A Sacrifice For Your Wife

Marriage as the Lord has instituted it is the coming together of a man and a woman to form a single unit, to fulfill all that God has destined them to fulfill together. It’s a lifetime bonding in which the Lord puts love between them to facilitate this bonding. Marriage is a bonding with its own instructions that makes the bonding last a lifetime. So, following the instructions of the union makes the union a very beautiful one. The advantages of the bonding are enormous, but it only works for those who know the rules and follow the rules.

So much has been said to the wives as though the men need not contribute anything. But the bigger responsibility of the home belongs to the men. Now we read in Ephesians 5:25-29 that a man needs to love his wife like Christ loves the church. What a big responsibility that is when we consider the depth, height, and width of how Christ loves the church. We all know that it is the love that Christ has for the church that made him lay down his life for the church. So, to say that God is instructing the man to love his wife to a point where he is willing to give his life for hers. You will agree with me that this is huge.

This instruction seems easy when the wife is such a submissive wife and obeys her husband’s instructions to the very last detail. With such a wife the husband is very proud, and loving her for what she is investing in the marriage is not a challenge at all. A submissive wife makes loving her easy. But what of the wife who is not submissive? Does the same instruction to love apply? Unfortunately, there are no exceptions to the rule. If this love must be in the pattern in which Christ loves the church, then it must be unconditionally selfless and sacrificial.

An old classmate of mine shared a story on our class’s WhatsApp group of her visit to one of her friends who kept eulogizing herself of how she’s had to put up with her husband’s excess just for the peace and progress of her marriage. Well, the husband was not there to say otherwise. And then on another day she and her husband met with the same friend’s husband and he was also full of praises for himself of how he’s had to put up with his wife’s behavior just for the peace and progress of their marriage. And then you ask, who is putting up with who? They both feel each of them is the one making the sacrifice that is keeping the marriage together. The truth is they are both working and so their marriage is working, and they are getting the peace they have worked for. Now, it is important that we understand that we can’t get what we didn’t work for. The result of your marriage is determined by the level of work you put into it. If you seek a good wife with the qualities you desire in a wife, then you need to invest continuous prayers in her, then invest continuous love and then patiently wait for a bountiful harvest of a wonderful wife and a glorious marriage. Note that you cannot possess what you are not willing to pursue.