Christ Defines the Husband’s Main Concern
Not Rights and Authority, but Sacrifice
The call to you, Christian husband, is the same as to your wife – in your sphere of responsibility to imitate Jesus Christ. For the woman, she was created for man to be his helpmeet. Therefore, she imitates Jesus Christ in his submission. For the man, who was created to be the woman’s head and provider, he is to imitate Jesus Christ in his sacrificial love. Thus, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, Christian marriage is sanctified and satisfying in the mutual imitation of Jesus Christ. Here there is no direct mention of the husband’s authority or rights. Defending these consumes men when the love of Christ grows cold in our hearts. Yes, the world attacks headship and authority in every sphere of life, but the world’s madness does not define the battle or give us marching orders. What else would we expect from the world? It rebels against God, and therefore each child of disobedience rebels against God’s creation, family, and social order. The husband’s headship is unequivocally assumed here and taught throughout Scripture, but the command to the husband is not to insist upon his rights and authority. His authority is from the Lord. It is not uncertain, and he does not need to flash constantly his badge and remind his wife to submit. His duty and his privilege are to model Christ’s love. Christians gladly submit to Jesus Christ because he loves us so much. Christian wives gladly submit to their husbands because they are reflections, albeit dim, of Christ’s great love and sacrifice.
Not Fulfillment, but Humility and Service
This is the unifying dynamic of Christian marriage, and of the Christian husband and wife. Each is seeking to “follow Christ, deny himself, and take up his cross.” Each must come to marriage to “imitate God, as beloved children, and to walk in love, as Christ has loved us” (Eph. 5:1-2). In our age of personal self-fulfillment, the use of the uniquely Christian agape brings out the strange, other-worldly, heavenly nature of the husband’s authority. The husband’s love is like Christ’s love: giving, not taking, sacrificing, not selfish, self-effacing, not self-centered, bride-promoting, not self-promoting. Like Jesus Christ, you, Christian husband are not to seek your own way and priority, dominate your wife, or have your wishes fulfilled. Christ’s self-emptying love places directly before you his humility and service. Worldly authorities think first of being served; a Christian husband, who has a real authority from God in his home, exercises his authority “in the name of Jesus Christ.” He uses his authority to serve the Lord Jesus, to lay down his life for his wife and children in imitation of Christ. In this, his authority is exercised like Jesus Christ: “for the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45).”
This Christian dynamic of service is the way we effectively counter the world’s hatred of submission. Too many defenses of Christian manhood undermine Christian manhood. The answer to the world’s destructive feminism is not for men to assert stridently their authority. This is a contradiction of Jesus Christ. It is to fight his war with our fleshly weapons. The best way to defend Christian manhood and Christian womanhood, for they are inseparable in the Lord’s creation and redemptive purposes, is to bring Jesus Christ’s submission and sacrifice front and center. He is the glorious model for the woman and wife in her submission and for the man in his sacrifice and love. This is the cross in which we boast, and it is the only truth that will defeat Satan and his lies about men and women. When we hold up and imitate our Savior’s love and sacrifice, the devil must flee. He detests and cowers before the love and sacrifice of our Lord. He always loses to the husband who lays down his life to love his wife, as Jesus Christ did to save us. He cannot defeat the Christian wife who denies herself and submits to her husband in the Lord. He hates submission. He hates sacrificing love. He hates the cross. It crushes his skull and his schemes. It will crush them in our day, if we walk by faith, rather than by fear.
Christ Sets the Example for the Husband’s Love
Sacrifice: Give Yourself, as Christ Did for You
By using the very word that defines God’s sovereign, saving love (John 3:16) and our Savior’s dying, sacrificing love (Gal. 2:20), the husband’s love is pictured as a direct imitation of God’s love in Christ (Eph. 5:25-26). Like Christ, you must lay down your life for the good of your wife. Sacrifice is by far the most challenging truth that faces Christian husbands, for it is the very life and work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Unless you are growing in him, you cannot possibly be a husband who is learning to deny himself and to prefer your wife and her needs to your desires and needs. Such sacrifice is possible in union with Jesus Christ, by the Spirit’s power in us so that we walk as Christ walked. To sacrifice for your wife means that rather than controlling her, you are looking out for her eternal good, setting a good example of obedience for her, and helping her to the arms of Jesus Christ.
Not yet in heaven and still fighting against your sinful flesh, you must sacrifice for your wife in seasons in which you may feel you are receiving nothing in return, or that the effort is too great. This, also, is the way of Christ. His bride was unworthy of his sacrifice, but he laid down his life because he loved her. As his disciple, you do not look for return, at least not in the selfish sense. You do not weigh duty by what you get out of your efforts. You do not measure your sacrifice by your wife’s response to you. The grace of our Savior is more powerful than your wife’s sins, than your sins. The more you abide in Christ, the more his sacrifice grips your soul, the less concerned you will become with self, fulfillment, and return. The more pleasure you will find in emptying yourself, and seeking nothing for yourself at all, provided that Jesus Christ is praised and your precious wife served.
Tenderhearted Kindness: Beautify, Nurture and Cherish, as Your Own Body
Christ’s love for us sanctifies us by his indwelling Spirit and cleanses us by his once-for-all sacrifice on the cross (Eph. 5:26). His love never leaves us unchanged. Every child of God is altered – deeply, personally, eternally altered by the love of the Son of God. The Christian husband’s love, because it is in Christ, empowered by Christ, and has its telos or destination to be with and like Christ forever (Eph. 5:27), transforms his wife. Your love for your wife, Christian husband, beautifies your wife, as Christ’s love beautifies you. As you nourish or nurture your wife, her spirit and countenance improve, for Christ in you is more powerful than her sins, her learned sinful responses to life, and her bad habits. His love is more powerful than your sins, your bad habits, and your selfishness. As you serve her, she will grow in maturity as a Christian woman, as a follower of Jesus Christ. You also cherish her. To cherish your wife is to be attentive to her, warmly engaged with her, and in every way seeking to be like Jesus Christ in your loving concern for her total welfare. The motivation to love her as Jesus loves his wife is to keep before the eye of faith this truth. You are preparing your wife by your love for her true and eternal Husband, the Lord Jesus.
Faithful: Leave and Cleave, as One in Covenant
Your tender kindness toward your wife is the fulfillment of the marriage covenant (Gen. 2:23-25). The husband leaves his parents and nurtures his wife. She becomes the object of his desires, affections, attentions, and service. You are joined to your wife in one flesh, so that the way you treat her is the way you treat yourself, for she is your other half. You are in covenant with your wife and must live as one with her. How do we live in covenant with our wives? First, we are resolved in our hearts, with our eyes, and in our thoughts that she alone is the object of our attentions and affections. You and your wife have exclusive sexual, friendship, provision, and companionship rights in each other – no one else – not mentally or virtually or emotionally. Second, speak with your wife with all the affection, tenderness, and interest that becomes a man who represents the loving sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his life. Third, when you must confront or even rebuke, for disagreements and rough patches in the marriage will come, the Lord’s path is clear: speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:19). You are in covenant with your wife, as your Savior is with you. You are not separate from your wife, for the two are now one. You must resolve your sins together and support one another in your life struggles.
Christ Quenches the Husband’s Bitterness
Do Not Feed Bitterness
The wife must submit to a sinful husband, who can be cold, authoritarian, unfeeling, moody, withdrawn, critical, and controlling. The husband must love his wife, who can be moody, cold, discontented, frigid, demanding, manipulative, and sulky. Christian marriages are subject to life’s troubles and sorrows, but the Holy Spirit commands you, Christian husband, not to become bitter. Bitterness is the sinful response to personal injuries, slights, and disappointments that are never addressed but allowed to fester. Husbands become embittered toward their wives when they obsess over their wife’s sins and make them worse by your sinful responses. Bitterness is an aggrieved spirit that enfolds the sinner upon his wounded feelings. Bitterness is an especially nasty and cancerous heart sin. Unchecked and unconquered by our Savior’s grace, the bad feelings grow, the indifference, the wife’s response to your indifference, or your quiet persecution of her for her many faults. Do not allow bitterness to take root. Do not answer your wife sharply, no matter how she answers you. Do not nurture sinful thoughts – “she is always so ugly and demanding” – “she never tries to meet my needs” – “she never sees the good things I try to do for her” – for they feed bitterness.
Overcome Bitterness (vv. 12-14)
Bitterness in marriage is the opposite of our new life in Jesus Christ. He teaches us the way to fight against bitterness and to overcome it by his strength. I call upon all married believers to apply these gospel remedies without delay and without excuse. They have already been given to us in 3:12-14. First, we must put on the mind of Christ toward one another: bowels of mercies – you, Christian husband, must cherish the deepest affection for your wife, as Christ’s own wife given to you to love, as he has loved you. Kindness means that you must speak gently to her and do good to her, and endeavor to develop a kind attitude toward her, even when she does not please you. It is far more important for you to please Jesus Christ than for your wife to please you. As you please Jesus Christ, your wife will be more pleasing to you, for your attitudes toward her will change. You will have more “lowliness of mind toward her.” When men cherish high views of their own opinions, desires, and needs, it becomes difficult to live with them and impossible to please them. This is so unlike our Lord Jesus Christ that every Christian husband has ample room for repentance for this one sin of high-mindedness, even in the absence of any other known or recognized sin.
To further quench bitterness, put on Christ’s meekness – a tamed spirit that does not make demands upon others. A meek husband places more demands upon himself than he does his wife – not to act lordly or condescending toward his wife but to act with gospel lowliness and longsuffering – a very long fuse toward your wife’s weaknesses and failings. Let us say that she disappoints you conjugally – ask the Lord to tame and transform your desires so that you are pleased with her as she is, patient to work with her to help her overcome weakness in this area, and honest in sharing with her your need for her to love you more as a wife. A Christian wife will respond well to such appeals, however personally challenging, if they are made tenderly, and if she is adopting the same lowliness of mind to which her Savior calls her. Thus, we need the mind of Christ, as the Spirit said in Philippians 2:3-6, if we are to quench bitterness. The best and only way to be a husband that loves your wife as Jesus Christ loved and gave himself for his wife is to be made more like him. Thus, it is the shocking lack of desire for Christlikeness among men more than anything else that explains the bitterness that takes root in our marriages.
The more you remember how much Christ has endured with your continued provocations of him, the more you will be humbled to extend the same forbearance to your wife (v. 13). Forbearance is holding up under the pressures of the insults, injuries, and weaknesses of others. Bitterness is wilting under these, giving way to them, rather than forgiving them (v. 13). To forgive is to put them away in love, to extend grace to another despite their many weaknesses. Husband do not throw your wife’s failings in her face or crush her under the weight of your disappointments and frustrations. This is the opposite of extending grace. She may be sinning against you in fundamental, serious ways, but there is a way to confront these that does not feed bitterness – like the Lord Jesus, when he speaks honestly and humbly to us in his word, without browbeating us, and laying down his life for us to give us the strongest imaginable incentive to forsake our sins and love him wholeheartedly. He forgave us, and we must forgive our wives – sincerely, whether or not they ask, but especially if they ask. A husband who nurtures bitterness and withholds forgiveness from his wife is a man who has forgotten how much pain and misery his sins cost the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we must put on love toward our wives (v. 14). To put on love is to be clothed with love – with Christ’s love for us and the Spirit working his fruit of love in our lives. We must seek Christ’s transforming love. Do not wait upon your wife to change – the Lord Jesus is calling you to be changed – by the power of his love applied to your heart and life and words by the indwelling Spirit of love and grace. This means that you as a Christian husband are seeking to know more of Christ’s love and to seek to be changed by his love as you meditate upon his person and work. Do you think about his love? Do you wonder at his love for you? When you sing, “O, the deep, deep love of Jesus,” is your heart moved to worship and adoration? To love your wife better?
Begin with your words. Let your words be clothed with love. Do you speak endearingly to your wife, or is there always a sharp, accusing, or complaining edge to your words? What if the Lord Jesus spoke to you like this? You would be cut to the quick and die from the horror of it. Do you talk lovingly about your wife to others, or do they gain the clear impression that you are derisive and displeased with your wife? Do you pray for your wife? We pray for those whom we love. Are your prayers more in the vein, “Lord, please help my wife to do what I tell her?” Or “Lord, please help me to love my wife as you have loved me, and then help her to grow in your love also, so that we may grow in love to one another?” Jesus Christ’s love changes you, Christian husband, and your love will change your wife – not because you love perfectly, but because you can only love in union with Christ and therefore his love through you will reach your wife and beautify her.
The Best Preparation for Marriage
When we look at the husband’s duty to love his wife in this fashion, in the context of the entire letter to the Colossians, it is apparent that the best and most necessary preparation for marriage is far more than financial and vocational. These are important, and no man should seek a wife who is not clear on his calling in life and able to work and provide for his wife. A man cannot leave and cleave if he cannot support and provide. But a wealthy suitor may make a very bad husband, if he is not growing in the love of Jesus Christ. Without the love of Jesus Christ ruling a man’s heart, he cannot be a Christian husband. And thus, the heart of Christian manhood is not burning things down or building them, throwing axes or yelling at feminists. It is not slinging innuendoes and slurs against wicked people or marching against them in militant parades. The heart of Christian manhood, and therefore the heart of the Christian husband, is to love as Christ loves. This is the love that saved the world and saves each sinner. It is the love that will save our marriages, and your marriage individually – the magnificent, glorious, incomprehensible, incomparable, humble, gentle, selfless love of Jesus Christ. Let us as Christian men learn to love our wives in this fashion. Our Savior will help us. Let us go boldly to him and ask for the help of his Spirit, and then begin to walk as he walked.
If you are married and want to have a more satisfying marriage, use this Sabbath to put on the love of Jesus Christ, to learn more of his love, and to remember his great love and what it cost him to save you. Stoke the fires of Christ’s love in your hearts until it is a roaring fire. Review what his love did for you – he humbled himself, obeyed because we disobeyed, suffered because we assaulted holiness and authority, died for us, received our judgment and hell because he loved us and would not lose us. The fire of his love will consume our pride, our hurt feelings, and our bitterness. The fire of his love will ignite and inspire your effort to love as Christ loved, despite the many obstacles you face as a husband. You may think your wife is past winning – she is not past being won by the love of Jesus Christ in you. If she is, then she needs to have the love of Christ kindled in her heart also. But keep coming to Jesus Christ, asking him to show you his great love, to help you understand more of his love, to be satisfied with his love, so that in its transforming beauty and power, you may love your wife. If you are not yet married and desire to be, do the same. Your best preparation for marriage is to be a man who is growing in wonder at the love of Jesus Christ.
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