A Wife’s Responsibility In Solving Marital Conflict

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.

–1 Peter 3:1

What is a wife’s responsibility in solving marital conflict? It’s an interesting question when we consider marriage as a model of Christ and the church—the husband representing Christ, the wife representing the church. We don’t want to extend the analogy too far, but it’s plain in Scripture, so we should explore it and try to learn from it.

Christ is sovereign, and he takes initiatives. A key initiative is that he puts it in the heart of his church to do things, especially to pray. So I’m part of the bride. I see a problem in the relationship between me and Christ. What should I do? Blame him? I should go to him, talk to him, ask him for help.

Now a wife is under the Lord Jesus directly for herself, not just through her husband. So she probably sees things her husband doesn’t, and has unique sensitivities about what’s causing problems in the marriage. So she should say to God first, “O God, heal this marriage. Please work on this marriage.” And then she should ask, “Please, give me wisdom how I can help my husband see what I see.” There’s a way to be a submissive wife and at the same time be way ahead of your husband spiritually, or in a given situation to be much more perceptive than he is.

On the husband’s side, leadership in a marriage obviously doesn’t imply perfection or infallibility, or that in every situation he knows what’s best. But generally he’s taking the initiatives. This means, among other things, that he’s going to care a lot about making his wife full in her experience of Christ, including her responsibility to point out to him things in his humanity (not his Christ-likeness) that he’s not seeing.

So, yes, we husbands need to hear from our wives about things we’re blind to. But she doesn’t want to take over at that point. She wants to say, “Here’s the way I see it. I think we need to do this or this or this.” And then his job as the leader—and this is the hardest job as the leader—is to humble himself to act on that instead of saying, “Okay, if you don’t like the way I do it, go ahead.” The hardest thing in the world can be to receive from your wife news that you don’t want to receive, and then to rise above the self-pity, the anger, and the frustration of that moment.

So I would say a wife’s role is to see all that God enables her to see and then ask him for wise and humble and submissive ways to share, to bring into her husband’s life her perspective on things. And it’s the husband’s job as a leader to be humbly receptive to those kinds of things and then to take action.

TALK ABOUT IT

Does today’s reading bring to mind any recent scenarios in your marriage?

Were you able to observe, speak, hear, or act with grace about a point of tension between you?

How do you want to handle potential conflict in the future to love and honor your spouse?