a Challenge to Husbands

The seventh passage I want to share with you is  Ephesians 5:25-26:

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.

Some of the passages are on my list because of the encouragement and hope they give me. That has been true of most of the passages I have shared so far. But some are on my list because of the direction and challenge they give. This verse definitely belongs in the second category. More than forty-one years ago a most wonderful young woman became my wife (by the grace of God), but I know myself well enough to know that without words like these found in Scripture, I could have moved from those exciting days of young love into a very selfish and ungrateful way of living.

However, thoughts like this one, and especially this one, kept calling me to treasure what I had been given and to focus on her and not myself. The number of times I have failed to do that is just testimony to how much I needed this challenge and direction and correction.

I understand that God’s message to wives is one that must be accepted with much faith, but his message to husbands sets the bar as high as it can be set. To love my wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her—those are words that humble me even as I say them. But that is God’s word for me as Sheila’s husband, and our marriage is blessed when that word toI take it to heart.