This is not about intellectual superiority. There was a very famous commander in World War II and he was put in charge of a very significant theatre of war in the Middle East and he had his staff. He had a brigadier, a couple of colonels, a little group of majors and some staff captains. He wrote that many of the people on his team were very intimidating because they were so brilliant. About half of them became professors immediately after the war. He said, ‘These people were intellectually my superiors, they had such breadth of knowledge. Just to hear them talking to each other about all sorts of things I had never heard of, made me feel inferior.’ But he led the most successful command team in World War II, because whatever their strengths he knew how to make a team work. Their contribution was to accept their rank and the whole team pulled together and it was brilliant. Marriage is not a matter of inferior and superior; it is a matter of accepting an order for Christ’s sake and to do his bidding.
The husband has no personal authority whatsoever. God hasn’t given him the headship because he is particularly qualified for it. It is a delegated authority. God gave the headship to the man. If he hadn’t been given it, he would not have it naturally. Husbands are answerable to the Lord concerning how they exercise this headship. It helps them carry out their role to see this and it helps their wives to accept it. They are commanded to carry out that headship with great affection and great respect. What God requires of husbands, is diligence, not superior judgement. They don’t necessarily have superior judgement, so therefore in all the issues of married life, in all the decisions, they take account of one another’s views, and the husband must weigh this thing very diligently, not just storming in and saying, ‘Because I am the husband, that means my judgement is capable.’ No, you have got to honour the views, the instincts, and the insights of your wife. A husband has got to recognise his wife also has her capacities and gifts and part of his task is to make sure that she can exercise them, and that she too can serve the Lord.
This is a bond for life if husband and wife have mutual love; it survives and enriches any experience in life. Work and worry; sorrow or happiness; sickness or health – there isn’t anything which isn’t made bearable and even enriched by mutual love – youth, old age, emotional problems, physical difficulties. Love itself is like a kind of home, forget the bricks and mortar forget the physical home. Love itself is a kind of a home, a place of rest – you both come into this mutual love and it is a place, an environment of rest and of certainty – you are certain of things in this relationship, of mutual sympathy and strength and encouragement. You share your worlds; you dismiss your complaints against each other by love; you hold each other in honour; it is a wonderful thing, marital love. Your love is tested in marriage and others observe it. It is demonstrated to children and it is a powerful witness in that respect and it is well pleasing to God, and will bring down great blessing upon your lives and service.
In modern English we tend to think bitterness is a kind of attitude of response. You feel bitter if somebody has done something to upset you, annoy you, frustrate you in some way. Actually the word does not have that connection here. It simply means bitter as opposed to sweet. It comes from the Greek for sharp, piercing, so it is bitterness in the sense of unpleasant, difficult to receive. What is your attitude like? Are you a prickly person? Are you difficult, or are you cold or indifferent? That too is piercing to the wife, if she is ignored, or you are just a cold person, unhelpful, unappreciative, ungrateful, conversationally lazy. Conversation can be quite difficult in marriage. You begin marriage, the first year or two you have got so much to say to each other. Then you run into a sticky patch when you have said absolutely everything to each other that you can possibly think of and so you hardly talk to each other. Somehow or other, I can tell you this from experience, as you get older it all comes back. You are probably telling each other the same things dozens of times, but somehow you don’t mind any more. If you are in that middle patch, you have to work at it pretty hard; it doesn’t just happen automatically.
Never let go of your wife in your heart in any sense. Eve fell first and what did Adam say? He blamed her when he tried to explain himself to the Lord God and that was the first act of unfaithfulness in human history. It wasn’t sexual, moral unfaithfulness but it was grave unfaithfulness. The moment he was asked to explain himself, he reproached before God his own wife. That is unfaithfulness in the bud. You must put that to one side. You can talk things out, you can solve problems, you can discuss them in a right spirit, at a right time. Often not the same day that you notice them. It is best to let a little time go by and get a sense of proportion, but don’t in your mind, in your heart begin to be distanced from your wife.
We must love each other dearly but don’t spoil each other. Sometimes you hear of a husband and wife who flatter each other too much. Of course, you must flatter each other, but not empty flattery. Don’t over-fuss the husband or the wife. Don’t give excessive comforts. Be kind, show love, help each other, sympathise, but don’t give too many creature comforts because this life is the time of labour, not of rest. This life is the life of battle for the Lord, defence of the faith, the winning of souls. Don’t soften up each other. We are to be hard in the right sense as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.