Reflection on God's Word

MARRIAGE (PART 1)

by Tim Thomas

February 2, 2007

Ephesians 5:21-30

Since this is such a long passage (and commentary), I decided to break it up into two separate reflections. In the first part of my commentary on this passage dealing with Christian marriage, I focus on a general overview and then move into looking at the role of the wife. In the second half, I will focus on the role of the husband.

I begin writing about this passage on marriage relationships with a little bit of fear. Marriages are always tricky. There are years of sometimes tacitly negotiated thoughts and behaviors that are developed in the course of a marriage, and these help maintain a balance in the relationship. I'm always worried that by teaching about marriage, I might disturb this balance in somebody's marriage in an adverse way. To safeguard against that, if you feel like you are doing things differently than what I recommend here, but your marriage is a good one, then disregard what I write... please!

I also have the concern that my own marriage, when evaluated beside the standards that I write about, might fall short of the ideal advocated here. I worry about being branded as a hypocrite -- though a hypocrite is someone who tells others what they ought to do, but refuses to do it himself. I suspect most people fall short because they haven't figured out how to do the things they think they should, not because they know what to do but don't do it.

On the positive side, I know of very few who are completely satisfied with their marriages, and perhaps looking more closely at what is written here might bring adjustments to marriages that lead to new life and hope. It is good to be challenged by the Bible -- it's one important way that we learn and grow. I'm sure that most of you are well aware that there have been some really bad teachings on marriage based on this and other passages in the Bible, and perhaps by writing here, I can correct some of these errors taught by others, and breathe life into struggling relationships.

One of the most harmful uses of Scripture has been the effort of some conservative and fundamentalist teachers who have taken only a shallow look at this passage, and used it to propagate an authoritarianism in the home that God never intended to be there. The quote in this passage about wives submitting to their husbands has been misunderstood to mean that wives were supposed to blindly and mindlessly obey every utterance of their husbands. Worse, some husbands believed that it was their duty to make their wives obey. What a recipe for disaster! Yet there are some male-dominated, macho churches that have propagated this exact idea, and have applied pressure on husbands of wives who don't conform to some standard.

The beginning of this passage, verse 21, tells us that each believer is to submit to other believers out of reverence for Christ. For those who want to make the word "submit" to mean "obey", this ought to cause some genuine confusion. How can we "obey" each other? I give you orders, then you give me orders that contradict my orders? This cannot be. So we must search for an alternative understanding of the word "submit". The best alternative that I have found is to understand "submit" as meaning to "respect and show honor to". That is, while we are dearly loved children of God, gifted by Him and empowered to accomplish the things that He has prepared for us to do (Ephesians 2: 10), so are all of our brothers and sisters in Christ. So we honor the fact that each of our brothers and sisters has a unique personality, calling, and gifting from God, and that the entire Body of Christ is incomplete without them (see 1 Corinthians 12-14). Submitting to one another reminds me of the passage in Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter 2, where he says that we are to be completely humble and gentle, and to consider one another better than ourselves.

I think that "submit" includes the dimension of seriously listening to what the other person has to say. It certainly must include some dimension of communication, because the word has the implication of understanding the other persons wishes and desires, which are expressed by the other person through verbal and non-verbal communication.

Imagine what our congregations and even our society would be like if we took these admonitions more seriously! We would be less prideful, slower to take offense, more serious about resolving differences, less needy to show ourselves of value or better than others, and more willing to serve and to love. Quite simply, it might transform the face of the earth, and our churches would reflect the glory of God that the prophet Isaiah wrote about in chapter 60, and we would have the unity the Jesus prayed for in chapter 17 of the Gospel of John. Perhaps if we take nothing else out of this study, we can learn to practice submitting ourselves to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

If we are to submit ourselves one to another, than this must also imply that the husband should submit to his wife. "But wait!", you say. "Doesn't this passage say that wives are to submit to their husbands?" Indeed it does. But it also says that husbands are to love their wives. If we want to argue that since wives are told to submit to their husbands, then husbands do not have to submit to their wives, it is equivalent to arguing that since husbands are told to love their wives, then wives do not have to love their husbands! The truth is that wives should love their husbands AND husbands ought to submit to their wives (with the word "submit" interpreted as I suggested above).

This does not get us entirely off the hook in grappling with the more traditional understanding of the husband being intended to be an authority, head, or leader in the home, since verse 23 refers to the husband as "head" of the wife as Christ is head of the Church. Then in verse 24 the original point about the wives submitting to the husband is reiterated and strengthened, once again emphasizing that wives are to submit to their husbands as the Church submits to Christ.

So any honest attempt to be obedient to God's will and plan for our lives must deal with these verses, along with similar ones in 1 Corinthians 11:3. In many ways, the passage in 1 Corinthians muddies the water, because in 11:13-16 it challenges the reader to agree with Paul's teaching based on their intuitive understanding of what is proper based on the culture at the time. And since our culture is different, when the people of Corinth would have answered in the affirmative in these cultural questions, we in the West would answer in the negative. This, of course, provides support for those who want to disregard both the Ephesians and the Corinthian passages, based on an understanding that the teachings about wives and husbands were entirely cultural, and therefore are irrelevant to us today.

I feel uncomfortable totally disregarding these passages, because the Apostle Paul was clearly trying to communicate principles that were meant to transcend time and culture. Nonetheless, we cannot help but factor in the influence of the culture of his day on some of the wording he used.

In grappling with these verses, my struggle is with understanding the comparison of the wife's relationship to the husband as being similar to the relationship of the Church to Jesus. Jesus, being God, is all-knowing, all-powerful, and full of love. He is perfect. Submitting to Him is relatively easy, because of His clear superiority to me in every aspect. Wives and husbands are of the same order of magnitude, unlike a person and God. Wives are often smarter than their husbands and wiser than their husbands, at least on many of the practical matters we encounter in life. Seeing how the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the Church is a genuine struggle for me here.

So I'm thinking that this term must somehow be describing a positional or functional fact rather than an issue of one person somehow being better than another person. For example, in 1 Corinthians 11:3, in talking about how a wife is to submit to her husband, Paul writes that it is to be in the same manner as Jesus does to the Father. And yet we know that Jesus and the Father are one -- as we also know that the husband and wife are one. Yet in the oneness of both relationships, there is some kind of sense of one part being "head" of the other part.

It is interesting that the Apostle Paul does not write that the husband "ought to be" the head of the wife, nor that the husband should make sure it looks like he's the head, nor even that the wife should make the husband look like he's the head. No, it says plainly the the husband "is" the head, regardless of whether it seems to be true to the outside observer or not. This may be pointing to some kind of spiritual ordering -- that is, describing the way God views a husband and wife. Since God invented marriage, I suppose it is for Him to say what is true and what is not. Clearly from the account in Genesis, Adam was made first, and then Eve was created from Adam as an appropriate counterpart for him.

We already mentioned that there seems to be a special emphasis on the wife submitting to the husband, even though it seems clear that the husband needs to submit to his wife, as well. There is also a special emphasis on the husband loving the wife, even though the wife needs to love her husband. Why did Paul emphasize these particular foci for husbands and wives? It seems to me that perhaps these are the things that each would find naturally difficult to do, and therefore require special emphasis. Or, perhaps, these are the special needs of the target (the husband or the wife), and if a marriage is to run successfully, the spouse needs to take special care to ensure that those needs are met. Both may be true. It seems that husbands struggle with respect or esteem issues -- and perhaps wives struggle building them up in these areas. And perhaps wives struggle with whether they themeselves are lovable -- and maybe husbands struggle with showing them the love they need.

How these things that Paul mentions plays out in a marriage can be complicated, and even in marriages where each partner seeks to fully obey this, one application of this will look different than another application. It seems to me the critical point of application -- and hence, potential tension -- comes in the area of decision-making. Some Christian couples worry that they aren't doing their marriage according to the Bible, because they always talk decisions over, and come to a consensus before they act. I think this is perfectly in accordance with this passage, now that we have stepped away from the common but oversimplified understanding of the man being in charge. On the other hand, some couples are more comfortable with the husband taking the lead in decisions, which seems fine to me, as well, as long as he does it with a heart full of love for his wife, and that the wife is entirely supportive of him taking the lead.