From Dave Black Online (10/21/09):

I had never noticed before how Paul’s discussion in Ephesians 5 climaxes in his quote from Gen 2:24, where he says that a husband and his wife are glued together in a binding and permanent relationship. So, if I follow Paul’s train of thought correctly, he shows how a husband’s love is (1) a sacrificial love (never a selfish love), (2) a purifying love (he helps his wife to be consecrated to the Lord), (3) a caring love (he is not to seek his own physical comfort, pleasure, etc. but hers instead), and — perhaps most importantly — (4) an unbreakable love. A husband would no more think of leaving his wife than he would consider tearing his own body apart. As Tracy said, Paul’s arithmetic here is profound: 1 + 1 = 1. And the pattern, the exemplar for us, is the Godhead — “I and the Father are one,” said Jesus.

Becky and I are one. Jesus and His Body are one. Just as Jesus will never leave or forsake His Bride, so Becky should know — she should really KNOW beyond the shadow of any doubt — that I will never leave her or forsake her. Does your wife know this? Does mine? When you see the faults in your wife, you are to keep on loving and forgiving her. Even should she be as unfaithful as Gomer, you should still keep on loving her, realizing that she has not offended you a fraction of how much you have offended God.

Talk about “love”! Talk about raising the bar! All of this teaches us an important truth about the Christian life, and that is that the Christian life is first and foremost about relationships — my relationship with the Lord, and my relationship with others. Once we men learn how to enjoy that kind of fellowship with our wives, show them that kind of love, and bear each others burdens in such a sympathetic way, will we be fulfilling our vocation as husbands.

(Material from Dave Black Online is used by permission of Dr. David Alan Black, who is the author of The Jesus Paradigm and the forthcoming Christian Archy, amongst many others.)