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Transcript 200D — Living With an Unsaved Husband
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: If a husband doesn't want his wife to have anything to do with the Lord, and not read the Bible, should she be obedient to him? And the second question is, if he wants her to do worldly things, like going to bars and drinking, should she be obedient to him? I'll take the answer over the air.
HC: All right. Thank you for sharing those questions. Good night
The question that is raised is a very practical question that arises when you have a mixed marriage, where the husband, let's say, is not born again and the wife is born again. And now the husband lays down rules. And he says, "Don't you ever read the Bible again. Don't you ever pray again. Don't you ever go to church again." What is the wife to do?
Well now, the Bible teaches that a wife is to be submissive to her husband. But the Bible also teaches that we are to obey God rather than men. In other words, when we are commanded to do something that is contrary to the will of God, by someone who ordinarily can command us, then we are to disobey that one who commands us, because we must obey the higher authority.
Of course this is somewhat of a hypothetical question because there's hardly a wife, at least in our land, who is not able to own a Bible or have a Bible somewhere in the home. It doesn't have to be out on the table where attention is called to it. It doesn't have to be in any place where it looks like it is frequently read. It can be hidden back in a closet someplace.
More than that, there is hardly any family where the husband is always with the wife. And so there are times when the wife is alone, of course. And then there is time to read the Word. There is time to turn the dial, for example, to listen to a Gospel radio station like Family Radio. Certainly anyone who is a born again believer can pray. You can pray in your heart, without ever giving any outward manifestations of praying.
So really it would be very difficult to think of a situation where this was absolutely a rule that there would be no way of not following. Now if you lived in a situation where you could not do it, or let's say that you did read your Bible, and now your husband comes home to you at the end of the day, and he says, "Did you read your Bible today?" And you have to answer him honestly, "Yes, I did, for a little while this afternoon." And so you take your beating, whatever it may be.
Oh yes, you take your beating. People all through history have been persecuted for righteousness' sake. If you lived in a country where an ideology was offered that was contrary to the Word of God, and you had to deny Christ, you're not going to deny Christ. You're going to stand for Him. But you're also going to take your beating. You might end up in a concentration camp, or you might end up losing your head. These things are all likely possibilities. But we must obey God rather than man.
Now the same thing has to do with the committing of sin, the going to places where sin is in vogue. It's a little more difficult, of course, in this case. A person actually could go into a bar and not sin. They could be present there and not take part in the activities. You wouldn't be a very happy companion for your husband, but you actually could be there. And I'm not sure that that would be absolutely wrong, in a certain situation, as long as you did not take part in the sin.
Now if he asked you to commit adultery with someone, or if he asked you to drink alcohol, and you felt it was a sin to drink alcohol, then of course you'd have to disobey. And again, you'd have to take your punishment.
Having said all this, of course, you must realize, and I want to underscore this again, because I think this is very very important, if we happen to be the individual in the home who is born again, there are some very basic rules that we've got to follow.
Number one, we must not be "holier than thou." We must not flaunt our relationship with Christ in some kind of a superior, prideful fashion. We must walk very humbly. It's only by God's grace that we are saved. We don't deserve this salvation. We ought to be just absolutely thankful and helpful to everybody else because we have been looked upon with favor by God, and these others have not. And in our compassion, and in our pity for the others of our family, we're going to go the second mile every time, to show our love to them, and to help them.
More than that, as a wife, and as any member of the family, we're going to always think good thoughts about the rest of the members of our family. This means, effectively, that we're going to be the easiest one in the family to get along with. We're going to be the one that will bring the least irritation. We're going to be the salting salt, the preserver in the family. We're going to be the one that's always pouring oil on the troubled waters, because we are going to encourage that there is forgiveness, and we're going to encourage that there might be patience. And we're going to show this especially in our life.
And as a consequence of this, if a wife is showing this love and this surrender to her husband, it's going to be increasingly difficult, unless he absolutely is obsessed or possessed, or out of his mind, or deranged in some way, it's going to be increasingly difficult for him to be nasty to his wife. He won't believe how he could have come to live with such a wonderful woman. He never realized what a great and wonderful wife she really is. Look how she's always thinking about his comfort, and has such a concern for him, and is ready to go the second mile for him all the time. It's her privilege to do this.
Now she's not a doormat to be stepped on. She's doing this out of the joy of her heart. She's doing this because she realizes that she has everything on her side. Christ is her Savior. She is of royal blood. She's got it made, in the good sense. And now she hopes that, as she is the fragrance of the Lord Jesus Christ, through this opportunity might be given to show what it really means to be a Christian.
As a matter of fact, in a home, if you are the only born again one there, the rest of the family is going to see Christ no closer than they will see Him in you as the born again member. And if they can't see Christ in me, if I'm the only born again member, then they're not going to see Christ. And therefore I'm going to patiently study the Bible and pattern my life more and more after the patience and the wisdom that I find in the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, the whole Bible is the Word of God, and it is the guide book that I'm going to follow.
And so I think that when we would begin to do this, we're going to find that this ugly situation – "Don't ever let me catch you reading the Bible" – is going to diminish. It's going to get into the area of strictly hypothetical and not have any truth in fact.