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,
Ephesians 5:25-26 (NIV)
The Price Named First
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Paul gives a man an instruction he could manage for a week, then attaches a comparison that costs him everything he has.
Christ gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word. So the love has a direction, and it runs toward her good rather than toward his comfort. He gave himself up so that she would be made holy, and a husband reading this gets asked to pay before anything has improved. Paul says it with the aim on her.
A woman who runs a five-person shop gets in at six because the stove takes an hour to make the place workable. By the time her crew arrives the shop’s warm and the stove’s out of mind. She’s never mentioned it to them. Two of them assume the building holds heat overnight.
Paul asks husbands for that, measured against a giving they can’t match. Christ gave himself up for a church that wasn’t radiant yet, and the radiance was the purpose of the giving. A man who takes that for his standard is agreeing to go first, before she’s radiant and before the house is easy.
Going first has a floor under it. A man who uses this verse to explain why his wife should keep absorbing how he treats her has read it backwards, and in a house where someone is being frightened or hurt, the thing this passage supports is her safety, not her endurance. Getting her safe, and telling people who can act, is what love aimed at her good does in that house.
Plenty of marriages are being held up right now by one person going first without mentioning it, and in plenty of houses that person is the wife. She gets no credit for it, and the work is the same work. Six in the morning looks like nothing from the outside, and keeping it up on those terms is hard.
Her crew hangs their coats by the stove and gets to work without looking at it once.
A Prayer to Remember
Teach me to go first, God. I’ve been waiting for a sign that it’ll be worth it, and the waiting has gotten comfortable. Give me one thing to do this week that no one notices and no one thanks me for, and then keep me from bringing it up at dinner when I want the credit.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
