How do I respect my husband when he is not worthy of respect?
If it is an abusive situation, seek help right away. If abuse is not the issue, continuing to encourage and build him up will help set expectations and increase his desire to achieve the status you’re giving him.
This being said, the respect verse of marriage is Ephesians 5:33, which says, “I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
In other verses this love from the husband toward his wife is described even further as, loving his wife “as Christ loves the church…” This is agape love in the Greek. The Greeks didn’t even have a word for this level of love—an unconditional love—until Jesus came and started talking about it and living it. Additionally, it’s an impossible love to consistently show without the Holy Spirit living in one’s heart.
So, granted, it will be more challenging for a believing woman to respect and honor a husband who is not a believer. She will obviously want to live for God while he may not even believe in Him. So what can she do?
I Peter 3:1 gives the answer. “Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own 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,”
What “words” are Peter referring to here?
He’s actually talking about the words and attitude that come from a quiet and submissive heart. This is difficult, and it doesn’t help that culture tells us this is outdated and borderline abusive. So we need to decide who we really believe knows better—God or man. Then, hopefully we will go to the Lord for help.
Since this is so foreign to a lot of us, let me give you a resource that will not only help men love their wives the way they are supposed to but also women to understand the biblical respect that God talks about for them.
The book is called, “Love and Respect.” The author is Emerson Eggerich. You can get it at Barnes and Noble or order it on Amazon HERE.