Through The Bible in a Year - September 29, 2026

“In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church… ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’” - Ephesians 5:28-31

Paul makes an argument that surprises us: when a husband loves his wife well, he is actually loving himself. Not in a selfish sense, but in a profound theological one. The two have become one. What is done to one affects both.

When a husband diminishes his wife—through criticism, passivity, domination, or neglect—he cannot escape the consequences. He is doing damage to himself. He is deflating one side of the united whole God intended a husband and wife to be.

Once, Kathy and I were playing a board game with another couple. When the wife came close to winning and was required by the rules to give us a warning to keep the game going, she would not speak. Why? The husband told us. He had decided that his wife would not speak in public without his permission.

We discovered that he was intent on monitoring her every word to keep him from embarrassment and to protect his dignity. It should not surprise us, that over time this husband ended up becoming more selfish, more domineering, and more depressed. By extinguishing her voice, he lost her support and became more and more his own worst self. By silencing her, he had silenced something essential that God intended for his own development and spiritual maturity.

You cannot take the air out of one side of a basketball and expect it to perform as intended. The two sides are needed in their fullness for the ball’s purposes. In a similar way, what diminishes a wife diminishes a husband. And, by God’s design, what causes her to flourish causes him to flourish.

As I look back over five decades of marriage, I realize that had Kathy not been the wife she is—helping me understand what it means to love, to show affection, to be emotionally present—I could not have been the father or husband God called me to be. I would not have known how to express the care of a pastor. Due to issues in my own family of origin, my early marriage and ministry were conducted with my heart “on numb”— kept emotionally guarded from childhood wounds. Yet, by Kathy’s patience, love, and tenderness, her gracious care thawed what had been frozen in me.

I praise God for my wife and know that God put her in my life so that, by watering the gifts of grace in her, I would grow in experiencing more of that same grace.”

The intimate is often the path to the transcendent. The way we care for one another in marriage teaches us of Christ’s own care. A husband who loves his wife tenderly and well is learning something about the love of Christ that cannot be learned any other way.

Respond: Where has your spouse’s influence, presence, and love been shaping you into a better person? Where have you been withholding something from your spouse or diminishing something in your spouse—emotionally, practically, or spiritually—that has been impoverishing both of you?

Consider one way the presence of your spouse in your life has made you better. You might even ask God to show you where your emotional absence or critical spirit has been diminishing not just your spouse but you.

Prayer: Father, you intended for two to become one. What I do to my spouse, I ultimately do to myself. Forgive me for thinking that diminishing another somehow protects or privileges me. It doesn’t—it impoverishes us both. Help me to nourish and cherish my spouse as my own body, knowing that the flourishing of one to whom I am united is essential for my own flourishing. My spouse’s wellbeing is bound up with mine. We are one. Help me live like I believe that. In Jesus’ name, Amen.