The Special Duties of Husbands to their Wives

Fulfill your duties to your wife in order to avoid the following unhappy results:

• Failure of your wife to fulfill her duties towards you
• Such will cause you much affliction
• She will be bitter towards you in the end

Summary of your Duties as Christian Husbands:

• You are responsible to undertake the government of your family including your wife. This ability consists:
• In holiness and spiritual wisdom. An ungodly, irreligious man is both a stranger and an enemy to the most important part of family-government.
• In due acquaintance with the works of your calling. He that is utterly unacquainted with the members of his family, will be very unfit to govern them.
• He must be acquainted both with the common temper and infirmities of mankind, that he may know how much is to be borne with, and also with the particular temper, and faults, and virtues of those whom he is to govern.
• And he must have prudence to give them direction in accomplishing their tasks; and justice to deal with every one as they deserve; and love to do them all the good he can, for soul and body.
• He must make it his daily work, and especially be sure that he governs himself well, that his example may be part of his government of others.
• The husband must unite authority and love. Love must not be exercised so imprudently as to destroy the exercise of authority: and authority must not be exercised over a wife so magisterially and imperiously, as to destroy the exercise of love. As your love must be a governing love, so your commands must all be loving commands. Lose not your authority; for that will but disable you from doing the office of a husband to your wife.
• To preserve the authority of their wives over the children. This must be done with such cautions as these:
• Justify not any error, vice or weakness of your wives. They may be concealed and excused as far as may be, but never owned or defended.
• Urge not obedience to any unlawful command of theirs. No one hath authority to contradict the law of God, or disoblige any from his government. You will but diminish your own authority with persons of any understanding, if you justify any thing that is against God's authority. But if the thing commanded be lawful, though it may have some inconveniences, you must rebuke the disobedient. How can they help you in government, if you suffer them to be disobeyed?
• You must preserve the honor of your wives. If they have any dishonorable infirmities, they are not to be mentioned by children or servants. As in the natural body we cover most carefully the most dishonorable parts (for our comely parts have no need), so must it be here. Children or servants must not be suffered to carry themselves contemptuously or rudely towards them, nor to despise them, or speak unmannerly, proud or disdainful words to them. The husband must vindicate them from all such injury and contempt.
• The husband is to excel the wife in knowledge, and be her teacher in the matters that belong to her salvation. He must instruct her in the Word of God, and direct her in particular duties, and help her to subdue her own corruptions, and labor to confirm her against temptations. Those husbands that despise the Word of God, and live in willful ignorance, do not only despise their own souls, but their families also; and making themselves unable for their duties.
• The husband must be the principal teacher of the family. He must instruct them, and examine them, and rule them about the matters of God, as well as his own service, and see that the Lord's day and worship be observed by all that are within his gates. And if he be unable or negligent, it is his sin, and will be his shame.
• The husband is to be the mouth of the family, in their daily conjunct prayers unto God. Therefore, he must be able to pray, and also have a praying heart. He must be as it were the priest of the household; and therefore, should be the most holy, that he may be fit to stand between them and God.
• The husband is to be the chief provider for the family. He must be especially careful that wife and children want nothing that is fit for them, so far as he can procure it.
• The husband must be strongest in family-patience; bearing with the weakness and passions of the wife: not so as to make light of any sin against God, but so as not to make a great matter of any frailty as against himself, and so as to preserve the love and peace.
• The manner of all the following duties must also be carefully regarded:
• That all be done in conjugal love, and tenderness, as over one that is tender, and the weaker vessel; and that he does not teach, or command, or reprove a wife, in the same imperious manner as a child or servant.
• That due familiarity be maintained, and that he keeps not at a distance and strangeness from his wife.
• That love be confident, without base suspicions, and causeless jealousies.
• That there be no unjust and causeless concealment of secrets, which should be common to them both.
• That there be no foolish opening of such secrets to her as may become her snare, and she is not able to bear or keep.
• That none of their own matters, which should be kept secret, be made known to others. His teaching and reproving her should be for the most part secret.
• That he be constant, and not weary of his love or duty.

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Note: This material from Christian Economics by Richard Baxter (pp. 141-145) has been edited and simplified.