A wise wife (2)

A family that succeeds in the sight of God is the family that takes away all the iniquity of the family, trusts God completely, and keeps the commandments of God (cf. 2 Kgs. 18:3-7).  The family that succeeds in the sight of God is the family in which God is with them and God's will is fulfilled (cf. Gen. 39:45).  Is our family a successful in the sight of God?  In order for us to join in the work of the Lord who builds a family that succeeds in the sight of God, we must obey the commandment of the Lord.  In other words, our family members must faithfully bear the biblical responsibility given to each one of us.  Of those responsibilities, we had already meditated on one of the two biblical responsibilities of the wise wife - obedience to her husband.  Today, I would like to receive a lesson from meditating on the second responsibility of the wise wife.

Second, the biblical responsibility of the wise wife is to respect her husband.

Look at Ephesians 5:33 – “… and the wife must respect her husband.”  Among the arranged main contents of 20 years of marital counseling by one of the professors in Sung-shim University in Korea, there are seven things that a husband wants from his wife.  One of them is that he wants his wife to respect him and to encourage his self-esteem.  One of the most difficult things for the husband to bear is being ignored by his wife.  In particular, he doesn’t like if his wife compares him with other husbands.  The menus that the wife compares her husband with other husbands are salary, gifts, vacations, do good to his wife’s parents, helping with housework, etc.. The wife shouldn’t try to modify her husband’s behavior with these menus.  Instead, the wife should complement what her husband is doing good and demands what she wants him to do.  When does the husband usually feel that he is ignored by his wife?  There is an internet article titled ‘Men also want to cry at a time like this: 36 kinds of a wife’s words that kill her husband’s spirit’.  I want to share just few of them:

(1)     ‘Where were you?  Why did you come home now?’ It is not easy for me to go straight home after work.  I may want to meet my longtime friends and spend time with them or I may have to do some errands for my boss. But my wife cannot tolerate this.  So she says to me, ‘Do you think this is a boarding house?  Get out!  Get out!’  When my wife says like this, I am perplexed.

(2)     ‘If you meet someone like your dad, it will ruin you.’  When my wife keeps on saying this to our kids, and when my kids keep on listening to it, then they may think and feel that this lie is true.  My wife keeps on complaining she is unhappy because of me.  It means that if she didn’t marry me she would be happy with another man.  I don’t really mind what she says about me.  But when she says, ‘If you meet someone like your dad, it will ruin you’ to my kids who are sensitive, then my pride gets really hurt a lot.  I can read at a glance that the children see me as incompetent while sympathizing with their mother.

(3)     ‘If my parents didn’t help you in our home ... ?’  When someone comes home, my wife is busy boasting her parents’ home.  She says, ‘If my parents didn’t help us then we would be on a street.’  But she went to her parents' her house and got some groceries only.  I never heard that people become homeless because they don’t have the groceries.

(4)     ‘You are just showing off.’  My wife looks at me with animosity when I give her advice when she did something wrong even though I wanted to do well with her.  ‘Why are you provoking my sense?  Are you boasting because you studied a lot?  Are you showing off?’  She thinks that she is always right and she cannot hear my words at all.

(5)     ‘You can’t even earn money.’  When I pressure my wife for breakfast, she criticizes me by saying, ‘Do you think you have right to eat?  You can’t even earn money.’  Those who have not heard such word cannot understand how miserable heart that is.

(6)     ‘Your friends are just like you.’  If she hates me, she hates my friends as well.  She says, ‘If you want to know him, you have to see his friends.  But there is no one who is useful among your friends.’

(7)     ‘Does your hobby feed you?’  Sometimes I go hiking or fishing with my friends once on weekends because it is fun and relieves stress.  However, I cannot find my fishing equipment.  Last time, my wife said that she was going to get rid of my climbing gear, this time I think she even got rid of my fishing equipment.  Looking at me who was looking for my fishing equipment, my wife seems to be pathetic. 'Does your hobby feed you?'

(8)     A wife who speaks ill of her husband in front of people.  When my wife is with me, she is fine.  But she is different when she is with her parents, my parents, and friends.  She says, ‘Him?  If I see what he does, I feel something pressing on my chest.  It’s a miracle that he still has his job.’

(9)     She tells everything to her parents.  ‘We fight 3 or 4 times a week.  My wife's parents’ house is just 5 minutes away from our house.  So, after fighting, my wife rushes to her parent’s house and tell everything to her parents unilaterally.  Then my mother-in-law calls me right a away.  'How could you keep on fight with my precious daughter?’  ‘She first initiated the fight.’  ‘So you fight with a woman?  You should just avoid her at that time.’

In his book “Reforming Marriage,” Douglas Wilson talks about the wife’s responsibilities.  And this is what he says about her respecting her husband: ‘Although it’s not wrong for a wife to love her husband, but it is wrong if she changes respect with love and doesn’t respect her husband as the Lord commands.’  I agree.  How many wives have exchanged the word “respect” with “love” and say that they love their husbands but don’t respect them?  Why do you think the wife isn’t obeying the God’s word and not respecting her husband?  I think it’s because the woman knows how to love better than her husband.  And because she wants the same love from her husband, she may not respect her husband because her heart isn’t satisfied with his love.  In the end, I think it’s is selfish for the woman to love her husband and not respecting him by changing the word “respect” with the word “love”.  So I personally asked my wife to say "I respect you" to me rather than "I love you".

This is what Douglas Wilson says about the biblical duties of wives:

(1)     The wife must respect her husband (Eph. 5:22, 33).  Here, respect involves revere and obedience.

(2)     The wife should have childbirth in God’s providence (1 Tim. 2:15).  Also, she should nurture her children and care them tenderly (1 Thess. 2:7).  She should not complaint about her fertility.  Also, she should not boast about her fertility.

(3)     The wife should be diligent in her house (1 Tim. 2:3-5).  The young women should do their housework and should be productive. 

(4)     The wife must satisfy her husband's sexual needs (1 Cor. 7:2-5).  Therefore, he must be protected from the sexual sins.

(5)     The wife should be careful about nagging and quarreling (Prov. 19:13b; 27:15-16).  The women should use the power of their tongues that God has given them wisely to help their husbands.

(6)      The wife must be the disciple of her husband.  The husband must educate and teach his wife (1 Cor. 14:34-35).

(7)     The Christian wives must work hard in charity work (1 Tim. 5:9-10).

I hope and pray that you be able to fulfill the biblical duties of a wife as a wise wife who respects and obey your husband so that you may be able to build a successful family in God’s sight.