A Christian Way to Treat a Difficult Wife

Why not make a list of your wife's good qualities—until you feel you can respect her as a person? It seems to be the least that anyone can do as a fellow human. Your wife must have some good qualities (and very likely has many), otherwise you wouldn't have married her. It seems to me that this step is of utmost importance.

Then, why not make an effort to recall the happiest times you have spent together? Try to keep on doing this until you suspect that you may be falling in love with her again. Such a realization may unnerve you, but it will make the remaining steps easier. Besides, you once solemnly vowed to love her as long as she lived, and you are a man of principle.

Think back to the creation story and remember that God intended a man and a woman to live together forever (that's millions and millions of years). Evidently He placed in us the capacity for living with one person for long periods.

Dwell on Ephesians 5:21 to 6:9. I think it's important not to limit oneself to 5:22-33. One thing I get out of this passage is that we're all supposed to submit ourselves to one another, wives to husbands, children to parents, slaves to masters, and also masters to slaves, parents to children, and husbands to wives. But we are to submit in different ways. The husband is to submit by taking the responsibility of headship and by taking (in a Christly manner) a responsibility for his wife's salvation; and he is to do so at any personal cost, including crucifixion.

The husband is in charge, no doubt, but he is to "give himself" for his wife, as Christ gave Himself for the church. This means (it seems to me) that we are to love-at-any-cost a wife who is at times perfectly horrid (like the Christian church has often been in its relationship to Christ through the centuries). Thinking about Christ's love for us makes it easier for us to love our wives the way He wants us to.

Contemplate Christ's message that in order to be forgiven we must be forgiving. Justification by faith is helpless to save us unless we are as forgiving in our attitudes as we need God to be to us. "If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you; but if you forgive not men their trespasses against you, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you." [1]

God loves our spouses as much as He loves us, and He cannot let them down by overlooking our meanness to them. Realizing God's goodness in forgiving our sins makes it easier for us to admit we too have made mistakes and that maybe our wives aren't the only ones to blame.

For SDAs this forgive-in-order-to-be-forgiven theology is heightened by our awareness that we are living in the end-time Day of Atonement. Offered at-one-ment with God Himself, we can enjoy this privilege only as we do all in our power to be at-one with others. Some people ask, "What does 1844 have to do with our daily lives?" Many things, one of which is that it alerts us to do all we can to be reconciled to (that is, to be at one with) our spouses, as we hope for salvation ourselves.

Discover that most first-time marriages in America survive till death. Discovering this myself not long ago was a great surprise for me. Pollster Lew Harris has gone on record as being astonished that people have used statistics to prove the opposite. Sociologists and pollsters provide evidence that the number of successful first marriages approaches 80% or even 85%. (They survive even though in many of them one or the other partner engages in an affair somewhere along the way.)

Surely Seventh-day Adventists of all people should do as well as other people do. Probably we should do far better than they do, for we are to witness to them. If even "heathen" couples can make their marriages work, surely we who know God can do so!

Think about the instruction from God in Malachi 2:13-16:

This is a serious passage and can only make us take our own situations seriously.

Recall the example of Hosea in a recent quarter's Sabbath School lessons. Surely we who live in the light of the Sanctuary and the Spirit of Prophecy and the Sabbath and the Second Coming know how to live at a level at least equal to Hosea's in Old Testament times. The Interpreter's Bible commenting on Hosea 1:2 says:

Gather stories of couples who have settled down with each other after a period of serious conflict. Visualize yourself doing the same with your wife and being glad you did.

Help. If doing this list of suggestions seems hard (and I suspect it will seem altogether impossible), is divine help available to make it easier? Indeed it is! See Ephesians 3:19, 20: