What the
Christian religion has to do with marriage is a huge subject, so at best this is
an overview. I call it Rethinking Marriage because that’s what the early
Christians did. The early Christians inherited two models of marriage from
their forebears. Jews who came to follow Christ naturally brought the Jewish
understanding of marriage into their Christian faith and Gentile Christians,
almost all of whom were former pagans, brought that model. Of the two, the
Gentile model drew more attention from the apostles than the Jewish model.
Jesus hardly
talked about marriage at all except to endorse the existing Jewish
understanding that the marital union between husband and wife was supposed to
be both physical and spiritual, and that the loyalty of husband and wife to one
another was to be greater than any other such bond. He also taught that a
marriage is dissolved by death, which was no new teaching, of course.
The apostles
were Jewish, of course, and considered themselves Jewish until they were
martyred. The distinction between Jew and Christian came later. So we should
not be surprised that the apostles taught what Judaism has long held, for
example:[1]
· Marriage
is holy and sanctifies life. Marriage is a spiritual union between a man and a
woman as the fulfillment of God's commandment.
· The
purposes of marriage are two. First is companionship, based on God’s words in
Genesis 2.18, "It is not good for a man to be alone," referring to
Adam without Eve. The second purpose is procreation, based on God’s first
commandment in the whole Bible, given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1.28, "Be
fruitful and multiply." In Jewish thought, God blesses sexual relations
between husbands and wives for both purposes.
· In
addition, Jews viewed marriage as a contractual agreement with legal rights and
obligations on husband, wife, and their families. This is little emphasized in
Christianity mainly because that has been taken over by the state.
With those views to build on, the apostles soon learned that
they had their work cut out for them in educating former pagans. In the Roman
world, wives were little better than chattel to their husbands. Only in the
upper classes which ruled the empire was there any semblance of mutuality in
the marital relationship, and that because women could inherit the estates of
their fathers. (Well, money talks). But the moneyless ninety-five percent of
the world’s women lived in a society that was strongly patriarchal. So was first-century
Judaism, but not like the Gentile world. The main effect of apostolic teaching
was to reimagine and redevelop how husbands and wives related to one another on
the basis of their faith in Christ risen, and this meant that their most
important identity was not husband or wife, not even man or woman, but adopted
son or daughter of God and brother and sister of Jesus Christ. Hence, wrote
Paul, just as in Church there should be no distinction between Jew or Gentile,
nor between slaves or freemen, even so basic as male and female was not as
important as the fact that, “you are all one in Christ Jesus.”[2]
There was thus a radical change in the way that husbands and
wives should relate to each other because there was a radical new foundation
for all human relationships, including marriage. Why did the apostles teach
Gentiles such a radical change from the Gentiles’ existing understanding? I
think it was because they learned from women that Jesus was risen. Jesus chose
to appear first to Mary and some other women. The first thing that Jesus did on
the first Easter morning was elevate the status of women magnitudes higher than
ever before. I think the apostles found this quite humbling and it made them
rethink the role of women.
Probably the most controversial apostolic teaching about
marriage is Ephesians 5:22-33:
Wives, submit to your husbands as 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.
Husbands, love your wives, just as
Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing
her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself
as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy
and blameless.
In this same way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just
as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body.
"For this reason a man will
leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh." This is a profound mystery-- but I am talking about Christ and
the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves
himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
What nags us
today is the word, “submit.” We tend to overlook that of the 214 words here,
only 26 are directed to the wife; all the others are about the husbands.
Paul compares
marriage to the church and Christ. In God's eyes, a husband and wife are, in
some mysterious way, a single entity. It is a profound mystery, how two can
become one. It has no parallel except the way in which the church is the body
of Christ in the world.
Before men
get all excited because the Bible says for wives to submit to their husbands,
they need to consider the model they are held to. Their model in marriage is
Christ and nothing else. Husbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved
the church.
The
Christlike model for husbands to follow is one of servant-leadership in the
manner that Christ leads the church. Christ leads us not by an authoritarian
bark of command, but by the sacrificial pouring out of his Spirit. Servant
leadership is leadership without ego. It is humble. It shuns power for power’s
sake and does not seek prestige. It is self-giving and does not dominate.
A
servant-leader listens deeply with the heart as well as the head. He is not
arrogant and can change his mind. The servant-leader heals and mediates. He
seeks justice and a shared vision for the common destiny.
It is to
this sort of husband whom wives are admonished to submit. The scripture says
that wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord. Our God is a God of
love and care. God is present and working for the good of his people. God’s
anger is fleeting but his grace and love abide always. God always acts
redemptively to save and cherish and treasure.
It would
appear, then, that wives are to submit to husbands who mirror the character of the
Lord, even though husbands will never do this perfectly and often not even very
well. Wives are not admonished to submit to violent husbands. Wives are not
admonished to submit to a husband who is abusive or who buries her personal
worth with dominance and overbearing. Wives need not submit to husbands who
treat them with contempt or scorn or who fail to value them as a sister of and
in Christ.
Yet, if the
husband does represent the character of Christ, the wife is to submit. What
might such submission mean? I suspect that both the husband and the wife would
discover that they are impressively liberated from petty disputes and needless
arguments. They would discover that their joint identity as one flesh before
God would flower into the deepest possible love and appreciation for each
other. In losing themselves in each other they would discover who they are.
Husbands and
wives living together in grace are mutual heirs of the Kingdom of God. They
share mutual equality and mutual dignity as co-inheritors of God’s reign. They
live in mutual humility under God's grace. They share a mutual destiny in the
fullness of God’s life and in the coming, but ever-present, reign of God.
The foremost
obligation of a married man is not to be a better husband; it is to be a better
man. Our task is to be recreated men, transformed, and reformed in the image
and likeness of Christ. No husband has any right to expect his wife to submit
to him until he has submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and begun to move
on to perfection.
The chief
task of married women is not to be better wives but to be better women. Women
are called to the transformation of their persons and character in the likeness
of Christ. No woman can be a Christlike wife who is not a Christlike woman.
The French
have a saying, “The heart has its reasons that reason does not know.” Within
the Christian faith is a series of mysteries:
▸ Whoever will
save his life must lose it.
▸ Jesus died
but still lives.
▸ The kingdom
of God has not yet been established, but it is among us now.
▸ Jesus
ascended into heaven but the body of Christ is on earth as the church.
It is part
of the maturing of faith to accept these mysteries as perhaps unfathomable to
reason, but knowable to the heart and spirit. Our faith has its reasons that
reason does not know. A mystery of God cannot be explained; we can only
encounter God in it.
We are called to have Christlike marriages. Within the Christlike marriage are other mysteries: The two will become one. Leadership means sacrificial servanthood. Submission means liberation. In this mystery of marriage the husband and wife will encounter God and love one another most fully.
My tips for husbands and wives:
Commit
yourselves first of all to Christ and the kingdom of God.
Then jointly
submit your marriage to his Lordship; make it an anniversary ritual.
It is the
husband’s responsibility to keep the romance alive. Continue to court your
wife!
Do not have
a child-centered marriage for when the kids are gone you’ve got what?
Enduring
marriages are not automatic. They result from choices each spouse makes
throughout.
Don’t let
problems fester. But also agree on an expiration date.
Pray
together: pray with each other and pray for one another.