Dads, Front and Center

Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.

–Colossians 3:19

Annis Duff wrote, “Successful family living strikes me as being in many ways rather like playing chamber music. Each member of the ensemble has his own skills, his own special knack with the part he chooses to play; but the grace and strength and sweetness of the performance come from everyone’s willingness to subordinate individual virtuosity and personal ambition to the requirements of balance and blend.”

What kind of music is emanating from your home right now? Is it beautiful and melodious or harsh and dissonant? Paul said if you want to know whether you’re really becoming like Jesus Christ, the first test is how you act at home. In Colossians 3, he outlined the responsibilities of each member of the household, beginning with wives: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (v. 18). As we learned last week, the test of a wife’s Christlikeness is her willingness to submit to her husband. Submission has nothing to do with inferiority or superiority; it has to do with position: a wife voluntarily submits herself to her husband just as Jesus, who was equal to God, willingly submitted Himself to the authority of God the Father.

Submission gets a lot of bad press these days. I think husbands themselves are partially responsible for the attitude people have toward submission. My seminary professor Howard Hendricks used to tell us, “A lot of men run around their homes like frustrated drill sergeants, yelling, ‘I’m in charge! I’m in charge!’ And unfortunately, they are the only ones who believe it.” No, Paul said husbands have a responsibility as well: “Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them” (v. 19). A husband’s responsibility is to love his wife. Paul expanded on that in Ephesians 5:25, 28: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her. . . . So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.” The test of a husband’s Christlikeness is his sacrificial love for his wife–that is, his willingness to place her interests above his own and make sure her needs are met before his own.

That’s what Jesus did for us. Even though He was equal with God, He humbled Himself and died on the cross in order to meet our greatest need. Just as Christ sacrificially placed our interests above His own, husbands are to sacrificially place their wives’ interests above their own.

***

Today’s devotion is adapted from “Dads, Front and Center” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2012.

Annis Duff, Longer Flight (New York: Viking, 1955), 11.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.