The Blessed Effects of God’s Saving Grace (4:1–6:20)
Husbands
Christ’s unselfish love is certainly the compelling argument here. But it’s interesting to see Paul add a second argument, one on a somewhat lower level. It’s as if Paul were saying, “If the example of Christ’s unselfish love isn’t enough for you, then you might consider another angle—almost a selfish one.”
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 to make the point that when two people marry, they don’t remain separate entities any longer. It wouldn’t be logical for them each to remain at home with their parents. The only thing that makes sense is for both of them to cut the ties with their parents and set up their own new household. The two have essentially become one.
Since the two are in essence one, “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.” It’s just the natural thing to do. All people look after their own needs. They eat and sleep, dress and groom themselves. Shouldn’t a husband just naturally show the same kind of devoted care and concern for his other “self,” or as we might say, for the rest of himself?
32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
We have previously noted that when Paul uses the term “mystery” he is not talking about something dark or mysterious, something impossible to understand. Rather, he’s referring to something that needs explanation, something we couldn’t ever have figured out by ourselves.
When it’s explained, it becomes clear and comprehensible.
The “profound mystery” that Paul is speaking of is not primarily that marriage unites husband and wife into one. No, his thoughts have swung back to Christ and the church. The real mystery is the one-way love of Christ.
Christ redeemed weak and worthless sinners and gathered them together into a church to be his holy bride. He is her head; she is his body. So closely are the two joined into one.
In quiet awe Paul reflects on the mystery of Christ and the church—and on the fact that there can be in the human experience something that reflects this divine unity and even approximates it. That something is a Christian marriage in which the husband loves “his wife as he loves himself,” and his wife respects him as her husband.
Although that ideal is not fully attainable in our sinful world, it is a goal for which all married people should diligently strive.