The Gospel-Driven Marriage: How to Be a Good Wife

No, really, I figured out how to be a really good, Christian wife. In 12 easy steps:

- memorize Proverbs 31, post reminders all over your house, and try really hard to be the Proverbs 31 woman.

- Keep the house clean, and never complain or feel isolated or despair that your work is never finished.

- Keep the children well-behaved and quiet at all times.

- Have a hot, healthy, and homemade dinner on the table when he gets home from work (thats the 3 H’s for your easy memorization. You’re welcome.)

- Give him backrubs every night.

- Shower him with compliments about his manliness and general awesomeness.

- Wear makeup and fix your hair every single day.

- Keep your figure at a size 4, no matter how many kids you have.

- Have lots of kids.

- Be available for sex whenever he wants it, especially when you don’t feel like it.

- “Submit” during arguments by never voicing your true opinions. He’s the “head,” so you won’t get your way anyway. Remember, women are to stay silent.

- Be joyful about all of this at all times.

Did you laugh? Or did you resonate with a lot of these? Have you been advised that you need to do these things to be a good wife?

It sounds silly (maybe – or maybe there are others out there like me?), but I believed many of these had to be true if I was to be a good wife – up until last week. Do these things, you’ll be a good wife. Insert coin into slot, out comes your prize. Simple. Pre-marital counseling books recommend a lot of these. Christian marriage books teach these things. And of course these are good things for a wife to do (not all of them…some are unhealthy).

But they cannot make you a good Christian wife.

Look at the list again. What is inherently Christian about doing these things? Not a thing. Honestly, this is Basic Wife 101 for any good Muslim. That’s not okay. The way we live needs to be different from people who follow works-based religions!

I’m concerned about books like “Created to Be His Help-Meet” by Debi Pearl and “The Excellent Wife” by Martha Peace. They take a woman’s identity in Christ and shift it to her identity as a wife by saying that you cannot be in God’s will unless you are fully under the headship of your husband. Both of these books advise women to stay in abusive relationships to maintain the authority of the husband, not to confront a husband in his sin, and to consider a husband’s infidelity as the wife’s own fault for not being or giving enough. They make us feel guilty for having gifts and talents that perhaps don’t exalt and edify our husbands or children – when they may be perfectly honoring to Christ. And if you will only follow their rules, you can be a good wife.

Your husband is not your mediator. He is not your spiritual guru. Your husband is a sinful human being who is responsible for his own sins. Therefore, we cannot place our husbands at the center of our lives – a place reserved for Christ alone. We also need to remember that women are bearers of the image of God, too. Your individual giftings and passions are vital to the Body of Christ – they do not cease when you get married or have children.

Maybe you’re not reading books as awful as this, but are your Christian marriage books promising, “Do this, and you’ll be a good wife or have a good marriage”? Welcome to works-based life. It isn’t describing a Christian marriage, even if it’s a marriage between two Christians. Any Muslim could read Debi Pearl’s marriage (or parenting) advice and glean much from it on how to be a good wife (or mom). That should throw up a red flag for us!

A Gospel-Driven marriage doesn’t give you more rules so you can be a ”good wife.” The Gospel tells you, “You cannot be a good wife!” The wife who follows all of these rules will still have a resentful, jealous, rebellious heart, no matter how hard she wills herself to be “joyful.” Give me rules like this, and I’m going to push back. Or, I will try my hardest to comply, and daily live in guilt and self-hatred for failing to be this good wife - or be prideful on the days when I do well to uphold these rules.

We don’t need more rules. We need Christ.

Grace isn’t an added extra to the Bible, it is the very air we breathe as Christians! You cannot be the Proverbs 31 wife, no matter how much your actions may resemble hers. Didn’t this happen before? Didn’t we learn that the Law could not save us, only make us aware of God’s requirements for holiness and our sinfulness? That we need Christ to be our righteousness and make us good? What makes us think that we can just try hard to be good wives?

We don’t need more books to tell us who we should be or what we should do. We need Christ, who takes us as we are and uses marriage to transform us into Godly wives – over a lifetime. This is the difference between the wife of noble actions and the wife of noble character. The gulf between the two is vast.

The wife of noble actions is chained to the should’s and the rules of wifely behavior.

The wife of noble character is bound to Christ and free to fail, is given grace, transformed by the Holy Spirit, and eventually becomes a good wife by the grace of God.

We need fewer Christian wives who stick to the rules (and find pride or guilt in their ability to keep them), and more wives who:

- stay connected to the Holy Spirit through prayer and meditation, nourishing their own relationships with Christ

- read the Gospel and repeat it to themselves daily

- receive grace for not being a good wife, and give grace to their imperfect husbands

- stop seeking RULES and start seeking CHRIST.

These rules put our husbands in the center. They make our outward behavior towards our husbands as the standard by which we succeed or fail. And that’s anti-Gospel. It’s burdensome. We need to have Christ at the center – our service is to Him, before our husbands. When we submit first to Christ, we start becoming wives of noble character, from the inside out.

The Gospel makes us compassionate, which leads to backrubs and hot dinners for tired husbands.

The Gospel transforms us into servants who give, which leads us to do daily chores without resentment.

The Gospel changes our idleness to diligence, so that our houses might stand a chance against the onslaught of our children. (Maybe.)

This Gospel takes tired, confused, and overwhelmed wives into Christ’s arms and says, “It’s okay. The laundry isn’t done, the dishes are piled in the sink, you snapped at your husband…and I still love you. I’m making you into a better wife.”

And it should go without saying, but this same Gospel also transforms sinful and selfish husbands into the Christ-like men who give themselves for their wives as Christ gave himself for the Church. There is no room for domination in a loving relationship infused with the Gospel – which leads us to be people who give themselves and consider others as more important than themselves. The Gospel changes authoritarians into servant-leaders.

This radical grace transforms any Gospel-driven wife, no matter the outward circumstances. This grace is extended to stay-at-homers and working wives. It’s for both the naturally fiesty and the reserved. Introverts or extroverts. Moms or non-moms. Egalitarian, complementarian, or patriarchal. Christ doesn’t make any of these externals the requirement for righteousness or for being a good wife, because our actions don’t earn His grace! He is our source of goodness for all things. So we can stop judging wives who work, or moms who homeschool, or wives who don’t want kids, or wives who want twenty kids. Because, let’s be serious – we humans tend to judge those who do things differently from us.

What lies about being a good wife do you believe?

Have you read an anti-Gospel, “Christian” marriage book? How did it affect you?

How can we put ourselves before Christ to transform us into Gospel-driven wives?

Husbands, what lies have you believed about being a good husband? (Didn’t mean to marginalize the men here, but a lot of damage has been done in the misunderstandings of “submission” – please share with us your point of view!)