Wife, Reverence Your Husband

 

Marriage 21 

 

This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband. (Ephesians 5.32-33)

 

          The picture here is so helpful. On the one hand, we have Christ’s sacrificial love and tender care for the church. On the other hand, we have the church’s complete obedience and deep honor directed toward Christ. It is the wife’s portion of this picture we want to examine today.

          The dictionary defines reverence as a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe. Synonyms include admiration, adoration, approbation, approval, awe, bow, deference, deification, devotion, esteem, fealty, fear, genuflection, high esteem, homage, honor, love, loyalty, obeisance, obsequiousness, praise, prostration, respect, veneration, and worship.

          Of the three specific commands in this chapter directed toward the wife – to love her husband, to submit to her husband, and to reverence her husband – this is the more difficult one, in my opinion. After all, mothers are familiar with the idea of unconditional love no matter what the child does or is, and every mother is a woman. Generally speaking, women are better instinctively at all sorts of emotional things, including love. Respect, on the other hand, is often viewed as something that must be earned. Unconditional respect is a bit of an oxymoron. 

          In other contexts, I agree that respect should be earned, but bringing that into marriage is problematic at best. Why? Because the closer you get in a relationship the harder it is to maintain respect. Put your face six inches from the mirror, and you will clearly see all the flaws that are veiled at a distance of six feet. In a marriage, there is humanity without mystique; there is frailty, weakness, hesitation, insecurity, and sin visible. There is no earthly relationship quite so revealing or unveiling of the inner person as a long marriage.

          Put another way round, the greater the distance between us, the easier it is to cultivate respect. But the closer the relationship, the more you discover my humanity and the harder it becomes to maintain a respect so deep as to be called reverence. Of course, you can try to remind yourself of the things about me you respect in the first place, but it will be a constant battle in the face of my unveiled humanity. This is why the concept of earned respect is often damaging in a marriage; a wife knows her husband's humanity too well.

          So respect him unconditionally.

          How can you possibly do that?

          The same way you submit to him – through him to God.

          We see an Old Testament example of this in the relationship established between Moses and Aaron. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God. (Exodus 4.16) God instructed Aaron in this context to view his brother – a man about whom he surely knew more than one or two peccadilloes – as if his brother was God. Aaron failed at this, as indicated by his and Miriam's rebellion against Moses, but if Aaron had followed God's instructions, he would not have failed.

          Many years ago, I spent two summers traveling with an older evangelist named Joe Boyd. I was just a teenager; he was in his upper sixties at the time. He had taken young men training for ministry with him every summer for years. I can only imagine the nonsense he had to put up with over those years. From time to time, Dr. Boyd would attempt to prevent the outbreak of such nonsense by preemptively warning us. On one such occasion, he was describing an interaction he had with an unruly preacher boy. The boy flatly disagreed with an instruction given to him by Dr. Boyd and said, "The Holy Spirit is leading me not to." Dr. Boyd looked at him and said, "Son, I am your Holy Spirit."

          I do not know that I would have said that, but it was not as blasphemous as it sounds. There was a clear biblical line of authority from the parent through Dr. Boyd to that young man. Just as that young man did not have the right to look at his parents and tell them the Spirit was leading him to disobey them, he could not use that line on Dr. Boyd either. Joe Boyd was to him instead of God, so to speak.

          Turning yet again to the Old Testament, we find a bad example of this. 

 

II Sam 6.15  So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.

16  And as the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal Saul’s daughter looked through a window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart.

...

20 Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself!

21  And David said unto Michal, It was before the LORD, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel: therefore will I play before the LORD.

22  And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight: and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honour.

23  Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.

 

          Michal’s failure here is even more startling when placed against Sarah for contrast. Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. (I Peter 3.6) Sarah and Michal both were aware of unpleasant facts about their husbands, yet Sarah managed to box that out and maintain her reverence toward Abraham, while Michal signally failed at doing the same thing with David.

          The position of husband merits deep respect and reverence, as the King James Version puts it. The man in the position is not the point. Just as the wife submits through her husband to the Lord, so she extends reverence in the same manner.

          I suspect if that last sentence were carried out it would revolutionize more than a few homes in our midst.