Husbands, Love Your Wives

By Kevin Garrett

In my Sunday school class, I’ve been teaching the differences between the theological constructs of complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Yeah, come to my class…I may bore you to death.) To summarize it simplistically, the first teaches men and women are of equal value but have differing functions which complement one another, while the other teaches men and women have equal value but fully interchangeable functions. The discussion in our group has been lively.

Today is my wife and my thirty-fourth anniversary. (She is an incredibly tolerant woman!) I love her as much, if not more, today than I did when we were first married. On this day, I pause to give immense thanks to both God and to Tina for this milestone. I cannot imagine being without her and I cannot be grateful enough for every day I am allowed to spend with her. Where I am weak, she is strong. Where she seems weak, the Lord seems to have gifted me with strength. We truly complement one another and I am so glad we were created differently from one another.

In Ephesians five, we read, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . .” Eph 5:25. This is part of Paul’s discourse on mutual submission among believers. Notice the focus on loving wives sacrificially. Jesus gave his life for the church, (all believers throughout all of time), and husbands are to love their wives in this way. Too many fail to recognize this and tend to focus on submission of wives instead of a husband’s loving, willing submission to loving and caring for his wife’s welfare to the point of self-sacrifice and even death.

Gentlemen, love your wives enough to die for them. Encourage them. Support them. Do not endure the differences between the two of you, but rather, embrace those differences, celebrate them, and realize God put you two together to take on the world as one dynamic duo. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Happy anniversary, Tina. It’s you and me against the world. I love you.

Dr. Kevin Garrett has served the Lord through ministry for over thirty years. He holds a BS in Education and an MA in Music. He also holds an MDiv, DMin from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, with specializations in church health and next generation ministries. He and his wife, Tina, joyfully serve as pastor of First Baptist Church of Atmore, AL. They have two sons, Geoffrey and Nelson, and one daughter-in-love, Brooke, all of whom are active and serving in their churches in north Alabama. They adore their grandchildren! Read more about David, by visit his website.

Feature Image by Sofia Shultz from Pixabay