Don’t forget your husbandly responsibility!

Part 1

Today’s verse, written under inspiration by the Apostle Paul is directed to each of us men who are married.  There is both a strong positive and negative aspect of the words here.  We husbands need to heed them well.  We will look at the positive side today, and the negative side tomorrow.  Men, we need to heed both sides!

“Husbands, love your wives,”
Paul uses the highest form of “love” as the focus, the action of this command.1  Our love is to be continually given to our wives.  We are to literally, “keep on loving” them.  This word “love” is related to the word for love most believers know – agape.

This agape love is a sacrificial kind of love.  In Paul’s day, this was unheard of in a family for the husband/father to love his family this way.  This was true of the Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultures.  The husband was the master of his household.  He had all the power to do whatever he wanted with his wife and children.  The law favored him totally.

“There were no complimentary powers or privileges on the part of wives, children, or slaves.”2

This new idea for “love” was introduced by Jesus Christ.  In fact, Paul wrote of this kind of love in Jesus,

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved [agapao3] me and gave himself for me,” (Galatians 2:20).

And this same kind of love Jesus manifested, is Biblically commanded for each husband.

“Husbands, love [agapao] your wives, even as Christ also loved [agapao] the church, and gave himself for it,” (Ephesians 5:25).

In the scriptures we see that the Father “loves us,” and He sacrificed His Son for us (John 3:16).  Jesus “loves us,” and He sacrificed Himself for us (Galatians 2:20).  This agape love we men are commanded to love our wives with is a sacrificial giving kind of love.

“…it can be defined as a sacrificial, giving, absorbing, love. The word has little to do with emotion; it has much to do with self-denial for the sake of another,”4 (Guzik).

Men, learning to love our wives this way is a tall order, but the Lord would not tell us to do it if it were impossible.  Let’s keep on asking the Lord to help us love our wife and family the way He loves us.

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened,” (Matthew 7:7-8).

Come back tomorrow and let’s see what we husbands should never do to our wives.

1.  In Greek grammar, this verb is a present active imperative.
2. Guzik, David, David Guzik’s Enduring Word Commentary, the electronic version in eSword.
3. Agape is the noun form for a Greek word for “love.” Agapao is the verb form of the same word.
4. Guzik, ibid.