Husbands love your wives

Preceding to this thought, husbands would want to major on the woman’s idea of submission to the man. However, the emphasis is not on the man’s headship, but the love for his wife.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Eph 5:25

Husbands, love your own wives.

Husbands, show or prove your love to you wives

It is a command.

It is a racial idea- self sacrificing love is not found outside of the NT writings.

It is a choice.

            Not based upon our feelings, but of the will.

It is not based upon the response of the wife.

It is a self- sacrificing love.

            As Christ loved the church.

            It is a simile. How is the husband to love his wife?

                        As Christ willingly gave his life for the redemption of humanity!

26-27

The relationship of the church as the bride of Christ

A metaphor of the prenuptial bridal bath.

            We, as the church as in the process of sanctification

            Marriage supper of the lamb

                        Holy and blameless

28-29

Like wise

Love is demonstrative

Love is a choice

Love is self-sacrificial

Wives respect- husbands love

Christ is the head

[1]Ephesians 5:25-33 (NASB95)
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.
28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself;
29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,
30 because we are members of His body.
31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

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[1]  New American Standard Bible : 1995 Update. LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.