Marriage vows used to look much different
in days gone by. Certain things were
asked of the man, while different things were asked of the woman. Yet today, marriage vows tend to be identical
for each gender.
The
Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:22-23, “Wives,
submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the
wife as Christ is the head of the church.”
Paul’s teaching about the roles of
husbands and wives was quite revolutionary at the time, as the prevalent
culture didn’t see men and women as equal.
Yet at the same time, it’s revolutionary in our culture that tends to
see men and women as the same without any distinct roles or callings. So even though there’s some overlapping in
being male and female, they each are still distinguishable ways of being human with
distinguishable gifts and callings in marriage.
Notice
Paul doesn’t tell wives to love their husbands, but to respect him. He doesn’t tell husbands to respect their
wives, but to love them. He tells
husband and wives both to submit in verse 21, but then tells the wives to
submit a second time in verse 22. The wife is not told to work for the
perfection of her husband so she can present him before the throne, spotless
and without blemish.
So does this mean that the wives don’t
have to love their husband, but just respect them? Or that a wife is not supposed to work for her
husband’s maturity and sanctification? Of
course it can’t mean that because those things are taught in other places. So the only reason Paul would lay out these
different instructions is because men and women are good and bad at different
things. Recognizing this, Paul
emphasized different things for each, because each possesses different gifts
and roles.
Contrary to the Buffy enthusiast,
there’s plenty of evidence that men and women will go about the same job in
different ways. Tim Keller quoted a
study that concluded, “Men tend to see themselves maturing as they separate and
become independent and make an impact. Women
see themselves maturing as they attach to others and become interdependent.” In other words, men have the gift of
independence, while women have the gift of interdependence, which seems to fit
well with what scripture says.
Now with the obvious differences
between husbands and wives, a lot of the more conservative believers will
assemble a long list of specific and very stereotypical roles. They may say that the husband should work and
the wife should stay home with the children.
I know many couples that make that work them, and that’s wonderful. But where does the Bible specifically say
that? Or that the woman cooks, and the
man is in charge of the checkbook? That
works for some marriages, and that’s good for them. But where does the Bible specifically say
that?
Before the industrial age, husbands
and wives both stayed home and worked to produce goods together, whether it was
farming or raising livestock or making clothes.
They both worked to produce goods and they both raised the children. It wasn’t until the industrial age that for
the first time someone had to get up and leave the home to go to place of
work. The husband usually went to off to
work while the wife stayed home and raised the children. Yet the Bible doesn’t nail itself down into
those kinds of specifics for the roles of husbands and wives.
Proverbs 31 talks about a woman of
worth. She into real estate and
investments, she does sewing and child rearing, and there’s no reason to think
that her husband was doing all those things with her. So when we talk about the Bible’s teaching
regarding the traditional family, we cannot hone the Bible to the traditions of
one particular place in history. In
light of this, there seems to be great amount of freedom in how a wife
contributes to her home and to her family.
When Paul says in vs. 22, “Wives,
submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the
wife,” he is referring us back to Genesis with the important word, “head.”
This word has a primary meaning of “source.” It could be used to refer to the headwaters
of a river, being the river’s source.
The Greed word here for “head” is just like our word, “authority.” If I write a piece of poetry, I am the
author. Therefore since I am the source
of the poetry, I have the authority to inform you of what the poetry is about. So when Paul is referring back to Genesis
where Eve is taken out of Adam, Adam is in a sense the source and headwaters of
Eve. So when Paul says what he says, it
is because of the way things were set up at creation.
In the first chapters of Genesis,
there are two things crucial for understanding marriage. First, the man and woman were created as namer
and helper. Secondly, husband and wife’s
original nature of being a namer and a helper was cursed and corrupted because
of sin.
God tells Adam to name the animals. In the Bible, naming something was to take
charge of shaping its character and purpose.
A parent would name a child because the name reflected the kind of child
they would hopefully grow up to be. God
would change a person’s name when he would change their nature.
When God creates Adam to name the
animals, he obviously wants him to have an impact on shaping the character of
the world. Eve, on the other hand, was
created to be a helper. The problem is
that we tend to think of a helper as being weak without the ability to really
contribute much. We tend to think of how
a child might help his dad build a doghouse.
He can’t really help, but he can get the hammer for his dad and maybe
hand him a nail or two.
Biblically the word “help” is an
extremely sophisticated term that is almost always used of God, as God is our
help in time of trouble (Psalm 46:1). A
helper, therefore, is someone with power and resources you don’t have. Eve,
being created as Adam’s helper, implies weaknesses and deficiencies in Adam
that Eve doesn’t have, and that Eve possesses power and resources that Adam
doesn’t have.
For example, I can help my son with his
math because I know more about math than he does, but there’s two ways that I can
help him. I can bring my help in such a
way as to enable and empower him, or I can bring my help in such a way as to
replace him where I just do the math for him. And yet if I do it for him, I’m not really
helping him. Therefore, a wife has the
gift of using her strength and power in such a way as to enable and empower her
husband.
This doesn’t mean that women don’t name
animals or that men aren’t supposed to help their wives. But each has a gift that makes them strong in
certain areas. When we talk about women
having a gift of interdependence while men have a gift of independence, we don’t
mean that women are to never be independent or that men are never to be
interdependent. We are talking about
things in which each gender excels, therefore when a husband and wife come
together, they complete each other. They
each have strengths that fill in the gaps of the other’s weaknesses.
So the first basic truth from Genesis is
that men and women are created differently.
The second basic truth is that they and their strengths have been corrupted
by sin.
God says to Eve in Genesis 3:16, “I
will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children in anguish. Your desire will be for your husband, yet he
will rule over you.”
God says to Adam in verses 17-19, “The
ground is cursed because of you. You
will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the
ground.”
Notice that when God curses humanity,
he curses each gender differently. He curses
Adam’s work so that Adam’s desire to subdue and bring order to his world by way
of his work will become an idol. In
other words, his work will become too important to him. It will be a continual source of frustration
because it will never really fulfill him.
God then curses Eve’s
relationships. She will desire her
husband desperately, but he will want to dominate her. Her gift of interdependence is corrupted into
dependence where she wants to be taken care of.
Adam’s gift of independence is corrupted into tyranny.
So the traditionalist that rails on
about the husband’s need to rule over his wife and get his wife under control is
forgetting the curse. They are forgetting
the fact that men will tend to oppress women and that women will tend to make
it easy for them. Their fallen natures and
corrupted gifts can feed off each other in destructive cycles.
The fact is that men and women in
marriage are supposed to learn to submit to one another, and the husband is supposed
to have a loving authority. The wife is
to use her helpership to continually pull her husband back from tyranny and
autonomy, while the husband is use his strength to pull his wife back from
dependence and helplessness.
So what then is a wife’s submission to
her husband? I must be tie-breaking
authority. The traditionalists believe
the wife is the submitter while the husband makes all the decisions for the
family. Yet marriage, being the ultimate
friendship between two people where iron sharpens iron, there will be
contention at times as each one grabs the other and pulls them away from the
corrupt use of their gifts.
So normally in marriage, the husband
and wife will sit together and try to figure out what the best decision
is. But what happens when they just can’t
agree? What happens when a decision has
to be made? What if you’re trying to
decide what school the kids should attend, or what house to buy, or what
neighborhood to live in? What if it’s a decision
that will impact the whole family, but an agreement can’t be reached? The Bible’s answer is to let the husband break
the tie.
When the husband initiates loving leadership
in his home, and the wife ultimately and graciously defers to her husband, the
Bible says that they are getting in touch with something deep inside that dates
back to creation. The two of them are becoming
more masculine and more feminine, and together a more complete image of God. As a result, the marriage is strengthened,
the next generation is discipled, and God is glorified.
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