Today, women are so programmed to want their own position and to want recognition for what they do. They do not want to be known as Mrs. So-and-so, but to be known in their own right, for their own gifts and their own contribution.
But the excellent woman, the virtuous woman, the woman of noble character that we’re reading about in Proverbs 31, recognizes that it is really a compliment to be known as the wife of a man who has risen to a position of spiritual leadership. He’s a godly man, and that’s how he has this position. Her husband is honored. He’s esteemed, and this verse tells us he sits with the elders at the gates.
Now, that doesn’t mean a lot to us in our culture, but in the Jewish culture in those days, the city gate (placed at the entrance to the city) was a place where the legal and the judicial matters were handled.
That’s where business matters were transacted, and the civic leaders, the political leaders, the business leaders, the judges, would all sit at the gates, and people who had a need or needed their case tried or needed help with their business transaction, would come to the elders. They would get counsel, advice, they would get wisdom, and they would get matters settled.
So this woman’s husband is apparently one of the elders of the town. He’s influential; he’s a leader; he has a position of influence; he’s a judge. This woman’s noble character adds to the respect and the esteem that other people have for her husband.
Because he has a successful home life; because he has a wife who is worthy of praise, and because he has children who follow in her influence and are following God as she does, this man is esteemed. He’s respected, and she has helped contribute to that.
You see, a man’s reputation in the workplace begins at home. You see, your character adds to or detracts from your husband’s reputation and what other people think of him. This woman is a support to her husband. She enhances his reputation and his standing.
Either you’re enhancing your husband’s reputation at church and in the workplace and in the society, or you’re pulling it down. She’s competent, as we have already seen in this passage, in her own right. She’s a very capable woman. She’s a hard-working woman, and there is a lot that we see to praise this woman for, but one of the things that we appreciate about her is her humble spirit.
She’s willing to stand in the background at times and to let her husband be the one who is esteemed out in the marketplace. Here is a woman who does not aspire for recognition herself. She is content to serve in the home and to have her husband be the one who is known in the marketplace.
Now, let me say that not only can you enhance your husband’s reputation, but according to the New Testament, you can actually disqualify your husband from ever having a position of spiritual leadership in the church. Did you know that? First Timothy 3 tells us about the qualifications that men have to have if they are to serve as elders or as deacons in leadership and in authority in the life of the local church (see verses 8-10).
But it also goes on to tell us what kind of qualifications their wives must have. Their wives must be reverent. Their wives must fear the Lord. They must not be slanderers or malicious gossips. They have to have their tongues under control (Verses 11-12). Do you realize that if you don’t have those qualities of a woman of virtue, that you can actually disqualify your husband from having a position of spiritual authority and leadership in the church?
Proverbs chapter 12 tells us that a gracious woman is a crown to her husband, and that’s what this woman is (verse 4). She’s a crown to her husband so that when he’s out at the city gates, when he’s working, when he’s influencing, people say of him, “He’s a good man. He’s got a great wife.” She’s a crown to her husband. She respects him. She builds him up. She’s not promoting herself, but she’s functioning in a way that honors his leadership.
I remember hearing one woman say, “When we get to Heaven, if I can hear God say to my husband, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ then I will know that I have been a success, because I will have fulfilled my role of being a helper to my husband.” I love that way of thinking!
Here’s a woman who’s creating a climate at home that encourages her husband to thrive and that makes it possible for him to be successful in his work because he has no worries at home. Remember what we read earlier in Proverbs 31? “The heart of her husband safely trusts in her” (verse 11). He knows that things are okay at home, and as a result, he can be successful in his workplace.
Here’s a woman who, I believe, is taking the role of praising and encouraging her husband in the fulfillment of his dreams and his calling. My mom was such an incredible example of this: what it meant to be a virtuous or a noble woman. She worked with my dad in believing in his dreams. He had a dream of starting a new kind of insurance business back in the late ‘50s.
No one had ever done it this way before, and he was a dreamer. Some people considered these wide-eyed dreams and would have laughed at them because it wasn’t considered possible. But she believed in those dreams, and she worked with him and rolled up her sleeves and helped him.
They started this little business at their kitchen table in an apartment in New Jersey
But she let God work in his life and let God be the one who grew him up and matured him in those areas where he needed to grow, and she prayed for him and supported him in the home in the meantime. Some of you may be thinking, “Well, that’s easy for this woman to be virtuous, because her husband is a leader, and he’s a godly man. But my husband isn’t in the gates. He’s not a man of influence.”
Don’t make your husband a prisoner to that expectation, just set about to be the kind of woman that can encourage your husband to grow into all that God has for him.
A lengthy description of what Jonathan Edwards’ wife, Sarah, was like. I think it’s a perfect picture of this kind of woman who is supporting her husband from her role at home. He says: In the midst of these complicated labors [and he’s talking about the time when the revival was going on, and life was very, very busy for Jonathan Edwards], as well as at all times, he found at home one who was in every sense a helpmeet for him. One who made their dwelling an abode of order and neatness, of peace and comfort, of harmony and love to all who lived there, and of kindness and hospitality to the friend, the visitor, and the stranger.
While she paid a becoming deference [or respect] to her husband and treated him with entire respect, she spared no pains in conforming to his inclinations.
That’s kind of old-fashioned language, but when I read that, I think of my mother, who in so many ways conformed to the inclinations of my dad. Sarah Edwards did that.
She rendered everything in the family agreeable and pleasant, considering it her greatest glory, and that wherein she could best serve God and her generation, to be the means in this way of promoting her husband’s usefulness and happiness.
Did you catch that? She considered it her best means of bringing glory to God and fulfilling God’s purpose for her life in her generation by promoting her husband’s spiritual usefulness and happiness! She knew if she could create a climate in the home where her husband was encouraged to become spiritually mature and fruitful and to be used by God, then she would have been the helper suitable to him.
Now, your husband may not be a Jonathan Edwards, and let me just say, few men are. You don’t have to live with Jonathan Edwards. We respect him from this vantage point of history. That’s easy—to look at another man, your pastor, a counselor, a great Christian leader, and say, “Yeah, I could be a godly woman if I was married to that man.”
You’re not married to that man, and only that man’s wife knows what it’s like to be married to that man. You see him when he’s on the platform, when he’s in front of everyone else, and he’s at his spiritual peak. She lives with him and knows that he, like every other man, has his faults, his failures, his weaknesses, and she has to accommodate with those. She has to live with those just like you have to accommodate and live with your husband’s weaknesses.
So don’t be going and thinking the grass is greener on the other side. God has given you exactly the husband that He knows He wants you to help, and God fashioned you to be the helper suitable to that man, not to someone else’s man—but to your husband.
Our goal, even as this virtuous woman’s goal is to lift up and enhance her husband’s reputation—his standing in the community—our goal as women, our goal as believers, is to enhance the reputation of Christ. We are to live in such a way that people say, “She’s the kind of woman that makes me want to know her Heavenly Husband—she makes me want to know Christ.”
Our goal is not to draw attention to ourselves, to build up our own reputation, to have our own career, to lift up our own abilities and talents. Our goal in life is to be a support to Christ—to lift Him up for others to think that He is known and that He is wonderful. “Her husband is known in the gates” (Proverbs 31:23a).
To those of you who are married, I want to say that when your character causes your husband’s reputation to be enhanced and built up, you are really giving to the world, as a married couple, a picture of the Church’s relationship to Christ. Marriage isn’t just about you and your husband. It is about that, but it’s much bigger than that.
It’s about God’s great redemptive plan and about revealing to the world what it’s like to be married to Jesus, what it’s like to be a bride who reverences and submits to and honors and builds up and helps and encourages her husband. That’s our calling. So when you relate to that husband who is in the gates or maybe not yet in the gates, remember that you’re painting a picture for those who are watching, and the picture you paint you want to be one that will point them to Christ.
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