How should a wife show respect to her husband?

Ephesians 5:22-24; 5:33; 1 Peter 3:1-6

Part of building a happy, healthy, God-honoring marriage requires recognizing the role that God has given to each spouse and learning how to interact with your spouse with that role in mind. Though other factors and principles certainly apply, a wife will make significant contributions to her marriage by learning how to support her husband’s role as the head of their home.

Ephesians 5:22-24

Paul teaches wives to submit to their husbands. This word means to voluntarily, willingly “place yourself under” another and this is how Scripture teaches wives to respond to their husbands.

This choice differs from obedience, which is how children (minors, dependents) should respond to their parents and which is obligatory (Eph 6:1). Submission requires a voluntary, willing choice, not a coerced or compulsory one.

However, it does not require that the husband be a follower of Christ or a deserving person. It simply requires that he be your husband.

So then, submit means to get behind your husband’s decisions and following his lead, so long as his decisions do not require you to disobey God (Acts 5:29) and do not enable unlawful behavior, like abuse and criminal activity (Rom 13:1-2).

A good and godly husband will communicate with his wife and hear what his wife feels and thinks about key decisions which affect their relationship and family. What’s more, he should allow her input to influence his decisions whenever possible. Even so, he must make the final decision with one of six possible outcomes:

1. Choose his inclination and be wrong.
2. Choose her inclination and be wrong.
3. Choose his inclination and be right.
4. Choose her inclination and be right.
5. Choose a blended decision and be wrong.
6. Choose a blended decision and be right.

Since no man is perfect, the husband won’t always make the best possible decision, no matter how much he intends to do so. In fact, husbands generally want to make the best decision, but it’s difficult to do so. For a wife to submit to her husband requires her to accept and support his responsibility to make the final choice about a mutual concern without pressing her inclination upon him so strongly that he is not free to choose and take full responsibility for his choices.

Submission also means that a wife should resist the urge to say, “I told you so,” grading his decisions and pestering him when his decisions don’t turn out so well.

Furthermore, the principle of submission also encourages a wife to express admiration and praise for her husband when his decisions turn out well, especially when he made a decision towards which she was more inclined against.

Ephesians 5:33

After speaking to husbands, Paul repeats some advice to wives in Eph 5:33. It’s fascinating to observe that he doesn’t repeat his instructions to submit, but he uses a different word that means to respect. This “respect” refers to an accompanying attitude, the attitude and demeanor of a wife who chooses to take her husband seriously and to value him as the leader of her family and home.

Such respect speaks to the heart of submission and goes deeper than external words and actions. A wife can merely accept and tolerate her husband’s decisions and leadership grudgingly and reluctantly, but such an approach – though better than no submission at all – is incomplete. She should also show respect for him and his decisions through her attitude as well.

A wife who depends on the Holy Spirit for a heart of respect will show her support to her husband through heartfelt words of assurance and encouragement. She will not role her eyes at him, make negative comments about him in public, give him the “silent treatment,” and so on. She will make him feel as though she respects and values him deeply not only through her actions but through her attitude towards him as well.

Every husband is a grown man who’s still a young boy inside looking over his should at the sidelines for a woman who’s cheering for him. For a time, his mother provides this encouragement (or should at least). But a wife can provide even more meaningful encouragement and support because while a mother has a certain explainable, maternal reason to cheer her son on, a wife does so by her own voluntary choice.

1 Peter 3:1-5

Peter (who was married, by the way, see 1 Cor 9:5) provides additional guidance to wives for how they should interact their husbands. We should note that this guidance applies both to believing and unbelieving husbands.

First, Peter taught that Christian wives should behave in a wholesome and pure, respectful and considerate way towards him.

• She should be devoted to him with a single heart and mind and should exhibit no romantic interest or behavior towards other men. This singular focus should not only include refraining from other men but should include deliberate romantic behavior towards her husband (see 1 Cor 7:1-5).
• She should also show greater respect for him than for other people, whether that be other men (including her employer or pastor), her parents, her friends, or even her children. Apart from Christ, she should value her relationship with him as her number one priority.

Second, Peter encouraged Christian wives to behave in a gentle and quiet way. This advice runs contrary to wives being critical, nit-picky, and loud (Prov 21:9, 19).

• So, a Christian wife should genuinely listen to what her husband says rather than doing all the talking herself and then cutting him down, criticizing him, or interrupting him whenever he does talk, jumping to negative and preformed conclusions.
• What’s more, she should never yell at him or call him childish or hurtful names. Following OT Sarah’s interaction with her husband, Abraham, Christian wives should address or speak respectfully to and about their husbands, not just privately only, but also to and around other people, including their children in the home.

Peter reminds wives that your treatment of your husband should be the result of an even deeper respect for God. If you are walking closely with God, then he will enable you to respect your husband as a result, not vis versa.

Finally, Peter encourages Christian wives not to let fear of an unwanted outcome or of what people will think about you or your family influence you otherwise.

Sarah, for instance, followed her husband to an entirely different land, uprooting from her family forever with no record that she questioned him or gave him a hard time. We should admire her for this! Moses’ wife was not so supportive (Exo 4:25).

Sarah also supported Abraham when he made some questionable decisions that risked her own well-being (Gen 12:11-20; Gen 20:1-2). It’s possible to make a case that she should have (or even could have) resisted in this case, and even pagan leaders rebuked Abraham for his poor judgment, yet Sarah respected him, nonetheless. By alluding to this scenario, Peter challenges our perspective.

In a subsequent study, we’ll discuss a husband’s responsibility towards his wife, which is to love her sacrificially, selflessly, and unconditionally, just as Christ loves the church. If you think being a submissive wife is challenging, then think twice because for a husband to love his wife as Christ loves the church is a profound responsibility! This does not diminish, however, the profound challenge that wives face regarding their responsibility to let their husband’s lead their home and support them in wholeheartedly in doing so.