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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
... and the wife must respect her husband.
Ephesians 5:22-24, 33b
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
In yesterday’s message, we saw where these words formed the foundation for healthy relationships because the Lord didn’t create us to be self centered people but rather self sacrificing, a people that genuinely care about others and their needs ahead of our own.
As we move to verses 22 through 24 and the latter part of verse 31, we find the Apostle Paul move the discussion about healthy relationships and submission into marriage, starting with expectations for the wife. Look again at his words here:
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
... and the wife must respect her husband.
Note how the word “submit” is woven through this passage and as we see here, it’s in the spirit of dedication and sacrifice.
God’s word makes it clear that the wife is to submit to their husbands in the same way they give themselves up to Jesus. This is because God has established the husband as the head of the marriage and therefore his spouse who is to put forward their all to their partner with respect.
The world likes to get up in arms over this passage and stirs up strife through creating its own model for marital relationships. This model is grounded in the ideal that there should be absolute equality between a husband and wife, an extension of a societal view that men and women should be equal.
This passage isn’t speaking about a societal viewpoint as it applies to marriage and how the husband and wife should function within its framework. No, the Lord here is isolating marriage and setting the standards it will operate under. On the wife side, the standard is to submit in every way and respect her husband.
Now, just in case you think this gives the husband the liberty to abuse his marital leadership privilege, think again. For tomorrow, we are going to see the Lord give the husbands their marching orders and trust me, their level of accountability is just as high as the wife’s, if not higher.
Just one more important point before I close...
A person can’t read these words from Paul and not consider the cultural context within which they were written. Let me explain.
In first century AD, men definitely carried themselves as the head of the household within a marriage. It was a very patriarchal in nature and women were expected to wait on the man, hand and foot, as were the children. Husbands would sometimes go away for long periods of time, leaving the wife to handle all the household affairs and child rearing but as soon as they returned home, they expected to be the center of attention. There was no submitting on the husband end. It was all on the wife side of things.
Do you see where I’m going here?
You see, this passage didn’t have much impact on the wives in first century AD. They were already in a position of submission within their marriage. But the husbands now, that was a different story. Just being commanded to submit to their wife would have been a radical shift in the way the husband normally functioned in a marriage.
Tomorrow, we’ll see how Paul totally rocks their world with what he writes next.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com
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