Page 42 - Family Life Student Textbook

Study Section 8: The Husband is to Love his Wife

8.1 Connect
When you watch “family sitcoms” on TV, generally they have the husband and wife roles reversed.
He is an incompetent bumbling idiot and the wife is demanding and bossy. The kids talk back to
their parents with lines that are supposed to be funny. Our culture has it all wrong.

Since God created marriage, and the Bible is His instruction book, we need to understand what He
says to the husband regarding his role in marriage. There are many differing ideas in our cultures today
regarding the role of the husband. Too often, we learn an improper role of the husband from watching our
father relate to our mother. If we want to have a good marriage, we need to understand and follow God's
instructions regarding this important area. Let’s learn what they are…

8.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to describe from God's word the role of the husband in loving his wife
and how he is to fulfill that role so that our marriage can be the success that we want, and that God
intends.

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8.3 Divinely Appointed Roles in Marriage

Although man and women are equal in value in God's eyes, their biblically defined roles in
marriage are different.

Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male
and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

God has designed the husband and wife to be interdependent.

1 Corinthians 11:11–12 “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is
man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of
woman. But everything comes from God.”

God has designed the husband and wife to carry out his design for marriage through dependence upon his
power.

John 15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will
bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

God has designed a divine order of responsibilities in marriage. First, we want to look at the God-given role
of the husband.

The husband is to love his wife.

4 Credit for much of the material in this lesson is given to Dr. Bruce Wilkinson’s biblical manhood series called “Leading
and Loving”
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