Complimentarianism
Rules for Christian Households –Colossians 3:18-19, ESV
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.
-See also Ephesians 5:22-33
This is long overdue, but still, I think it’d be edifying to share this with you all.
Pastor & theologian on Ligon Duncan said it best once:
“God has created men and women equal in their essential dignity and human personhood but different and complimentary in function, with male headship in the home and believing community, that is the church, being understood as part of God’s created design.”
If ever we need a Scriptural foundation for what Biblical manhood and womanhood is, it is found in these passages we just read. God requires wives especially to submit to their husbands, and husbands especially to love their wives (and not be harsh to them = be really really nice to them!).
Have you ever wondered why God demands this of us? Why didn’t Paul write “wives love your husbands” & “husbands submit to your wives” instead? I’ve wondered about this, and found that God has much reason to do so. It’s not that wives shouldnt love their husbands, or that husbands should never submit to their wives (of course, we know this to be a must in 21st century relationships)…but I think it is that because of who we are, men / women, God has made us differently & have different weaknessess, different areas of the husband-wife relationship that we are specifically responsible to God for. Scripture specifically tells us of this.
It’s about Biblical order, and not about what we value. Pastor Voddie Baucham put it nicely in his series “Love and Marriage” at 722.. The wife must be submissive to the Lord. In the same way, she is to be subjective to her husband… Submitting to proper Biblical authority. Similarily, husbands must love their wives; “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” He must be a loving leader; a leader in love, in the Word, in righteousness, in selflessness, and in intimacy.
May we all grow in loving & forgiving each other, as Christ first loved and forgave us, so that the world will know that we are His disciples.
“Love is an act of the will, accompained by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object.”
I happen to think Paul’s characteristic brilliance is shining through in Ephesians. To wit.
When it comes to instructions to women, he offers the standard party line–echoes, what many Greco-Roman moralists have said, “wives, submit.”
When it comes to men, he absolutely departs the standard party line. If I remember correctly, this is the ONLY place in all extant Greco-Roman literature where any teacher instructs men to love their wives. And not only that. He goes so far as to suggest that their love mirror the love Christ had for the church, which resulted in Christ willingly and fully submitting to the church.
As Winnie the Pooh might say, “Curiouser and curiouser…. “