Torch, Summer 2001

14 TORCH / Summer 2001 The Submissive Spouse The Loving Leader always right. The husband’s leadership role is about taking the ultimate responsibility before God for the family just as someone has to take that responsibility in any institution. The loving husband allows God to use his wife’s abilities to make the home function well and honor God. She’s to be a true helpmeet—useful, helpful, and a wonderful blessing from God. The sad fact is that many men, even many Christian men, have accepted a false impression about what it means to love their wives and lead their homes. Too many Christian men have swallowed the culture’s view and mistaken emotion for love. They have failed to exercise their mind and will and to exhibit the agape-love that was demonstrated for us by Christ. Similarly, too many Christian men have failed to cultivate a godly perspective on leadership. Again, they have accepted the cultural view that leadership means the exercise of power over others to their own benefit. Nothing could be further from the biblical model. These twin failures are at the bottom of the crisis in Christian marriage. Even more damaging to families than a wife’s refusal to submit to her husband is the husband’s refusal to love his wife. I might even go so far as to say that a husband who truly loves his wife and leads the home in a godly fashion will rarely, if ever, be confronted with a submission issue. When it’s all over, when we leave planet Earth, when eternity is there for us, there will be a lot of things that will have mattered—what we have done for God, what we have done for Christ. But I believe the most important thing is what has happened in our families. God help us to build Ephesians 5 families. Husbands, be those loving leaders that God wants you to be. even over your professional career. But again, that principle is not just for wives, it is applicable to husbands and fathers, too. The family should be the highest priority for all. Earlier this year, there was a great deal of press coverage about a basketball team and its desire to win a championship, not just for their coach, but also for their coach’s wife. This team had a long-term coach who was married to the love of his life. Everything the coach did in basketball was for the girl he had met in the church choir back in their rural hometown nearly 50 years earlier. But now, at tournament time, the coach was alone. His wife of more than 47 years had died of ovarian cancer on New Year’s Day. Her death meant the basketball team had lost its number one fan. The controlled, disciplined, cool-handed coach had lost the fire to his ice. He was the polished but standoffish introvert. She was the warm, vibrant, beaming extrovert. His wife was everything to him. “Everything I did she did with me,” he told the reporters. “If I went to see a recruit, she went with me. If I had the team over, she cooked. She was my companion most of my life.” I believe that coach was able to love his wife more fully because she knew how to be submissive. She knew what it was to be attractive externally and internally and to be attentive to her husband. Whether they were Christians or not, they knew what it was to be a godly spouse to one another. May we who claim to know Christ learn that lesson as well. T T