How a Husband Should Love His Wife and a Wife Love Her Husband

“For we are members of His body of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” (Ephesians 5:30) 

God made them male and female for a reason. 1) To give and receive sexual pleasure in marriage. 2) To bear children for the Lord. 3) To compliment one another in marriage. 4) To show the example of Christ and the church—marriage is the living symbol of Christ and the church. 

 
Do you want respect from your spouse? Then stop butting heads! I did not always submit to my husband because I thought he was very controlling. But the closer I got to God and our relationship grew, the more I saw that it was not controlling but rather a protective love for me. I was the controlling one in the marriage and I often rebelled against my husband and did what I wanted to do. 
Frank and I used to be two ferocious bulls in one pen, always head butting one another. Our marriage was a wreck and both of us were unhappy. Thanks be to God that we have learned what the traditional roles for husband and wife truly mean! The blessings that couples can receive from following God's design for marriage are innumerable. You can love your spouse and LOVE doing it!

When a person does not have a relationship with their creator they do not understand “who they are” and “what their purpose in life is”. So they create division in their life to “find themselves and to be somebody” worthwhile to themselves and to others.

Money and status symbols become more important in a person's life when they do not know God or thinking they know God but do not understand His wisdom. These things become more important to them because it is how they show others who they are—by what they do and what they have, instead of through the person God made them to be.

If you are wrapped up with actively re-organizing society’s political schemes and bureaucracies it will stand in the way of understanding your position as a child of God. A child of God does not have to fight for any rights – because they have already been blessed with the freedom to be “who they are”. Believers have all the rights that God has blessed them with. Without God we can only be what we can be, or only what others want us to be.

Feminism is an attitude that keeps women away from understanding their true purpose in life and marriage. It degrades marriage and women because it adds selfishness and self-seeking values into the marriage relationship. Marriage is all about serving each other. If a wife or husband to be is not up to that task of marriage then they really shouldn’t get married.

The battle to be superior to a man or to be his equal, even though she already is equal to him, should not be a part of the Godly woman’s life. Feminism has evolved because of lack of faith and being in fear. Both of these grow like a snowball rolling down a hill—it grows bigger and bigger and …this is what fear does to you.

Many people have evolved with the ways of society and perceive the god-given roles of man and woman in marriage as stereotypical, but that’s the whole point. God created and designed the sexes to work together and be the most beneficial in their God-given roles. When we try and change what God has already established it causes numerous problems in marriage, families, and society in general.

We Have to Learn a New (Old) Way to Love Our Spouse

Couples are not really loving each other in the proper ways? We know this because our ministry receives numerous emails from couples who are either hurting, confused or need special guidance for a certain situation going on in their marriage. They often tell us how unhappy they are with the way their marriage has become. 
What are the proper ways to love our spouse?  
Most people have been conditioned to believe the wrong things about "what love really is". We think that "to love" our spouse WE have to feel a certain way. We think that to "receive love" from our spouse means we are going to feel good all the time in marriage. Both of these are incorrect perceptions of what love is. 
We have literally confused "how to love" with "how we feel". And this is why there is so much fussing, fighting, arguing, lusting, adultery, separation and divorce. The only way to come out from this confusion is to learn a new (old) way to love our spouse. 

Romans 12:9
Love Must Be Sincere (NIV)
Let Love Be Without Dissimulation (KJV)

Real Love Is Providing for Each Other's Needs

Do you want to be loved and learn to love in the right ways? We need to understand what love is before we can bring those actions into our marriage! Love is providing for each others needs. For the husband this means putting his wife's needs above his own, and wanting to do it! For the wife it means being the helpmeet to her husband in every which way. This is what marriage is all about. 
There are two ways we can love our spouse. We can love under our own understanding of what we think love is, or we can love the way God has shown us to love because of His great love for us! What's the difference? The first way of loving is a condition and learned way to love, which is selfish and self-seeking. Some examples of how we love our spouse selfishly is through adultery, disrespect, controlling and demanding behavior, rebelliousness, using our emotions in negative ways and becoming ensnared in lust addictions. We have separated ourselves from THE Source of where true love is!
We have not been taught to love without dissimulation. (Romans 12:9)
Many couples think they have fallen out of love with their spouse. This causes insincerity and dissimulation in their behaviors, such as adultery and lust addictions because when they believe something to be true in their mind their actions soon follow their thinking. The fact is they have not fallen out of love with their spouse, they were never in love to begin with! Love is not that superficial. Love is not something that is or it isn't and that's because love is a choice and love is an action. You make love happen by what you do!  The second way to love is what comes naturally because we have loved and accepted God into our lives first. The reason it's so natural is because we have recognized and utilized the spiritual Christ in our lives, which makes loving our spouse a natural process of who we are. 

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.  He nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.  (Ephesians 5: 28-29)

 Jesus loves His people (The church) and He wouldn’t do anything to harm His people, in fact Christ protects His people from death with His own life!

Do you remember the part in the bible about when Jesus cast out the moneychangers who were buying and selling outside the church?  He overturned the tables of the greedy moneychangers and the benches of those who were trying to make a buck selling doves, and he would not allow anyone to carry any merchandise through the temple courts. Jesus was angry because the church had become a den of extortion.

     Is it not written, “My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? But you have made it a den of thieves.” (Mark 11:17)

 

So if Jesus was upset about moneychangers buying and selling among the church, don’t you think He would be upset about spouses treating each other badly within the church body? When and if the churches do not teach Christ’s teachings on marriage then the people within the church body will not understand how to love their spouse according to God either. And as we can clearly see this is what is happening today in marriage. A man is blessed by what he does with his life concerning the Word of God. If our marriage or life does not see any blessings then it is because we are not following Christ’s teachings about marriage!

“Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7)

Christian marriage should be the same as Christ and the church, and if it is not now, it should be your goal to work towards as husband and wife in the marriage. God’s intention for us is to cleanse (inner healing) ourselves and work on restoring the marriage to Him! Transformation of ourselves, through the Word of God (giving up old ways and becoming new in heart and mind in Christ) is the way into the Kingdom of God.

“This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let everyone of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.” Ephesians 5:32,33)

“Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin. That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” (1 Peter 4:1-2)

 
 Do you know what roles and duties God has assigned you in your marriage?  What is your purpose in your marriage? God created for husband and wife to share in the same goals but have different roles. Together they compliment one another and work together in harmony. 
Assuming our position in marriage is how husbands and wives love one another and have successful marriages! There is no other way.