Perfect Husbands

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Love never fails! (I Corinthians 13:8).

There are no perfect husbands. Although those of us who have wives may desire to be the best husbands that we can possibly be, the fact that there are no perfect husbands should bring us great comfort. We are not perfect in our role; we will make many mistakes. Though we will falter and fail on many fronts with our wives, there is one simple ingredient in being a husband that will make it all work.

Love covers all mistakes (Proverbs 10:12).

Genuine love for our wives, lavished on them, will cover all of our mistakes. More than anything else our wives just need to be loved; they need to know that we love them. We’re not talking here about some mere sentiment, but a sincere, active love. After all, love is “the greatest” (I Corinthians 13:13), “a more excellent way” (I Corinthians 12:31).

Though we’ll will never be “perfect” husbands – without any mistakes – love will bring us up to a divine “perfection” that is unmatched, for love is “the bond of perfection” (Colossians 3:14).

If we want to be “perfect” husbands – let’s love our wives.

Husbands, love your wives (Ephesians 5:25; Colossians 3:19).

Clyde L.Pilkington, Jr.
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What It Means to Be a Man

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Many men define manhood in terms of their relationship with other men. They have fallen into the humanistic trap of “measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves” (II Corinthians 10:12). One expression of this is the “macho” image of physical and emotional prowess. You are a man if you can shoot, throw or chew better than the next man. You are a man if you do not fear or have tender feelings. Aggression, rather than dominion, is the fruit of this definition. But this aggression need not be physical. It can be intellectual. Some men assert their manhood by their shrewdness in business, in politics, or in their respective profession. The effect is the same, however. Such men become predators, and the society dominated by them will become power-worshipers.

Nevertheless, this is not the most common definition of manhood. For the average man, the man of simple ambitions, masculinity is defined in contrast to the woman. Too many Christian men also fall into this trap of using the woman as the yardstick: man is what the woman is not; man does what the woman cannot, or should not, or will not. The result is a matriarchal society, which is a curse from God (Isaiah 3:12). For most women can do what most men can do, and in our day, do it better. If a man, whether consciously or unconsciously, defines himself in terms of his relationship to the woman, he will become effeminate. He may be mistaken for a Christian gentleman, but he is really a eunuch.

True manhood is defined by God. A man is a man only if he is subordinate to God. This fact is brought out rather graphically in the very Hebrew words used in the Bible for male and female. The physical parallels we normally expect are absent.

The word for male is zakar, which means “to mark.” It is the root which is translated in our English Bible as “remember.” This produces some interesting applications.

For instance, in Genesis 8:1 it says, “And God remembered [maled] Noah.” In Exodus 2:24, it says, “God remembered [maled] His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” There are scores of examples, which space does not allow here, but the conclusion is clear: the “male” is not defined in terms of physical distinctions, but in terms of a relationship with God.

In stark contrast is the Hebrew word for female, which is neqebah and comes from the root naqab, meaning “to puncture,” a strongly sexual term (the Greek word for female is parallel and means “nipple”). Thus the passage in Genesis 1:27 which reads, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them” would literally read, “… the marked one (By whom? God!) and the punctured one (By whom? Man!) created He them.”

Putting it another way, masculinity is having a personal, headship relationship with your Creator. This is maleness.

James Wesley Stivers
Restoring the Foundations: Essays in Relational Theology
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The Husband: The House-Band

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The word husband is an old English compound word: house-band.

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1886), in his 1859 work On the Study of Words, provided for us the etymological roots of “husband”:

“Husband” is properly “house-band,” the band and bond of the house, who shall bind and hold it together (page 54).

What an impressive word, laden with such powerfully scriptural implications. As men, we dare not look to social, cultural or contemporary models as our guide for holding our homes together. None of these will suffice. We must devote ourselves to God and His Word for our guidance, for He is the author of our duty.

Being a husband can, at times, seem overwhelming, but as we look to God’s empowering grace we can have the strength to embrace the full implications of such a divine responsibility.

May God ever use this simple common word husband – spoken daily – increasingly to remind us husbands of our imperative role as house-band.

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
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Loving Our Wives Too Much

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Harry Ironside was approached by a young man on one occasion who came to confess a fault. He told the preacher that he felt he was loving his wife too much. “In fact, I’ve put her on such a high plane, I fear it’s sinful,” lamented the young husband.

“Do you think you love your wife more than Christ loved the church?” inquired Ironside. He didn’t dare say he did. “Well, that’s the limit to which we must go,” he continued.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it (Ephesians 5:25).

Harry Ironside (1876-1951)
Cited in An Appeal To Husbands, by Don Currin
The Awakener (Vol. 9, No. 1)
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Most Momentous of Earthly Events

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As God hath knit the bones and sinews together for the strengthening of our bodies, so He has ordained the joining of man and woman together in wedlock for the strengthening of their lives, for “two are better than one” (Ecclesiastes 4:9). Therefore, when God made the woman for the man, He said, “I will make him a help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18). Marriage is the most momentous of all earthly events in the life of a man or woman.

Arthur W. Pink (1886-1952)
The Excellence of Marriage
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Choosing the “Right” Wife, or Being the Right Husband?

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Sometimes a husband may grumble about his “choice” of a wife. He’ll speak of her incompatibility, her lack of interest in mutual things, her indifference in spiritual matters, her deficiency of physical appeal, etc.

Interestingly, in Old Testament times marriages were commonly arranged. Although we do not necessarily promote a return to its practice, that does not mean that it was without any merit. One interesting thing that it and the levirate law (where a man was required to marry his brother’s widow) do is that they demonstrate that a man can love and care for a woman – any woman – even one they did not even choose themselves. The bottom line is that marriage is not so much about “choosing” the “right” wife, as it is about being the right husband.

Paul did not write:

Husbands love your ideal wives …
Husbands love your loving wives …
Husbands love your helpful wives …
Husbands love your Proverbs 31 wives …
Husbands love your non-deficient wives …
Husbands love your uncomplicated wives …
Husbands love your unbroken wives …
Husbands love your compatible wives …
Husbands love your submissive wives …
Husbands love your spiritual wives …
Husbands love your attractive wives …
Husbands love your supermodel wives …
Husbands love your sexy wives …

No, without qualification, he simply wrote:

Husbands love your wives …

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
(Excerpted from his book, Wife Loving, below)

————————————

Wife Loving — The Husband’s Paramount Privilege

by — Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.

This book is about Christ-mentored husbandry; a look at husbands’ important and honored role of loving their wives. So lofty and divine is its pursuit, Paul presents none other than Christ Himself as the mentor: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church.”

(#0462) 978-1-62904-046-2 US Trade 6×9 PB, $9.95

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Crowning Creative Act

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God’s crowning creative act was the making of woman. At the close of each day, it is formally recorded that God saw what He had made, and it was good (Genesis 1:31). But when Adam was made, it is explicitly recorded that God saw it was not good that the man should be alone (Genesis 2:18). As to man, the creative work lacked completeness, until, as all animals had their mates, there should be found for Adam also a help meet for him – his counterpart and companion. Not until this need was met did God see the work of the last creative day also to be good.

Arthur T. Pierson (1837-1911)
Cited by Arthur W. Pink in The Excellence of Marriage
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The Sin of Husbands: Bitterness

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

Divine revelation alerts husbands to their natural hindrance to loving their wives: bitterness. Bitterness is defined as “anger and disappointment at being treated unfairly; resentment” (Oxford); “a feeling of anger and unhappiness” (Cambridge).

Some husbands tell us that they can’t help the negative feelings that they have toward their wives. A husband may say that he can’t “help” having these feelings, but certainly one can “help” what is done about them. Negative “feelings” of bitterness or otherwise can’t be used as an excuse. Feelings are fickle. Feelings aren’t trustworthy. Feelings should never lead our way. Feelings are great servants, but dangerous masters. We must not allow ourselves to be dominated by our feelings.

In 1832 Adam Clarke writes concerning this passage,

Wherever bitterness is, there love is lacking. And where love is lacking in the married life, there is hell upon earth (Adam Clarke Commentary).

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown remind us that,

Many who are polite abroad, are rude and bitter at home (Commentary, 1871).

The divine, Pauline instruction, followed immediately after the directive to love our wives, is to “be not bitter against them.” A.T. Robertson tells us plainly that, “This is the sin of husbands,” and that it is in the “present middle imperative in prohibition: ‘Stop being bitter’” (Word Pictures of the New Testament).

Christ’s love was willingly self-sacrificial; yet ours is resentful? Does Christ resent the ecclesia for all that it puts Him through? Is He ever bitter and resentful toward us for all of His personal labors and loss sacrificed for us?

Negative feelings toward our wives should be for us an immediate indication of the hardness of our own hearts. We must ever look to the Savior for correction and encouragement of such sinful attitudes.

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
(Excerpted from his upcoming book, Wife Loving.)

All I Want from My Wife Is …

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Husbands are often heard complaining, “All I want from my wife is for her to be … loving … giving … gracious … co-operative, etc.” While these are wonderful ideals, and undoubtedly we should endeavor to lead our wives on a spiritual journey that would have us grow together in these areas, our responsibilities as husbands are not lessened by our wives’ lack in any or all of them. Loving our wives is not at all contingent on their responses.

Husbands, be loving your wives according as Christ also loves the ecclesia, and gives Himself up for its sake.

This is a clear, stand-alone truth. Christ’s love and giving up of Himself for us was in no way contingent on our own level of love, grace or co-operation: it was unmerited. This is the Paul’ point regarding our role with our wives. No one in the Old Testament ever could have known such a remarkable truth as this – because they never could have imagined the extent of selfless love outpoured at Calvary.

Will we ever “get” what we long for from our wives? Perhaps to some degree, but that is beside the point. Husbands have a higher calling than merely to “receive”: they are called to selfless “giving.” Some husbands are busy stressing to their wives the word “subject” (“submit”) in Ephesians 5:22, all the while avoiding the “gives” in :25. Husbands who consume themselves with their wives’ shortcomings are usually the same ones who fail to look in the mirror to see their own. To adapt our Savior’s words,

Why do you notice the splinter in your wife’s eye and fail to see the plank in your own eye? How dare you say to your wife, ‘Let me take out the splinter that is in your eye,’ and you never notice the plank in your own eye? What a hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see properly to take out the splinter in your wife’s eye (cf. Matthew 7:3-5).

Husbands’ standard excuse for not doing what God has called them to do is to follow Adam in shifting the blame to our wives. It is always somebody else’s fault. If our wives were just somehow different, we would love them more and give up ourselves for them. We as husbands must be done with our selfish victim mentality. God is behind all of our circumstances, including our marital ones, and all that we are going through is for our good.

The husband’s sacrificial love and giving to his wife are not merely petty matters; they are principles on which the divine structure of the universe is founded. The sooner we learn these grand truths, the further along we will be in our spiritual development. We will review the lessons of these divine principles over and over until Christ is formed in us. This life is the training and preparation for our celestial calling and responsibilities. Don’t waste its priceless lessons. Make the most of them. We will be thankful for every lesson learned at the appearing of Christ – and make no mistake about it: there will be a great surprise waiting for us, for many of those who have appeared to be great spiritual teachers and leaders here in this life will be dwarfed by those whom Father has privately taught the principles of divine love and self-sacrifice.

Yet now are remaining faith, expectation, love – these three. Yet the greatest of these is LOVE (I Corinthians 13:13).

One may excel greatly in faith and hope, but Paul clearly tells us that without love we are “nothing” (:2), and ALL of our other efforts, no matter how noble they may appear to others, benefit “nothing” (:3). Faith, hope and love: having only the first two out of the three leaves us destitute. Love is faith’s and expectation’s superior. Let’s learn well the lessons of Christ’s love. Let’s not come up empty at His appearing.

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
(Excerpted from his upcoming book, Wife Loving.)

Choosing the “Right” Wife, or Being the Right Husband

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Sometimes a husband may grumble about his “choice” of a wife. He’ll speak of her incompatibility, her lack of interest in mutual things, her indifference in spiritual matters, her deficiency of physical appeal, etc.

Interestingly, in Old Testament times marriages were commonly arranged. Although we do not necessarily promote a return to its practice, that does not mean that it was without any merit. One interesting thing that it and the levirate law (where a man was required to marry his brother’s widow) do is that they demonstrate that a man can love and care for a woman – any woman – even one they did not even choose themselves. The bottom line is that marriage is not so much about “choosing” the “right” wife, as it is about being the right husband.

Paul did not write:

Husbands love your ideal wives …

Husbands love your loving wives …

Husbands love your helpful wives …

Husbands love your Proverbs 31 wives …

Husbands love your non-deficient wives …

Husbands love your uncomplicated wives …

Husbands love your unbroken wives …

Husbands love your compatible wives …

Husbands love your submissive wives …

Husbands love your spiritual wives …

Husbands love your attractive wives …

Husbands love your supermodel wives …

Husbands love your sexy wives …

No, without qualification, he simply wrote:

Husbands love your wives …

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
(Excerpted from his upcoming book, Wife Loving)