When my husband and I were first married, I spent the first few weeks of my time as a new wife searching the Bible for instruction and examples about how to fulfill this new role of mine. How did God envision it? What was expected of me? How did other godly women live this calling out?
At one point, I remember coming across the verse, Proverbs 12:4 “A wife of noble character is her husband's crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones.”
I started thinking about this image, of a wife as a crown for her husband.
Who wears a crown? Someone of royalty or great stature—likely a prince or a king. Yet, how do you know that he has that high position? By the crown he wears on his head. Without the shiny, gem-studded crown, he would just be seen as an ordinary man. But it is the crown that shows off his true position, the truth about who he is.
I saw in that simple picture how a wife has the opportunity to show the world the truth about who her husband is. By her behavior, she can showcase whether he is just an ordinary man or whether he is one who stands above the rest and is worthy of respect. In this way, our actions as wives affect more than just ourselves; they directly reflect our husbands, as well, even if they had nothing to do with the action in question.
And when we choose to wield it wisely—conducting ourselves with “noble character”—a wife becomes a crown that her husband can wear proudly. It is not a plastic toy that a child would wear, but a real treasure that makes him walk taller.
It’s a truth that is really quite powerful. It can be something of great opportunity—to shine for the sake of our spouse, or it can be one that begets misery, bestowing instead disgrace. The difference depends completely on how we treasure this truth.
Recently, I was recalling this mental image and I realized that it doesn’t just end there, between a wife and her husband. The Bible is rich with the allusion that an earthly marriage is merely a reflection or a preparation for the eternal union that will bring us together with Jesus. He constantly touts himself as bridegroom and us as his bride.
So just as we can be a crown for our earthly husbands through our actions, so can we be a crown for our eternal husband, too, in the way we act. Our behaviors—especially that of serving—should showcase the greatness of the husbands we so dearly love, both the one we share a name with now but also the One who awaits us in the life to come.
