Slandering Your Spouse: 9th Commandment, Pt. III

The third sermon on the Ninth Commandment. This focuses on slander between husband and wife.

“You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all. You always take the sweetest rose, and crush it till the petals fall.”

The Lord requires a husband and wife to take great care and caution in what they say to each other and about each other.

Lying and slandering are the work of the devil. "Devil" literally means "slanderer."

The ninth commandment says that we are to bear no false witness against our neighbor. What more important neighbor do we have than our wife or husband? F. W. J. Schroeder: “Man finds his richest freedom in family life under God. This freedom is destroyed, and the home turned into a prison, where men and women bear false witness against one another.”

Yet we have this sinful idea that strangers deserve our best behavior, while we can let it all hang out with people who are the closest to us. We say things to our wife or husband we would never say to someone we just
met. Yet what is a stranger’s opinion of us compared to our loved ones’?

If a husbande refuses to allow his wifeer to use those gifts which the Lord has given her he has defamed her and is breaking the ninth commandment. Prov. 31:31 "Give her of the fruit of her hands, And let her own works praise her in the gates.”

Husband, what gifts does your wife have that you have overlooked or not let her use, because you think that’s only for men?