"Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." Ephesians 5:25-27 ESV
The passage I have chosen above has one of the toughest commands ever given to mankind. Paul tells us that we are to "love our wives as Christ loved the church." Talk about going after the brass ring! But I have a theory and my theory is this: You are selfish. Too selfish to attain what Paul commanded. But I know the cure for this disease of selfishness. It is called marriage. But you might ask me: Can't I be selfish and married at the same time? Yeah, you can but you can't be happily married and selfish at the same time. Nor can you love your wife like Christ loved the church and be selfish either.
As Christian men, we are called to a higher standard. We are called to focus on meeting the needs of our wives and not our own. If we focus only on meeting our needs and not the needs of our wives we will have failed miserably and meet life every day only to be eternally disappointed. But if we take up the charge of Paul, we will meet life with great fulfillment and the needs of our wives will always take precedence over our own.
Men, take a moment to remember what caused us to fall in love with our wives in the first place and when you remember them, mention them to your wife now and then. The goal of the Christian marriage isn't happiness, it is holiness. And to reach that goal in our marriages, we have to defeat selfishness every single day. We have to wake up with the determination that we will nail down our selfish nature for the betterment of our spouse and our family.
Marriage is a start to defeating selfishness but it isn't the be all end all. God, knowing that we would need help to defeat selfishness, gave us a wife but then in His infinite wisdom, gives us a child. Try being selfish when you have kids. And if one doesn't get it done, then He will give you a few more for good measure. Did you know that the word diaper spelled backwards is repaid. Mama always said I would pay for my raising.
Seriously, most of my shortcomings as a husband and father can be zeroed in on me not nailing down my selfish nature and keeping it nailed down. It is when I focus only on my needs, everything else goes out of focus and I fail as a husband and a father.
Paul said it best when he said, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." I said it earlier, and I believe it bears repeating, that is the toughest command in scripture for all men. I don't think it is attainable on this side of heaven but that is the standard that Jesus set for us and it is the standard that we should try to shoot for.
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