Love Your Spouse || Ephesians 5:25-26 || Mid-Week Midrash #53

“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. Christ died for the church to make it belong to God. Christ used the word to make the church clean by washing it with water.” – Ephesians 5:25-26

This verse compares Christ’s love of the church to a husband’s love towards his wife. Both include loving them with unreserved, sacrificial, and selfless love. We know that Jesus gave everything he had, including his own life, for the sake of his church, which set the standard for us. This purifying and divine love is what Jesus calls us to replicate. We should not be able to bear the thought of anything sinful in his life that displeases God, much like a husband would be in his wife’s life. The husband’s greatest desire for his wife should be that she becomes perfectly conformed to Christ, so he leads her to purity.

Now everything I explained extends into verse 27. However, it’s still an excellent example of how we should love our significant others. Three terms stuck out to me out of intrigue: unreserved, sacrificial, and selfless love. To be unresolved means to be not finished. The love we need to share with our significant others. To be sacrificial requires losing something for the benefit of something else. I think that’s why we see the conversation about not being able to bear the thought of anything sinful. Typically, I’ve seen this refer to things we do on Earth that don’t please God. We need to sacrifice doing these things so that love and energy can extend to others. To be selfless means to not focus on yourself. We should be prideful and egotistical when we look at ourselves. We need to ensure we’re checking in with ourselves and taking care of our needs, but we need to make sure that it doesn’t get out of hand. We should share that energy with our significant others to ensure that we take care of their needs and meet our relationship responsibilities.