According to Ephesians 5:27, Christ’s purpose in loving the church is to sanctify and cleanse her with the Word so that He might present her to himself a glorious bride without spot or wrinkle. I don’t mean to imply a wrong motive to Christ here, but it is clear from this passage that His work and ministry in His church is so that He will be able to present her to Himself. Not only does He want to present her to Himself, but He wants what He presents to Himself to be glorious and without spot or wrinkle. In order to do that He undertakes the ministry of cleansing and sanctification.
This is exactly what a man is supposed to do in loving his wife like Christ loved the church. A husband is to minister the principles of Scripture to his wife and serve His wife in a Godly way using the Word of God in such a way that his wife grows more beautiful, clean and holy as time goes by. And as a practical result, he reaps the benefit more and more as the years go by.
The bottom line is that he is to love his wife as he loves himself because in actuality, when he is loving her, he is loving himself because the two have become one. Many men, on the other hand, neglect their wife or don’t minister to them in a way that causes their beauty to increase. Instead they become hard, cold and cynical. When this happens, obviously the man hasn’t loved his wife the same way Christ does the church.
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