Loving Your Wife As Christ Loves The Church

Mark Altrogge reports on this new book:

My friend Larry McCall recently wrote Loving Your Wife As Christ Loves the Church, a thorough, doctrinal, and practical book for husbands. Each chapter begins by focusing on how Christ loves his bride, the church, then teases out practical applications for imitating Jesus in loving our wives.

Great quotes from teachers like Alistair Begg, John Piper, and C.J. Mahaney pepper the pages, as well as real-life examples from Larry’s own marriage. He teaches us how to encourage, equip and romance our wives and avoid such pitfalls as lust, flirting, and divorce.

Here’s a quick overview of a few chapters:

Chapter 1 – The Perfect Husband. Though many lack a role model of a godly husband, God provides his Son, who models sacrificial love for his bride for us to imitate.

Chapter 2 – A Predetermined Love. God chose us in eternity knowing we’d always be utterly unworthy of his love. So we too must love our wives unconditionally.

Chapter 4 - A Peerless Love. Adultery begins in small ways in the heart. Larry explains how to repent if we’ve been hooked, how to resist temptation, and develop a “good offense” by cultivating love for our wives and enjoying marital intimacy

Chapter 5 - A Practical Love. We should regularly say, “I love you,” and show it as we serve, share the load at home, and actively listen to our wives. “Our wives don’t want us to fix them. They want us to care…about them and how this issue might be affecting them.”

Chapter 9 - A Passionate Love. Romance involves talking, time, touching, and thoughtful actions. Sex is a matter of giving, not just getting.

Chapter 12 – A Pardoning love. Christ is patient and forgiving. We too must forgive as Christ forgave us.

Every chapter ends with discussion questions and action steps for private devotional use or with a group. I just ordered it for our church book store. You can get it at Amazon.com.