Our Husband’s Great Love

How much would a husband do for his wife? How far could his love go?

When you get married, you make vows about loving “in good days and bad, in riches and poverty, in health and sickness, for as long as you both shall live.” It’s easy to say that when you’re young and strong and smitten. But these vows get harder on the bad days, when there is poverty, sickness, even unfaithfulness.

How much would a husband do for his wife? Sometimes a husband stays at his wife’s side, year by year, caring for her during an illness or severe injury. It’s inspiring too, to see how married love can endure, even when fifty or more years have gone by, and there’s still a delight in one another.

This kind of love amazes us. But from God’s point of view, this is how it should be.

It’s his will for the love of husbands and wives that their love is true and steadfast, generous and sacrificial. 

In Ephesians 5, Paul is teaching about how Christian households should function. He exhorts men: “Husbands, love your wives” (v. 25). He’s got things to say about the husband’s headship and his responsibility of care—but this is where it all begins: with love. Biblical love is a loyal love, a union of love-and-faithfulness, where we always strive to act in the interest of others.

That’s a tall order, even in a marriage that is healthy and strong. But before saying more about such love, the Spirit moves in a surprising new direction: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her” (v. 25). This is the model for a husband’s love and his powerful incentive: Christ’s amazing love for his church, his bride.   

In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit used this image to depict the close relationship of God and his people. Think of Isaiah 54:5-6, where God says to his people, “Your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name… For the LORD has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a youthful wife when you were refused.”

If Israel’s Maker and God was her loyal husband, then Israel was his grumbling wife—forsaken, grieved, rejected—not because of God’s failings, but because of her own. She could be a hard woman to love. But God compares himself to a husband tenderly devoted to his wife, or to a young man seeking to win over a young woman.

Christ loved his church with a loyal love, a love that wasn’t just a sweet feeling but a powerful work. At the cross, Jesus gave his life for his people, his bride. There He surrendered to God’s justice. He renounced all his own rights and privileges, and He endured a punishment that should’ve fallen on us, a sinful and adulterous people.

This was sacrificial love like none other, a husband’s love that went to the greatest extent.

In loving us like this, our husband had three purposes (vv. 26-27). He gave himself for us to sanctify and cleanse us, to present us to himself a glorious church, and to enable us to become holy and blameless.

First, Christ’s love sanctifies and cleanses us. If someone is sanctified, they are made holy, they are set apart. And formerly, we were so far from sanctified! Like the loosest woman, like the prostitutes in Hosea, we were open, available—free for the taking. But Christ’s love cleanses us.

This is probably a reference to the ceremonial bath taken by a Jewish bride. Just before she got married, she would take a bath to symbolically show her purity as a bride, that she was fresh and undefiled for her husband. Though we were completely polluted by sin, Christ cleanses us by his blood. He bathes us to wash away every stain of sin, that we may be pure for him—his holy bride.

Our husband’s great love has a second purpose: “that He might present us to himself a glorious church.” At weddings in many cultures, there is a moment of presentation. For instance, the bride appears at the end of the aisle in church, her father at her side; she slowly walks to the front, and then stops near her bridegroom. Maybe a veil is lifted from her face, and the father presents her to her husband-to-be. It’s a big moment, so leading up to it a bride will make many preparations. Her dress, her hair, her face, flowers and jewelry—it all has to be just right, for she wants to appear before her husband in beauty, lovely and radiant.

This is what the Spirit wants us to imagine: the church as a lovely young woman, presented to her groom. But in this case, the bride does nothing to make herself beautiful—it is the husband’s work: “Christ presents her to himself.” He has to make her lovely, because in ourselves we’re far from lovely. We’re the unfaithful bride: contaminated by sin, repulsive in character, nothing to offer.

But this is our husband’s great love: He cleanses and sanctifies us, so that He can present us to himself “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (v. 27). Through Christ’s sacrificial love, there remains no defect of sin, no stain of worldliness, not even the smallest spot to spoil our purity. Christ has transformed us. He did the preparing, the presenting, and finally, the accepting.

By his love, He has made us devoted to him. 

This then is the third purpose of Christ’s love; He gave himself for us, “that we should be holy and without blemish.” By faith, we’re in an intimate relationship with God through Christ, and now we delight in being close to our husband. Now we delight in loving and serving him.

We’re not yet completely free of our blemishes and spots, but neither are we content to remain in sin. Those who know Christ’s love yearn to be devoted to him, to love him with their whole heart. He is our husband, and we want to walk with him. We want to talk with him. We want to submit to him, for we know that his will is always good.

So may Christ help us never to forsake him, but to be true to him always, in good days and bad, for as long as we shall live—and even forever.