The role that husbands and wives fulfill within a marriage is modeled after the completed work of God in Christ for the church. As the church submits to Christ, so are wives to submit to their husbands, and as Christ loved the church, so are husbands to love their wives. In the world we live in today there is much confusion over these roles. And unfortunately poor cultural values have invaded the minds of many to bring a false determination of the expression of harmony within a marriage.
It is here, perhaps more than anywhere else, that the church must learn to practice the discipline of grace. The crucible of marriage is the one place where the four-fold understanding of love as, unconditional, parental, friendship, and romance are united together. The glue that keeps marriages strong is the nothing less than the grace of God.
Ephesians 5:21-33 (NIV)
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
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.