A careful Bible reader, wanting nothing less than "the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27), has noticed that husbands are to love their wives "even as Christ loved the church," to love them "as their own bodies" (Ephesians 5:25, 28). However, he wonders why nothing is said about the wives loving their husbands. He has overlooked the statement that the "aged women" are to "teach the young women ... to love their husbands" (Titus 2:4).

I. DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF LOVE

Though the word "love" for husbands appears in Titus 2:4, the Greek word back of it is phileo, not agapao as in Ephesians 5:25, 28. Oftentimes those two words present different aspects of love. A vivid example of phileo only meaning to "like" someone, not to "love" (agapao) that person, is in the replies Peter made to Jesus’ questions (John 21:15-17).

Peter understood clearly the commitment in agape love, and of its superiority over the affection of philia love. He had bragged of his commitment to Jesus, claiming a deeper loyalty than that of the other apostles: "If all shall be offended at you, I will never be offended" (Matthew 26:33). However, after he had forsaken the Lord, even cursing and swearing, and lying, "I do not know the man" (Matthew 26:74), upon hearing the rooster crow, his heart was broken. Bitter weeping displayed his deep shame. Like Judas, he was a traitor, and he knew it. All bragging was gone and his spirit was crushed (Matthew 26:75).

After the Lord’s resurrection, when Peter was with the other disciples by the lakeside, Jesus asked him, "Do you love (agapao) me more than these?" (John 21:15). Peter, hearing agapao in Jesus’ question, knowing the magnitude of commitment in that word, knowing he had betrayed the Savior, he could not honestly put Jesus’ word agapao on his lips. His reply was an evasion, using phileo. Phileo not only means "love," but also "like" (B-G-D, p. 859). Peter was doing his best not to say that he loved Jesus whom he had betrayed, but he felt he could honestly say that he liked the Lord. Accordingly, the best translation of Peter’s reply is "Yes, Lord, you know that I like [phileo] you." A second time Jesus asked Peter, "Do you love [agapao] me?," and Peter hedged again, "Yes, Lord, you know that I like [phileo] you."

The Lord, noticing Peter’s evasion, in his third question asked, "Do you like [phileo] me?" Peter, undone, overcome, and grieved, opened, as it were, wide his breast and heart as if to say, "Lord, no more will I brag, and I will not be so bold as to say ‘I love [agapao] you; but you know all things: you know I am not bragging to say that I like [phileo] you."

The same commitment of love in agapao that Peter understood is found also in Jesus’ command to his disciples to love [agapao], not like [phileo], their enemies (Matthew 5:44). Phileo love is warm and friendly, including the word "friend" (philos) and the word "kiss" (philema).

Jesus did not command his disciples to have a warm, friendly, kissing attitude toward enemies, such as toward the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor, but to practice agape love. Though sometimes agape "properly denotes a love founded in admiration, veneration, esteem" (Thayer, p. 653), certainly that aspect of agape is not in the American missionaries who give years of unselfish labor in Japan. On the contrary, their agape love is founded in the desire, as is God’s, in "not wanting any to be lost" (2 Peter 3:9), in a desire "to seek and save the lost" (Luke 19:10).

Jesus practiced what he preached about loving enemies as he prayed for his murderers, "Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). Stephen too loved his enemies who stoned him, not in "admiration, veneration, esteem," but exhibited in prayer, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 7:60).

A chart shows the contrasts between agapao and phileo:

II. AGAPE AND PHILIA AS SYNONYMS

As sharp as is the contrast, in certain contexts, between agape and philia, in other contexts they are synonyms and are interchangeable. Sometimes agapao is "like phileo" (CLASSIC GREEK DICTIONARY, p. 3). Sometimes agapao alternates "with phileo" (Bauer-Gingrich-Danker, p. 4):

III. PHILEO IN TITUS 2:4

If anyone should say (surely not!) that biblically wives’ love for their husbands (philia, Titus 2:4) is not supposed to be equal to husbands’ love for their wives (agape, Ephesians 5:25), then we have a God who teaches that:

IV. THE CONCLUSION

The conclusion must be that God, who is "love" (1 John 4:8, 16), is incapable of teaching that a wife is worth dying for but not a husband. Therefore, the apape and the philia, as used in Ephesians 5:25, 28 and Titus 2:4, are synonyms, making husbands just as dear to wives as wives are to husbands.