
As I’m sure you’ve heard before, Ephesians 5:33 states, “However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

After decades of studying the Scriptures on relationships, I’m convinced that the roles for husbands and wives are really a matter of emphasis rather than absolutes.
In other words, there are very few things that a wife must never do while a husband must always do, or that a husband must never do and a wife must always do. And yet, to deny that there are God-ordained differences between the roles of a husband and wife would be a huge, unbiblical mistake.

In my previous article called This Truth Will Bring Peace to Your Marriage, we discussed that for a husband and wife to be able to enjoy each other, they must first be able to say to God, “You are my Lord. I have no good without you,” (Psalm 16:2). Only when our God-needs are met are we then free to have our people-needs met.

In most cases, a man doesn’t end up in a terrible marriage by accident. Yes, in some instances, a man did all he could but was simply tricked by a particularly manipulative woman. However, more often than not, a man who claims he was tricked by a woman was really tricked by himself. Proverbs 19:3, “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord.”