Ephesians 5:22-33; Instructions for Husbands & Wives

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church- for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:22-33

I have a very dear friend who is much further along in her walk with God. I greatly respect her and she always proves reliable when I am in need of a bit of guidance on something. She was the one who directed me to Ephesians when I was struggling with some issues concerning marriage and my role in it.

I have been working on this one for over a year. I read it, I reread it. It doesn't change. I struggled a lot at first to put this one in perspective. I had always been raised to be an independent woman. Not to depend on a man to give me everything. Maybe that is where I went wrong early on.

As I struggled to come to grips with the very first part about wives submitting to their husbands; I finally read on and began to really think about it as a whole. We are to submit to our husbands as to the Lord. What does submission to the Lord mean exactly? What does it entail? It requires up to have faith and trust, for one thing. Just as the Lord has our good in mind, we must also know that is true of our husbands.

Read on though, wives aren't the only ones with something to do here. Husbands also have a role. They are supposed to love their wives, just as Christ loved the church. When you think about that; it is huge. How much did Christ love the church? This is a pretty big task for husbands to live up to also.

They are also to love their wife as he loves himself. So a husband has a big responsibility to love his wife and take care of her. And a wife is to respect her husband.

So, it is not saying the husband has permission to treat his wife however he wants and she has to respect him anyway. She is to respect him and he is to love her as himself, and as Christ loved the church. When the husband is living up to his part and the wife is living up to her part, it makes it easy for them both to fulfill their roles. A husband who gives more love, will be more easy to respect; and a wife who gives respect to her husband will more easily feel love from him.

It boils down to the basic of what I see as human needs; men need to be the leaders in their homes and women need to feel loved.

Resources

Day 11 - Resisting Offense Through Love

Bible Gateway - Ephesians 5:22-33 New International Version