John Gill’s biblical vision and example of marital masculinity stands as a needed corrective to the disorderly egalitarian, destructively passive, and disastrously macho versions of masculinity that our confused culture has put forth in recent decades.

A short time before his death, eighteenth-century London Baptist pastor John Gill (1697–1771) put the finishing touches on his monumental Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity. Near the end of this work—which comprised a summary of the doctrine he had taught over the course of his fifty-one year ministry to the same congregation—Gill turned his attention to practical theology, the study of theology that concerns itself with the proper worship of God.^[1]

Drawing from Ephesians 5:33, Gill summed up the duties of husbands and wives to one another as love and reverence.^[2] Husbands, he instructed, are called to love their wives while wives are called to revere (that is, respect) their husbands.

Gill then outlined how husbands should love their wives in four points, articulating characteristics of what complementarians have recognized as biblical masculinity. These four points can be summarized in four words: provide, protect, pastor, and please.

According to Gill, the husband has a particular responsibility to provide for his wife. The husband is to “nourish” and “cherish” his wife as his own body (Eph 5:29), which includes “food and raiment, and all the necessaries of life.” Those who do not, Gill noted, are worse than unbelievers (1 Tim. 5:8).^[3]

The husband not only provides, but protects his wife “from all abuses and injuries” as she is the weaker vessel (1 Pet. 3:7). The husband’s responsibility may call him “to expose himself to danger, and even risk his life in her defense, and for her rescue” (1 Sam. 30:5, 18).^[4]

Faithful husbandry also demands that each husband seeks the spiritual welfare of his wife. In other words, he should be the spiritual leader—the pastor—of the marriage. The Christian husband should be active in seeking the salvation of an unconverted wife, and the “spiritual peace, comfort, and edification” of a believing spouse. The Christian husband, according to Gill, should lead his wife as a fellow “heir with him of the grace of life” in all forms of spiritual devotion.^[5]

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