Love Your Spouse
David W Palmer
(Ephesians 5:25 NKJV) Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.
(Titus 2:4 NLT) … train the younger women to love their husbands and their children.
Both of these passages say clearly that God expects spouses to love each other.
Submitting to God’s Love and Leading
Expanding on this through the apostle Paul in Ephesians, the Holy Spirit first addressed the wives:
(Ephesians 5:21–24 NLT) And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. {22} For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. {23} For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. {24} As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
Next, to show the context in which the instruction to submit is designed to operate, the Holy Spirit addressed the husbands: “Husbands, love your wives” (Eph. 5:25 NKJV). In the passage above, he doesn’t give this same directive to women; he begins by talking to them about submission. However, without its context, this edict can be taken and legalistically and lovelessly used as an order to benefit men’s selfish egos and pride. It has been used to force women into subservience to a tyrant and/or abuser. This was never God’s loving intention. So, let’s put this in context to understand what he wants.
First, he says to everyone: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21 NLT).
One of my early pastors said, “We all have to submit to someone.” God’s word says that we should “submit to one another.” This is true in general in many respects. For example, in various ways and at different times—usually temporarily—we submit to one another’s ownership, expertise, gifting, maturity, position, title, and knowledge in certain areas.
In Christ’s body, we do this out of reverence and respect for Jesus and the Holy Spirit; we recognize God’s gifts, callings, and the placement of his delegates. We first submit to his choice in this. And hence, we submit to his work in them, through them, and to us via them. In other words, we always look for, honour, allow, and willingly submit to the Holy Spirit—his gifts, his calling, his graces—no matter who he chooses and through whom he operates in what way.
However, although the Holy Spirit said, “submit to one another”—and as we have seen this works in different ways between the same people, depending on the situation. For example, a pupil may submit to a teacher while in class; but later, the same teacher may submit to the ex-pupil in his or her home, or is he or she is elected to government. Yet, the Holy Spirit goes on to specify certain lines of submission in Christ’s body that are more permanent—wives to husbands, children to parents, workers to bosses, etc:
(Ephesians 5:22 NLT) For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
We must note first that the Holy Spirit is saying that a wife should submit to her husband “out of reverence for Christ,” and “as to the Lord” (Eph. 5:21, 22 NLT). He is saying that it’s because of your love for Jesus and his anointing; and it’s because you have laid your life down so his dream/kingdom can prevail, that you submit to your husband—not because he deserves it, has earned it, or is worthy of it. You submit with your eyes fixed firmly on Jesus, and your heart on what is best for his kingdom and Father’s dream to come into manifestation on earth.
What’s more, we shouldn’t be surprised that submission and obedience are part of a love relationship. God says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church.” God certainly expects love to be the context and atmosphere of a marriage, just as it is between Jesus and his bride. After all, marriage is an earthly pattern and exemplar of what God wants his relationship with us to be:
(Ephesians 5: 31–32 NLT) As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father
