Mutual Respect For One Another
Photo: © Giuseppe Porzani - fotolia.com
Putting Jesus First In All Our Relationships
In EPHESIANS 5:21-31 Paul gives spiritual advice on how to preserve really loving and caring relationships in the family.The key is to put Jesus first in all our dealings with one another and to treat one another the way that Jesus would treat us.
Practical Tips
For wives, this means submitting to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Saviour of his Body, the Church. As the Church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
That seems to go against the prevailing trend for women to be assertive and aggressive at work and in the home. But it does not mean that wives are to be doormats. That's not how Jesus treated women and he doesn't expect men to treat their wives like doormats.
For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body.
