7 Ways a Husband Can Take Initiative in Showing Love to His Wife

How a Husband Can Show Love to His Wife

Husband, you’re not your wife’s sinless, all-wise redeemer. She has one: Christ. Yet Christ died to save the church and to make the church holy before the Father. That was his aim and ambition (Eph. 5:25–27). Likewise, helping your wife become holy and one with you must be your uppermost aim and ambition in marriage.

In other words, brother, when you wake up in a funk, or get to the end of a long day and you’re exhausted, or sit and watch her do that thing that annoys you, or she fails to meet your expectations about something, or she spends too much money, or when the well of romantic feelings seems to run a little dry, or even when she fails you in more dramatic ways, you do not sit back and sulk and say, “I’m not satisfied. I’m not happy. I’m not fulfilled.” No, these things are what you expect because God intends you to be the one who loves right there in her sin and folly and (at times) spiritual ugliness in order to love her toward the working out of her redemption. That’s your job. That’s your purpose in her life. When you said, “I do,” you said “I do” to actively preparing her for her coming Redeemer by showing her what he will look like. That means:

1. You take the initiative in ending arguments by choosing gracious (if need be, apologetic) words. You have nothing left to prove. You are done with self-justification because you are justified in Christ!

2. You take the initiative in spiritual leadership in the home in order to “[cleanse] her by the washing of water with the word” (Eph. 5:26).

3. You don’t have to require perfection of her today. You’re playing the long game. The question is not whether you can get her to be a perfect wife today. The question is whether you can help her look more like Jesus over the next fifty years by acting like Jesus yourself.

4. Even when she is behaving toward you in some way that is frustrating and perhaps sinful, you take the initiative in exemplifying the patience and forgiveness of Christ. That is how Christ has loved you.

5. If she identifies patterns of sin in your life, especially those that have ripple-effects in the lives of those around you, do not immediately brush her off or become defensive. Rather acknowledge the gracious gift that her wisdom and insight can be to your own sanctification.

When you said, “I do,” you said “I do” to actively preparing her for her coming Redeemer by showing her what he will look like.

6. She is your number one priority, more than friends, work, parents, career aspirations, and hobbies. Christ didn’t lay his life down for anyone else—only the church.

7. You may never, ever use your authority in any way to hurt or abuse her, for Christ has never abused you. Love her more than your professional ambitions, your cherished dreams, your adolescent expectations of marriage, your strongly held convictions about who should do what with the toilet seat or how an onion should be cut or who wronged whom first in that last argument.

Love her as your own body, says Paul. She is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, says Adam.

Brother, you are to lead in your home, and you lead by being the first to die to your own desires, not simply so that your wife’s desires might therefore lead but so that God’s desires would.

Jonathan Leeman is the author of Using Authority Well: A Concise Guide for Men.

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