Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,”.
Is there any question that our women are under intense and furious attack from the pit of hell? Unless you have your eyes willfully and stubbornly glued shut, you have noticed. You have noticed the onslaught of objectifying messages flying at us about women’s value and worth. That it is less. That it is low. That it is as an object. That it only exists as an extension of men’s appetites. Yes, you may have noticed the high and holy worth of women being reduced and objectified down to the level of a hamburger. Forget being made in the image of God, women now are encouraged to “empower” themselves by cavorting around like a piece of meat to try and get us to drool. Can anyone think of some hellish consequences to this kind of “empowerment”? Have we noticed the incredible pressure on women to stoke men’s appetites? How about the impact of actually succeeding in getting men to look at women like pieces of meat? Have you noticed the impact in how women are treated with less and less dignity and respect the more they are reduced from “human being in the image of God” to “beef, it’s whats for dinner”. And it’s everywhere. I’m not just talking about pornography (though a more powerful way to reduce a precious human being to a consumable piece of meat is hard to think of) but also consumerism, “sports” magazines, beer commercials, the fashion industry, the movie and music industry, it’s epidemic. I consider this to be the true “war on women” – the war that hungers for the destruction of the human soul, that aims to strip the very humanity from a human woman.
Brothers, women are under attack from the barrage of lies about their value, frequently under direct attack from disrespectful behavior, often subjected to selfish/proud/unloving/insensitive/inflexible/unfaithful husbands, way too often coerced into living and acting out the lie that they need to give all of themselves to their boyfriends to be worthy, and all too often under actual physical attack. All of this, in direct unholy contradiction to the value attached to one that bears God’s Holy Image.
Enter Jesus.
Enter, The Lord of Glory, who stepped into the fray and saw everything. All the attack and condemnation upon humanity, men, women and children. From the enemy, from ourselves, yes. All the confusion, and sin and ignorance and hurting lost souls hurting themselves and others. Yes. And the sacrificial cost of redemption? Yes.
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6)
Welcome. Welcome to your calling as husbands men. As you can see, boys need not apply.
Because it takes a man, a man to lay his life down and die for his wife – every single day. It takes a man to sacrifice in a Christ like way, to redeem and give honor to his wife. It takes a man to love the at times unlovable woman he has vowed to honor and be faithful to. And make no mistake, this sacrifice, this dying to yourself is hard. Truly laying down your selfish misguided belief that you’re entitled to some standard of treatment, that takes a man. It takes a man to lay down entitlement and confront the cold hard reality that what he deserves is hellfire and death (“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” Romans 6:23) so every breath of life and anything else on top of that is just gravy. To really get that, and in light of the free gift of life in Jesus, to model that in his treatment of his wife.
Let’s be men. 1st Cor. 16:13,14 “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.”
Fight warrior, fight.
~Scott