I watched two Si-Fi films this
week: Avengers: Age of Ultron (my
second viewing) and Wonder Woman—keeping
both Marvel and DC happy, I suppose. As
a man, I may not fully appreciate the accolades women are heaping upon the
origin story of the Amazon princess but I do like her as a role model for young
girls and a reminder to young guys. Both
discover a woman can have strength, empathy, brains, and vision.
On the whole, I think WW is a better movie than A:AU.
Yet, the Avenger flick revealed a secret we shouldn’t ignore. Hawkeye is married. Happily married, it seems. That’s something of a shock. If you didn’t grow up with the comics, I
should tell you superheroes generally avoid marriage. Maybe that’s changing.
I think I’ve seen a spark between
Diana Prince and Bruce Wayne but maybe I’m just a romantic. No, it’s probably not that. Even if there were such a spark, it’s unlikely
to grow into a flame. And it wouldn’t
just be the age difference; what’s a few thousand years when it comes to
love. No, superheroes don’t get married
because, for them, marriage would be really tough. It would be hard to focus on defeating
villains when those villains threaten to hurt the superhero’s family. (Hawkeye’s family lives in a “safe house” in
the middle of … well, we’re not told.)
Then, too, on a more mundane level marriage demands our focus and
attention. Imagine Superman busy saving
the world from some plot by Lex Luthor and suddenly remembering he didn’t pick
up Lois’ jacket before the dry cleaner closed.
But the superheroes need to know
something. Marriage is tough for
everyone, unless you’re single; then you can advise your married friends on
Facebook.
Paul knew marriage was tough. In Ephesians 5:22-32 Paul addresses the
complexities of marriage and family. Of
course, plenty of people doubt whether Paul was married. We just can’t say. Still, he wrote some of the most widely
debated words about marriage ever written.
If we take the Bible seriously, we can’t ignore what he says.
To understand what the apostle says
we need to remember that this section of the letter, beginning with 5:22 and
ending with 6:9 has to be understood in light of 5:21. In fact, we might even
suggest ending verse twenty-one with a colon. The instructions to wives and
husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters are designed to show these
groups how to live in mutual submission to one another. Paul begins by
applying the principle to the marriage relationship.
This passage is sometimes
misunderstood, maligned, and misused. I
don’t claim to have the final word on the issue but I will try to honor Paul’s
words and, hopefully, correct some of the confusion.
I think we can best understand
Paul’s intent by setting in in the context of mutual submission. This is important because through mutual
submission a Christian couple can have a mutually satisfying marriage
First, Paul offers …
A WORD TO THE WIVES (22-24)
What Paul says to the wife is rooted in his
vision of her relationship to her husband, summed up in these words: "the
husband is the head of the wife. "
What Paul means here is often the
focal point of controversy. It is more
difficult to determine precisely what Paul means than it is to
demonstrate what he does not mean.
It's important to notice what he does not say because some of the criticisms of
Paul are based careless readings of this passage.
While Paul says the husband is the
head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the Church, he does not say that the
wife is the husband's body. The wife is not seen as an extension of the
husband, deriving her significance from him.
Some contemporary Christian writers
actually seem to suggest this. One
writer says woman’s identity as bearing “the image of God” comes through man,
not directly from God. I find no grounds
for this demeaning view of women.
But what does Paul mean? The answer
may be found in the social conditions of the day.
In
the Roman society the oldest living male controlled the family; he had the
'headship' over the family. To have a "head" was to be an integral
part of one's legitimate family.
A woman's relationship to her
biological family was so important that in sometimes dominated her relationship
with her husband. C. C. Kroeger
explains,
Marriages
within the Empire were ordinarily arranged so that the wife remained legally
and religiously part of her father's family. Her relatives might with impunity
remove her from the marriage and contract another more favorable alliance, even
against her will. This system wrought marital instability….
Paul's intention may well have been
to call women to a new level of commitment to their husbands, a commitment
which exceeded that to her biological family.
This would be particularly important in situations where a Christian
woman’s father was a nonbeliever while her husband was a believer. The father might demand she abandoned her
husband’s religion and embrace his. Paul
may have been saying, take your stand with your husband.
Moreover, in certain circumstances
children could lose their "head", that is they were no longer
regarded as part of a family. It was a precarious position for a woman.
When a young man or woman embraced
Christianity and left their father's religion, they were sometimes disowned.
This would place a young woman in a kind of social and legal limbo. Paul's
declaration would have made it possible for a woman to remedy that situation by
joining herself to her husband as "head".
Some of what Paul wrote about men
and women, husbands and wives, may have been written out of concern for social
stability. His goal was not to maintain the status quo, as is often suggested;
the status quo was unstable. Paul wrote to establish stability.
At the same time Paul's words imply
a new vision of the family. Each couple—husband and wife—were an independent
unit, free of the oppressive family hierarchy. The couple's allegiance was not
to a patriarch but to Christ.
With that in mind, what did Paul
mean when he called for wives to "submit"
to their husbands.
To begin with, the very fact he
treats submission as a voluntary action on the wife's part, means he is not
implying the wife’s natural inferiority.
He seems to be speaking of a free
and responsive yielding to another.
Above all, the instruction does not allow us to claim Paul was
justifying the husband behaving as a despot in the marriage relationship.
Whatever Paul may mean when he calls
wives to submit to their husbands, he is not demanding that women submit to all
men ( as some interpreters have suggested).
I read of an instance in which a pastor told a female cardiologist in
his congregation that she had to change her specialty to something like
pediatrics or gynecology; as a cardiologist there would be too many occasion
for her to tell men what to do.
Nor does this mean a wife is obliged
to submit or obey her husband when that husband’s demands are immoral, illegal,
demeaning, or unbiblical. A popular
teacher in the 1980s insisted Christian wives must always obey their
husbands—no matter what they demanded.
God, he said would excuse even open sin, holding her husband responsible,
not her. Again, this is reading far too
much into the text.
Paul does not spell out what it
means for the wife to submit to her husband. But he gives us a clue in verse 33
where the wife is specifically called upon to "respect" her husband.
Women received little respect in
the New Testament world. An ancient
writer said "women are one and all 'a set of vultures'." Since women received so little respect, it is
easy to understand if women were reluctant to be respectful of men. Yet, that
is just what Paul calls for.
More and more women seem to have
little or no respect for men; that disrespect is seen in the media. Christian
women have to guard against this attribute of our culture.
And now . . .
A WORD TO THE
HUSBANDS
(25-32)
Husbands are told to love their
wives. Paul uses the word agape, that noble, self-giving love
which was to characterize Christians.
But Paul is not simply repeating a command he has already given to
Christians in general. Another lesson in
social history will help us appreciate the revolutionary character of Paul's
words.
In the New Testament world Jewish
women were treated better than women were treated in most other nations. Still a common morning prayer offered by
Jewish males said "God I thank Thee I was not born a woman." Rabbis taught it was a waste of time to try to
teach a woman.
What about Greek women? After all, most of Paul’s audience was
Greek.
Some of the philosophers talked
about extending equality to women, none of them put their words into action.
V. F. Calverton in Sex and Civilization writes: "In [a]
civilization that has become known for its intellectual genius and progressive
tendency, the position of women was a tragic spectacle... She was regarded as a
form of property with rights no more exalted than that of a slave."
Charles Carlston points out that
women were considered "basically uneducable and empty headed.
Robert Briffault wrote,"The
Greek woman was the most degraded and abject to be found in any civilized
country, of the western world.”
In the Roman world the attitude toward women
was especially evident in the laws governing marriage, the paterfamilias had
power of life and death over his family.
Seneca cynically said, "Women
were married to be divorced and divorced to be married."
Summed up in the inscription:
"Rule over the woman."
When Paul called for husbands
"to love their wives as Christ's loves the church" it must have
seemed incredible.
Some have looked at these verses
and thought the saw the command: Husbands subdue your wives. Don't waste your
time. The command to love is the only command. Love is how the husband submits
to his wife.
Christ is the model of this love. Without pressing the analogy too far, I think
we can say the husband should strive to copy Christ's sacrificial love.
Sacrificial love is demonstrated by
giving your most precious assets to your wife: Time, attention.
A man boldly told his wife that he
would do anything of for her. Later that
day, she asked if he would go to the art museum with her. He responded, “No, I don’t want to miss the
Cowboys game.”
Sacrificial love is demonstrated in
marital fidelity.
The husband should strive to copy
Christ's sanctifying love. (27f)
The idea here may be the bridal
bath before the wedding. The image
refers to Christ’s work of purifying the church. Some have pushed the analogy too far in
suggesting the wife’s salvation is somehow linked to her being married. Paul clearly refutes such notions elsewhere
in his writings. (Gal. 3:28)
Still, I would like to believe Christian
husbands should strive to love their wives in such a way that their wives are
better for having been loved by them.
Certainly there is no place for
ridicule or demeaning words.
Instead, husbands should encourage
rather than discourage.
Years ago, I taught GED
courses. The majority of the students
were women. Most had dropped out of high
school after becoming pregnant and getting married. Some simply couldn’t accumulate the credits
they needed to graduate because their migrant worker parents were constantly
pulling them out of school so they could follow the harvests. Now, years after they should have graduated,
they were trying to get the equivalency diploma so they could get better jobs
or even start college.
One evening, a woman in her early
thirties told me she was leaving the class. She said her husband—who had also dropped
out—was afraid if people knew she had her GED they would think she was smarter
than he was. His ego couldn’t stand
that. The husband Paul describes would
have encouraged his wife to keep going or joined her in the classes.
The husband should strive to copy
Christ's strengthening love. (28-31) Just
as we feed and care for our bodies so we ought to nourish and care for our
marriages to make them stronger.
There would be no place for abuse.
Yet, 18% of Christians wives report some type of abuse.
The abusive husband is not
following Christ’s example even if he is a deacon or a pastor. Ruth Tucker
tells of how a prominent woman writer spoke to student wives at Trinity
Seminary. In her talk, she said she was
not entirely certain Christian women had the right to resist abusive husbands. Ironically, about the same time this woman
was offering this counsel, I heard one of the nation’s most ardent
fundamentalist Baptists tell his congregation that God did not expect any woman
to stay in a marriage where she was abused.
In this case, I think the fundamentalist had was right.
Finally, as Christ wants his relationship
with the church to grow deeper, husbands should want their relationships with
their wives to grow.
This is a controversial
passage. A key to understanding it is
found in Paul’s final . . .
WORD TO COUPLES (33)
Simply put, a balance of love and
respect is essential for any healthy marriage.
The very basic principles Paul has
laid down should warn any pastor or church from attempting to micromanage the
relationships of the husbands and wives within their churches. Except where there is clear abuse,
infidelity, or marital chaos, couples should be left to manage their own lives.
Couples need to be reminded that is
this love and respect demonstrated…
--Through Mutual Caring
--Through Mutual Commitment
--Through Mutual Communication
--Through Mutual Pursuit of Christ-Centeredness.
Each husband and wife should be told stay
close to Christ for your own sake and for each other's sake.
CONCLUSION
There are no simple formulas for a
successful marriage. Paul does point us to two key ideas: Love and respect.
Both are reflections of the mutual submission in which we are called to live.
Controversy will probably continue
to swirl around these statements. When we understand the goals we can better
resolve the controversy.
John Stott helps us see that the
command to "submit" and the command to "love" are set
marriage partners on the same pathway"
"What does it mean to
'submit'? It is to give oneself up to somebody. What does it mean to 'love'? It
is to give oneself up for somebody, as Christ 'gave himself up 'for the
church."
What would happen if we heeded this
call to mutual submission?
1. The divorce rate would drop
among Christians as the very notion of "irreconcilable differences"
became a distant memory.
2. Marriages marked by love and respect
would not be marred by physical or verbal abuse.
3. Marriage partners would not
stray into either the radical feminism that promotes demeaning stereotypes of
all men or into the chauvinism which denies the intelligence and creativity of
women.
4. Each partner would strive to
understand the unique character and needs of the other partner in order to help
that partner achieve his or her full potential.
5. Problems and decisions could be
faced with the resources of two minds rather than one operating under the
pressure of always having to be "wise" and creative.
6. Each partner would be learn
better how to fulfill his or her role in the marriage.
If Christian couples lived in such
mutual submission, the reality of what it means to be part of the one new
people of God would be demonstrated in every home and every neighborhood.
A Prayer
Almighty God, You who created the first couple and gave them a home
called "Paridise," we thank You for
the gift of marriage and home.
And we confess that by our pride and quest for power we have,
like that first couple, spoiled the gift of your love.
We pray for grace to rediscover your intention for our marriages.
May our marriages mark us as your people.
In Jesus' Name we pray.
Amen
