Those who know Christ’s love yearn to be devoted to Him, to love Him with their whole heart. He is our husband, and we want to walk with Him. We want to talk with Him. We want to submit to Him, for we know that His will is always good.

When you get married, you make vows about loving “in good days and bad, in riches and poverty, in health and sickness, for as long as you both shall live.” It’s easy to say that when you’re young and strong and smitten. But these vows get harder on the bad days, when there is poverty, sickness, even unfaithfulness.

How much would a husband do for his wife? Sometimes a husband stays at his wife’s side, year by year, caring for her during an illness or severe injury. It’s inspiring too, to see how married love can endure, even when fifty or more years have gone by, and there’s still a delight in one another.

This kind of love amazes us. But from God’s point of view, this is how it should be.

It’s his will for the love of husbands and wives that their love is true and steadfast, generous and sacrificial.

In Ephesians 5, Paul is teaching about how Christian households should function. He exhorts men: “Husbands, love your wives” (v. 25). He’s got things to say about the husband’s headship and his responsibility of care—but this is where it all begins: with love. Biblical love is a loyal love, a union of love-and-faithfulness, where we always strive to act in the interest of others.

That’s a tall order, even in a marriage that is healthy and strong. But before saying more about such love, the Spirit moves in a surprising new direction: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her” (v. 25). This is the model for a husband’s love and his powerful incentive: Christ’s amazing love for his church, his bride.

In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit used this image to depict the close relationship of God and his people. Think of Isaiah 54:5-6, where God says to his people, “Your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name… For the LORD has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a youthful wife when you were refused.”

If Israel’s Maker and God was her loyal husband, then Israel was his grumbling wife—forsaken, grieved, rejected—not because of God’s failings, but because of her own. She could be a hard woman to love. But God compares himself to a husband tenderly devoted to his wife, or to a young man seeking to win over a young woman.

Christ loved his church with a loyal love, a love that wasn’t just a sweet feeling but a powerful work. At the cross, Jesus gave his life for his people, his bride. There He surrendered to God’s justice. He renounced all his own rights and privileges, and He endured a punishment that should’ve fallen on us, a sinful and adulterous people.

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