Page 44 - Family Life Student Textbook

You can do it. Can you love your wife like this for one minute? For one hour? For one day? For one month?
Can you be kind and gentle to your wife for one month if I gave you $10,000 if you accomplish it? You must
decide to do it. Normally we don't want to do it. We may not feel like loving her or you may think she does
not deserve it. But God commands it.

A husband's love for his wife is to be sacrificial.

John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.”

1 John 3:18 “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in
truth.”

God loves us with an agape love and is shown by him making the greatest sacrifice ever for us. He
commands husbands to love our wives with sacrificial love. It must cost me something like David’s sacrifice
in 2 Sam. 24:18-25. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church.

Ephesians 5:25–33 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave
himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through
the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or
any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love
their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one
ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does
the church— for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his
father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is
a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one
of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her
husband.”

Christ loved the church enough to make the ultimate sacrifice. Sacrifice means to give up something I want
for something she wants.

A husband’s love for his wife is to be loyal.

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the
other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both
God and money.”

1 John 2:15 “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the
love for the Father is not in them.”

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