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Husbands and Wives

Ephesians 5:33 summarizes and concludes one of the most important passages on marriage in the New Testament.

God’s call is clear: Husband, love her. Wife, respect him.

God does not say to husbands to love her if she deserves loving, or to love her if she respects you.

Rather, the charge is unconditional: Love her!

Similarly, God does not say to wives to respect him if he deserves respect, or to respect him if he loves you.

Again, the call is unconditional: respect him!

It may be difficult to love a wife who shows you little respect, and it may be difficult to respect a husband who demonstrates meager love. But God can give us grace to obey him.

The book Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs relates the results of an extensive marital study:

Dr. John Gottman, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington, led a research team that spent twenty years studying two thousand couples who had been married twenty to forty years to the same partner. These people came from diverse backgrounds and had widely differing occupations and lifestyles. But one thing was similar—the tone of their conversations. As these couples talked together, almost always there was what Gottman calls “a strong undercurrent of two basic ingredients: Love and Respect. These are the direct opposite of—and antidote for—contempt, perhaps the most corrosive force in marriage.”

Isn’t it interesting that this extensive research, at a secular university no less, concludes that the two vital elements of marriage are the same two elements that God calls us to in the most significant New Testament passage on marriage?

And isn’t it interesting that the key area of marriage, the acid test, was something so simple and mundane as the tone of conversations—a tone of love and respect? Love is more than the tone of our conversations, but apparently, our tone is vital.

Husbands, what if you focused, for the next thirty days, on loving your wife with all your heart? What might God do in your marriage?

Wives, what if you focused, for the next thirty days, on respecting your husband with all your heart? What might God do in your marriage?