Your zeal for devotion to your wife is commendable, but your zeal for the spouse must not equal or exceed your zeal for following Jesus so the Savior Himself admonishes in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” First of all, He told those who followed Him that in order to be His disciples they must love Him SUPREMELY above all. He did not ever suggest that they should have hatred in their hearts toward the wife, children, mother, father, etc. Rather He was emphasizing that love for Christ must be so great that all other loves are hatred by comparison (Matthew 10:37). No consideration of love for even the wife must ever be allowed to deflect a disciple from the pathway of full obedience to the Lord.
However, the most difficult part of this first term of discipleship is in the words “and his own life also.” It is not only that we must not love our relatives less, but we must hate our own lives also!! Instead of living self-centered lives, we must live Christ-centered and Christ-controlled lives. Instead of asking how our actions will affect ourselves, we must be very careful to assess how it will affect Jesus, His Kingdom, His glory, His Great Commission to share the gospel to a lost world (Matthew 28:18-20). Considerations of personal safety and personal comfort must be subordinated to the great task of glorifying Christ and making Him known in your Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47ff; John 20:21a; and Acts 1:8). The words of our Risen Lord are absolute. He said if we do not love Him more than family or our own lives, we could not be His disciples. There is no halfway measure.
I have found it very difficult to balance my love for Jesus with my love for Doris. However, I have said to Doris and she has said the same to me, “I love you Doris but I do not love you as much as I love Jesus.” I made this statement to her before I married her. She made the same statement to me prior to our marriage. I heard the great Adrian Rogers say the same on several occasions.
There are cases where it is hard, hard to know what to do – balance one’s love for his wife and for Jesus. The Holy Spirit has shown me how to follow the “both and” policy rather then the “either or” policy. Any faithful pastor has to do this. That is, to show both your love for Jesus and for your wife at the same time. As an example: I serve as Chairman of Alpha Int’l Ministry of India. This position requires me to go to India at times. But Doris now requires special attention, so when I go to India I leave her in the hands of faithful disciples of the Lord who will attend to her every need, as well as I.
The bottom line is to follow the dictum of Thomas A’Kempis in his Imitations of Christ, “The voice of the divine rules out the multitude of human opinions.” Indeed, it does and I will obey this voice when I hear it.