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Why did Paul urge wives to submit and husbands to love? Perhaps Christian women, newly freed in Christ, found submission difficult. Maybe Christian men, used to the Roman custom of giving unlimited power to the head of the family, weren't used to treating their wives with respect and love. Of course both husbands and wives should submit to each other (see verse 21), just as both should love each other.

Ephesians 5:25-30

1. How did Jesus model leadership with His disciples (see Mark 10:45)?
2. What does this tell you about how a Christ-honoring husband should exercise his leadership role?
3. How did Christ demonstrate His love for the church?
4. What might you need to sacrificially give up to demonstrate love for your wife?
5. How do you provide care and maintenance for your own body?
6. If you make your wife's wellbeing a matter of primary importance, what kind of care and maintenance will you need to provide for her?
7. Do you pray for your wife to become "holy and without fault"? If you haven't up until now, are you prepared to incorporate this into your praying and planning?

Ask God to show you what actions of yours would best promote your wife's well-being and contribute to her holiness.

25 And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God's word. 27 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.

28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife. 29 No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church. 30 And we are his body.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Your Son taught us, Lord, that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Help me to believe it and apply it in my own family.

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