Making Marriage Marvelous Series

Some little girls were having a great time playing wedding.

They had a couple of bridesmaids, a bride and a maid of

honor. The mother of one of the girls observed that the

groom was conspicuous by his absence, and she asked,

"What about the groom?" One child quickly replied, "We

don't need a groom. This is just a small wedding."

There is many a wedding where the groom feels left out,

and many where he wishes he was left out, but the fact is,

there is no way to get a wedding so small that you do not

need a groom. The smallest wedding on record took place

without any attendants or guests, and there was no

preacher, but even Eve had a groom. When you have cut all

the corners possible, and you are down to the bare minimum

you still have a groom. The groom is not in limelight like the

bride, and his role is very minimal. He gets only a fraction

of the published publicity, which is not much more than the

ushers get, but he is no mere appendage which can be cut off

if necessary. You can eliminate everyone else in the list

below the bride, but the groom must remain.

God in His all wise providence ordained that every wedding

must have a groom. It is important to man's ego

that it is so, for if he was not a necessity he might very well

be ignored all together, and the fantasy of the little girls

might become fact. It is said with as much truth as humor

that some Hollywood brides keep the bouquets and throw

the groom away. But why all this rambling about the

necessity of a groom? It is because he does play second

fiddle when it comes to the wedding, and the fact is, he plays

a secondary role in the marriage.

The wife plays the leading role in marriage even though

she is to be submissive to her husband. When the biblical

view of marriage properly understood, no woman can ever

complain that she is treated unfairly. Nowhere is a woman's

role as wife and mother so exalted as it is in the Bible. The

Bible is almost like the newspaper. It magnifies and glorifies

the bride and wife, and just mentions the husband.

Proverbs 31 gives the greatest description in literature of the

role of an ideal wife and mother. Nowhere in the Bible is

there such a description of the ideal husband and father.

Peter was a husband, and he had a great opportunity to

write at length about husbands, but in our text of 7 verses of

marriage counseling he devotes 6 of them to the wife, and

only 1 to the husband. It looks like typical coverage for the

husband, and possibly 6 to 1 is even better than what he gets

in the paper. But the question is, why? When the groom is

just as essential as the bride, why does he get so much

attention? It is not only because he is less beautiful than the

bride, but also because his role is less difficult and demanding

than that of the bride. Generally speaking it is

much more difficult to be a good wife than to be a good

husband. It takes so many more virtues, and that is why the

Bible and books on marriage are filled with so much more

advice for wives than for husbands. One of the reasons is

that wives read more on improving their marriage than

husbands do. Both Peter and Paul deal with the wife before

they do the husband, and they say more about her role.

What a wife is and does determines more in a marriage

than any other factor. She is the star at the wedding, and

must go on being the star, for when she falls the sky is dark

indeed. Don't ever fall for the folly that the biblical role of

women makes her second class. If women's lib wants

freedom from the biblical role for women, then they want to

be free to be less and not more, for the biblical role makes

her the primary factor in marriage and the home. It is true

that man is dominant in business, government, war, and

politics, but when it comes to the home and marriage the

wife is the leader.

The analogies of Scripture illustrate what I am saying.

Jesus is pictured as the groom, and the church is the bride.

It is not hard for the groom to be loving and loyal to his

bride, but the bride is constantly struggling to be faithful,

and to keep unspotted from the world. The battles of the

bride is what the Christian life is all about. The brides side