Husbands love your wives

This is how we are to love because we determine to love, because we will to love. This is, of course, defined for us as the kind of love the Lord has for His church. He does not love us because we are lovable. He did not save us because we were lovable. He didn’t save you and notsomebody else down the street from you because you were more lovable than the person down the street. You might have picked your life partner because that person was more lovable in your judgment than the other people you knew. That is not how God chose you. He predetermined by His own will to set His love on you and to then spend His love relentlessly on you forever and ever and ever. And it is that kind of love that a husband is to set upon the woman that he takes as his wife.

It is the manner of our love. Let’s start with that word “manner,” we’ll break it down into several parts. This love, the manner of this love, “as Christ loved the church” and you can go all the way back and say, Romans 5:8, “He loved us when we were enemies, when we were alienated, when we were unlovable and unlovely and unloving and before we loved Him. We only love Him because He first loved us. That’s what we’re talking about. You set your love by your will because it’s right and it’s noble, and it’s the way Christ set His love on us.