07/26/2026
For those who don't like to read long posts, read it a little at a time, but make sure you read it for learning. Ready to read? Let's do this:
When Christian authors and teachers assign gender-specific needs that Scripture itself never assigns, they move from explaining the Bible to defining humanity. It is in this place, that the message they convey moves away from God's Will .
One of the most influential Christian marriage books of the last two decades is Emerson Eggerichs’ Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires. The Respect He Desperately Needs.
There are many things in there that some might find helpful, but there also some things that need and deserve closer scrutiny.
Nonetheless, the subtitle is compelling and both the title and some of its claims made about men and women were said to have been based on Ephesians 5 (including verse 33). But the title and some of its claims raise an important question:
Does Ephesians 5 actually teach what that subtitle claims?
When we open the passage, Paul clearly commands husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands (Ephesians 5:25, 33).
What the passage does NOT say is that a wife’s deepest or “driving” need is love or that a husband’s deepest or “driving” need is respect. (Big exhale).
Scripture never teaches that women are created with a deeper need for love or that men are created with a deeper need for respect.
So, while Scripture commands husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands, it neither states nor requires the conclusion that women, by design, need love more than respect or that men, by design, need respect more than love. These conclusions are not supplied by the scriptures, but rather by the interpreter or in this case, the author.
The issue isn’t whether love and respect belong in marriage because they absolutely do. Every Christian marriage should be characterized by both. The question is whether Scripture teaches that love is uniquely the defining need of women while respect is uniquely the defining need of men.
Love and respect are inseparable expressions of Christlike love within every biblical relationship. To love someone biblically is to treat them with honor, dignity, patience, and respect. Likewise, to genuinely respect someone is to act toward them in ways that are loving and seek their good. Scripture never presents these virtues as competing or dividing them along gender lines.
When we assign gender-specific needs that Scripture itself does not assign, we risk confusing our observations about people with God’s revelation about people.
Throughout Scripture, God often addresses the prevailing weakness, temptation, or responsibility of a particular audience without implying that everyone else is exempt from the same virtue. Sound hermeneutics requires us to distinguish between what Scripture explicitly says, what it reasonably implies, and what we ourselves infer.
Our responsibility is not to make Scripture fit our theories, or opinions (no matter how we arrived at them) about men and women.
Our responsibility is to let Scripture speak for itself. Selah
