Don't Hate Your Wife
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When desiring to obey a command of God for our lives, it is helpful to consider what doing the opposite entails. For if we grasp what is contrary to the command, we can be more sensitive to the Holy Spirit's correction and redirection when we have strayed.

This strategy of considering the opposite is certainly suggested by Paul when he instructs men to love their wives.

So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church (Ephesians 5:28-29 KJV).

Paul establishes that the opposite of love is hate. While he states that no man ever hated his own flesh, he implies that men, not realizing that their wives are as their own flesh, can and do hate them. Therefore it behooves a man to understand what the Word of God means by hate so that he can stop or never start hating his wife.

Hate may involve and express many different feelings, thoughts, and actions. According to Matthew 5:44, those who hate you also curse you (wish evil and pray against you). They despitefully use you (insult, revile, and treat you abusively). And they persecute you (harass, trouble, and molest you, making you run or flee as they pursue you and drive you away).

In Matthew 24:9, those who hate you also deliver you up to be afflicted (put you into the hands of oppression, tribulation, distress, and straits). They also kill you (literally, kill or destroy, and metaphorically, extinguish, abolish, and deprive of spiritual life and inflict moral death).

In Luke 6:22, those who hate you also separate you from their company (limit and exclude you). They reproach you (upbraid, revile, and treat you with scorn or contempt). And they cast out your name as evil (reject you and cast you away as being something evil that causes them labor, pain, and sorrow, and therefore to them you are something wicked, bad, or worthless.)

The Apostle John wrote that "he who hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes" (I John 2:11  KJV). Through Word Based Counseling, we are working to open the eyes and hearts of men who have sowed a bit or a lot of hatred, because of ignorance, because of passion, or because their hearts were hard. We are also working to bring healing to those who have been hated.

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