Love & Respect Part 3
Marriage is God’s idea, and it is
Ephesians 5:21-33
21 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.
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her
26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.
27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.
28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself.
29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.
30 And we are members of his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”
32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.
33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Ephesians 5:21-22
21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
Ephesians 5:33
33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
The
Most Christian women
Respecting your husband begins with
1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1 Corinthians 16:13-14
13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
14 Let all that you do be done in love.
When his
As a man, he is called to his
as a woman you are called to the
Genesis 3:16-19
16 Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.”
17 And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.
19 By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”
As a man, he desires his wife
1 Corinthians 7:3-5
3 The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs.
4 The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife.
5 Do not deprive each other of sexual relations, unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
God, in his wisdom, created a supernatural dependency that requires humility and sacrifice for relationships to thrive. He asks us to give what doesn’t come naturally, because He wants us to live supernatural lives.