Husbands, *love* your wives
Before we leave the Easter season, I wanted to share with you something that stood out for me during the last days of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. It was a slightly odd thing for me, being that it was the subject of marriage….
How did I manage to get to the subject of “marriage” from the Easter celebrations? Well, what was running through my mind throughout the Easter liturgy was the last part of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians:
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 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. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
“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, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” – Ephesians 5:21-27
Now, without a doubt, this is a passage that has been abused over the years. It has certainly been used for the subjugation of women and the preservation of tyrannical husbands. In response to this, many have rejected the entire passage out of hand. I don’t think either of these two positions is acceptable, since both reactions ignore the passage’s context and miss the important imagery being used by Paul.