You remember last week, we noticed that the husband is the head of the wife, remember? What does a head need? A body. What does a body need? A head. What good is a headless body? No good! What good is a bodiless head? No good! What do heads and bodies need? Each other!

Husbands, love your wives; as your own body. If you see yourself as the head, you better see her as the body! Nothing to do with subservience, nothing to do with inferiority. Everything to do with mutual inter-relatedness, and mutual, total dependence. You are utterly indispensable to each other.

You know what the problem has very often been? We are very happy doing our own thing, going our own way, until something comes along and we need the “little woman.” Come along little woman, where are you? Then the little woman has done her thing, and then we get back to being the “macho man” again, and doing our own thing! What’s that got to do with loving your wife like your body, because you’re the head? Very little understanding of being mutually indispensable.

Not only that, husbands ought to love their wives as their own body. Listen: “He who loves his wife loves himself” (Eph. 5:28). Why? Why does he love himself? Why does he love his wife as if he’s loving himself? Because they’re inextricably bound up in each other, but also because he understands something. What he understands is this: if it is true that he loves himself, and he should love his neighbor as himself, then it’s perfectly obvious that his wife is his closest neighbor.

Historically, biblically, we have two great commandments. In recent years, psychologists have found a third one that has nothing to do with the Bible. Biblically, the first commandment is “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and mind, and soul and strength.” The second commandment is thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The third command, that psychologists have found, is: thou shalt learn to love thyself.

Now the big deal that I hear all the time is this: Well, I can’t love my neighbor because I haven’t yet learned to love myself, so I’m working on loving myself. Now, I understand about self hatred, and I understand about real guilt and false guilt, and I understand about nurture and nature, and all the garbage that people get, and how screwed up they get about thinking about themselves. But to say that you’ve got to learn to love yourself before you love your neighbor is sheer baloney!

The Bible is pointing out to us is something we all know: that all of us are innately, inherently absorbed with ourselves as our prime concern. That’s the way we are, particularly men. If I am inherently, innately regarding myself as a prime concern, I might actually begin to grow up through the ministry of grace in my life, and actually get the strange idea that other people might be as important as I am! Then I begin to love my neighbor as I love myself.