Husband’s Duties, Respect

Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.  (Colossians 3:19)

A definition of marital duties would be incomplete without inclusion of the basic duty of any sincere relationship between two human beings, especially in the intimate setting of marriage.  Each partner must maintain conduct that accepts and validates the individual personality and worth of the other person.  A wife should be held at all times to be an individual with her own identity, not just someone's wife.  She should be accepted as one of God's individual creatures and children, loved and created by him to be a unique vessel of his grace and intended to fill a position of value and significance in the family by her own personal right.  In that position she deserves to be respected and loved as herself.

The lesson from Colossians carries a two-edged sword.  On one side the husband is told to love his wife.  Let the record show that this is a positive, active, self-sacrificing love.  Too often, husbands demonstrate conditional love for their wives.  They work 8 or 10 hours a day, but assume that it is the wife's duty to work 18 hours a day.  Being a housewife isn't work; it's just existence, so when hubby calls for a special favor, it is wife's duty to jump.  Let the wife get sick for a while and place the responsibility of the house on hubby.  He will complain loudly at the fraying exhaustion of the pace he must keep for those few days.  He should remember that his wife keeps that pace all the time, and seldom complains.  The significant issue of love here and in other passages that command that the husband love his wife is the kind and quality of love.  It is the God-kind of love, agape, the unqualified and unselfish giving of self, even the sacrificing of self, as Christ did on the cross for his church, his bride.  If a husband constantly demands one duty after another from his wife, but does not respond with this quality of love, he knows nothing of the Bible example of a husband's love for his wife.

The other side of the two-edged sword in this lesson requires, "And be not bitter against them."  This really is a part of the same lesson and obligation of the husband.  In counseling people with problems in their marriage I have observed the almost universal tendency of one or the other parties, usually the husband, to blame the other for lost opportunities.  "I wanted to accept that great promotion with the company, but you refused to consider relocating to Timbucktoo.  Therefore, my present failure to succeed is all your fault." "Before we got married, I spent three weekends a month hunting, fishing, and doing all of those other things with the boys.  Every time I walk out the door now, you complain.  It's all your fault."  Friends, the Bible example of a husband's love is not characterized by hubby blaming the wife for business failures and by looking over the fence to greener grass on the other side! That is the very sin Paul warns against here, "Be not bitter against them."

The husband's duty to respect his wife and accept her as a contributing partner with the right to voice her ideas in family issues is vital to this example.  Perhaps the business relocation that strained the marriage beyond its ability to survive could have been prevented by respecting the wife's opinion to keep the family roots established in familiar soil.  Perhaps the affair the husband got involved in would never have occurred, had he not insisted on his right to continue his old routine with "The boys." There certainly are times when a family relocation is appropriate.  When both husband and wife are agreed and committed to the change and keep their values, it can actually be a strengthening experience to the marriage.  There is nothing morally objectionable to a man spending time with his friends in athletics or sports, but when it over-shadows the time he needs to spend with his wife and children, then it becomes a violation of the husband's first obligation to his family.  When these or other issues are inserted at the expense of respect for the wife, they become fertile soil for the devil to plant the seeds that threaten to make the marriage a statistic, a casualty, instead of a warm nurturing climate for every family member.

Periodically, I have heard husbands and wives say that they were only preserving the marriage temporarily until the children were grown and out of the nest.  This short-term band-aid avoids more serious attention to the real problems that could well be resolved by rebuilding the relationship on the simple foundation of respect.  When a man or woman thinks of self, all sorts of actions can be justified and defended.  But the very essence of the simplest and most basic of the New Testament's guidelines for godly living with those around us will be violated.  We call that basic rule, the Golden rule, "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (Matthew 7:12).  The simple application of this rule to the husband-wife relationship could save large numbers of troubled marriages, because the problems between the two people are very manageable problems when treated by the simple respectful spirit of this marvelous Golden Rule.
Rules for a model marriage necessarily include rules for working out difficulties between two partners who are both less than perfect, rules that impose kindness and respect to each other and to the differences and strains that will periodically enter the relationship.  When God imposed the rule of a lifetime obligation for the marriage relationship, he knew very well that the parties to the contract would be human and imperfect, so he also imposed remedial attitudes and practices that, if applied by both partners, heal the wounds and preserve the relationship.  May we lovingly and respectfully administer the Divine prescription to our marriages and to all of our relationships.