Piper on marriage

Husbands,  love  your  wives,  as  Christ  loved  the  church  and  gave
himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by
the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church
to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that
she might be holy and without blemish.
In  Christ's  relationship  to  the  church,  he  is  clearly  seeking  the
transformation  of  his  bride  into  something  morally  and
spiritually beautiful.  And  he  is  seeking  it  at  the  cost  of  his  life.
Let's  think  for a  moment  about  the  implications of this  passage
on  how  a husband thinks and acts with a view to changing his
wife. We will come to the wife's desire to change her husband
shortly.
The first implication is that the  husband, who  loves  like  Christ,
bears a unique responsibility for the moral and spiritual growth
of his wife—which means that over time, God willing, there will
be change.
Treading on Dangerous Ground
I realize that at this point—no matter how I come at this—I am
tread-ing on dangerous ground. I could be playing right into the
hands of a selfish, small-minded, controlling husband who has
no sense of the difference between enriching differences between
him and his wife and moral and spiritual weaknesses or defects
that should be changed. Such a man may distort what I am
saying into a mandate to control every facet of his wife's
behavior, and the criteria of what he seeks to change will be his
own selfish desires cloaked in spiritual language.
This is no laughing matter. I have had to deal with husbands
who were pathological in their understanding of a wife's
submission. One woman told me, as we were sorting through
their dysfunctional rela-tionship, that her husband demands that
she get permission for