Meditation

Hi there,

In the original text, of today's passage, Paul used the ancient Greek word agape which is translated here as "love".

Simply put, Agape love is selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love that seeks the good of others without expecting anything in return.

Loving and leading without lording over another human is a difficult calling when both parties are less than perfect.

In yesterday's passage the wife is called to be easier to lead. In today's, the husband is called to make it easier to follow. But he’s also called to one kind of love he’s not qualified for, and one he knows quite well.

Today's passage stresses the challenges of loving someone as you do your own body. You know exactly what you like, when you like it and how you like it. You know your favorites and what to avoid.

And as a man you are to consider all that and more in how you lead an imperfect wife.

Today's verses are Ephesians 5:25-28. (Previous and subsequent verses are in grey for context).

Instructions for Christian Households

²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ 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.

²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body.

³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.

³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Encouragement

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
​⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
​⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

Philippians 2:5-8

​

Steve Pawley

God's word in your hand

John Piper's "Look at The Book" Youtube series goes deep on the individual words of a passage and their relationship to each other. I've included this video which uncovers much of the meaning of a passage that John Piper calls "the most amazing paragraph in the world concerning the high calling of a husband to love his wife".

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