:24 Paul emphasized the permanence as well as the unity of marriage. God’s standard for marriage did not change from the time of Adam until the time of Paul, and it has not changed to this day.

One of the greatest barriers to successful marriage is the failure of one or both partners to leave … father and mother. In marriage, a new family is begun and the relationships of the former families are to be severed as far as authority and responsibilities are concerned. Parents are always to be loved and cared for, but they are no longer to control the lives of their children once they are married.

Proskollaō (cleave) literally means to be glued or cemented together. Husbands and wives are to leave their parents and to cleave to, be cemented to, each other. They break one set of ties as they establish the other, and the second is more binding and permanent than the first.

“‘I hate divorce,’ says the Lord, the God of Israel” (Mai. 2:16). God has always hated divorce and He will continue to hate it, because it destroys that which He has ordained to be unbreakable. He hates divorce on any terms and for any reason. He will tolerate it in certain instances, and will forgive it, as He will forgive any other sin; but He will never change His hatred for it, just as He will never change His hatred for any other sin.

Husbands and wives are not to be quick to divorce each other because of wrongs their spouses have done, not even for unfaithfulness. Just as Christ does not separate Himself from believers who sin against Him, husbands and wives are not to separate themselves from their partners who sin against them. As Christ is always forgiving of believers, husbands and wives should always be forgiving of each other.

Israel was repeatedly unfaithful to God, and that unfaithfulness is frequently referred to in the Old Testament as spiritual adultery. When God chose Israel to be His people, He determined to love them “with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). It was only after unrelenting spiritual adultery and rejection of Him that God finally gave Israel a divorce (Jer. 3:8). But that was not to say He rejected the true believers within the nation, who were secure in His saving grace (see Mai. 3:16-18).

That is the sort of bond God ordained for marriage. It is not everlasting as far as eternity is concerned, but it is lasting as far as the earthly lives of the husband and wife are concerned. Though He has made provision for divorce in the cases of unrepentant and continued adultery (Matt. 5:31-32; 19:4-10) and the departure of an unbelieving spouse (1 Cor. 7:15), death is God’s only desired dissolution for marriage.

Just as the body of Christ is indivisible, God’s ideal design for marriage is that it be indivisible. As Christ is one with His church, husbands are one with their wives. Therefore when a husband harms his wife he harms himself. A husband who violates his marriage violates himself. A husband who destroys his marriage destroys a part of himself.

When a man and woman are joined in marriage, Jesus said, “They are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matt. 19:6). When the Pharisees asked, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate and divorce her?” Jesus replied, “Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery” (vv. 7-9).

Jesus made clear that God, through Moses, only “permitted” divorce; He never “commanded” it, as Jewish leaders had claimed for hundreds of years. The bill of divorcement was to protect the offended wife, who would then be allowed to marry again without becoming guilty of adultery. That is the only provision that either Moses or Jesus gives for divorce.

But it is not God’s will that even adultery break the marriage relationship, and that is the message of the book of Hosea. Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was unfaithful in the extreme, not only committing adultery but becoming a prostitute. Yet God’s word to Hosea was to keep loving her and forgiving her. The more she sinned, the more he was to forgive—reflecting God’s gracious forgiveness of His sinning people. Finally God restored the marriage of Hosea and Gomer, and He gave the promise to Israel, “I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like the lily” (Hos. 14:4-5). That is the way God has always loved His people, the way Jesus Christ has always loved His church, and the way Christian husbands are always to love their wives. The Lord never puts us away. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

When a husband sees faults and failures in his wife—even if she is as unfaithful and wanton as Gomer—he should realize that she has not offended him to a fraction of the degree to which he has offended God. God has immeasurably more for which to forgive us than we could ever have for which to forgive others. (For a more detailed treatment of divorce, see the pertinent passages in the author’s commentaries Matthew 1-7 [Moody, 1985] and First Corinthians [Moody, 1984] as well as his book The Family [Moody, 1982].)

The early church Father John Chrysostom wrote,

A man who was afraid that he loved his wife too much was asked if he loved her as much as Christ loved the church. When he answered no, he was told, “Then you must love her more.”

Peter admonished, “You husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman; and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered” (1 Pet. 3:7). Here we see at least three commands. First, a husband is to be considerate of his wife. To treat your wife in an understanding way is to treat her with sensitivity and consideration. Over and over we hear wives saying—usually with justification—that their husbands do not understand them, are not sensitive to their feelings and their needs, and do not communicate with them. The fact that a husband may have many pressures and worries of his own is no excuse for his being insensitive to his wife, whom God commands him to love and care for as Christ loves and cares for the church.

Second, Peter teaches that a husband is to be chivalrous to his wife as “a weaker vessel.” True chivalry is not simply a formality of polite society; it reflects the attitude men should have toward all women, particularly their own wives. A husband’s courtesy toward his wife not only pleases her but also God.

Third, Peter tells husbands to honor their wives “as a fellow heir of the grace of life.” Husbands and wives should be the best of friends, not only in family matters and daily activities, but in spiritual things as well. A husband who is not considerate of his wife and who does not honor and respect her is defective in his spiritual life, and his prayers will “be hindered.”

The husband who gives his wife consideration, courtesy, and honor contributes to the beauty and strength of his marriage and gives an invaluable example and legacy to his children.

THE MOTIVE FOR LOVING YOUR WIFE

This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see to it that she respect her husband. (5:32-33)

As Paul has pointed out in w. 23-29, marriage is a picture of the church and its relationship to Christ. This mystery—this magnificent picture that men could never discover and that was unknown to the saints of the Old Covenant but is now revealed—is great. God’s new people, the church, are brought into His kingdom and His family through faith in Christ. He is the Bridegroom and they are His bride (Rev. 21:9). A husband’s greatest motive for loving, purifying, protecting, and caring for his wife is Christ’s love, purifying, protecting, and caring for His own bride, the church. Christian marriage is to be loving, holy, pure, self-sacrificing, and mutually submissive because those virtues characterize the relationship of Christ and the church.

The sacred relationship between Christian husbands and wives is inextricably related to the sacred relationship between Christ and His church. Because of this great sacredness, Paul said, Nevertheless let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see to it that she respect her husband. The use of nevertheless (plon) is intended to end the discussion and emphasize what in it is most essential to remember.

When Christian husbands and wives walk in the power of the Spirit, yield to His Word and His control, and are mutually submissive, they are brought much happiness, their children are brought much blessing, and God is brought much honor.