What Does It Mean for a Man to Lead His Family Spiritually?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back as we begin a new week
00:00:06.920 | on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:09.220 | Thanks for making us a part of your daily routine.
00:00:12.980 | Kelly writes in to ask about spiritual leadership
00:00:15.720 | in the home.
00:00:16.560 | She writes this, "Hello Pastor John,
00:00:17.760 | "my husband and I are still in the beginning stages
00:00:20.020 | "of our marriage.
00:00:20.860 | "Both of us were raised in a Christian home.
00:00:22.720 | "Unfortunately, both of us had fathers
00:00:24.800 | "who failed to lead the family spiritually.
00:00:27.780 | "Our mothers did that job."
00:00:29.980 | Now I desire my husband to lead our home spiritually,
00:00:32.880 | but we both don't know what that looks like.
00:00:35.080 | Does he lead in prayer with me daily?
00:00:37.440 | Does he read the word with me daily?
00:00:39.780 | What did this look like for you, Pastor John?
00:00:42.080 | - Well, my first thought is,
00:00:44.740 | I wonder why Kelly wrote to us instead of her husband.
00:00:48.640 | I hope it's because they agreed,
00:00:52.920 | they both wanted to ask and they agreed
00:00:57.000 | it was just simpler for her to write in, that's fine.
00:01:00.640 | I hope it's not because he's dragging his feet
00:01:04.340 | and she's having to pull him along.
00:01:07.320 | So my first suggestion is that she go get her husband
00:01:12.600 | right now, turn this off, go get him
00:01:16.000 | and listen to this together,
00:01:17.980 | rather than her becoming the mediator here
00:01:22.080 | and turning it into something he may not like.
00:01:25.860 | Let's put one passage of scripture at least in front of us
00:01:30.700 | so that the assumption isn't taken for granted.
00:01:34.300 | Ephesians 5, 21, "Submit to one another,"
00:01:38.740 | husbands and wives, "out of reverence for Christ.
00:01:42.600 | "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord,
00:01:47.360 | "for the husband is the head of the wife
00:01:49.480 | "as Christ is the head of the church,
00:01:51.600 | "his body and is himself its savior.
00:01:55.140 | "Now as the church submits to Christ,
00:01:57.760 | "so also wives should submit in everything
00:02:00.440 | "to their husbands."
00:02:01.840 | Husbands, love your wives,
00:02:04.540 | "as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."
00:02:09.540 | So the picture we have is that in loving each other
00:02:14.940 | and serving each other and submitting to each other's needs
00:02:18.600 | and longings in a kind of loving and humble mutuality,
00:02:23.600 | the wife takes her cues from the church
00:02:28.680 | as the church is called to follow Christ as its leader.
00:02:32.420 | And the husband takes his cues from Christ
00:02:36.240 | as the head of the church who gave himself up for her.
00:02:40.320 | One of the reasons this whole issue
00:02:43.280 | of headship and submission in marriage matters
00:02:46.760 | is that God intended for marriage
00:02:49.440 | to represent the covenant love
00:02:51.200 | between Christ and his bride, the church.
00:02:53.960 | That's what we are trying to flesh out
00:02:57.780 | when we're working on this matter of headship and submission.
00:03:02.440 | There are differences and there are similarities
00:03:07.440 | between the relationship between the wife and the husband
00:03:11.080 | on the one hand and the relationship between Christ
00:03:13.520 | and the church on the other, and both the similarities
00:03:16.960 | and the differences shape the way we flesh out this drama
00:03:21.120 | of Christ and the church.
00:03:22.640 | For example, one similarity is that Christ
00:03:27.640 | wants the submission of the church to be free and joyful
00:03:33.240 | with a full understanding of who he is
00:03:36.640 | and what he stands for and why he's doing what he's doing.
00:03:40.880 | Christ does not want slavish obedience
00:03:44.720 | or joyless compliance or mindless submissiveness
00:03:48.200 | from the church.
00:03:49.840 | He wants his church to be full of intelligence
00:03:52.240 | and understanding and wisdom and joy and freedom
00:03:55.400 | when she follows him.
00:03:57.160 | Without this, her following, the church's following,
00:04:00.880 | would not glorify the Lord Jesus.
00:04:03.700 | Mindless submission does not glorify a leader.
00:04:08.440 | Similarly, a good husband does not want slavish obedience
00:04:13.000 | or joyless compliance or mindless submissiveness.
00:04:15.680 | He wants his wife to be full, full of intelligence
00:04:20.160 | and understanding and wisdom and joy and freedom
00:04:23.080 | when she commits herself to follow him.
00:04:26.600 | So that's an example of similarity affecting how we do it.
00:04:30.160 | Here's an example of difference between a husband
00:04:32.960 | and a wife on the one hand and Christ and the church
00:04:35.040 | on the other hand that affects how the marriage works.
00:04:40.040 | Husbands, human husbands are fallible and sinful
00:04:45.740 | and Christ is not.
00:04:48.440 | Therefore, you can never draw a straight line
00:04:52.860 | from the way Christ leads his church
00:04:55.420 | to the way the husband leads his wife
00:04:58.440 | without taking into account this distinction,
00:05:01.560 | this difference, his finiteness and his sin
00:05:05.120 | have to come into the picture.
00:05:07.160 | Another difference that makes a difference,
00:05:09.200 | another difference that shapes how we go about this
00:05:12.960 | is that both the husband and the wife
00:05:17.960 | are submitted to the Lord Jesus as their supreme Lord
00:05:23.420 | and Jesus is her direct Lord, not her indirect Lord,
00:05:29.440 | only through the husband.
00:05:30.980 | The teaching of the New Testament,
00:05:32.420 | and you can see this in 1 Peter 2, Ephesians 5,
00:05:36.560 | Colossians 3, is that Christians, male and female,
00:05:40.700 | first relate to the Lord Jesus as their supreme master
00:05:44.720 | and then for the Lord's sake, as it says,
00:05:48.800 | in obedience to the Lord, we enter back in.
00:05:52.320 | We are sent back in to the institutions of the world,
00:05:55.820 | like marriage, in relationships that God assigns to us
00:06:00.200 | and we act then in those relationships of submission freely
00:06:04.640 | because our supreme and primary Lord has said to.
00:06:09.640 | So the submission, therefore,
00:06:11.220 | that a woman offers to her husband
00:06:12.880 | is done so freely at the bidding of her Lord, Jesus.
00:06:17.640 | So those two differences between our marriages
00:06:23.100 | and Christ's marriage imply
00:06:25.600 | that the husband will not presume
00:06:28.880 | that his will is infallible
00:06:31.760 | and that his wife is less wise or intelligent
00:06:35.840 | or insightful than he is.
00:06:37.520 | Jesus is always wiser than the church.
00:06:40.120 | Husbands are not always wiser than their wives.
00:06:44.720 | It also means, those differences mean,
00:06:48.000 | that a mature Christian husband
00:06:49.880 | will not express his leadership with childish,
00:06:56.080 | proud bullying or one-sided decision-making,
00:07:00.040 | but will always seek out both the wisdom
00:07:05.040 | and the desires of his wife.
00:07:10.840 | This is what good, fallen, fallible,
00:07:14.160 | yet Christlike leadership does.
00:07:17.800 | Another way to talk about this same reality
00:07:20.980 | is to point out that the roles of leadership and submission
00:07:25.260 | in the marriage are not based on competence.
00:07:28.780 | God never said that the man is appointed to be head
00:07:32.860 | because he's more competent
00:07:35.320 | or that the woman is appointed to submission
00:07:38.060 | because she's less competent.
00:07:40.800 | Competence is not the issue in whether a man is head
00:07:45.800 | and a woman is submitting.
00:07:48.680 | Competence plays a role in how they exercise the roles
00:07:53.480 | of leadership and submission,
00:07:55.420 | but not who the roles belong to.
00:07:58.760 | So the way I define a husband's leadership or headship,
00:08:03.760 | as God wills it, is a sense of benevolent responsibility
00:08:08.860 | to lead, to protect, and to provide for his wife.
00:08:13.640 | And the key word there
00:08:15.180 | is a sense of benevolent responsibility.
00:08:17.860 | He may have a disability, for example,
00:08:21.800 | that keeps him from being the breadwinner,
00:08:25.320 | but that disability does not keep him
00:08:28.180 | from feeling a benevolent responsibility
00:08:30.940 | that the family's needs are met
00:08:33.460 | and that sense of responsibility will move him
00:08:36.040 | to take initiatives with his wife and children
00:08:39.260 | to see to it that the family is cared for.
00:08:42.260 | That's the main issue, a sense of responsibility
00:08:45.500 | that moves the man to take initiatives in the family
00:08:49.940 | so that God's will is done as much as possible
00:08:53.680 | by every member of the family.
00:08:56.600 | So here's some examples.
00:08:58.100 | And keep in mind that when I say
00:09:01.520 | he feels a special responsibility
00:09:03.520 | for initiatives in the family,
00:09:05.960 | he's not ruling out the fact
00:09:09.520 | that his wife may have important initiatives
00:09:12.000 | to bring to the discussion because of his blind spots
00:09:16.000 | and his fallibility and her wisdom and her perceptivity.
00:09:21.000 | So the point is she ought not to have to feel
00:09:27.760 | that she's constantly doing the initiating, prodding,
00:09:32.680 | to get this man to talk about things
00:09:34.480 | that need to be talked about
00:09:35.520 | and plan things that need to be planned,
00:09:37.200 | do things that need to be done.
00:09:39.600 | So here come some of the kind of things
00:09:42.000 | where I think a husband should be taking active initiative.
00:09:47.000 | What is the overall moral vision of the family?
00:09:52.240 | He should take initiative in asking that question
00:09:55.240 | and pursuing an answer with his wife at his side.
00:09:58.480 | What do we believe about God and the world
00:10:02.200 | and family and culture?
00:10:03.880 | All families stand for something.
00:10:05.840 | All families are known for something.
00:10:07.640 | All families are called to glorify God
00:10:12.440 | according to their gifts.
00:10:14.240 | What does that look like?
00:10:15.400 | And that's the man's responsibility.
00:10:17.480 | Pursue that, figure that out.
00:10:20.320 | A man feels responsibility to take initiatives,
00:10:23.600 | to form and carry through that moral vision of the family.
00:10:28.380 | And of course, he's doing it
00:10:30.440 | through the constant interaction with his wife.
00:10:33.400 | She would not be thrilled
00:10:35.040 | to be left out of that formulation.
00:10:37.720 | But I think most Christian women are thrilled
00:10:40.960 | that the husband is taking the initiative
00:10:43.040 | and drawing her in to see to it
00:10:45.400 | that they have such a moral vision for the family.
00:10:48.480 | And this would include initiatives like,
00:10:52.600 | let's clarify the expectations we have for our children
00:10:56.240 | and how they'll be disciplined.
00:10:58.040 | And then how my leadership will relate to the discipline
00:11:02.640 | and your leadership as the mother will relate
00:11:04.520 | to their discipline.
00:11:06.360 | And how they're gonna spend their leisure and so on.
00:11:09.640 | It includes things like taking initiatives
00:11:11.840 | and deciding on where the family goes to church
00:11:14.480 | and how they participate
00:11:16.280 | and whether they get there or not.
00:11:18.720 | It includes things like ministries,
00:11:21.280 | what the family's doing in ministry
00:11:23.200 | and how they're involved together
00:11:24.440 | in the neighborhood and missions.
00:11:26.320 | It includes things like taking initiatives
00:11:28.880 | with lifestyle issues for the family.
00:11:31.740 | Like what are we gonna do with social media
00:11:34.320 | and television and entertainment and leisure
00:11:36.280 | and sports and vacations?
00:11:38.320 | Every family has to make hundreds and hundreds
00:11:41.600 | of decisions about these things.
00:11:43.840 | And one of the things that depresses a wife
00:11:46.620 | is when a lackadaisical husband never thinks
00:11:49.720 | about what needs to be done
00:11:51.520 | and has to be constantly prodded to figure things out.
00:11:55.040 | She wants, of course, to have input.
00:11:58.360 | She's probably got more insight
00:11:59.620 | on a lot of these things than he does,
00:12:01.020 | but she wants him to take initiative.
00:12:02.920 | We need to think about these things.
00:12:04.400 | He needs to say, "Let's sit down.
00:12:06.320 | "Let's talk.
00:12:07.640 | "Let's pray."
00:12:08.920 | She wants him to do that.
00:12:10.640 | It includes things like finances
00:12:13.040 | and how the family spends its money
00:12:14.920 | and what they're gonna save for
00:12:17.880 | and what kind of insurance they're gonna have
00:12:19.680 | and retirement plans and pensions
00:12:22.720 | and the whole financial vision of the family,
00:12:25.240 | including how much they give to the church
00:12:27.320 | and all these things.
00:12:28.360 | The husband should feel a special responsibility
00:12:31.880 | to take initiatives, to work it out with his wife,
00:12:35.560 | constantly being drawn in to that initiative.
00:12:40.000 | She's gonna have superior wisdom on many of these things,
00:12:44.400 | but she longs for a husband to take initiative
00:12:48.840 | to put the process in motion
00:12:51.200 | by which these things can be worked out
00:12:54.000 | and problems can be solved and plans can be made.
00:12:58.480 | Finally, perhaps most important,
00:13:01.360 | yes, the husband should feel a special responsibility
00:13:04.840 | to lead the family in a pattern of prayer
00:13:07.640 | and Bible reading and worship.
00:13:10.560 | And here again, the issue is not competency.
00:13:15.120 | He may have an eighth grade education
00:13:17.160 | and his wife may have a college degree.
00:13:19.360 | He can still take initiatives to see
00:13:22.680 | that the family is a prayer-saturated,
00:13:25.080 | Bible-saturated family by working it out with his wife,
00:13:29.040 | how she uses her gifts,
00:13:30.560 | which may exceed his own in Bible reading
00:13:33.240 | and Bible explaining.
00:13:35.240 | So I hope those few examples give a taste
00:13:40.240 | of what it means for a husband and a wife
00:13:42.480 | to model Christ and the church for a very needy world
00:13:47.480 | who needs so badly to see it.
00:13:50.680 | Yeah, amen.
00:13:51.520 | What a high calling for men,
00:13:53.600 | a beautiful calling of laying down our lives.
00:13:56.080 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:13:57.440 | And thanks for the question, Kelly.
00:13:59.600 | Tomorrow, we return to the theme of affirmation
00:14:02.440 | and praising others,
00:14:04.040 | specifically to the situation
00:14:06.480 | when we cannot genuinely accept affirmation from others
00:14:10.120 | because we assume that their praise is a means
00:14:13.120 | to get something from us.
00:14:14.880 | How do we kill the sin of habitually being suspicious
00:14:18.480 | of the motives of others?
00:14:20.360 | That's tomorrow.
00:14:21.680 | For more information about this podcast
00:14:23.200 | or to find our most recent or our most popular episodes,
00:14:25.560 | go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:14:30.560 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:14:32.280 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:14:34.400 | with John Pfeiffer.
00:14:35.480 | (upbeat music)
00:14:38.080 | (upbeat music)
00:14:40.680 | [BLANK_AUDIO]