Loving Your Spouse to the Extreme (for men)

-By Rick McGinniss

A couple of months ago, we were the guest speakers at a Valentine's banquet at our mentor church, Woodcrest Chapel, in Columbia, and the topic they gave us was, "The Rewards of Doing It Right" - what have we done right over 20 years of marriage and what's the payoff in our relationship? At the very beginning I said, "tonight, we're going to sound like we have it all together, but I promise you that if you check back with us in two weeks, we'll be on the verge of divorce" ... and we were ... and we will probably be there again two weeks from today.

That's how it always works whenever I speak about marriage. Marriage is as much a challenge for me and my spouse as it is for you and yours. I want to make sure you understand that.

Along the same lines, this "husband thing" is as much a struggle for me as it is for any other guy. Occasionally, my wife has said to me, "you know, when you speak about marriage, a lot of those women in the church go out of there thinking you'd be the perfect husband to have ... but I know the truth."

So do I. I know the truth about Rick McGinniss. He's a very fortunate guy who God didn't give up on and who happened to stumble on to a wonderful and patient woman who wouldn't give up, either. If I'm doing anything right as a husband today, it comes as a result of many years of my wife's pain and patience, and the work of God in my life.

One more thing, and then we'll get into this. I have a reputation for being pretty blunt with men about their weaknesses in marriage. A lot of times, guys take that to mean that I'm siding with the women, that I believe that somehow men are more responsible for marital problems than women are. I'll comment on that in just a minute, but let me tell you why I'm blunt with husbands (and I'm going to be blunt again today).

I live with four women. Even my dog is female. This "blessing from God" - and it is a blessing most of the time - has provided me with over two decades of constant feedback of how my attitudes and actions are perceived by a small sample of women.

For a long time, I thought that, if there were any problems in our relationships, it was because something was wrong with them. But then a strange thing happened. I became a pastor and all of a sudden, women were coming to me for counsel about their marital struggles. And I was shocked - they were saying the same things about their husbands as my wife and daughters were saying about me! Then it hit me - maybe my women weren't crazy. Maybe I wasn't the perfect husband and father. Maybe there was a lot of room for improvement on my part.

And that's what I finally concluded, and it was a pretty bitter pill to swallow. So, if I'm blunt with you, gentlemen, it's because I'm blunt with me. I know the truth about me and I know the truth about most of you. I know you need to get your act together as a husband, because I constantly need to get my act together. And none of us are going to get off the hook on this because the stakes are too high. It's just too easy for us to crush the spirits of our wives and ultimately destroy our marriages.

Well, now you know where I'm coming from. My marriage isn't perfect, I struggle with being a good husband and I constantly need to be held accountable for those things.

So, what's the key? How does a man love his wife "to the extreme?" There are lots of answers to that question, but for me and my house, the answer that seems to be working is the one that's found in the Bible.

And it really is an extreme answer, which you will see as we go through it this morning.
The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior ... Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church. Ephesians 5:23,25-29 [NIV]

What "Love" Means:
Alright, let's take this passage apart and understand what it's saying about what it means for a man to love his wife to the extreme. There are four phrases that I've underlined and we're just going to take them one at a time and see what we can learn.

The very first sentence says ... "The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church ..."

Paul does not write that husbands ought to be the head of their wives. He says that they are. He is not telling us how marriages ought to function (that comes next), but what the marriage relationship between husband and wife is in God's sight.(1)

Douglas Wilson, in his book, Reforming Marriage, writes that, "meditating on this is a very valuable thing for husbands to do." So, let's do that for a minute. What does it mean for a husband to be the head and how does that display extreme love to his wife?

"Suppose a young sailor disobeys his orders," Wilson writes, "and runs his ship aground in the middle of the night. The captain ... [was] asleep and had nothing to do with his actions. But who is [ultimately] responsible? The captain ... The sailor is guilty, but the captain is responsible."(2)

Being the head means that you are responsible for what goes on under your headship.

And love for your wife means taking that responsibility for the condition of your marriage.
You are the head, your wife is not. You are responsible, she is not. If your wife is unresponsive to you sexually, if she nags you, if she doesn't trust your judgment, even if she runs around on you ... she is guilty but you are responsible.

That certainly is extreme when you compare it to the way most marriages operate. In most marriages, men believe it's the responsibility of the woman to set the spiritual, relational and emotional pace. That puts on her a tremendous pressure to perform. Eventually, many wives grow to resent that pressure and the marital relationship inevitably suffers.

That's why one of the most extreme acts of love a husband can offer his wife is to continually step up to the plate and own this responsibility. It's love because it takes pressure off of your wife that she was not called by God to carry. She's not the head, you are.

It took me a long time to buy into this in our marriage because I just didn't think it was fair that I be held responsible for Jetta's junk as well as my own. But I have to tell you that the day our marriage took a quantum leap forward was the day I finally owned the truth that "Jetta may be guilty about a lot of things, but I am responsible. She is not."

Once I took that step, it was like a pressure valve being released in our marriage. She started to relax because she didn't have to perform something to which she was never called. And once she started to relax, she started to respond to me on a new level. And miracle of miracles, she actually started changing ... which leads to the next principle of extreme love.

The passage we read earlier says that Jesus has a very specific goal in mind for his bride - which is us, the church. He loves in extreme ways, to the point of giving his life on the cross, in order to ...

"... present her to himself as a radiant church ..."

Jesus, through his love, is trying to produce a beautiful, lovely, radiant bride (which, again, is you and me - the church). And his love towards us is pro-active.

"He feeds and cares for it ..." the scripture says concerning the church.

But think about the raw material He has to work with. None of us, when we come to Christ are beautiful, lovely and radiant on our own. To be totally honest, from a spiritual and moral viewpoint, we're a bunch of losers.

But Jesus says, "that's OK, I will accept you as you are. Let me walk with you. Let me love you. And over time, you will be transformed."

The point of this passage is that husbands are to love their wives in this same way. Jesus loves undeserving sinners and turns them - us - into a church that rises and becomes something beautiful and incredible. Husbands are to do the same thing for their wives.

Extreme love means accepting this role, the role of God's primary agent of positive transformation in her life.
It means saying to our wives, "Yes, you are less than perfect. But that's OK, I will accept you as you are. Let me walk with you. Let me love you. And over time, you will be transformed, you will become even more beautiful than you already are, in character and in virtue and even in your physical appearance."

"When a man takes a woman into his home," Wilson writes, "all who know them should expect to see her flourish and grow in loveliness in the years to come."(3)

It's interesting that this principle was actually a law in ancient Israel.

A newly married man must not be drafted into the army or given any other special responsibilities. He must be free to be at home for one year, bringing happiness to the wife he has married. Deuteronomy 24:5 [NLT]

That's extreme isn't it? We're not talking "queen for a day," we're talking "queen for a year" - 365 days of devotion to seeing his wife become all she can be!

That's our mission as husbands - to see our wives transformed because of us. If Jetta isn't changing for the better - as a person, as a mom and as a wife - because of my presence, my attitudes, my actions, my example, and my encouragement, guess what? I am failing as a husband. I'm not loving her as I should.

Of course the question is, what exactly do I need to be doing to bring about this transformation? If I'm responsible for the condition of my marriage and apparently, the condition of my wife, what should my strategy be?

Well, let's look at the next key phrase in this passage.

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ..."

2,000 years later, millions of people from every race and every walk of life still follow Jesus Christ, to say nothing of the millions who chose to followed him throughout history. How did he gain that kind of attractiveness and credibility?

It wasn't through power, even though Jesus was the most powerful person to ever walk the face of the earth. He didn't demand to be followed. Instead, He loved and He gave up his life. He won the hearts of people and still wins the hearts of people and draws them to follow him into a transformed life.

That's called leadership and that's the strategy husbands are to employ with their wives.

Extreme love means carrying out your mission as a leader - not as a dominator.
Because he is the head, a husband has a lot of power. He can use that power to either lead his wife or he can use it to dominate her. There's a huge difference. Dominance is pretty simple. You just wave the big stick, yell a lot, maybe even throw some things, or you play the passive/aggressive game and just withdraw. Either way, it doesn't take long for people to get the message that they'd better get in line and do it your way.

Leadership requires a lot more skill. It takes a lot longer, it requires a lot more patience. It requires giving up your rights and putting the needs of your followers - in this case, your wife - first, in order to win her heart and convince her to follow you. Jesus once explained it to his disciples like this:

"You know that in this world kings are tyrants, and officials lord it over the people beneath them. But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must become your slave. For even I, the Son of Man, [the most powerful person ever] came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many." Matthew 20:25-28 [NLT]

Guys, if we're going to see our wives transformed - and I mean transformed both for their own good and for the good of the marriage - we've got to lead them, not dominate them. We've got to win their hearts through serving, not demand their compliance through intimidation.

I think the ability to do that comes down to one word: gentleness.

I think I've told this story before, but last summer when I took some time off, Jetta and I went to Colorado for a week all by ourselves. After we had gotten settled in our condo she said to me, "You know, this is the first time we've taken a vacation where I'm actually looking forward to being alone with you, because I know you aren't going to pressure me about sex." (By the way, I have Jetta's permission to tell this story!)

To understand the significance of her statement you have to understand that, for the first half of our 20-year marriage, my wife had a bad attitude about sex (and she'll admit that). The Bible says that a wife's body belongs to her husband and she just didn't comply very well with that. She was "guilty."

But I was responsible. I was responsible in that my behavior encouraged rather than discouraged her bad attitude, and I was also responsible to help her adopt a new one. So, for the first 12 years of marriage, I tried to bring about that transformation through demands. I'd yell, I'd make her feel guilty, I would hit her over the head with Bible verses and you know what? She complied with my demands, but her attitude got worse. She wasn't happy and neither was I.

About eight years ago, through the grace of God, I decided to change my strategy. I stopped demanding that she try to manufacture the sex drive of a man and allowed her to be a woman. I stopped making her feel guilty about the times when things just didn't seem to "work." I stopped telling her that there must be something wrong with her and that she needed to see a counselor to uncover some deep, dark, repressed secret in her past. In short, I decided to stop bullying her and treat her with gentleness.

To be honest, I did occasionally revert back to my old ways, but overall there was a night and day difference in my approach. And my wife started following me in this area, slowly at first, but she was following. And as we sat in that condo in the mountains of Colorado last June, it was like she was saying, "You did it! You've won my heart on this issue. You've led me to this point, and I'm happy to be there." (And, over the next week, I was pretty happy to be there, too!)

Gentlemen, let me ask you: in what areas does your wife need to experience a transformation? Let me encourage you to love her into that transformation by opting for the extreme strategy of leadership through gentleness and servanthood, instead of the easy out of domination. As I said earlier, our marriage isn't perfect, but this way is so much better, so much sweeter.

Now, at this point, someone might ask, "well, what if I do what you're suggesting here and my wife doesn't follow? What if she just doesn't want to be led?"

The answer is to be patient and act in faith by doing what God says in spite of what your wife does.

However, the great temptation at this point is to lash out in frustration. I know, I've been there ... which is why the final phrase of this passage of scripture is so important.

"Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body ..."

... but that's exactly what we do when we're frustrated, isn't it? We hate our own bodies - our wives - because they are weak and sinful, just like we are.

Gary Thomas, in his book Sacred Marriage, which we have available at our resource table, puts it this way: "You are married to a fallen woman in a broken world. It is guaranteed that your spouse will sin against you, disappoint you, and have physical limitations that will frustrate and sadden you. This is a fallen world. You will never find a spouse who is not affected in some way by the reality of the Fall. If you can't [honor] this spouse because she is prone to certain weaknesses, you will never be able to [honor] any spouse."(4)

Extreme love means choosing to show honor instead of scorn when we are affected by those weaknesses.
This principle is directly stated in 1 Peter 3:7 ...

You husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat her with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life. If you don't treat her as you should, your prayers will not be heard. 1 Peter 3:7 [NLT]

Doug Wilson points out that the problem with this is that "men commonly have trouble honoring weakness. When men get with men, some sort of competition usually arises. And when competition is there, men seek to exploit weakness ... If a football coach were to discover that the other team's left tackle was clearly weak, he will run his plays over left tackle all day long.

"In the marriage," he continues, "men commonly fall into an adversarial, competitive relationship with their wives. When the distressed wife expresses her concerns, and a husband ... says, 'that's the dumbest thing I ever heard' he is treating her as the opposing left tackle. He is seeking to exploit her. But Peter does not say to exploit the weakness; he says to honor her in it."(5)

The most obvious application of this, guys, is to control what comes out of our mouths. Most men grossly underestimate the power of their words with their wives. My wife used to tell me all the time, "you say these terrible things, then you expect me to just get over it. You might work that way, but I don't. It hurts me."

It took me a long time and the confirmation of many other women before I believed her. It took I don't know how many times of hearing her say, "the kids are afraid of you because you lose your temper so easily" before I believed her. And I am so sorry it took that long for me to wise up, because I did an incredible amount of damage through the scornful attitude I had towards my wife, damage that took almost a decade to undo in the sexual area of our marriage.

Extreme love means speaking to your wife with courtesy, even when her words, feelings and actions make no sense to you, even when she is wrong.

"My wife was created by God himself," Gary Thomas writes. "How dare I dishonor her? In fact, shouldn't it give me pause before I even reach out to touch her? After all, she is the Creator's daughter!"(6)

That's loving your spouse to the extreme.

Conclusions:
Now, I have a question for you ladies at this point. You've heard this whole presentation on extreme love. What do you think it would be like to be married to a man who took responsibility for the condition of your marriage instead of dumping it off on you; who understood his role to be a God-appointed encourager and cheerleader of positive transformation in your life; who led you and served you with gentleness instead of bullying you; who, in spite of your weaknesses, honored you as a daughter of the Creator?

What would it be like to be married to a man like that? If that was the consistent pattern of your relationship over the long haul, if your husband showed you that kind of extreme love, do you think that your heart and mind and body would grow to be soft and tender towards that man? Help me here. Raise your hand if you believe that.

Gentlemen, that's the good news. They are telling you that this approach will work. But, here's the bad news. This kind of love is completely unnatural for most men. We're not wired up this way.

And that leads to two inevitable conclusions.

1. First, "if I am to love in this way, I must choose to believe that it is the best way." And I know that's a real problem for a lot of guys. They hear this kind of stuff and they say, "it just won't work. Nice try, Rick, but it's too idealistic."

I understand that sentiment and, from time to time, I still feel that way. But let me ask you ... is what you're doing actually working? Is your approach winning your wife's heart so completely that she follows you willingly and with joy?

Do a cost-benefit analysis on this thing - the reality of your way versus the possibilities of God's way. Maybe it's worth a try ... and that leads to the other conclusion ...

2. "If I am to love in this way, I must change."
I've got to become a different person.

In Gary Thomas' book, there is the story of how a man named John Barger walked the road from being a domineering husband to a serving one. And I want to close this message by reading it to you.

"It's easy to scorn women," Barger said, "and most men do. We see them as physically weak, easy to intimidate, ... emotional, illogical, and often petty. Or we see them as temptresses; in desire we idolize tham and parade them across the pages of magazines, yet we scorn and hate them for their commanding sexual power over us. Male scorn affects every aspect of our lives.

"I do not speak here merely of your scorn of women; I speak of mine as well ... I swaggered through marriage for many years, ruling my wife Susan and my seven children with an iron hand while citing Scripture as justification for my privileges and authority.

"Years of dominating my wife and children left them habitually resentful and fearful of me, yet unwilling to challenge me because of the fury it might provoke ... I alienated Susan and the children, and lost their love. Home was not a pleasant place to be.

"Then a number of dramatic events occurred, which wrought a profound change in my moral, psychological and spiritual life." The first of these events was when Susan began to hemorrhage in delivery and the baby was stillborn. "At two in the morning in a stark, bright hospital delivery room, I held in my left hand my tiny lifeless son, and stared in disbelief at his death.

"[I realized in that moment that] I had the power to make my family's lives worse by raging against my baby's death and my wife's lack of love, or to make their lives better by learning to love them properly. I had to choose. In that critical instant, with God's grace, I chose the arduous, undramatic, discouraging path of trying to be good.

"I don't have time ... to tell you of all the afflictions we endured in the next four years ... In the midst of these many afflictions, I found that the only way I could learn to love, and to cease being a cause of pain, was to suffer, endure, and strive every minute to repudiate my anger, my resentment, my scorn, my jealousy, my lust, my pride, and my dozens of other vices.

"I began holding my tongue. I started admitting my faults and apologizing for them. I quit defending myself when I was judged too harshly - for the important thing was not to be right (or to be well-thought-of) but to love. As I had made myself the center of my attention for too many years already, I said little about my own labors and sorrows. I sought to know Susan's and to help her to bear them.

"And, frankly, once I started listening to Susan - once I began really hearing her and drawing her out - I was startled at how many and how deep were her wounds and her sorrows.

"One of my friends, when confronted at the end of his long workday with his wife's complaints about the noise, the troubles and the unending housework, snapped back at her, 'Well, do you want me to stay home and do the housework while you go off to the office?' ... What did she want him to do?

"I'll tell you: She wanted him to listen, to understand, and to sympathize. She wanted him to let her know that despite her problems, her exhaustion, her dishevelment, he loved her - to let her know that it caused him sorrow that she was suffering and that, if it were possible, he would change it for her.

"Barger's earnest efforts at renewing his love for his wife ... worked. It took three years of patience, listening and growing in Susan's trust, spending literally hundreds of hours talking, but eventually, Susan's anger dissipated, overcoming her cynicism, which in turn, softened her.

"Living in a renewed marriage, life became unusually sweet. John and Susan believed they were on the verge of a long and happy marriage, when tragedy struck again. Susan was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

"An eight month battle ensued ... [but] even though Susan was given the best care, the cancer won out and Susan died. She breathed her last breath holding the hand of her beloved husband."

"Barger looked back on their lives together with bittersweet feelings. Now that they had become best friends, now that he had learned the deeper meaning found in truly loving rather than in dominating, he had to say goodbye. But the sweetness was in remembering an unusual love, know that he had experienced something that most of us yearn for but don't find - true, soul-deep companionship."(7)

ENDNOTES

1. Douglas Wilson, Reforming Marriage, pg 22.

2. Wilson, 30

3. Wilson, 52

4. Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage, 69

5. Wilson, 32-33

6. Thomas, 63

7. Thomas, 45-48