What God Joined Together - Family Radio

She desires his salvation because she knows that it would mean her trauma
of being married to a difficult tyrant of a husband would come to an end. She
knows that if saved, her husband would desire the best for her and show his love
to her because a believing husband wants to obey God’s command to love his
wife as Christ loves the eternal church.
Thus, there is much at stake as she prays for the salvation of her husband.
She knows that salvation comes by the Word of God and that she is
commanded by God to be a witness. She seeks every possible occasion to
share the Gospel with her husband. Certainly, she reasons, her activity is in
accord with the will of God.
WITHOUT A WORD
God says, “No!” If her husband is to be saved, he is to be won without the
Word. Why would God teach this apparently impossible program Does God
have one means by which He saves normal unbelievers and another program
whereby He saves husbands That cannot be true. Then why this curious
admonition that the wife is to be silent
We can begin to understand when we see the special condition that prevails
in the husband-wife relationship. When we bring the Gospel to others,
normally they know little about our personal lives. Therefore, all that the
unbeliever usually sees is the Gospel itself.
If a minister preaches from the pulpit, “Thus saith the Lord,” while it is a
well-known fact that he is living in sin, his preaching will have little power.
Those who hear him speak look upon him as a hypocrite. In such a case the
elders ought to deal with the pastor, and even seek to remove him from his role
of pastor, if necessary.
Likewise, if we know someone who seems to be an ardent witness of the
Gospel, and yet does not live the Gospel, we will not take him seriously. He,
too, will be looked upon as a hypocrite.
An unsaved person may know something about the life of the one
witnessing to him, but not everything.
But a husband knows more than anyone else about his wife’s thinking and
actions. He has lived, and may still be living with her, in the most intimate
relationship. He is with her when she goes to bed and all through the night. He
is with her in the morning before she has had her first cup of coffee. He is with
her when she is tense, tired, depressed, or angry.
Because of the intimacy of marriage, he knows by the way she walks, by
the way she looks at him, by the way she greets him when he comes home from
work, by the way she puts food on the table, and by countless other
mannerisms, whether she is thinking lovingly or resentfully towards him.
Therefore, even though she claims to be such a fine Christian, fellowshippping
with other Christians and insisting that her husband repent from his sins and
trust Christ as Savior, her husband knows that often she lives quite differently
from the way she preaches to him. He may be convinced that whatever
Christianity his wife has, he does not want it. He senses hypocrisy in his wife.
36 What God hath joined together...