Paul exhorts the husbands to love their wives. The opposite of subjection is ruling. However, the apostle does not exhort the husbands to rule over the wives, but to love them. In married life, the wife’s obligation is subjection and the husband’s, love. The wife’s subjection plus the husband’s love constitutes proper married life and typifies the normal church life, in which the church is subject to Christ and Christ loves the church.
Verse 25 says, “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” A husband’s love for his wife must be like Christ’s love for the church. This means that a husband ought to give himself up for his wife.
The requirement for the husband is much heavier than that for the wife. Submitting to someone is not as difficult as giving yourself up for someone. To give yourself up is to be a martyr, to sacrifice your life. Husbands are to love their wives at such a cost to themselves. They must be willing to pay a great price, even to die for their wives.
Verse 28 says, “So the husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.” In this verse Paul twice speaks of husbands loving their own wives. As we have pointed out, this indicates that a husband is to love his wife without comparing her to others.
In this verse Paul exhorts the husbands to love their own wives as their own bodies. Everyone loves his body. A husband should regard his wife as part of his body and care for her as his own body.
Verse 29 goes on to say, “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ also the church.” We show love for our body by nourishing and cherishing it. To nourish is to feed. Concerning physical nourishment, it is the wife who nourishes the husband. It is a somewhat abnormal situation for the husband to do the cooking for the wife. But spiritually speaking, husbands are to nourish their wives. Just as we eat for the sake of our body, so husbands need to take in something of the Lord for the sake of their wives. In doing this a husband regards his wife as part of his body. A husband needs to nourish his wife, to take care of her need, just as he takes care of the need of his body. This is the meaning of nourish in verse 29.
To take in something to meet the wife’s need reveals a deep love. I have known some husbands who were skillful in cooking. They even cooked for their wives. Eventually I learned that they were cooking only for their own enjoyment, but they neglected the real need of their wives. To nourish your wife does not mean to serve food to her. It means that you take in something of the Lord to care for her need. In this way you nourish her just as you nourish your own body. This is real love.
Husbands should also love their wives as their own bodies by cherishing their wives. To cherish is to nurture with tender love and foster with tender care. This is the way Christ cares for the church as His Body. To cherish something is to care for it deeply and tenderly. It is to soften it through tender warmth. For example, a mother bird softens baby birds with the warmth of her body as she holds them under her wings. Under her embrace, the little birds are warmed tenderly. The heat from the loving embrace of the mother’s body softens and warms the cold little birds.
Sometimes wives are like cold birds. They may not argue with their husbands or even be angry with them, but they may become cold. They may use coldness as a weapon to subdue their husbands. At such times, a husband should tenderly warm and soften his wife, just as a mother bird warms her baby birds by embracing them. This is cherishing. A brother who by grace and in love cherishes his wife in this way will surely be a good husband.
The warmth conveyed through such cherishing does not burn others; it soothes them tenderly and even melts their hearts. This is exactly what the Lord does to us in the church. Although we love the Lord, sometimes in our experience we become “cold birds.” We may not rebel against the Lord, but we may become cold. At these times, the Lord embraces us, spreading His wings over us in order to warm us up. By the warmth of His embrace He softens the “cold birds” and melts our hard hearts. This is the Lord’s tender love for His Body.
Verse 31 says, “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.” Christ and the church being one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), as typified by the husband and wife being one flesh, are the great mystery.
For a proper married life, a man must leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife as one flesh. A man and a woman get married for the sake of their own married life, not for the sake of their parents’ family life. Neither the parents of the wife nor those of the husband should interfere with the marriage. It is absolutely against the biblical principle for a married couple to live either with the husband’s parents or with the wife’s parents. Such an arrangement spoils married life. According to biblical principle, a man should leave his father and mother and be one with his wife. This principle, of course, also applies to the wife. I know of some young women who became engaged with the condition that after marriage the couple would live with the wife’s parents. This is wrong. Only when the husband and the wife both leave their parents can they have a proper married life. This is the teaching of the Word of God.
Finally, in verse 28 Paul says that the husband ought to love his own wife as his own body. He also says, “He who loves his own wife loves himself.” The same point is stressed again in verse 33. This indicates the depth of the love a husband must have for his wife.