Tag: Husbands and wives

Dirty Words

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This week, in part four of our series, I Do, we dealt with one of the dirtiest words in our culture. Want to know what it is? Submission. The idea of one person submitting themselves to another is anathema in the mind of the culture. And yet, when guys like Paul and Peter talked about marriage in their New Testament letters, they consistently used the word. That means we need to figure out what kind of a role it is supposed to have. Keep reading and wrestle with me with what this should look like.

Dirty Words

My boys enjoy Legos. A lot. In addition to having two of them on Lego Robotics teams at school, I think we are on a good approach for having every Lego set known to man before they graduate from high school. Over the years of accumulating various cool sets, though, some have gotten disassembled after being played with for a while. On occasion, they’ll want to play with a set from the past they know now resides in pieces in the playroom. Fortunately, the Lego website has the instructions and parts list for pretty much every set they’ve ever produced available to download. It’s just a simple matter of printing out the parts list, finding the right pieces, and then pulling up the instructions on some kind of a computer so they can rebuild it. Simple, right?

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Getting Things Right

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In this third part of our series, I Do, we finally start getting practical. In the first part we defined marriage, and last week we talked about its purpose. That’s all good and important to know, but how do we actually get it right? Let’s talk about it starting with a special focus on what husbands need to do if our marriages are going to be what they can be.

Getting Things Right

We’ve talked about this a few times before and will talk about it again in the future, but one of the challenges of being a follower of Jesus committed to the idea that the Scriptures are right and true in everything they affirm is that there are some places that are downright hard to handle. The reasons for the difficulty are sometimes theological, but they are also scientific and cultural and social and relational and even just applicational. For example, the Law of Moses calls for the stoning of incorrigibly rebellious children and at the same time Jesus said that He came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. Unless we can successfully understand Jesus’ fulfillment of the Law to mean that we can disregard commands such as that one, other than a strong temptation on rough days—like, say, day four or five of being stranded inside with three increasingly wild boys…not that Lisa and I know anything about that—we need to get used to the idea of living in constant and open rebellion to the Law given by God to His people.

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Morning Musings: Judges 13:13

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“And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, ‘Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Manoah didn’t believe his wife.  The text doesn’t come right out and say this, but I suspect that’s what was really going on here.  And think about why: In that culture a childless couple was considered cursed by God.  It was a step worse than a couple who couldn’t have a son.  This was the life of Manoah and his wife.  Then she comes to him out of the blue and announces that God told her she’s going to get pregnant and have a son and that the son is going to save Israel from the Philistines who had been oppressing them for a generation.  This would be a little like someone coming and telling you he had a dream that you were going to get that big promotion at work and a big raise and you won the lottery as well.  Naturally, he was suspicious. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Ephesians 5:25

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“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

If Paul’s words to wives were tough here, his words to husbands are even more challenging.  Wives are called to submit to their husbands as a function of their prior and larger submission to Christ.  Husbands are called to love their wives after the pattern of Christ’s love for the church.  That, of course, prompts a question: How did Christ loved the church?  Answer: He died for her.  He committed Himself to the last breath to seeing her become fully who God created her to be.  Everything he did was for her benefit.  Every single decision He made was filtered through the lens of whether or not it was going to be to her advantage.  For husbands, this is our standard. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Ephesians 5:22-24

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“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Here it is at last.  The gleaming evidence, lit up by a flashing neon sign, pointing to the fact that Paul is now finally letting out his true colors.  He hates women.  He uses the dreaded “S-word” here.  He thinks women should be submitted, subjected, subordinated to men.  He is convinced, just like everybody else in his day, that they are of less value to society than men.  He was laying a foundation of oppression and injustice here that has persisted in the church until today.  Women should be silent and seated at the feet of their men, catering to their every whim, and treating them as if they were the god of the home.  Disgusting!  Why else would he write something like this? Read the rest…