Astute counselors and bible scholars teach the very important doctrine that to maintain a happy marriage, women need love and men need respect. It is interesting that the bible does not teach that both just need love but goes a step further and differentiates the needs of a wife and husband. This comes from the bible passage in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus:
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…husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. ~Ephesians 5:25-26, 28-30, 33
Of course, the Old Testament first commands man to love God and to love his neighbor, and Jesus clarifies this as the Two Great Commandments, so loving one another is not a new concept for marriage. But in marriage, wives are called to go one step further and to respect their husbands. We will discuss that in the next essay. For now, let’s explore what husbands loving wives should look like, biblically.
Paul explains in this same passage that loving each other should look like how Christ loves us. Christ left His divine home in heaven and came down to earth clothed in a human body, lived a perfect life, and died an unfair, cruel death on a Roman cross out of His love for us, to save our lives. So, husbands loving wives looks self-sacrificial. He counts her life more valuable than his own.
In our world, people define love as a feeling to be thrown around to mean everything from liking something to hating something but not wanting to tell the truth about it! Love in our world is rarely expressed how the bible intended love to be understood. In God’s economy love is an action. To love is to do something, not just feel something. Just as faith without works is dead, love without works is meaningless.
Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? ~Peter 2:15-16
If there is no love in a home, the fault lies with the husband because it is incumbent upon him to bring love to his wife. How does he do this? He spends time and effort listening to her, watching her, and caring for her to determine her needs and desires. Then he finds ways to bless her in those ways, because she is a unique person and needs his unique love for her. He cannot function on ‘autopilot’ and expect his wife to feel loved! A biblical love of a husband for his wife is thoughtful, kind, expressive, and mostly, unique.
The word for Jesus as the Son of God in the bible in Greek is ‘monogenes’. This basically means ‘unique’ Son. Jesus was God’s unique expression of love for us that could not be found in anyone else. For a husband to love his wife like God first loved us means that it will be a unique love made especially for her, and not anyone else.
~Song of Mary~ 