Long-time friend and pastor Larry McCall (Christ’s Covenant Church, Winona Lake, IN) loves to help Christians live out biblical commands and see them experience ever more deeply the transforming work promised to us in the gospel. In his Loving Your Wife as Christ Loves the Church he takes up the famous command of the apostle Paul to husbands found in Ephesians 5:25 and very practically explores what this kind of love looks like in the Christian home. Today he is here to talk to us about his book … and his subject.
Books At a Glance (Fred Zaspel):
First off, not to belabor the obvious, perhaps you can summarize for us what your book is about. Can you summarize your central thesis briefly?
McCall:
Loving Your Wife as Christ Loves the Church is an easy-to-read book for husbands that is Bible-based, Christ-centered, and grace-promoting. The starting point for the book is the Bible’s teaching in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” This is not a “grit your teeth and try harder” book. I have sought to show in specific ways how Christ is the perfect model for us husbands in knowing how to love our wives and how the gospel empowers that love. The book is meant to be full of hope and help.
Books At a Glance:
What contribution are you hoping to make with this book? And perhaps you can tell us how your interest and attention to “flesh out” this subject in such practical detail came about.
McCall:
As a longtime pastor I had the growing realization that most men were never mentored by their dads in the ministry of “husbanding.” Having the privilege of speaking at quite a few men’s conferences and retreats, I often begin by asking, “How many of you guys had dads who taught you how to love your wife?” The highest percentage of hands I’ve ever seen go up in response is about 20%. Normally, about 10% of the guys raise their hands. So, you can see that the great majority of men feel a lack of training in the amazingly important ministry of loving their wives. And, to complicate matters, we men tend to avoid areas of felt incompetency. We don’t want others to see our incompetence. So, lots of married men devote themselves to things they do feel more competent in – their hobbies, their jobs and yes, even their “ministries” in the church rather than devoting themselves to the scary responsibility of loving their wives. In the meantime, there are lot of married women who are hurting, craving their husband’s love and attention while their husbands are spending their time and attention on other things.
Seeing this, I felt compelled to write a book that men would read that is practical and gospel-fueled. A humbling realization along the way was that I needed this book! Though we had been married for 35 years by the time I was writing this book, I found that this book was, in a sense, for me. By God’s amazing grace, thousands of other men have read the book and found help as well.
Books At a Glance:
When you look at the state of marriage in the church today, are you encouraged … or not?
McCall:
I feel kind of torn in how to answer this question. When I look at the world around us, I’m profoundly grieved. Our society’s view and valuing of marriage is eroding at light-speed. But on the other hand, there has been a resurgence of the “functional centrality of the gospel” in many of our Reformed churches. I’m very encouraged by that. Many of the younger couples in our churches who are starting married life these days are doing so with a much better foundation than most of us who have been married for 20 or 30 or 40 years. More and more pastors are teaching a gospel-centrality to married life. Books such as The Meaning of Marriage, Love that Lasts, When Sinners Say ‘I Do,’ This Momentary Marriage and, I hope, Loving Your Wife as Christ Loves the Church are being read by people in the early days of their married life. These couples have the advantage of seeing how the gospel empowers them in their ministry of being a Christ-reflecting husband or wife. That is very encouraging.
Books At a Glance:
Knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time and pass on some wisdom to your younger self — just before your wedding day — what would you say?
McCall:
Insightful question. Thanks for asking. I think I would point my younger self to the hope I have in Christ rather than to a list of “rules” or “keys” to better husbanding. Christ is both the model and the motivation for husbands when it comes to loving our wives. As a soon-to-be groom, my understanding of how Christ was to impact and empower me as a husband was greatly deficient.
Books At a Glance:
Men are called to be leaders in the home, but they are also called to serve and sacrifice. It can seem like a fine line between having authority and being authoritarian. On the other hand, some husbands simply let their wives do whatever they want. Are there any keys to look for that can help husbands balance leadership with service?
McCall:
We husbands are called upon by the Lord to lead our wives. But it’s important to remember that our leadership is to reflect Christ’s. Jesus said, “whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:26-28). As husbands, we are called upon to reflect Christ in our marriages, looking for ways to serve our wives. That might include anything from sharing the workload around the home to taking time to listen to her heart issues to providing gracious direction for her spiritual growth.
Books At a Glance:
What would you say to a husband who says that he just can’t love his wife no matter how hard he tries?
McCall:
I often think back to the darkest days of our marriage when I struggled with this attitude personally. I was frustrated with what I was perceiving as my wife’s failures as a wife. And, guess what. She was simultaneously frustrated with what she saw as my failures as a husband. It was like we were stalemated, each of us feeling like we couldn’t fulfill our roles in the marriage until the other one changed. What broke the stalemate? The Holy Spirit began to convict me and encourage me with the gospel truth “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The Spirit began to increasingly draw my attention to the love I already was receiving from Christ. With a growing reliance on his love for me, my love for my wife began to grow once again. I thank God that he began to work similarly in my wife’s heart and over time, our marriage took on renewed joy and passion as each of us reveled in Christ’s love for us and that love then overflowed to one another.
Books At a Glance:
What would you say to pastors and church leaders with regard to their role in strengthening the marriages of people in the church?
McCall:
Great question.
- Obviously, as pastors and church leaders we should devote ourselves to praying for the marriages in our churches – not just the marriages that are on the rocks, but for all the marriages.
- Second, I would say that we married pastors should humbly model the kind of “husbanding” we would want to see in the lives of the other married men in the church. But, in saying that, I would emphasize that this doesn’t mean that we should try to present an image of marital perfection to the other married folks in the church. That’s not reality, and pretending to have the perfect marriage can be downright discouraging to couples in the church who know that their own marriages are far from perfect. Be honest about your own struggles as a husband when you interact with other men and when you preach and teach, confessing sin and showing reliance on the gospel for everyday living. In doing this, by the way, focus on your own struggles and don’t talk about your wife’s struggles without her explicit permission.
- Regularly offer classes on marriage or plan marriage retreats, providing clear hope and help on marriage that is Bible-based, Christ-centered and gospel-fueled.
- As pastors, require at least 3 to 6 hours of premarital counseling before you commit to doing a wedding. Look for ways to give engaged couples a solid foundation on the functional centrality of the gospel for married life. Equip them for the coming years with the gospel.
- When appropriate, make applications in sermons that can be readily linked to life as married people. Show how God’s Word makes a difference as a husband or a wife.
Books At a Glance:
Do you have any suggestions as to how your book might best be used in the context of the local church?
McCall:
Yes. Here are some things we’ve done at our church or that I’m aware that other churches have done with Loving Your Wife as Christ Loves the Church:
- Use the book as required reading for the soon-to-be groom when doing premarital counseling.
- Sometimes we use this book as required reading for the husband who is in marriage counseling at our church.
- Form “bands of brothers” of men who are willing to work through the book together. For churches that are inexperienced with men’s accountability groups, I provided an appendix in the book explaining how to set up these groups. By the way, every chapter in the book has discussion questions and action steps that make the book very easy to use in men’s groups.
- Plan a men’s retreat that focuses on the topic of Loving Your Wife as Christ Loves the Church. I speak at a number of retreats like this each year where the retreat planners build into the cost of the retreat a copy of the book for each attendee. That way, each man has the book and is encouraged to read and interact on it.
- And, make sure to stock Loving Your Wife as Christ Loves the Church on your church’s book table or book room!
Books At a Glance:
Have you thought of a sequel to this book? Perhaps a book that fleshes out how a wife should love her husband? Or what biblical “submission” looks like in a Christian marriage?
McCall:
I’m smiling because I’ve been asked that question a number of times. My wife, Gladine, has been asked if she would right a companion book for wives. I working on another book right now (an easy-to-read book on the Solas of the Reformation), but maybe Gladine and I could work together on a book for wives after that project. We’ll see how the Lord leads.
Editor’s Note: Check out our Summary and our Review of this book here at Books At a Glance.