More Than an Example

Every Man Needs Someone to Follow

Think about the men who shaped you most. Not the ones who handed you information from a distance. The ones whose lives you could actually see. A father who modelled something worth following. A coach who showed you what commitment looked like in practice. A friend whose integrity held under pressure. Men learn by watching other men. This is how we are wired, and there is nothing weak about it. The question is not whether you need someone to follow. You do. The question is who.

When it comes to marriage, many men look to their pastors. This is understandable. A pastor speaks the Word, carries spiritual authority, and is often the most visible example of a man trying to live for God. For many Christian men, the pastor functions almost as a proxy for God Himself. Others look to fathers, older men in the faith, respected figures in the church whose marriages seem stable and whose character seems solid. These relationships have real value. But even the best human example has limits. He has his own blind spots, his own unresolved patterns, his own version of the struggles you are facing. He can point the way. He cannot be the way.

There is only one man, Jesus Christ, whose life sets the perfect standard for what a husband is called to be. And He is not simply someone to observe from a distance and imitate through effort. He is someone to remain in. That distinction, as we will see, changes everything.

The Perfect Example

Jesus as an example, is something we need to look honestly at. Because the example is extraordinary, and most men have not fully taken in what it is actually asking of them.

Scripture gives a husband one model for how to love his wife. Not a cultural ideal, not a personal preference, not a reasonable standard adjusted for the pressures of modern life. One model:

That phrase, just as Christ loved, is not a loose comparison. It is a precise standard.

And to understand what it means, you have to look at what Christ actually did.

He set aside glory. He set aside the rights and privileges of being God. He came not as a dignitary but as a servant. He was misunderstood, falsely accused, mocked, beaten, and killed. Not in spite of His love, but as the fullest possible expression of it. This is what love looks like from God's perspective. Costly, deliberate, and entirely focused on the one being loved rather than the one doing the loving.

Under this example, a husband learns something that reorders everything in his life. His wife comes first. Before career, before friends, before family, before personal ambition, before his own comfort or recognition. Not as an occasional gesture, but as the settled orientation of his life. Her concerns become his concerns. Her struggles become his burdens to carry. Her flourishing becomes his deepest investment.

This is not a peripheral application of the standard. It is the standard itself. To love as Christ loved is to give yourself up, consistently and without reservation, for the sake of the one you have been given.

Think about it honestly. What are you quietly ranking above your wife right now? Not in theory, not in what you would say if asked, but in practice. In where your time actually goes. In what you protect when pressure comes. In what you are most reluctant to sacrifice. For some men it is career. For others it is friendships, or the family dynamics that were never fully renegotiated when they took a wife. For others still it is personal aspiration, the plans and goals they are fundamentally still living for, with marriage running alongside rather than at the centre. The example of Christ does not allow any of these to hold that position. He gave everything. The standard is clear.

When a man truly looks at the example, he feels two things almost simultaneously. The first is a deep sense of calling, something in him that responds to the nobility of it. The second is an honest recognition that he cannot sustain this in his own strength. And that recognition is not a problem. It is the beginning of wisdom. In fact, it is precisely at that point of recognition that the most important revelation in this series becomes available. Because what Christ offers a husband is not simply a standard to reach for.

More Than an Example to Follow

Here is where everything shifts. Most men, when they encounter a high standard, respond by trying harder. They resolve to do better, to be more intentional, to develop better habits. And for a season, this works. Then life becomes pressured, the marriage goes through a difficult stretch, the old patterns resurface, and the effort that seemed to be building something quietly runs out.

This is not a failure of character. It is the inevitable result of trying to produce fruit by effort alone, disconnected from the source of that fruit. And Jesus named this directly:

Read that final phrase carefully. Apart from Me, you can do nothing.

Jesus is not saying the calling is difficult without Him. He is saying it is impossible without Him. A branch does not generate life from within itself. It does not observe the vine, study how the vine produces fruit, and then produce its own version through disciplined effort. It simply remains connected. And from that connection, fruit comes. Not as the branch's achievement, but as the natural overflow of the life flowing through it.

This is the truth that changes the entire approach to marriage. Christ is not only the example a husband looks to. He is the vine a husband must remain in. The love described in Ephesians 5, the patience of 1 Corinthians 13, the self-giving of Philippians 2, none of this can be sustained by admiration of the standard alone. It requires connection to the source. And the source is Christ Himself.

The practical implication of this is more radical than it first appears. For years, many men approach their marriages as a project of self-improvement with Christ as the model and Scripture as the manual. They study the standard. They identify their gaps. They work on their weaknesses. None of this is wrong, but it places the man at the centre of his own development, working toward Christ from a distance. The Vine does not call the branch to study its fruit and work toward producing something similar. It calls the branch to remain. And remaining, by its nature, is less about what a man does and more about where he stays.

A husband who understands this stops asking, how do I perform more like Christ? and starts asking, how do I remain more fully in Him? That shift changes something in his daily orientation that is subtle but significant. The man who is trying to imitate Christ keeps his eye on his own performance. He monitors his tone. He measures his patience. He evaluates how well he is living up to the standard. There is a kind of self-consciousness to it that, however sincere, keeps him focused on himself rather than on Christ. The man who has shifted to abiding keeps his eye on his connection. He is not primarily asking, was I patient enough today? He is asking, did I remain close enough to the One who is patient? That reorientation changes where the energy goes. And over time, it produces something that self-monitoring alone never can: a man who is being transformed rather than performing.

Abiding is not passive. It is the most deliberate thing a husband can do. It is the choice, made daily, to remain connected rather than to go it alone.

What Abiding in Christ Actually Produces

When a husband remains in Christ, something begins to happen that his own effort cannot manufacture. He loved us first. Before we were worthy. Before we had changed. Before we gave Him any reason to. And a husband who is abiding in that love begins to love his wife the same way. Not as a reward for her behaviour, not in proportion to what he receives in return, but in faith, knowing that God is able to complete the good work He started in her, and that his role is to love her in the direction of that, consistently and without demanding she arrive before he gives his best.

He also begins to pray for her differently. This is one of the more observable changes that abiding produces and it is worth pausing on.

The man who is relying on his own resources tends to pray about his wife in terms of what he needs from her or what he wants God to change in her. He prays for more peace in the home. He prays for her to understand him better. He prays, if he is honest, for God to make the marriage easier. These are not wrong prayers but they keep the husband at the centre. The man who is abiding prays differently. The more he stays close to Christ, the more his prayers move away from his own needs and toward God’s will for her. He finds himself asking not for God to change her to suit him, but for God to fulfil His purposes in her life and for the grace to faithfully play his part in those purposes. That is not a small shift. It represents a fundamental change in who the marriage is actually for in a man's heart.

And he begins to carry a spiritual covering into the marriage. Not through performance, but through presence. Scripture describes a husband cleansing his wife by the washing with water through the Word. This is not a husband who delivers spiritual content to his wife, corrects her theology, or positions himself as her teacher. It is something quieter and deeper than that. It is a man whose own life with God is real enough and close enough that something of that reality begins to permeate the marriage itself. His steadiness when circumstances are difficult comes not from his own composure but from being rooted in something that does not move. His hope when she is discouraged comes not from optimism but from genuine faith. His patience comes not from restraint but from having been on the receiving end of God's patience long enough that it has begun to shape him.

What his wife begins to experience is a husband who is less reactive and more present. Less focused on being right and more genuinely attentive to her. There is a steadiness about him that comes not from having resolved all his own struggles, but from being held by something greater than his struggles. She may not always be able to name what has changed. But she feels it. The atmosphere in the marriage shifts. This is not sentiment. It is the observable consequence of a man whose inner life is being shaped by consistent connection to Christ. The fruit is real, and it accumulates.

There is one more thing the example of Christ makes clear, and it is something a husband learns only from remaining close to it. Christ's love was not indulgent. He did not give the church everything it wanted on demand. He gave what was needed, when it was needed, in the way that would serve its growth rather than its comfort. There will be times when the most loving thing a husband can do is say a gentle no or offer a quiet honest word about a direction his wife is heading that concerns him. This is not control. It is the kind of love that sees beyond the immediate moment. It is learned not from a principle but from remaining in Christ who does it perfectly.

The passage adds something essential to the abiding picture. Jesus did not endure the cross through willpower or a superior capacity to absorb suffering. He endured by remaining in the Father, sustained by the Spirit, and fixed on the joy set before Him.

That joy was not a reward waiting at the end of the pain. It was the church. The bride He was giving Himself up for. There is something here for a husband to sit with. The joy set before Christ was not a future circumstance but a person He loved. When a husband fixes his eyes on Christ rather than on his own performance or his wife's response, he begins to see his marriage the same way. Not as a challenge to endure but as a person to love. And that shift in seeing is itself a fruit of abiding.

The Bridge to What Comes Next

Here is the question this article leaves with you. If abiding in Christ is the key, if remaining in the vine is what makes the fruit possible, then how does that abiding actually happen? How does a man remain in Christ on a Tuesday evening, in the middle of a difficult marriage conversation, when his old reactions are rising and he has nothing left in his own reserves?

The answer is not found in more effort. It is not found in better habits or stronger resolve. It is found in the Helper Christ Himself promised to send, the One He called the Paraclete, meaning the one called alongside. The one who does not observe from heaven but who is present with a husband in every room, every conversation, every moment of his marriage. The one who takes the things of Christ and makes them real, personal, and alive in the specific texture of a specific man's life.

That is the Holy Spirit. And He is not a resource to access. He is a person to walk with. That is what the next article is about.

Hello there! I am Gerrad, and for the first sixteen years of my marriage, I struggled to understand my role as a husband. At what felt like the lowest point, through the prayers and support of my wife, close friends and good mentors, I began learning the truth about being a husband from God's perspective. These articles are written to encourage any man who has a genuine desire to love his wife - as Jesus Christ loves the church.