Loving Our Wives (So They Know It)

by Scott Kaczorowski

In a recent Falling in Love Again with Your Lord lecture, Laurie Aker spoke about what it means/looks like to truly seek after God.  One area where she applied this to the ladies was submission to their husbands–even if they don’t agree or understand or think it makes any sense.

Men, we can translate this into the biblical injunction on our end as well: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Eph. 5:25).¹  Even when we don’t think we understand them!  And we need to love them in the way that they understand and receive love.²  (Anyone embracing the concept of “love languages” à lá books like The Five Love Languages should be nodding in approval right now…)  We get this concept clearly at a linguistic level.  If you say, “I love you” to someone in English but they don’t speak English, we have expressed our love to them but they have not received that expression of love.  We can forget that this applies not only to the linguistic realm but also to our actions.³  We need to communicate by our words and our actions in ways our wives receive and understand love.

Here is where it gets sticky.  She is probably not going to come right out and say, “Honey, I need you to love me in this way…”  Men, if you have a wife like that… praise God for her!  For most men though the cues will probably be more subtle.  There will be cues.  You will just need to be actively looking for them.  This may sound like hard work, and for some men it may be.  But we must if we would love our wives as Christ loved the church.

Footnotes:
¹It was suggested to me that I make these points for the men.
²On this point, see footnote 1.
³The I had the idea for this example the morning I wrote this, upon further reflection I may have read this in the literature previously.  It would be odd if someone hadn’t made the point this way before.