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 of the union of God and man is the hard side.