Dealing with Failure

We've been talking about how a husband must love his wife as Christ loves the church. One of the ways that Christ loves is with a purifying love. Ephesians 5:25-26 says that Christ , "loved the church and gave Himself for her that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word." But husbands, what if your wife fails? what if, in spite of your best effort, your wife falls into sin. What are you to do?

Obviously, she will. Wives are in fact human beings just like you, and they will inevitably fail in small ways or in big ways. So how does a husband deal with this? The answer is, he must forgive. I refer to this verse all the time. 1st John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sons, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." God forgives, and God's forgiveness is cleansing. It erases the sin in a person's life as if it had never been there.

And forgiveness is required of us as believers. Ephesians 4:31-32 says, "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you." Because Jesus forgives us, He can demand that we forgive one another. So certainly, we should be eager to forgive our wives, the one woman we have chosen out of all the women in the world to love.

But not only does Jesus forgive our sins, He forgets. No longer will He hold our sin against us. In Jeremiah 31:34, God says, "For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." That's what Christ does - He forgives, and He forgives, and He forgives some more. True Love cleanses by forgiveness, and by forgetting. True love won't hold on to wrongs to be used as weapons later. True love forgives as many times as necessary. And it forgets. How many couples, each time they get into a disagreement, trot out twenty years of wrongs to be rehearsed over and over again, adding new layers of bitterness each succeeding week, month, and year? Is that helpful to a marriage? Of course not!

Jesus forgave you a lifetime of sins. To constantly bring up the other's faults isn't love; it isn't forgiveness - it's revenge. But we are under an obligation to forgive no matter what. And once it is forgiven, we forget it. We never hold that sin against our wife again. NOT EVER! Do you hear me?

Remember that when God forgives, Scripture teaches us that He buries those sins in the depth of the deepest sea. He puts our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west. He places our sins in the middle of His back between His shoulder blades. Ever tried to look there or even scratch there? When God forgives, it is as if we had never sinned. He won't even mention any of our sins on the day of the final judgement, not if we are true believers. What is in the past stays in the past. Is that the way it is in your home, husband?