Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Ephesians 5:25
It wasn’t quite dawn when my husband rose from bed and went into the kitchen. I saw the light flip on and off and wondered at his action. Then I recalled that the previous morning I’d yelped at the sight of an “intruder” on our kitchen counter. Translated: an undesirable creature of the six-legged variety. My husband knew my paranoia and immediately arrived to remove it. This morning he’d risen early to ensure our kitchen was bug-free so I could enter without concern. What a guy!
My husband awoke with me on his mind, putting my need before his own. To me, his action illustrates the love Paul describes in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Paul goes on, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself” (v. 28). Paul’s comparison of a husband’s love to the love of Christ pivots on how Jesus put our needs before His own. My husband knows I’m afraid of certain intruders, and so he made my concern his priority.
That principle doesn’t apply to husbands only. After the example of Jesus, each of us can lovingly sacrifice to help remove an intruder of stress, fear, shame, or anxiety so that someone can move more freely in the world.
What “intruder” might God be asking you to address to help another? How might you allow someone to help rid your life of certain “intruders”?
Dear God, thank You for the gift of Your Son who’s removed the intruder of sin from my life and reconciled me to You!
INSIGHT
In Ephesians 5:26–27 we find an example of a Greek hina clause. This type of clause is used to express purpose. It’s often translated as “in order that” or “so that.” In verses 26–27 (niv) it’s twice translated simply as “to.” A final occurrence appears at the end of verse 27, which translated literally reads: “but that she might be holy and blameless.”
Each of these clauses expresses a purpose for Christ’s sacrificial love for the church. The first purpose is for the church’s sanctification, to be set apart from the sinful world and found in God’s kingdom (v. 26; see Colossians 1:12–13). The second is that Jesus might present the church, His bride, to Himself. The final purpose is so the church would be “holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:27).
Paul uses this example of purposeful love to instruct husbands in how to love their wives. A husband’s love ought to have a purpose—to imitate Christ’s love for the church.