What Love Looks Like
READ
Most weddings are a big, beautiful day. Flowers, vows, everyone watching. But anyone who's been married for a while will tell you the real thing happens later, on an ordinary Tuesday night, in the middle of dishes and tiredness and a disagreement neither person wants to have. That's where a promise either becomes real or doesn't. Paul writes about marriage with that kind of ordinary, lived-out love in mind.
Read Ephesians 5:22–33 and notice what he says love actually looks like.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
REFLECT
Before we get into this passage, it's worth acknowledging that it's a tricky one. Some people have been hurt by the way it's been used, as an excuse for control or for someone to have the final word. That's not what it's about, and it's worth saying plainly. Paul starts the whole section with the sentence just before it: "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Everything that follows lives inside that mutual posture.
Notice also who gets the most words. Paul spends just a few lines on wives and far more on husbands. And what he tells husbands is striking: "Love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Gave himself up. That's the model. Not "be in charge," but "give yourself away." Christ's way of leading, in this picture, looks like a towel and a cross, not a throne. In a culture where husbands held almost all the power, Paul takes the strongest position in the room and tells him to spend it on the other person.
He even connects it to something everyone understands: we take care of our own bodies without being told to. We feed them, shelter them, look after them. Paul says that's how closely joined a married couple is. Caring for your spouse isn't a favor. It's caring for part of yourself.
Here's what's quietly radical about the whole passage: it treats love as something you do more than something you feel. Feelings come and go. They're lovely when they show up, and they're not always there on a Tuesday night. But a commitment keeps showing up anyway. It chooses patience when it's tired, honesty when it's awkward, and generosity when it would be easier to keep score.
Maybe you're not married. Maybe you're single, divorced, widowed, or in a marriage that's hard right now. This passage still has something for you. Paul is pointing to a kind of love Christ models for all of us: a love that gives instead of grabs. That can shape friendships, family relationships, and how you treat the people closest to you, whatever your situation. Most of us keep our closest people in a category of "the ones who should meet my needs." Paul flips that. Your closest relationships are where you get the most practice at looking like Jesus.
He closes by calling it a "profound mystery," pointing past marriage itself to Christ and his people. The love between two people, at its best, is a small picture of a bigger love that chose to give everything. That's worth reaching for, one ordinary Tuesday at a time.
RESPOND
Take a moment to process what God might be leading you to do in light of what you read.
In your closest relationships, are you more focused on what you're receiving or on what you're giving? What would shift if you flipped that?
Where is love asking you to be a commitment rather than a feeling right now?
Who is someone close to you that you could serve in a small, practical way this week, without being asked and without keeping score?
REST
Take a moment to rest in God’s presence and consider one thing you can take away from your time reading, then close your devotional experience by praying:
Lord, thank You for showing us what love looks like, a love that gives itself away. Forgive us for treating our closest relationships mostly as places to get our needs met. Teach us to love in ordinary, faithful, practical ways, especially when we don't feel like it. Heal what's broken in our relationships, and give us courage to keep showing up. Let the people closest to us catch a glimpse of Your love through us. Amen.