The Christian Husband Continued - OutofThisWorldLeadership.com

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Part One: The Qualifications of a Christian Husband

Manhood Redefined

In the early 1990s, Robert Hicks studied the six Hebrew words for man:

Adam: A human creature
Zakar: A male
Gibbor: A warrior
Enosh: A weak or feeble man
Ish: A husband
Zaken: An old or bearded man

Hicks concluded that each word embodied the defining characteristics of a man at various stages in his life, moving from basic biology to spiritual wisdom and maturity. Every man’s journey, Hicks suggested, will move him from one stage to the next, with the goal of becoming a zaken—a man marked by godly wisdom.

Stu Weber, a pastor from the Portland area, went to what he calls “the headwaters” of masculinity—Genesis 2—and found in pre-Fall Adam four masculine characteristics. Weber says every man has in himself something of a king, a warrior, a mentor and a friend, resident in the masculine soul from the first moments of creation and implanted there by the designer. Those four “pillars,” according to his book Tender Warrior (and later in the book The Four Pillars of a Man’s Heart), give men a road map for biblical masculinity.

Robert Lewis has suggested that the essence of masculinity can be found in comparing the failed first Adam with the triumphant second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. In juxtaposing the two, Lewis offers men a helpful understanding of what he calls “authentic manhood.” Real men, according to Lewis, reject passivity, accept responsibility, lead courageously and expect the greater, eternal reward.

For better or worse, no one has shaped our understanding of our own masculinity more than our fathers. We are marked for life by their lives, their models and their instructions—or by their absence. (Note: I’m fortunate there—check out this post from 2014.).

What had been a fight for survival during the Great Depression evolved into a quest for prosperity in later years. Over time, that which had once been considered only part of a husband’s responsibility became his sole responsibility. What is the confusing message? Being a man means being a success in the marketplace. Period. End of discussion.

Prior to the advent of television, the dominant institutions shaping the next generation were the family, the community and the Church. TV, movies and sports give young boys a new definition of what makes a man a “real” man.

The feminist movement has left men unsure of what is acceptable male behavior. Some women view common courtesies such as a man opening a door for a woman as pandering chauvinism. Is it any wonder that today millions of men are asking themselves the question, “What is a real man?” Instead of being instructed from the Scriptures and discipled by their fathers, young men are watching the media exalt super warriors while their moms reward them for being peaceful.

Masculinity by the Book

The differences between the sexes are the single most important fact of human society. – George Gilder, Men and Marriage

The biblical record is clear: God created them male and female, with what author Mike Mason calls a “mysterious, compelling combination of identity and otherness.”

The consequences of the Fall for the woman involved her relationships with her husband and children. For the man, the consequences involved his laboring in the soil from which he was taken (see Gen. 3:23).

As Dennis Rainey, the host of FamilyLife Today, likes to point out, we all seem to know intuitively that a man is designed to face danger, be courageous and protect the women around him.

The lists of biological, physiological and psychological differences between men and women have filled books and prompted tens of thousands of research projects. In his book Men and Marriage, George Gilder sums them up by saying that “man is rendered more aggressive, exploratory, volatile, competitive and dominant, more visual, abstract and impulsive, more muscular, appetitive and tall. He is less nurturant, moral, domestic, durable, healthy and dependable, less balanced, and less close to the ground… Most of these propensities are substantiated by a large amount of cross-cultural material, combined with a growing body of physiological—particularly neuroendocrinological—data.”

Courage and Fear

In their book The Silence of Adam, Larry Crabb, Don Hudson and Al Andrews point to the interconnectedness between godliness and masculinity: The only way to be manly is first to be godly. In our day, men are looking for their manhood more than they are seeking God. Too many men make the mistake of studying masculinity and trying to practice what they learn without paying enough attention to their relationship with God.

Success in the marketplace, great wealth and power, and the honor and praise of the culture are not the measure of real masculinity. To be fully a man, you must commit yourself to the pursuit of godliness.

Note the central theme of Proverbs. A godly life, according to Solomon, begins with wisdom. And the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord:

Today there is such an emphasis on God’s great love for us that we have forgotten what it means to fear Him. We don’t see Him as a consuming fire but as a kindly grandfather who chides us when we are mischievous, always with a twinkle in His eye and only a faint sternness in His voice. Don McCullough writes, “We prefer to imagine a deity who happily lets bygones be bygones, who winks at failures and pats us on the back to build our self-esteem. But according to Scripture, ‘God is love.’ And love devoid of judgment is only watered down kindness.”

For love to exist in any relationship, there must first be respect and trust. Anything we call “love” that does not have a foundation of respect and trust is just a bunch of sloppy sentiment.

A Man and God’s Word

Most husbands have never looked seriously at what God expects from a man as a husband. Instead, they are content if their marriage somehow meets or exceeds what they see around them. Meanwhile, God is calling us to something more than mediocrity as husbands. In an age of casual Christianity, God is calling men to gold-medal faith in Christ. Our devotion to His cause and His Kingdom should rival or exceed the intensity exhibited by the distance runners who are training for the next Olympiad. We need daily conditioning. A casual, spiritual workout or a trip to church once a week will not suffice. Where do we begin our quest for godly character? We begin where that kind of character is defined and modeled—the Word of God.

God has some pretty remarkable things to say about His Word: God’s Word provides us with divine guidance. God’s Word helps us see our own heart more clearly. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). God’s Word equips us for godly living.

God’s Word leads us to eternal life. “But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).

The biblical idea of meditation revolves around letting your mind dwell on the truth of Scripture, the wonder of God’s creation, His divine attributes and His goodness to us. Paul directs our meditation to “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything is worthy of praise, dwell on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

Reading, studying, meditating on and memorizing the truth of Scripture are essential parts of our spiritual workout if we hope to grow in godliness. A husband who is spiritually flabby will find himself ill equipped for his role.

A Man Who Walks with God

Pastor and author Don Whitney says God uses three primary catalysts for changing us and conforming us to Christlikeness:

He uses other men to sharpen us, as iron sharpens iron (see Prov. 27:17);
He uses circumstances to provoke us to obedience (in both of those cases, we are generally the passive recipients of God’s working in our lives); and
He uses a category of spiritual activities that has classically been referred to as the “Spiritual Disciplines.” Whitney writes, “Think of the Spiritual Disciplines as spiritual exercises. To go to your favorite spot for prayer or journaling, for example, is like going to a gym and using a weight machine. As physical disciplines like this promote strength, so the Spiritual Disciplines promote Godliness.”

The spiritual discipline of prayer has become obscured in our day because we have allowed our own selfishness to dominate our understanding of what prayer means. We have become like college students who call home only when their checking account is low. We are quick to cry out to God when we face difficult circumstances beyond our control, and just as quick to ignore the discipline of prayer when everything is going smoothly. Prayer has become synonymous with “asking God for something.” Any other reason for prayer has become superfluous.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Paul exhorts us with a startling three-word declaration: “Pray without ceasing.” According to Jesus, we are to begin our prayers by honoring our Father. For Jews who refused to even speak the name of God, it was a radical paradigm shift for them to address their prayers to a heavenly “Father.” He instructs us to pray so that our hearts, our minds and our actions might be yielded to His perfect will. In prayer, God takes a man who, as the old hymn says, has a heart that is prone to wander, and He guides him in paths of righteousness for His own name’s sake. When a man disciplines himself to pray regularly, he will grow in masculine godliness.

Worship incorporates the disciplines examined above. To worship the Father in truth requires reading, study, meditation and memorization of God’s Word. To worship Him in Spirit means that our inner self—the nonmaterial part of man—communes with God, who is Spirit. Worship is the total response of our life to the life of Christ.

The major theme of our worship should be the theme of Scripture—the glory of God made manifest to us in His redemption of His Church. As one contemporary chorus suggests, “Let’s forget about ourselves and magnify the Lord and worship Him.” Good advice. In fact, the English word “worship” comes from the original Anglo-Saxon term worthship.

Undoubtedly, somewhere along the line, you’ve heard (or maybe even said yourself), “God is all I need.” But the God who created you made you with a need for relationships with other people. His plan has always been to meet some of your needs through His servants. Remember, Adam walked with God in the cool of the day in paradise, just the way God had created him, when the creator made the startling statement, “It is not good” (Genesis 2:18).

In Scripture, God has established three social institutions to carry out His plan for men:

Family
Government: Established under His Lordship, to carry out His purposes in a society.
His own Body, the Church: Men and women who name Jesus Christ as Lord and who gather for the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments.

Over the last 30 or 40 years, we have seen what sociologist Robert Bellah calls our culture of “radical individualism” pollute and distort what we understand about the Church. By inviting men and women to have a “personal relationship with Christ,” and by stressing how we can know God personally, we have obscured the bigger picture. “There is no such thing,” says Chuck Colson, “as Christianity apart from the church.”

When we talk about the discipline of community, we are talking about active participation in the life of the Church. Not membership. Not attendance. When a man disciplines himself to active participation in a community of faith, he will grow in masculine godliness.

Part Two: The Model for Husbands—Jesus Christ

In his excellent study of male and female roles in marriage entitled Rockin’ the Roles, Dr. Robert Lewis suggests that many men have abused the concept of headship and assumed the role of despot in their home. They have become what he calls “lording leaders” who fail to reflect Christlike humility and service in their relationships. Their model for headship seems to have been the Pharaohs of Egypt more than the Lamb of God. Women have rightly rebelled against this kind of dictatorship in marriage, but many have thrown out the proverbial baby with the bath water.

John Calvin taught that the office which Christ “received from the Father consists of three parts. For he was appointed . . . Prophet, King and Priest.” Christ’s headship, according to Calvin, involves the perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament types.

The Husband Who Leads in Prayer

Husbands are responsible to serve a priestly function in their homes. We have the holy duty of leading our wives and our families into God’s presence for worship, reminding them of God’s grace and mercy in the forgiveness of their sins and offering intercession on their behalf.

In the same way that the Levitical priests superintended the worship of the Israelites, a husband should function as the worship leader for his marriage. He should set apart his home as a temple of God, keeping it holy and undefiled. The flame of God’s Spirit should burn brightly in his own heart and in his home.

In our contemporary, individualistic, egalitarian culture, many husbands reject their priestly responsibilities with their wives, thinking, “She’s fully capable of having her own quiet time or doing her own Bible reading.”

The spiritual discipline of prayer as one of the activities God will use to conform us to the image of His Son. Sadly, this is a discipline too often neglected by task-driven, self-sufficient men. For some reason, it seems, women are more disposed to the duty of prayer.

The intercessory prayer of Christ in John 17 becomes a model for how a priestly husband can intercede on behalf of his wife.

Glorify God: The first thing you notice as you read through the prayer is that Jesus begins by praying that God would be glorified by the events that were about to take place (see v. 1). His beginning focus for intercession was what the Westminster Catechism calls “the chief end of man.” He prayed that His own triumph over death and sin would ultimately bring glory to His Father. Like Jesus, our lives should be consumed by a desire to see God glorified, for His name to be hallowed and for His will to be done in all things.
Grow in Knowledge: Jesus’ second petition in His high priestly prayer was for His disciples to know God (see v. 3). Our lifetime pursuit as believers should be to grow in our knowledge of Christ. In his classic book Knowing God, J. I. Packer says that “interest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing Him.” Knowing God involves an intimate love relationship.
Hold Fast to the Faith: Jesus also prayed that God would protect His followers (see v. 11). We should pray that our wives would be women who hold fast to their faith, even in the midst of difficult times or of persecution. Our prayer of protection should be aimed not so much at their physical safety, but, as Peter points out, we are to “rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet. 4:13).
Reflect Holiness: Next, Jesus prays that His followers will be holy, sanctified by the truth of God’s Word (see v. 17). If the prayer for our wife’s sanctification calls us up short, it should challenge us again to lead morally disciplined lives in our own service to Christ. Self-examination is a necessary part of the ministry of intercession, lest we prove to be hypocrites and Pharisees.
Draw Close: Jesus prayed that His followers would be brought to complete unity (see v. 23). Women tend more than men to be more oriented toward relationships, and the prayer for unity is a plea to God that we would be of one heart and one mind in our relationships with others in the Body of Christ. John 17 is often cited as proof that Jesus wants us all to be one. It is important to notice, however, that Jesus’ prayer for the unity of His disciples followed His prayer that they be sanctified in truth. The only basis for true unity is the “one faith, one Lord, one baptism” unity that binds our hearts together in a common understanding of the gospel. While we might as believers charitably disagree on important issues, such as whether infants or adults should be baptized, we must be united around the essence of the Christian faith, the gospel of Christ.
Remain Faithful: Jesus’ final petition in John 17 is for us to be with Him, beholding His glory (see v. 24). As husbands, we can pray on our wife’s behalf that our Lord would return quickly and take us to be with Him. A true disciple of Christ is one who proves faithful to the end. In exercising his priestly responsibilities, a husband ought to also pray for his wife, that she would persevere in her faith and so might prove the reality of her profession of faith in Christ.

Following Jesus’ pattern of intercession in John 17, then, a husband should pray for his wife that she would glorify God; that she would know Him; that God would keep her safe in Him; that she would be set apart for His service; that she would be one with Him and with other godly women; and that she would stay faithful to the end.

The Husband Who Hears from God

Every governor of a family ought to look upon himself as obligated to act in three capacities: as a prophet to instruct; as a priest to pray for and with; and as a king to govern, direct and provide for them. It is true, indeed that the latter of these, their kingly office, they are not so frequently deficient in . . . but as for the former, their priestly and prophetic offices . . . they care for no such thing. – George Whitefield, “The Great Duty of Family Religion”

A part of the headship responsibility every husband bears is the call to be a prophet. In its simplest definition, the term means, “one who hears from God” or “one who speaks for God.” The prophet of God has always performed the simple act of hearing and speaking the word of the Lord.

A quick survey of the prophetic literature in the Bible, from Isaiah to Malachi, will show the chief responsibility of the prophetic office was proclamation. They reminded God’s people of His providential love and care for them. They revealed His plan of salvation.

Here are the marks of a prophetic husband.

He Hears from God: To hear from God today, a husband must be diligent to equip himself as a student of the Scriptures. Douglas Wilson, in his book Reforming Marriage, says, “A man may not be a vocational theologian, but in his home he must be the resident theologian. The apostle Paul, when he is urging women to keep silent in the church, tells them that ‘if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home’ (1 Cor. 14:35).” The spiritual disciplines of a godly man begin with reading, studying, meditating on and memorizing the Word of God.
He Establishes a Doctrinal Foundation for His Home: Only a generation ago, we dumbed down that catechizing standard to include memorization of John 3:16, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and “Jesus Loves Me.” Today, in most evangelical churches, we’ve determined that the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer are no longer necessary. As the expectations for men in the evangelical world have gotten lower, men have not objected—they have breathed a sigh of relief.
He Faithfully Proclaims the Truth of God: Most of us husbands are intimidated by the task of proclaiming God’s truth, because we expect too much of ourselves in the process. A husband needs to muster his courage and take the initiative to regularly call his wife and his family to the Scriptures as their source of life and truth.
He Confronts Sin and Calls His Wife to Repentance: “First,” Jesus said, “take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:5). Some husbands may avoid their prophetic responsibilities because they don’t want to face their own sin.
He Encourages His Wife with the Truth of God’s Love: Most wives don’t need a constant reminder of their own sin, especially from their husbands. They are painfully aware of their shortcomings and their failures. Instead, they need to be reminded of God’s forgiveness when they stumble. They need to hear again that His mercies are new every morning (see Lamentations 3:22-23). They long for encouragement. The husband who concentrates on confronting sin has missed the mark. As we speak for God, we need to make sure that His message of grace and love is coming through loud and clear. If your goal is a marriage where God is glorified, where each partner is growing in his or her knowledge of the Savior and being sanctified daily by His Spirit, and where two souls are being knit together in true intimacy, it will be necessary for you to assume the prophetic mantle as you lead your wife and family.

The Husband Who Loves and Leads

One king made the final decisions, even if they were unpopular and went against the wisdom of his advisors. He was willing to assume responsibility for unwise decisions (which he made more frequently than one might expect); and he was quick to share the glory when his plans succeeded. He was not always popular, and his kingdom had its share of hard times, but he tried to lead his people with wisdom, and they generally looked to their king with respect and with love.

Somewhere along the line, we got confused about what it means for a man to be a king. Maybe we drew our conclusions about kingship from British royalty. We looked to England and assumed kingship meant power, privilege and position.

From American shores, a king’s life has appeared to be the ultimate in selfish indulgence, with a few minor inconveniences cluttering up your existence. In ancient times, the picture was very different. The kingly office then was defined in the eyes of the people as a position of responsibility and leadership, not of privilege and possessions.

Author Dan Allender offers an enlightening job description for the kingly office. Consider how a husband is called into kingly service to his wife. The king led, protected and provided for the safety of the realm. The king was not only a warrior, but he also was the representative of the realm in conversations with the “world.” He planned strategies, negotiated alliances, and applied the word of God to daily conflicts… In so doing, he became the one who took the truth of God into the world and invited unbelievers to know and bow before the God of Israel.

As pastor and author Robert Lewis points out masterfully in his book Rockin’ the Roles, the husband’s responsibility to be “head” of his wife does not give him the right to be a King Moe-style “lording” leader. Nor does it allow him the option of being a responsibility-shirking King Larry—a “passive” leader. The divine design is for a husband to follow the rocky road of loving leadership in his marriage.

When we talk about a husband who is a servant leader, “leader” is a noun and “servant,” while also a noun, serves as a modifier. In other words, a husband is not to be a servant who serves by leading. He is called by God to be a leader, whose leadership is characterized by service.

For the sake of our wives, we must once again assume our true kingly roles as leaders who execute our leadership with humble hearts and loving service for our wives. Here are some practical steps we as husbands can take as we seek to take on the mantle of a servant-king.

Examine Your Leadership: Are you a dictator or a do-nothing kind of guy? Have you taken on the responsibility of serving your wife but ignored the task of leading her?
Start Leading: In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Very often, the only way to get a quality is to start behaving as if you had it already.” As husband and wife, it’s time to sit down and begin to discuss areas in your marriage where you need to start showing some leadership.
Examine the major areas of your family and your life: Consider your faith, your marriage, your children, your job, your relationships with friends, your service to the community, your physical health and well-being, your stewardship over the resources God has given you, and your recreational time. Then decide where you need to begin to take some initiative and lead.
Learn to Judge in Righteousness: 2 Samuel 23:3-4 is the dying advice King David gives to his son Solomon on how he is to lead God’s people: “The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spoke to me, ‘He who rules over men righteously, who rules in the fear of God, is as the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds, when the tender grass springs out of the earth, through sunshine after rain.’” That makes it incumbent on you as a husband to be a disciplined student of God’s Word, so that you might exercise your authority in wisdom. To the extent that you lean on your own wisdom and understanding as the source of your authority, you will be abusing your kingly office.
Do Some Strategic Planning: In his books Tender Warrior and The Four Pillars of a Man’s Heart, pastor and author Stu Weber expands our thinking on the husband’s role as “provider.” The root word, Weber explains, means to “see ahead” (“pro”—ahead or before, and “vision”—to see). A provider does much more than secure material necessities. He makes strategic plans for his marriage and his home, looking ahead to arrange for spiritual, emotional and social needs as well. Many businessmen who can establish a successful plan for a company are clueless when it comes time to think strategically about the spiritual, emotional, physical and social needs of their wives. Ask them about their five-year plan for their marriage, and you’re likely to get a deer-in-the-headlights look.
Stay Alert: Resistance to a husband assuming leadership in marriage will come from all directions. It will come from a culture that is increasingly drifting farther away from God’s standards and is pulling your marriage along in its undertow. It will come from friends and coworkers who thinking themselves to be wise have become as fools (see Rom. 1:22). We must be husbands who follow the calling and example not of the Old Testament monarchs, but of the King of kings.

Part Three: The Task—How to Really Love Your Wife

Love Her with Commitment

We talk casually about loving everything from golf to a particular brand of hot dogs and, in the process, our understanding of what real love is has been cheapened beyond recognition.

Paul explains that the dominant characteristic of Jesus Christ’s love was His sacrifice, giving up His life for us.

To become a “great lover” in the biblical sense of the expression, we must examine four very specific ways in which Christ has expressed His love for His Church.

1. Unconditional Love: The first way in which Christ demonstrated His love for His Church was by choosing us to be the recipients of His mercy and His grace. His decision had nothing to do with our worthiness to be the objects of His love. He didn’t wait to love the lovable. He chose to love us because it pleased Him to do so.

Hosea’s faithfulness to God’s call was remarkable when considered in the context of the culture in Hosea’s day. A husband had the right, according to the custom of the day, to divorce his wife for any cause. Not only did Hosea have the right to divorce Gomer for her unfaithfulness, but she deserved to be put to death.

God’s command for Hosea was that he love his wife in spite of her unfaithfulness. He was to choose to love her even though she had abandoned him. He was to be a living illustration of mercy, not justice. The life of Hosea is a living illustration of the unconditional love of God, who chooses to love us, not because we have earned or deserved His love, but because it pleases Him to love us.

2. Covenantal Love: A husband loves his wife by making a covenant with her and keeping it, no matter what. On his wedding day, a man takes his unconditional love for a woman and marks it in a covenantal ceremony. He stands before God and witnesses and takes a vow to love, honor and cherish his wife, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better or for worse, for as long as they both shall live.

A man who vows to love and care for his wife throughout his lifetime, no matter what, is inviting his community to examine his character.

3. Incarnational Love: A husband who seeks to love his wife in the same way that Christ loved His Church will not only love unconditionally and establish his relationship with a covenant, but he also will love incarnationally. His love for his wife will be characterized by setting aside any claim to privilege or prerogative and stepping into her world, learning to sympathize with her weaknesses.

Loving unconditionally will mean that we give up our own desires. It means that we arrive home from work in the evening not to be served and to relax, but to help get the kids ready for bed, to dry the dishes, to help fold laundry, to spend time talking about our day, to go to the grocery store, to help plan menus, to pay the bills, to empty the trash, to sit down with the family calendar and do some planning, and to listen to our wife’s frustrations about the kids or her job or the other ladies in the Bible study. It means setting aside the things we’d like to do and making it our priority to become part of her world.

4. Sacrificial Love

What Real Love Looks Like

The ancient Greeks may have understood love better than we do. In their language, they used three different words to express different dimensions of love:

Eros described the passionate, physical and sexual expression of affection between two people.
Phileo was the word they used to express companionship, friendship and the enjoyment felt when people were together with others who shared common interests and values.
Agape was their word for committed, self-sacrificing love that gives preference to others.

As you might expect, when Paul instructs a husband to love his wife as Christ loves the Church, he uses the last of those three Greek words.

The Love Chapter (1 Corinthians 13)

In one brief passage—fewer than 70 words—the apostle Paul outlines 15 characteristics of love that stand in stark contrast to the kind of attitude most of his readers were expressing toward one another. There are seven positive statements about what love is and eight negative statements about what love is not.

For us, the list provides husbands with a helpful tool for self-examination.

Love Is Patient and Kind: The root of impatience is usually selfishness. We’re not getting what we want or what we think we deserve. We don’t suffer long; rather, we think we’ve suffered long enough!

An old, Dutch proverb acknowledges that the wise are not always patient, but that the patient are always wise: “A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.”

Love Is Not Selfish: Love is focused outward, away from us. So-called self-love is an oxymoron—it’s really no love at all. Jesus did not command us to love ourselves, as some have suggested. He called us to love others in the same way that we already love ourselves. He was reminding us that our sin has caused us to be self-centered and self-focused. A husband who loves his wife as Christ loved the Church will be selfless, not selfish.

An arrogant husband will have no regard for his wife’s wisdom, her gifts, her skills or her value. He will not seek her input. He will claim his right to “lead” the relationship. The opposite of arrogance is humility. The humble husband will recognize and quickly acknowledge the help he receives from his wife.

A humble husband lets his wife know that she is his top priority. She has seen him put his schedule on hold to care for her when she really needs him. He puts her first.

Consider these 15 ways on “How to Make Yourself Perfectly Miserable”:

Think about yourself.
Talk about yourself.
Use the personal pronoun “I” as often as possible in your conversation.
Mirror yourself continually in the opinion of others.
Listen greedily to what people say about you.
Insist on consideration and respect.
Demand agreement with your own views on everything.
Sulk if people are not grateful to you for favors shown them.
Never forget a service you may have rendered.
Expect to be appreciated.
Be suspicious.
Be sensitive to slights.
Be jealous and envious.
Never forget a criticism.
Trust nobody but yourself.

That list marks the antithesis of the humble Christ, and as such, they stand in contrast to the character of a man who loves his wife as Christ loves His Church.

Love Is Not Easily Offended: In marriage, there will be times when your mate provokes, annoys, angers, frustrates, perturbs—you get the idea. In Matthew 18, where Peter asks Jesus if he ought to forgive his brother as many as seven times for an offense, he uses a number that, in the Jewish mind, signified completion. Jesus’ response is classic. His “seventy times seven” formula is Jesus’ way of saying, “If you’re keeping count, you’re not forgiving! Forgive your brother until you’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve done it.” We should keep no record of wrongs.

Love Bears, Believes, Hopes and Endures: A husband will love his wife by first bearing the weight of the responsibility for his marriage and his family. As much as possible, he will remove the burdens of life from his wife’s shoulders, leading her to the feet of the Savior, where together they may cast their burdens on Him. Additionally, a husband will show his love for his wife by covering over her sins and her faults.

Paul says we are to “believe all things.” Rather than suggesting that we be gullible, Paul means that we are to be trusting and not suspicious by nature. In marriage, the basis for our trust is our covenant relationship with each other.

John MacArthur adds, “If there is doubt about a person’s guilt or motivation, love will always opt for the most favorable possibility. If a loved one is accused of something wrong, love will consider him innocent until proven guilty. If he turns out to be guilty, love will give credit for the best motive.”

Love is hard work. It demands that a husband be patient and kind. He is not selfish or arrogant.

The Goal of Love

In Romans 8:29, Paul points out that Jesus loved us and died for us so that He could begin His work in us, making us into the kind of godly and holy men and women He wants us to be. In the same way, God is challenging us as husbands to be agents of sanctification—to assist Him in the sanctifying work He is doing in our wives’ lives.

A husband’s behavior ought to be exemplary. His wife ought to be challenged in her own spiritual life by the model and example of her husband. His high moral standards, courage and character should stimulate her to live the same kind of life before God.

James Boice says, “God holds husbands responsible for the spiritual growth and maturing of their wives.” This responsibility involves two primary assignments: we should not lead her into sin, and we are to lead her into righteousness.

There are three primary ways in which we can encourage our wives to grow.

Do all we can to help them grow in their personal walk with Christ.
Take the initiative, and encourage them to grow with us. We should set aside time to read with them, and to pray and study together.
Lead our wives to corporate worship. We should be the ones leading them to participate in Sunday worship, as well as Bible studies and fellowship with other believers.

A husband, then, is to tenderly care for his wife in the same way that a mother gently and tenderly cares for a new baby. The word “cherish” literally means, “to soften or warm with body heat.” It means we make another person our priority relationship. We cherish our wives by providing them with a warm, safe, secure environment, where they will never doubt our love, our care and our commitment.

Tommy Nelson, Founding Pastor of Denton Bible Church in Texas, gained notoriety in the Dallas area for a series of messages he gave to a singles Bible study, taken from the Song of Solomon. During an interview for FamilyLife Radio, Tommy described romance as a “marriage discipline.” A husband may have some natural abilities or instincts in that direction, he said. During courtship, these natural instincts flow freely. But in marriage, we have to refine our instincts and abilities through regular romance workouts. We can’t rely on our spontaneous romantic urges to communicate our devotion for our wives.

My personal prayer is that I continue these “romance workouts” and practices of Lepine’s A Christian Husband, as Jennifer and I continue to grow towards one another and towards Jesus Christ more and more each year…