Isaiah - Verse By Verse

Walk thru Eph #131

versebyverse | April 09, 2008 17:39

Thought:  To me, the kind of marital love that loves a mate as much as self will be much less likely to end in disaster.

Question:  Do I love my spouse as much as I love myself?

Scripture:  Ephesians 5:33 (NIV):  "However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."

Paul returns to the practical.  "However" means he is not so ignorant as to focus and dwell only on high, difficult to grasp mysteries of theology.  He will re-emphasize the necessity of daily practices that exemplify broad, eternal truths.  Yes, there is the high mystery of God for us to consider; but we consider it in order to have it inspire us in the mundane days of living.  "Husband, love your wife"!  Do what God tells you to do now.  Demonstrate in the present the deep beauty of the eternal truths you cannot quite fully understand.  Realize you have the privilege of imitating Christ in what He did to save you.

And wives, "respect" your husbands.  Just as the church MUST keep Christ as authoritative Head:  decision-maker, pace-setter, example, etc., so must the wife keep her husband in that same position.  How do we respect our husband and hold him in this position?  We acknowledge his role of authority over us.  We defer to his decisions, we give him room to lead, we obey his requests and we actively trust him, and if we cannot trust him, we trust God in the situation instead.  Now some husbands, obviously, are not respectable.  But I believe, because this is commanded of wives more than once in scripture, that God intends to lead through even an unsavory human, through even seemingly tragic flaws of human nature.  Wives can trust in God as having placed their man in the position of leadership, so their trust is toward God and their respect still goes toward the husband--even when he does not deserve respect.  The buck stops with the obedient wife.  Her trust in God can make something beneficial out of what appears to be headed for disaster.  God, after all, is ever Sovereign.  We are never left in the lurch by God--abandoned only to some functioning ideal that He put into motion.  No.  He oversees everything--always.  And He blesses when we are obedient--even whan it's hard to obey.  To me, the bottom line is to respect a husband as though I was respecting Christ Himself.

Perhaps there are husbands who find it hard, very hard, to love their unlovable wives.  I think of Gomer and Hosea.  Love wins out in the end.  "All noble things are difficult"--Oswald Chambers.

Prayer:  Dear Lord, help husbands to love unselfishly and help wives respect their husbands, holding them in honor as authoritative leaders.  Amen. 

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