Christian Men, Live Up to Your Commitments

There is a tendency when discussing Christian marriage to focus on what Scripture says women should do.

“Wives, submit to your husbands” is probably one of the most frequently quoted phrases from Ephesians 5.

But there is another instruction in the same passage that deserves at least as much attention:

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church.

That is not a small commitment.

According to Ephesians 5:25, husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her. The passage goes on to tell husbands to love their wives as they love their own bodies.

If Christian men want to talk about biblical marriage, perhaps that is where we should start.

Not with what our wives owe us.

But with what we promised to become for them.

You Cannot Demand Her Commitment While Ignoring Your Own

Marriage involves commitments from both people.

Yet it is extraordinarily easy to become an expert on somebody else’s responsibilities.

Is she supportive enough?

Does she respect me?

Does she listen to me?

Does she fulfil what I think Scripture requires of a wife?

But Christianity has an uncomfortable habit of turning the question around.

What about you?

Are you loving her?

Are you listening to her?

Are you considering her needs?

Are you protecting her dignity?

Are you putting aside selfish desires when necessary?

Are you treating her wellbeing as seriously as your own?

That is considerably harder than quoting a Bible verse at somebody else.

What Does “As Christ Loved the Church” Actually Mean?

This is where the standard becomes uncomfortable.

Christ’s love for the Church is presented within Christianity as sacrificial.

Christ gives himself.

So when Ephesians 5 tells a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the Church, it doesn’t describe marriage principally in terms of male privilege. It places an enormous responsibility upon the husband.

If you want Christ to be the model for your role as a husband, you don’t get to take only the authority from the analogy.

You have to take the sacrifice as well.

That means sometimes setting aside what you want.

It means understanding that being a husband doesn’t entitle you to organise marriage around your own convenience.

It means recognising that love is demonstrated most clearly when doing what is loving costs us something.

There is nothing particularly sacrificial about getting your own way.

Leadership Is Not Getting What You Want

Some Christians interpret these passages as establishing a particular leadership responsibility for husbands. Others understand the passage through the preceding command to “submit to one another”, emphasising mutual submission between husband and wife. Those interpretations differ within Christianity.

But whichever interpretation a man adopts, leadership cannot simply mean:

I make the decisions.

If your model is Christ, leadership means taking responsibility.

It means service.

It means sacrifice.

It means being the person prepared to give something up for somebody else’s wellbeing.

A man who interprets biblical leadership primarily as an entitlement to obedience has extracted the part that benefits him while overlooking the part that costs him.

That isn’t much of a sacrifice.

Your Wife Is Not Responsible for Managing Your Selfishness

There is another uncomfortable aspect of commitment.

Marriage doesn’t magically eliminate selfishness.

We all enter relationships with preferences, habits, ambitions, frustrations and expectations.

The temptation is to expect our spouse to accommodate them.

But Christian marriage asks something more demanding.

Sometimes the person who needs to change is you.

Sometimes the argument isn’t happening because your wife is being unreasonable.

Sometimes you’re wrong.

Sometimes the thing you desperately want isn’t remotely as important as you have convinced yourself it is.

Sometimes loving your wife means saying:

“You’re right.”

Sometimes it means apologising without adding“but you…”

Sometimes it means changing behaviour rather than explaining it.

And sometimes it simply means recognising that the woman you married isn’t there to organise her life around satisfying your desires.

Marriage changes the question from:

“What do I want?”

to:

“What do we need?”

Love Is Something You Do

One of the problems with the word love is that we often treat it as an emotion.

But the standard described in Ephesians 5 is intensely practical.

The husband is told to love his wife as his own body, nurturing and caring for her.

That makes love visible.

Love is demonstrated in behaviour.

It is present in the way you speak to your wife when nobody else is listening.

It is present in how seriously you take her concerns.

It is present in whether she is treated as an equal human being whose thoughts, ambitions and needs matter.

It is present in the compromises nobody else sees.

Anyone can say:

“I love my wife.”

Christianity asks the more difficult question:

Would she recognise that love from the way you treat her?

Respect Is Not a One-Way Street

1 Peter 3 is another passage sometimes quoted because it discusses wives submitting to husbands.

Again, there is a tendency to stop reading.

The passage eventually turns to husbands and instructs them to be considerate towards their wives and to treat them with respect as fellow heirs of the gift of life. It even connects a husband’s treatment of his wife with his prayers.

That is significant.

A Christian man cannot compartmentalise his marriage from his Christianity.

You cannot treat your wife badly from Monday to Saturday and imagine that performing Christianity on Sunday somehow compensates for it.

What happens at home matters.

Perhaps it matters particularly because that is where our public performance disappears.

Stop Keeping Score

Healthy marriage cannot survive indefinitely as an accounting exercise.

I did this, therefore you owe me that.

I apologised last time.

I compromised yesterday.

I earn more.

I work longer.

I do more around the house.

Keeping score changes marriage from a partnership into a transaction.

Christian sacrificial love asks something different.

It asks:

What can I contribute?

That does not mean accepting mistreatment. Nor does it mean that only one partner has responsibilities.

It simply means that your responsibility remains your responsibility.

Your wife’s failures do not automatically excuse yours.

You cannot outsource your character to somebody else’s behaviour.

Look at Yourself First

This connects with a recurring theme throughout Christianity.

It is easy to identify somebody else’s shortcomings.

It is much harder to confront our own.

A husband can spend years thinking about how his wife ought to change without seriously asking whether living with him has become unnecessarily difficult because he refuses to change.

So perhaps there is a useful question every husband should occasionally ask:

“What is it like being married to me?”

Not:

“What do I think I am like?”

Not:

“What do my friends think I’m like?”

But:

What does my wife actually experience?

That question requires humility because we may not particularly enjoy the answer.

But listening to that answer may itself be an act of love.

A Christian Husband’s Commitment

Perhaps Christian men need to reclaim the seriousness of what they claim to believe about marriage.

Being a husband isn’t simply a status.

It is a commitment.

If you promise faithfulness, be faithful.

If you promise partnership, be a partner.

If you say you love her, make that love discernible in your actions.

If you hurt her, apologise.

If you’re wrong, admit it.

If something needs changing, change it.

If your selfish desire conflicts with the wellbeing of your marriage, be prepared to set that desire aside.

And if you believe the husband occupies a position of Christian leadership within marriage, then accept the uncomfortable consequence:

the greater the leadership you claim, the greater the responsibility you assume.

Before You Quote Scripture at Your Wife

So perhaps the next time a Christian husband is tempted to quote the Bible to explain what his wife should be doing, there is a useful discipline.

Keep reading.

Read what Scripture says about you.

Before asking whether she respects you, ask whether you behave in a way worthy of respect.

Before asking whether she supports you, ask how well you support her.

Before asking whether she sacrifices for you, examine what you sacrifice for her.

And before demanding that she lives up to her Christian commitments, make absolutely certain you are trying to live up to yours.

Because Ephesians 5 sets an extraordinarily high standard for Christian husbands.

Love your wife as Christ loved the Church.

• Christ’s example wasn’t selfishness.
• It wasn’t domination.
• It wasn’t entitlement.
• It was giving himself.

If Christian men want to invoke Christ as the model for marriage, then that is the commitment we are signing up to.

And perhaps Christian marriage would be healthier if men spent a little less time asking what Scripture requires of their wives and considerably more time asking:

Am I living up to what Scripture requires of me?