God's Pattern for Wives, Part 2

How can you argue with, teach the young women, love their husbands, love their children, be workers at home, be subject to your own husband? That's not confusing.

That's what the Bible says. And where there is disobedience, there is a statement being made about the importance of Scripture. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Today, as John continues his most popular study, The Fulfilled Family, he's going to focus on the woman's role at home. And it's a much more challenging and important role than you may have ever read or been told. You'll also see how husbands should support their wives in that calling. Practical biblical truth ahead, so stay with us.

But John, before you continue this series on the family, talk about your experience counseling struggling marriages. What would you say is the number one cause of conflict within Christian marriages, and what's the way to restore unity? So the number one issue in marriage is sin, and it can show itself in a lot of ways.

The number one solution is to get rid of sin. And then the thing that's corollary to that is forgiveness. So look, we're going to sin.

We're sinful people. We're put together in these very intimate relationships for decades and decades and decades and decades, and offenses come. It is the ability to forgive. And when I say forgive, I don't mean in some sort of tertiary, superficial way. I mean deep down, I love you too much to hold this against you because Christ loved me too much to hold it against me. What sustains every relationship, and certainly marriage, is that sort of sweeping reality that forgiveness is yours always, always. Whether you ask or don't ask, you live within the grace of my forgiveness. Forgiveness can be abused, right? But our Lord said, how often should you forgive? How about 70 times seven or 70 times a day?

So get ready. If you're going to be a forgiver, you're going to have to be dispensing a lot of it. But it's the only way that you can sustain a meaningful relationship. And eventually, forgiveness breaks down people. Love has a way of crushing people's selfishness because you take them back in grace. So the answer to whatever's going on that's wrong in your marriage is to be forgiving. And I realize even if it comes to divorce, you've got to forgive the person who divorced you and leave them to the Lord for however he wants to deal with them and move on with a heart freed from any bitterness. Thanks, John.

That's something we can't be reminded of enough. Forgiveness and love are the foundations of a healthy marriage that honors God. And on that note, friend, stay here as John shows you more about building a God-honoring marriage.

The title of his study, The Fulfilled Family. You might want to open your Bible to Ephesians chapter 5 and we'll touch base again with our text. Ephesians chapter 5 verses 22 to 24. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. God here very clearly calls the wife to submit to her husband. That is God's design for her blessing, for His blessing, the blessing of their children, the blessing of the church. Now, how does that submission work out? What is the character or the nature of that submission?

What does it look like? The best answer to that is to turn in your Bible to Titus and look with me at chapter 2. Now here we come to some very specific instruction. It is given, first of all, in verse 3, to the older women. And the older women are given the responsibility, of course, to live godly lives, to be reverent in their behavior, not to gossip, not to be engaged in drinking wine, not to be a slave to it. But here's the primary thing that you want to focus on for our study, teaching what is good.

Because that is the transition because that is the transitional statement that takes you into verses 4 and 5. Teach or encourage or discipline the young women, number one, to love their husbands. That's one word, philandras, to be husband lovers. That's right, to be husband lovers. It says in Ephesians 5 25, husbands love your wives, and here it says basically, teach the young wives to love their husbands. There is mutual love as mutual submission.

Be husband lovers. This is a command, folks. This is a command, and a command demands obedience and assumes the possibility of obedience.

In other words, if God commands this, then He assumes that you can do this. Sometimes you'll hear a woman say, I don't love my husband, and I have a standard response to that. Well, confess that sin immediately. Fast and pray, and ask God to show you the path of righteousness wherein you can love your husband. That's a sin, not to love your husband.

You say, well, I used to love him, you know, when the rockets were going off and the bells and the whistles and all that, but now it's sort of routine with an occasional bell or whistle. Well, that isn't what makes a marriage. What makes a marriage is a commitment to love.

Not to love is a sin. This love is a mature, sacrificial, purifying, caring love. It's not the love of heated emotion.

Obviously, after you've been married a while, you're not running around like a maniac like you were when you first fell and couldn't talk, think, or control your life. It's the love of depth and commitment that sees past the flirtatious vision of the person to the depth of their character. It's a sacrificial love. It's a purifying love.

It's a commanded love. We're to teach young women to love their husbands. That's the responsibility of the older women.

That's the heart and soul of what enables a woman to submit. It's so much easier if you love your husband. Secondly, the older women are to encourage the young women to love their children, to be children lovers, philatechnos, philandros, husband lovers, philatechnos, children lovers. Be lovers of children.

Realize that your life is your husband, your life is your children. A mother's godliness and a mother's virtue has the most profound impact on the life of her children. The rearing of children to righteousness gives a mother dignity. Her great contribution, the great contribution of a woman comes in motherhood. Obviously, as I noted, God doesn't want all women to bear children, but all who do find their fulfillment there.

Thirdly, in Titus, they are to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, to think right. It's a sad thing when we think about the world in which we live today and how women don't think right. They can't think straight.

Priorities are all fouled up. They've lost the ability to make sound judgments. They've lost common sense, something very basic. Teach them to be sensible. Teach them common sense. Teach them practical wisdom, discretion, sound judgment. Boy, that's so important. You know, just having some woman who's gone through life come back and teach you common sense to get you through the issues of life, very helpful.

Very helpful. Number four, teach them to be pure. Hagnas means chaste, virtuous, sexually faithful to her husband in every way. First Peter 3, remember, says that women are to be preoccupied with who they are, not how they look, not how they appear. First Timothy 2, 9 and 10 says they are to be attired when they come together modestly and discreetly with godly fear and sobriety. And modesty carries with it a sense of shame, a healthy sense of shame, a healthy blush.

Women in our culture could stand a heavy dose of blushing. So many women today have no thought but that of inciting lust or distracting someone away from pure thought to that which is impure. Women are to be pure. They are to make sure that they appear in such a manner that calls attention to their virtue and their godliness and not to themselves. They are to be modest and discreet, demonstrating their godly fear. He says that they are to be, and this is very, very important, pure.

And that has the idea of without blemish. The word discreet in the New Testament, which is used in a number of places speaking of women, such as 1 Timothy 2, 9 and 10 and other places, comes from that same term, as I think about it, saffron, which means self-control. They are to demonstrate self-control over passion, holiness. And then number five, and now we get down to the nitty-gritty, they are to be workers at home. We've dealt with the attitudes of a woman, love toward husband, love toward children, wisdom and purity. Now we turn to the very important issue, the sphere of her responsibility, workers at home, oikourgos, literally a house worker. This is the sphere of a woman's life. It is her domain. It is her kingdom.

It is her realm. The word is derived from the word house and the word work, a house worker. It doesn't simply refer, by the way, to scrubbing floors and cleaning bathrooms and doing that. It simply connotes the idea that the home is the sphere of her labors, whatever they might be. It is not that a woman is to keep busy all the time at home.

It doesn't mean that she can never go out the door. It doesn't mean that she's always to be doing menial tasks. Well, what it does mean is that the home is the sphere of her divine assignment. She is to be the homekeeper, to take care of her husband, to provide for him and for the children all that they need as they live in that home. Materially, she is to take the resources the husband brings home and translate them into a comfortable and blessed life for her children. She is to take the spiritual things that she knows and learns and to pass them on to her children.

She is a keeper at home. God's standard is for the wife and mother to work inside the home and not outside, for a mother to get a job, for a job outside the home in order to send her children even to a Christian school is to misunderstand her husband's role as a provider as well as her own duty to the family. The good training her children receive in the Christian school may be counteracted by her lack of full commitment to the biblical standards for motherhood. In addition to having less time to work at home and teach and care for her children, a wife working outside the home often has a boss to whom she is responsible for pleasing in the way she dresses and a lot of other matters, complicating the headship of her husband. She is in the danger of becoming enamored by the business world or whatever world she's in and finding less and less satisfaction in her home responsibilities. Many studies have shown that most children who grow up in homes where the mother works are less secure than in those where mother is always at home.

I think that should be obvious. Her presence there, even when the child is in school, is an emotional anchor. Working mothers contribute so often to delinquency and a host of other problems that lead to the decline of the family. It's not that mothers who stay at home are automatically or categorically more spiritual. Many mothers who have never worked outside the home do very little in the home to strengthen their families.

Gossiping, watching ungodly and immoral soap operas and a host of other things can be as destructive as a working mother. But a woman's only opportunity to fulfill God's plan for her role as wife and mother is in the home. Now, when children are grown, there is an opportunity for some kind of endeavor outside the home.

Certainly, that option is viable. If it doesn't compromise her as a woman, it doesn't compromise the headship of her husband, it doesn't put her under undue temptation, it doesn't put her in an environment where she is going to be subject to the actions and the words of ungodly men. It may be that when the children are grown, she can work part-time, she can even work full-time in an environment which is salutary to her and which increases her godliness and strengthens her as a wife. But the home is still her domain, and even widows or women whose husbands have left them are not expected to leave their domain and children to work outside the home. Paul declared this in 1 Timothy 5, 8, if anyone doesn't provide for his own and especially for those of his household, he is denied the faith and is worse than another.

He is denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. And this means to provide not only for his family immediately, but his extended family. If there is, for example, a widow or a woman without a husband by divorce in your family, you should care for her before you force her out to care for herself. If a woman has no husband, no financial resources of her own, the rest of her family or even her children or her grandchildren are to take care of her.

They have that responsibility so that she can maintain her responsibility in the family. That's indicated in the first part of chapter 5 of 1 Timothy. But if she has no one, no male relatives, that 1 Timothy 5 passage says, if she has no male relatives to support her, there might be a female relative who could care for her, according to verse 16. If she has no female relatives, there is nobody to care for her, then the church is obligated to care for her. I'm giving you the standard of Scripture. There are a lot of cases that you could bring up, what about this, what about this, what about this. All I can tell you is what the Bible says.

You have to use your own wisdom. There may be a situation where a widow has to be employed because the care of her children is not provided by anybody. And frankly, most churches don't come to the aid of these kinds of people. There may be a situation where your children are in school and without any compromise to your children or your husband, you can do some part-time work. Many women have become very fruitful working out of their own homes and doing that, much like the Proverbs 31 woman.

But the standard is very clear in Scripture. The sphere of a woman's influence is to be found in the home. The obvious things, of course, are when mothers go to work when they still have children, young, even infants, babies, children who haven't even gone to school yet, living in their home, and they abandon them and turn them over to the care of someone else. Even churches sometimes foster that by starting daycare centers for children under school age. Many times, women work because they want to maintain a certain economic standard.

The sacrifice of children and family for that economic standard is a bad decision. You say, what about that woman who is very capable and competent and energized, who has an industrious attitude, who's a very gifted person? She can take care of her household responsibilities because we live in a day when there's so many great appliances and you're not out there on a rock beating your dirty clothes out. We have all of that, and she's got time on her hands.

Can't she develop some enterprise? Of course, that's what the Proverbs 31 woman did, of course. In New Testament times, as in Old Testament times, a woman in a home had to grind flour, bake everything from scratch, launder, cook, nurse, and care for children, make beds, spin, weave, keep house, care for guests, and in the same time and with a full energy and commitment, devote herself to express her love to her husband, to her children, and to God Himself.

A tremendous assignment. You say, why in the world does God want women to be so busy? At the risk of sounding trite, it keeps them out of sin. Proverbs 7-11 gives a startling picture of a harlot. It says this about a harlot, she is boisterous and rebellious, and her feet do not remain at home. She doesn't find her home sufficiently fulfilling. She needs something else. She needs something else that leads her into sin.

To most of our society, this is all absolutely ridiculous stuff. And we get so engulfed in this kind of thinking because of the society around us that it may even seem a little strange to us, but this is the Word of God. Godly women are to be content at home, to be content to love their children and love their husbands and serve their families and their homes and serve the Lord. One of the most wonderful things that the church has ever experienced is the ministry of women. All the tests and the studies and surveys indicate that about 60% of all church life is cared for by women. Evangelical churches are populated by women.

They say about 37% of evangelical churches are men. The church has always benefited by godly women who work in the home and when they have time, they minister on behalf of the church. And as women abandon the home for the world, they also abandon the church.

Now, let's follow along here in Titus. The older women teach the younger women to love their husbands, love their children, be sensible, pure workers at home, kind, obvious what that means, kind. They're again caring for strangers, loving those in need. And then this, being subject to their own husbands. Again, that is the same expression as in Ephesians 5 22, to their own husband, not somebody else's, not some other man.

To be subject to her own husband, why? So that the Word of God may not be dishonored. Literally blaspheme, oh, that it may not be blasphemed or slandered.

What is at stake here? What is at stake here is the honor of the Word of the Word of God. If we say we believe in the Word of God, and we say we want to preach to you the gospel of the Word of God, and that the Bible has the answers, and that Christ is the answer, and we stand on the revelation of Christ in the Word of God, but in our daily lives, we disobey the Word of God, why should anyone believe that it's as important as we claim it is? The honor of Scripture is at stake. Even an unbeliever can read these verses. And an unbeliever is more likely to see them at face value. How can you argue with, teach the young women, love their husbands, love their children, be workers at home, be subject to your own husbands?

That's not confusing. That's what the Bible says. And where there is disobedience, there is a statement being made about the importance of Scripture.

And that has devastating results. Now, the whole issue here is evangelistic. This is an evangelistic epistle. This whole epistle to Titus is designed to teach the church how to evangelize the lost.

It's all about that. In fact, in verse 3 of chapter 1, God our Savior, verse 4, Christ Jesus our Savior, chapter 2, verse 10, God our Savior, verse 13, our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, chapter 3, verse 4, God our Savior, verse 6, Jesus Christ our Savior. Every mention of God is our Savior.

Every mention of Christ is our Savior after the opening salutation. It's about the saving work of God. And how does the saving work of God go on?

It goes on by means of the testimony of godly people. Older men, in verse 2, living a certain way. Older women, in verse 3, living a certain way. Younger women, in verses 4 and 5, living the way God has designed. Young men, verses 6 and 7 and 8, living the way God has designed. Verse 9, servants living the way God has designed.

Masters living the way God has designed. And as the church lives according to God's design in Scripture, what happens? The gospel goes forth. Verse 11, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. This lays the foundation for the gospel, how we live in the church. The Word of God is at stake. The gospel is at stake. But down in verse 14, we have been redeemed from every lawless deed, and the Lord is purifying for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

Why? So that the Scriptures will be believed, so that the gospel will be accepted. Back in verse 8, he says we're to live this way to silence the critics. We are, in verse 10, to live this way to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect. Our testimony is at stake. If we are going to reach this world, if we're going to evangelize this world, these are the principles. And the role of the woman is crucial in this regard. You have to take these principles and apply them in your own situation prayerfully and carefully.

But the principles and the commands are straight, forward, and clear. If it means changing your lifestyle, change it to obey the Word of God. As a woman, your priority is to God, and that means you obey Him. And then your priority is to your husband, and that means you love Him and you submit to Him. Your priority is to your children. You teach them, you instruct them, you raise them in godliness and express your love to them. Then your sphere is your home, which is your haven, a place of hospitality. And then your ministry in the life of the church. Anything apart from those priorities brings dishonor on God's Word.

It's that simple. And if we're going to have an impact in the world, that's the way we need to live. The Fulfilled Family Free of charge at gty.org available. You can send a letter to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412.

Or send an email to letters at gty.org. And be sure to mention the radio station you hear us on anytime you get in touch. That's more important to us than you may realize. And now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Be back tomorrow as John shows you God's instruction for husbands on building a godly home. That's on the next installment of John's Study, The Fulfilled Family. Join us then for another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.