Principles of a Godly Wife
This article was first an unrecorded sermon. By demand, I have written it out with help of a transcription AI tool.
This is for Christian women who are married (or want to be), and who want to be godly wives. What follows are some fundamental principles for how you can be just that.
I have arranged them simply. First come three Cs, which describe what a godly wife is: she is a Christian, she is a companion, and she is in covenant. Then come three Hs, which describe how that works out in daily life: she helps her husband, she honours him, and she heartens him. For each point, there is a Bible verse.
1. A godly wife must be a Christian
To be a godly wife, you must first be godly. That means you must be in Christ, and Christ must be in you. You must not only be a Christian, you must be living like a Christian!
So, before anything else, I want to speak to your intentions and motivations. Your first priority must be your own godliness. To be a godly wife you must put holiness first.
Proverbs 31 tells us that the chief virtue of the excellent wife is that she fears the Lord. She is motivated, above everything else, to please God, to obey him.
Why this matters so much
Marriage is an absolute blessing. But that does not mean it is not demanding. It demands all that you are. It places a claim on every part of you: your body, your emotions, your mind, your time, and your spirit.
Marriage exposes what is already inside you. It brings your selfishness to the surface. It reveals your impatience, your laziness and your self-centredness. Marriage does not create those things in you, but it can exacerbate them. So if you are not a woman who is walking with God and repenting of your sin, you will really struggle in marriage.
Being a good Christian wife requires the strength of the Spirit and real holiness. Your husband needs a woman who is putting to death the deeds of the flesh. He needs a woman who is cultivating the fruit of the Spirit, keeping in step with the Spirit and living in vital communion with Jesus.
Think about the alternative. No husband wants a wife who is out of step with the Spirit, whose flesh is winning out against her soul, who is unforgiving, bitter, unsacrificial, prayerless and selfish. More importantly, Jesus does not want you to be that wife!
So find and prioritise your faith in Christ, your life with Christ and your heart for Christ. Put everything else underneath Jesus. To be a godly wife, you must be a godly Christian.
2 and 3. A Covenant Companion
The second and third Cs belong together: to be a godly wife, you must recognise that you are a companion, and that you are one by covenant. Malachi 2:14 describes a wife as her husband's "companion and your wife by covenant."
Companion
A companion is someone joined to another, united with them in a common purpose. From this, we derive our word company. In marriage this companionship is whole and entire. It means giving yourself fully over to another person. That is why Scripture speaks of the two becoming one flesh, and why what God has joined together is now one rather than two. God knits your souls together, and companionship defines what it is to be a wife.
Covenant
That companionship lives inside a covenant. On your wedding day you made oaths and vows to give all of yourself to one another. The giving is total, and it runs in both directions.
There is a symmetry in this covenant, and asymmetry. You have symmetrical obligations, but you make asymmetrical contributions.
Symmetrical obligations: You both make the same promises. Your bodies and your lives belong to each other. Your hearts belong to each other. You promise to stay together in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse. Faithful till death.
Asymmetrical contributions: Yet in the actual carrying out of those promises there is often disparity day to day.
Sometimes one of you is sick, and the other does the caring.
Sometimes one of you contributes nothing financially, while the other wins the bread.
Sometimes one of you grows cold-hearted and distant, and the other fights to keep the marriage alive.
Go into marriage promising symmetrical obligations and prepared for asymmetrical contributions.
When your husband falls short
Whatever else we say about being a godly wife, remember that you are a covenant companion, and that everything which follows still applies when your husband is not holding up his side. Some of you reading this have a husband who is not a Christian, or who is far from ideal, or who may even be living in sin. What I say here still applies to you.
The reason is simple. You are a covenant companion to your husband before God. He witnessed your union. He joined you together. Marriage is his design, he rules over it. And he holds you to your obligations, regardless of your husband's present contributions.
(Grounds for divorce really do exist, and the need for law enforcement or elders can become real. The above refers to unideal and sinful behaviour, not criminal or covenant-breaking).
3 C's of Application
Those are the three Cs of what a godly wife is. Now for the three Hs of application:
1. Help him
The first is this: seek to be a helper.
"Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (Genesis 2:18).
In the Bible, a helper is one who comes alongside and gives vital support, without which there would be catastrophe. Most of the times this word appears in Scripture, it describes God himself coming alongside his people. He comes in to rescue them and to save them. That is the word used of Eve: she was made a helper, perfectly fit to provide aid to Adam.
Do you make your husband's life easier?
If I boil it all the way down, my question to you is very simple. Do you make your husband's life easier?
That is a very good aim for a wife: I want to make my husband's life easier.
You could expand and qualify it. You might say that you should make it easier for him to fulfil his God-given mission, or easier for him to glorify God. All of that is true. But I want to keep it simple, perhaps even bluntly so. Ladies, if you are married, part of God's calling on you is to make your husband's life easier.
A man embraces a cost when he marries. He willingly absorbs a sacrifice for the sake of the blessing, and marriage remains a great gain and a mutual giving for both of you. Now, he has agreed to look after you, to provide for you and to protect you, as well as the children. So ask yourself honestly:
Am I worth that sacrifice?
Am I bringing him a return?
Am I an overall blessing to his life, a positive force for help and sweetness?
As Ecclesiastes says, am I making it so that two are better than one?
He is up the ladder fixing a gutter, and you bring him a sandwich. He is home from work, and he finds dinner cooking, so that he can spend needed time with the children. He needs to tend to something and can't be at home, and you do not pout or make him feel guilty. He is practicing his presentation for work, and you offer your useful insight. He is worn down by stresses, but he doesn't have to worry about sexual frustration because you are regularly intimate. Have the feminists infiltrated us so much that these are seen as oppressive and regressive? I trust not.
God's answer to his prayers
Psalm 121 shows us a man in need turning to God: "I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." It is right for your husband to pray like that. God is the source of his help.
Yet, ladies, you are very often God's answer to that prayer. When your husband calls to God for help, you are the helper God has most consistently and constantly placed in his life. That ought to be your relationship to him. He ought to be able to say, "My wife is God's gift to help me in my need." Strive to be that answer to prayer for him.
I could give a thousand particular applications, and you may have questions about exactly what this looks like in your home. But if your heart is in the right place and you truly desire to be a help to your husband, the Lord will be your guide. That is ninety-five per cent of the principle.
2. Honour him
The second H is honour. Ephesians 5:33 tells wives to respect their husbands, and that is what I mean by honour. Romans 12:10 calls all of us to outdo one another in showing honour, and there is no more fitting place to do that than in marriage.
Husband and wife honour each other in different ways. A husband honours his wife through headship, protection, provision and affection. A wife honours her husband through submission. Submission has become one of the great evil words of our age, but it is a biblical command from God.
This command is addressed to a wife concerning her own husband. Some people confuse commands given to wives with commands given to women in general. Scripture does not call women to submit to men generally, or to honour and defer to every man. A wife submits to her husband because she is covenantally bound to him by God. She is his body, and he is her head. Christian men are brothers to you, not heads.
So honour your husband, ladies. Put intentional effort into working out what that looks like in your marriage. It will pay dividends.
"Surely this doesn't apply to me"
Perhaps you are thinking again, that this could not possibly apply to you. Not your husband, not your situation, not your dynamic. He is in a season that is far from honourable, or he has been dishonourable in the past.
I say this gently: thinking that way is doubting God and his wisdom. When he wrote, "Let the wife see that she respects her husband," and "Wives, submit to your own husbands," he wrote it with full knowledge of the kinds of men who would be husbands. He took your situation into account, and he said it anyway. He wrote it with difficult husbands in mind, because every husband is difficult at times!
This is why we must return to the first C. Only as a Christian, a God-fearing wife, will you have the obedience to keep honouring a man you feel is falling short. Perhaps honouring your husband is hard right now. In other marriages, it comes easily, because his character and actions command respect. Wherever you sit on that spectrum, you need to cultivate honour towards him.
Honour means priority
In a very practical sense, to honour your husband is to prioritise him. He should feel that he is the priority in your life. First there is God, then there is your husband. That means you prioritise him above:
Your work. He comes before your boss's desires, goals and vision.
Your home. Some of you fret more about the state of the house than the state of your relationship with your husband. Ask him if he feels that way.
Your friends. Godly women around you are a gift from God and worth cultivating, but time with friends should not be prioritised over time with your husband.
You prioritise him above all things other than Jesus.
3. Hearten him
The third H is hearten. Make your husband rejoice; encourage him. Proverbs 12:4 says that "an excellent wife is the crown of her husband." When you hearten and encourage your husband, it is like setting a crown on his head. Every guy likes that imagery.
To encourage is to fill someone with joy and with courage, to instil confidence in them. That is what you should aim to do for your husband, and I want you to be proactive about it.
The sinful critic
Many women drift into being critics of their husbands. Every shortfall is complained about. He is compared with better men. There is constant nagging. Many wives become sinful critics, and they make their husbands dread coming home.
When I speak to husbands, I tell them that they must never make their families dread them coming home. A husband should be a force for joy, order and love in the home, and his wife and children should look forward to his return. He should not bring home a rageful, grumpy storm. I tell you wives a similar thing. Do all that you can to make sure your husband does not dread coming home.
Proverbs speaks plainly about the effect of a quarrelsome wife. It is better, it says, to live on a corner of the housetop, or out in the wilderness, than in a comfortable house with a contentious wife (Proverbs 21:9, 19).
Practical ways to hearten him
Be very intentional here. Think of one practical thing you could do this week. For example:
Make his homecoming a celebration. Help your children cheer and welcome Dad when he walks in, so he feels wanted and heartened after a long day.
Hold an appreciation dinner. Pick an ordinary night with no birthday or holiday attached, and make a special dinner simply to celebrate your husband and his hard work.
Many men feel as though it is them against the world. Their boss dislikes them, their co-workers frustrate them, and the curse on creation afflicts their labour. You have the power to make him feel that he has a wife who is for him and a home that is for him, when everything else seems against him. A taste of paradise, in a world under the curse.
Encourage upwards
Be very sensitive to how often you criticise him, point out problems or bring him complaints. I would rather you encourage upwards: encourage him in the direction you want him to grow.
Where you might point out a weakness, name a virtue you are praying for him in:
"I'm praying for your patience today, darling. Is there anything specific I can bring to the Lord for you?"
Where you might complain, speak to the man you want to see:
"I know you're a man growing in self-control, and you want to be more like the man God made you to be. I think drinking less would really help you become that man."
Where you can see he is under strain, offer your help:
"I know the discussions with the bank are frustrating you. Is there anything I can do to help?"
"What can I do on my end, in the home, to make it easier for you to do what you said you would do?"
There are many ways to turn a request into something positive that he will be far more responsive to, and so avoid becoming constantly critical.
Grace for wives who fall short
So we have seen the three Cs of what a godly wife is: a Christian, a companion, and in covenant. And we have seen the three Hs of application: help your husband, honour your husband and hearten your husband.
I have tried to keep all of this simple, and even gentle. Even so, I know some of you will feel disheartened as you read it. You will compare yourself with God's picture of the godly wife and feel that you come up short.
It can be the best gift in the world for God to show you that you fall short of his standard. He shows you that you are less than you once thought you were, and that you cannot perfectly fulfil all your duties before the Lord. In other words, he shows you that you are a sinner, unworthy of God. Only when you see that can you acknowledge his grace.
No one will be in heaven because she was a perfect mother, a perfect wife or a perfect woman. You cannot tip the scales in your favour by being a very good wife. You need to trust the gospel. Whatever sin lies in your past or present, Christ can forgive you, Christ can wash you clean, and Christ can make you new. Because he died for sinners like you, and rose to life again.
Strength from the Spirit
Some of you truly are Christians. You know you are forgiven in Christ, yet you still feel discouraged by these commands, simple as I have tried to make them. That may be because you are out of step with the Spirit, not strengthened by him and not leaning on his power.
Here is a great promise Jesus makes to us: we are strengthened by the Holy Spirit for every trial God sends, every responsibility he grants and every blessing he gives. God's Spirit is given to help us keep his commands, and to bring us to repentance when we fail.
So go in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Be your husband's helper. Honour him. Hearten him.