Ephesians 5:21-33

Living Bible

²¹ Honor Christ by submitting to each other. ²² You wives must submit to your husbands’ leadership in the same way you submit to the Lord. ²³ For a husband is in charge of his wife in the same way Christ is in charge of his body the Church. (He gave his very life to take care of it and be its Savior!) ²⁴ So you wives must willingly obey your husbands in everything, just as the Church obeys Christ.

²⁵ And you husbands, show the same kind of love to your wives as Christ showed to the Church when he died for her, ²⁶ to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God’s Word;^{[a] 27} so that he could give her to himself as a glorious Church without a single spot or wrinkle or any other blemish, being holy and without a single fault. ²⁸ That is how husbands should treat their wives, loving them as parts of themselves. For since a man and his wife are now one, a man is really doing himself a favor and loving himself when he loves his wife! ^29-30 No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body the Church, of which we are parts.

³¹ (That the husband and wife are one body is proved by the Scripture, which says, “A man must leave his father and mother when he marries so that he can be perfectly joined to his wife, and the two shall be one.”) ³² I know this is hard to understand, but it is an illustration of the way we are parts of the body of Christ.

³³ So again I say, a man must love his wife as a part of himself; and the wife must see to it that she deeply respects her husband—obeying, praising, and honoring him.