Husbands - Learning to Listen to God's Word

Every coin has two sides. Every argument has two perspectives. Every marriage has two partners - a husband and a wife. And Scripture has much to say about both. So far, we've talked predominately about the wife. Now it's time to look at the husband. But I'm reluctant to talk about the husband perhaps because, if anything, the Scriptural mandate for the husband is harder than for the wife. The husband has the responsibility to lead in the home. God has made him the head.

But that's not the real reason I'm reluctant. I'm reluctant because this speaks directly to me in my own role as a husband. As I study the Scriptural pattern, I can see how far short of that pattern I fall. I have a lot of work to do, and change isn't easy. Change does not come without struggle. I can be tempted to dismiss these truths as for a different time and place. But this is as relevant as it gets. It's as relevant as my morning coffee with my wife all the way to when I crawl in bed with her at night. This speaks to every husband about his most intimate relationship. So I, like every husband, need to be open to the teaching of the Word of God. 1st Corinthians 2:14 teaches,

"But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritiually discerned."

We listen with our natural ears, and we think with our fleshly minds which are more concerned with our own ease and pleasure than in obeying God. We need the Spirit of God to convince us of the truth of his Word.

Where do we begin this discussion of the husband? With a little review. What we have learned most from our study so far is that God intended marriage to be a blessing - a beautiful thing. At creation, God saw that the one lack in His beautiful creation was that the man was alone. To fix it, God did surgery on Adam and created Eve. He intended theirs to be a mutually fulfilling relationship in which the man functioned as the head and the woman was his complement and completer. Together they would exercise dominion over this earth as co regents. That was God's original intention.

The fall and the curse changed all that. Following the fall, child birth would be difficult and painful. And marriages would be disrupted. Eve stepped out from under Adam's authority to eat the forbidden fruit, and the curse chiseled that rebellion in stone. Now the woman would try to dominate her husband and usurp his headship and the man would rule with despotic tyranny. That is the curse.

But God's intention is still that marriage should be a blessed union, and our hearts desire to return to that place. So Ephesians 5 gives us the instructions for how to do just that - to return to Eden in our homes. A godly couple who both follow the pattern set in Ephesians 5 will fulfill God's plan for the home. Over the next few days we will look at the responsibility of the husband to obey Ephesians 5:25, to love his wife as Christ loved the church.