To Love Their Husbands

After teaching the younger women to be sober, the second thing that older women are to teach the younger is "to love their husbands". According to Strong's Online Concordance, the greek word for 'love' is philanthrōpia, from which we get our English word philanthropy. In Greek, the word means benevolence, kindess.

I think it's important to note that the word does not mean 'the fuzzy feeling in the pit of our stomach'. As young brides we all have that adoring love of our husband where we just exude how much emotional love we feel. There are two possible reasons that the emotional love isn't mentioned here. The first reason being that emotional love, while not always at the same level, is something that often times comes naturally to us as women. We like that fuzzy feeling The second reason that Paul may not include emotional love in his list is that because when we are doing acts of kindness and goodness, "Philanthrōpia", to our husbands, emotional love will almost inevitably follow. You cannot continue to act in kindness to anyone and remain angry with them in your heart. Doing acts of kindness is to seek their good. In the act of kindness itself it begins to break down the barriers that may have stood in the way of feeling kindness. When you continue to 'do' kindness, and your feeling of kindness continues, emotional love of one sort or another will follow. This is what Proverbs 31 speaks about when it says in verse 12, "She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life." She acts in goodness (benevolence) toward him.

Knowing that when Titus 2 speaks of acting benevolently toward our husbands, how do we go about doing it? I almost want to laugh as the list seems overwhelming in number. We can fix him appealing dinner. We can greet him with a hug and kiss when he comes home after work, we can keep our homes clean and ready for company, we can offer encouragement when he needs it, we can wear nice looking clothes, we can have candles that he enjoys lit for a great smell in the house. There is so much we can do from offering a warm cup of coffee in the morning to offering a playful smile and knowing look in the evening.

For the next week, I'd like to encourage us all to choose one special act of kindness to do toward our husband's and see if that doesn't melt away any barriers that were starting to form, or see if it doesn't make our emotional love for our husbands even stronger.