Years ago, I wrote a newsletter called Every Husband Feels Like a Jerk and Every Wife Agrees. It was meant to explain a common phenomenon that kept emerging in the course of my marriage counseling practice. No matter what else they brought to the table, couples seemed to agree on one thing: No one believed the husbands demonstrated loyal love in their marriages.

In fact, whenever I began to talk about the quality of love in the marital relationship, most husbands began to act ashamed. They were like Isaiah when he saw the Lord sitting on his throne, “high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6:1). It seemed like their wives were so good at love.

It’s true. In almost every case, a wife approaches marriage with a deeper understanding of and passion for loyal love. I consider this a God-given gift, one way she reflects the image of God (Genesis 1:27). I began to identify this as an aspect of a wife’s inner beauty.

This inner beauty exposes areas where a husband is lacking. Just as Isaiah encountered the Lord’s beauty, I heard husbands echo his response: “My destruction is sealed, for I am a sinful man and a member of sinful race” (Isaiah 6:5).

But unlike Isaiah, who was reduced to humble contrition in the presence of such loveliness, husbands tend to fight back. “My wife wants too much from me,” they declare. The wives counter with a long list of their husbands’ failures. This tension increases because neither the husband nor the wife responds well to her gift of inner beauty.

Couple Implications

If inner beauty is God’s gift to a woman, then it stands to reason that it’s a gift that can be employed in the service of building redemptive marriages. I want to suggest a couple of implications for each couple.

To grow in loyal love, a husband must not be afraid for his sin to be exposed in his wife’s presence. This requires humility. He must stop telling his wife she wants too much and instead look to the Lord for his help. Typically, a husband wants to be a knight in shining armor. Instead, he needs to be willing to humbly see the ways he hides and casts blame. As a husband opens up to this exposure and learns to look to the Lord for forgiveness and care, he has more to give his wife. A wife’s inner beauty matters because a husband can let it expose his deep need for God’s grace and mercy. A wife’s inner beauty is meant to turn a husband toward the Lord, not drive him to intimidation, control, or defensiveness.

To use her gift to enhance loyal love, a wife must remember that her husband experiences shame in her presence. He experiences this whether or not she says or does anything. Her gift of inner beauty can be that powerful. When a wife trusts this, she can relate to her husband with more kindness and rest instead of feeling compelled to help her husband recognize where he is lacking. When Peter encourages wives to let their “adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit,” (1 Peter 3:4), he is telling wives to rest as their husbands learn how to make room for the ongoing conviction of sin that comes with marriage. Peter wanted women to stop expending so much effort. A husband’s struggle to love well should turn a wife toward more faith and less activity as she waits for him to grow into God’s love.

In fact, as a wife rests and shows kindness in the midst of her husband’s frustration, she can have a powerful effect. After Isaiah witnesses God’s beauty and expresses humility, a seraph touches his lips with a coal and says, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isaiah 6: 7). Later, we find Isaiah willingly responding to the Lord’s direction. Beauty and kindness together inspired courage in Isaiah. He is moved to stand up and follow the Lord.

It works the same way in marriage. When a husband responds well to his wife’s inner beauty, and when a wife mixes it with kindness, she becomes a compelling force in her husband’s life.

Gordon C. Bals founded Daymark Pastoral Counseling in Birmingham, Alabama, a ministry committed to restoring people to God and to one another. Anyone interested in reading further about this topic and/or related marital themes can find them in his recently published book, Common Ground: God’s Gift of a Restored Marriage, available on Amazon or on his website, www.daymarkcounseling.com.

I knock on the door expectantly. My friend Debbie greets me in sweatpants that hang loosely on her diminishing frame. Her face is slightly paler than the last time I saw her, and soft peach fuzz graces the top of her head.

She is the most beautiful woman I know.

I hug her tightly, not wanting to let go, wanting somehow to freeze this moment in time. The cancer that began in her breast continues to spread throughout the rest of her body. She has more tumors than the doctors can count, rapidly overtaking her brain. Daily she faces agonizing stomach pains and discomfort. In the midst of the physical pain is the emotional heartache of saying goodbye to her husband and two young children.

Deep waves of suffering have come to my sweet friend, whose faith is still so fresh and new. Her journey with cancer four years ago was the beginning of her journey to faith. Debbie describes God’s work in her life:

I was struggling with my faith in Christ for several years before my diagnosis. I prayed to have the faith of a little child again, I read, I researched, and I tried to make myself believe. The problem is that you cannot make yourself believe in Christ. It is purely a gift, and God gave me that gift with my first cancer diagnosis in December 2008, and the following chemotherapy treatments and radiation through 2009.

Then, in July 2010, during my battle with my first brain tumor and first set of partial brain radiation treatments, he spoke to me, told me that I was his, and filled me with the Holy Spirit. I learned more about finding true joy and contentment in all circumstances, and I gained new spiritual gifts as he continued to work to transform me.

In November 2011, with the diagnosis of a second brain tumor, followed by two brain surgeries and a second round of partial brain radiation treatments, along with surgery to remove a tumor in my lung, he taught me yet more dependence on him. But still this wouldn’t be enough to bring me to where my soul needed to be.

This past April, I got the diagnosis of four more brain tumors, now on the left side of my brain, followed by 12 whole-brain radiation treatments. It took this last battle to completely humble me, to make me understand my complete dependence on God. I finally feel like I’m on the road to the daily conversational relationship with my heavenly Father that I’ve always strongly desired and envied in the few people I’ve seen who truly have it. It’s been worth every day I have suffered. God has been weaving a story in my life. When I thought he was refusing to answer my prayers and refusing to show himself to me, he was just standing on the edges, but never gone. He knew the full picture. He cares about my soul.

Debbie was a seeker when she came to our outreach Bible study four years ago. Now, through her example, she is teaching all of us the beauty of faithful suffering. In the midst of losing hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows, she glows with indescribable radiance. The dark depths of her affliction make her faith shine all the more clearly. She believes her suffering has value because she treasures the growth it brings to her spiritual life. She knows her soul will live, even if her body fails.

Her four-year-old faith puts my 25-year-old faith to shame.

Her example reminds me that I am called to suffer well while walking in the brokenness this world presents. I am not to succumb to the despair I often feel. I am to faithfully accept the difficult circumstances the Lord weaves into my story. I am to value my soul’s health more than earthly comforts. My greatest hope should be for God’s glory, not my ease.

In this struggle Debbie has fought cancer with every ounce of her being. She wants to live and see her children grow up. She wants to be able to tell others about Jesus. She has honestly shared her struggles and the pain she experiences. On this road, there have been dark days of affliction when God seems distant and the fear of greater suffering is paralyzing. Together we have prayed, wept, grieved, and asked hard questions. For Debbie, suffering well has not been a denial of reality. It has been an embracing of a deeper reality. She knows that all things must be working for her good. Embracing God’s Word has been a healing balm for her soul; an active experience of the truth found in Psalm 119:50: “My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life.”

Just before his death, Jesus told his disciples, “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). We are promised trouble in this life. Why, then, are we so often surprised by it? Why do we seek our peace in circumstances rather than in Christ? Even if physical healing comes tomorrow for Debbie, death will eventually come. It comes to each of us. All that matters is knowing Jesus. Some lives are dead long before they die. In facing death, Debbie gives life to others by witnessing to the hope found in Christ alone.

Does it matter how we walk in the face of suffering? The Bible makes unapologetic claims about how we should face suffering: “But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet. 4:13). Allowing us to experience the brokenness of this world keeps us thirsty for the next. The reality of death forces us to consider carefully how we live. Only by believing that a better home awaits can we experience any sort of light in this land of shadows.

Debbie would not choose her situation. She has, however, chosen how to live in it. She lives as a servant of God.

Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love;  in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;  through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors;  known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed;  sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. (2 Cor. 6:4-10)

There is no more beautiful way to live.

Editors’ Note: You can follow Debbie’s developments at her CaringBridge page.

Melissa Kruger serves as women’s ministry coordinator at Uptown Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is the author of The Envy of Eve: Finding Contentment in a Covetous World (Christian Focus, 2012).

Today is the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This is an issue on which the church needs to speak with both force and clarity. I want to join a number of other pastor-bloggers who are speaking on this issue.

A few years ago I found myself in conversations with a man who was verbally and emotionally abusing his wife.  He justified his anger by appealing to Ephesians 5, saying that his fury stemmed from her “unwillingness to submit to him.”

As a Biblical Complementarian, I believe that the Bible means what it says in Ephesians 5, but I also think we (complementarians) face two challenges related to that text: First – there is the husband who would use such a passage to justify being domineering (at the minimum) and abusive. Second, there are the egalitarians and non-Christians who would assert that such abuse is the natural result of a complimentarian worldview.

So with all of this floating in my mind, here is what I’d want to say to a man in my church (“Bob”) who was abusing his wife.

Dear Bob,

It’s come to my attention that you’ve been abusing your wife. As one of your pastors, I want to make a few things very clear.

First – your membership in this church offers you no shelter or comfort. I might come visit you – whether in jail or at your home – but it won’t be to reassure you of anything but a call to repentance. I am encouraging your wife to distance herself from you until you demonstrate repentance. Apart from that, I see no reason to encourage her to get anywhere near you. It may be true that some wife-beaters have sought the shelter of pastors and churches, calling abuse a private matter, and avoiding legal consequences. I have no intentions of allowing such shelter. The authorities will be involved.

Second – as a member in this church, you’ve signed a covenant that invites church discipline in this situation. This means that your pastors are committed to helping protect your wife from you, and we will instigate a process that – apart from demonstrable repentance on your part – will end with you being removed from membership. One who lives in unrepentant sin (like spousal abuse) should take no comfort from the gospel, because their life bears no fruit of the gospel. We’ll invite the church to treat you as an unbeliever, and to call you to repentance when they see you. As a whole community,we are united in believing that your sins are devastatingly dangerous for your soul and for the witness of the church in the world. These concerns are why we would carry out this discipline.

Third –many abusers justify their abuse with a list of their spouses “sins” – nagging, refusal to submit, etc. Some Christian men even attempt to justify domineering and abusive behavior with the Bible. I want to disabuse you of any such justification, starting with a Bible passage that might (at first glance) appear as part of your defense. Ephesians 5:22-28 says:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

Ephesians 5 doesn’t appear out of thin air. It comes after a long discussion about God’s grace, his formation of the church, and a call to be compelled by the gospel to a life of love. It’s only after all of this dialogue (and a number of moral imperatives like “Don’t be foolish”, and “don’t get drunk”– all of which stand in stark contrast to a husband that abuses his wife), that the apostle gets to his discussion of marriage.

You see, Ephesians 5 isn’t a standalone defense for a husband that wants to rule over and dominate. All that Paul says in this passage is in the context of a life transformed by the gospel. A life ruled by love. A marriage marked by sacrifice and selflessness.

Do you see what I’m saying? To put it a little differently (and here I acknowledge that I’m borrowing a phrase from another pastor) an Ephesians 5 woman is married to an Ephesians 5 man. An Ephesians 5 marriage is an Ephesians 1-4 marriage. A submissive wife is married to a gospel-changed, sacrificial husband.

Have you demonstrated the kind of sacrificial love that Jesus has shown the church? Have you laid aside your rights and made yourself a servant? (Philippians 2:1-11) Have you worn out your knees interceding in prayer for your wife? (Hebrews 7:25) Have you laid down your life? Are you willing to die for your wife – not in some noble display of love, but in a shameful, cursed, miserable way? (Galatians 3:13) And have you been willing to do all of this even while your wife nags, pesters, throws tantrums, and in all ways otherwise sins against you? (Romans 5:8)

I suspect that the answer is no. Don’t you dare assume any biblical justification of your domineering and abuse – especially one that so corrupts the image of Jesus’ love for the church.

Anything less than that kind of selfless love is unchristian, and calls for repentance. Yes, Jesus leads the church, and husbands are to lead wives, but Jesus’ leadership is a leadership marked by love and sacrifice, selflessness, protection from harm, and mercy. Much abuse has been done in the name of “headship,” and all of it misses the point. Jesus leads his wife in such a way that she is stronger, safer, holier, and lovelier, and so should all Christian men love their wives.

The good news is that no husband can say they’ve accomplished all that Jesus has in loving his church. We all (myself included) fail to varying and sometimes spectacular degrees. My encouragement to you is allow yourself to feel crushed by the weight of this call. That pain is the pain of conviction, and it’s God’s way of reminding you that you need a savior.

This is a call for repentance, and repentance doesn’t simply mean saying, “I’m sorry” and getting the keys back to your home. Instead, you have consequences to face relationally and legally, and you’ll have to walk through those processes. You need help to deal with the emotional and spiritual roots of your abuse. You’ll need to get help from pastors, counselors, and peers who can help you change in a deep and meaningful way, and you’ll need to walk a long, slow, and at times lonesome road on the way to reconciliation.

Such is the consequence of sin. You’ve created deep wounds in the heart of a sacred trust. You’ve taken a lovely child of God, who married you and was told to expect the loving kind of leadership that Jesus shows, and she’s gotten a perverse, satanic corruption. Healing such a wound takes more than words. It takes time, grace, and miracles.

There is no guarantee that you’ll even end this journey reconciled. I’d encourage you to go ahead and start getting used to that idea. “But doesn’t the Bible say she’s supposed to forgive me?” Sure. But it also tells you to give up your “rights”. Don’t demand it. Don’t even expect it. Own the consequence of your sin – which might be that your relationship is broken until Jesus returns.

So yes, there’s no guarantee of reconciliation, but there’s also no other path. Apart from repenting, apart from turning away from your sins and towards Jesus, your future offers no comfort, and dire consequences.

So I appeal to you, Bob. Feel the weight of this. Repent of your sins.

If nothing else, I’ll say it again… Regarding your abuse: take no comfort, no sense of shelter, and no sense of justification in anything you’ve heard at this church or read in your bible.

And if you refuse to repent, know the consequences. The temporal ones involve separation from your wife and your church. The eternal consequences are far, far worse.

November 25, 2012  By Owen Strachan

Today, November 25, is The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.  I do not normally blog on Sundays, as faithful readers know.  But this is a topic worth addressing, especially because I am on the record as being for manly leadership in home and church.Let’s address this awful subject this way: if I could talk with a man who was abusing his headship of his home, what would I say?  What follows is an attempt toward that end, and ultimately, toward the strengthening of Christian families.  This is no mere hypothetical, of course.  Abuse happens.  Here you see how I as a complementarian, Christ-driven head of home and church would handle it.******Dear Bob:It has come to my attention that you are abusing your wife verbally and physically.  Knowing this, I am trying not to tremble as I write.  There is nothing worse than the strong mistreating the weak.Please know this: your abuse of your wife in the name of Christian leadership is a direct repudiation of true manhood.  You think that the expulsive exercise of your strength is warranted by Scripture.  You think that it shows that you are a man.  Actually, it shows your depravity.

It shows that you are acting as and very well may be the opposite of what you claim.

Ephesians 5 teaches that a man is head of his wife.  There is no textually faithful way to take this verse other than to conclude that it teaches manly leadership in the home.  But this does not mean that a man can lord his God-given strength over his wife and family.  Hear Ephesians 5:29-31 again, perhaps for the first time in reality: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.””  Did you see that?  The godly man “nourishes and cherishes” his wife.  Is that what you are doing?  It most certainly is not.

As is obvious from both Scripture and the most rudimentary moral sense, you are not called to use your strength on your wife.  You are called to use it for your wife.  Your full manhood should be aimed at protecting and blessing and building up the woman God has given you in marriage.  As a husband, the Lord has commissioned you to stand in the gap for your wife.  This means that you will sacrifice your body for her, not lead her body to suffer.  You see a train coming and her in the way, and you know your fate.  A man menaces her, and you are a spring-loaded force acting in her defense.  Somebody whistles at your wife, and you stare back at them, fire in your eyes.  In these and other ways, you are not directing your prowess at your wife–you are using it for her good.

Your present pattern, Bob, looks like Satanic headship.  You are attacking and tearing down.  The biblical pattern is Christic headship, sacrificial, others-centered, offered in order that others might flourish and thrive.  If you do not cease your ways, the elders of your church will “deliver [you] to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Cor. 5:6).  If you are bent on destroying your loved ones, you will face the prospect of a life outside the church, which places the soul in danger of eternal destruction if gospel repentance does not happen.

In our wickedness, we will use the Bible and Christianity to justify nearly anything.  The fact that you have justified your wicked abuse by Scripture does not for an instant reflect poorly on God’s Word.  It speaks to the depravity of the human heart.  The Bible nowhere enfranchises your behavior.  It holds up men like Boaz, who is a kinsman-redeemer for needy Ruth, even as it shames wicked men like Shechem who defiles Dinah (Ruth 3; Genesis 34).  Which kind of man will you be?

Repent of your sin.  It is a stench in God’s nostrils.  Were it not for your worth as an image-bearer, I would find it difficult not to threaten harm to you myself, and to bring many men with me.  As things stand, if you continue your pattern of abuse, I will indeed bring men with me, and we will rescue your wife and family, and we will not allow you to harm them.  We will bring the full force of the law crashing down upon you.  We are men of God; we are not weak; we are leaders and protectors of wives and children.  The Lord has saved us from our own wickedness and transformed us to be good to those he has given us.  As men of God, we are not scared of you.  We will surely stand up to you.  We urge you to stop your abuse, repent of your sin, and leave the pattern of destruction you have begun.

Know this, Bob–you will not for an instant longer be able to take advantage of this woman.  Those days, so help me God, are over.

Sincerely,

Owen Strachan.