Keep Up with Your Marriage Responsibilities

Responsibilities of the Husband

¹⁹ Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. COLOSSIANS 3 

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as the Messiah loved the Church and gave Himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, ²⁷ and to present her to Himself as a radiant Church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as the Messiah does the Church— ³⁰ for we are members of His Body. EPHESIANS 5

⁷ Be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life; so that nothing will hinder your prayers. 1 PETER 3

²⁶ If you have a good wife, do not divorce her. SIRACH 7

¹⁵ So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. MALACHI 2

Responsibilities of the Wife

¹⁸ Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. COLOSSIANS 3

²² Submit to your husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife [he has authority over her just] as the Messiah is the head of the Church, His Body, of which He is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the Church submits to the Messiah, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. EPHESIANS 5 

¹¹ A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. ¹² I do not permit a woman to… have authority over a man; she must be silent. 1 TIMOTHY 2

The husband has authority over his wife (Ephesians 5:13). She ought to submit to him even if his faith is faulty or lacking. 

¹ Be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the Word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, ² when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. ³ Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. ⁴ Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. ⁵ For this is the way the holy women of the past used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, ⁶ like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. 1 PETER 3

Just as the husband ought to secure God’s consent before doing anything, so the wife ought to secure her husband’s consent before doing anything. If she does not, her husband “has the right to affirm or to annul any vow or promise that she has made” (Numbers 30:13).

³ I want you to realize that the head of every man is the Messiah, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of the Messiah is God. 1 CORINTHIANS 11