Thoughts On Marriage, part 3

by Scottie Joines

Wives are to submit to their husbands (obey) as they would obey Christ. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, giving Himself up for her (sacrificial love), cleansing and sanctifying her as if she were holy and blameless. Can you imagine a marriage on the edge of divorce, where the woman is bitter from years of deceit and disrespect and a man who is angry from years of badgering and complaining from her, if being the head of the house as the Bible says, he would begin to take responsibility for his wife’s anguish and begin to consider her blameless and holy, cleansed from all past wrongs, treating her as such with love, kindness, and empathy? How would that action totally change the outcome of a divorce? She would begin to feel cherished.

Likewise, if a woman took the initiative and she began to treat her husband with respect and love as she would unto the Lord, he would begin to feel respected, important to her, strong. But here is where what God says back in the Romans passage comes into play. Prefer one another and be affectionate towards one another with diligence, not in a slothful way. In other words don’t do it only when it’s easy. We are to diligently keep at it, even when we don’t feel like it. This is the hardest thing in my life I will probably ever do. To have a great marriage, I have to be totally selfless. I have to respect my husband, even when my flesh is screaming that he doesn’t deserve respect. I have to capture each memory of the way we used to treat each other and stop holding it against him in my heart. I have to trust God. It’s a little ironic to me that God uses a husband’s selfishness and his love of himself to tell him how to love his wife. “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.” In other words, wives should treat their husbands the way they want to be treated and husbands should treat their wives as they treat themselves.