We come today to one of those difficult passages, that most preachers would prefer to avoid if at all possible. What we find here isn’t particularly popular in today’s world. Ours is an age of liberation. The idea of submission to authority is at variance with modern ideas of permissiveness and freedom. People have fought long and hard over the past 30 years to liberate, in particular, women, children and workers, from oppression and subordination. So anything that even hints of oppression is deeply resented and strongly resisted. So how do we respond to this modern mood?
Well, the first thing to say is that we should welcome those movements of liberation. We should be working against any institution which exploits or oppresses some group of people, whether they’re women, or children, the poor, racial or religious minorities, or anyone else who’s powerless to help themselves. I guess one of the shames of the Christian church over the centuries is the way we’ve acquiesced in the status quo, even at times unwittingly paving the way for imperialistic exploitation of conquered peoples. But in fact, we should be in the vanguard of those seeking social change. You could argue that the sort of liberation that we’ve seen over the past decades, even the past couple of centuries first occurred with the coming of the gospel. Wasn’t it Jesus Christ who took the first steps to liberating women, children and workers? Didn’t Jesus treat women with dignity and honour in an age when women were despised. Wasn’t it he who said let the children come to me, for of these is the Kingdom of heaven? Wasn’t it Jesus who worked as a carpenter, and who washed his disciples feet because he’d come to be a servant of all? So let’s be careful as we read a passage like this that we don’t read into it a reactionary patriarchal world view. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
In fact before we look at this passage we need to do a bit more background thinking. We need to have a solid foundation on which to stand before we look at something as difficult as this or else it’ll trip us up.
Before we look at this passage we need to understand the Christian worldview that Paul himself teaches. Already in this book he’s argued for the oneness in Christ of all races: that is, of Jew and Gentile. We’re all part of God’s family, brought to unity in the body of Christ. But back in Galatians he went further. There he points out that in Christ, not only is there neither Jew nor Gentile, but neither is there slave or free, male or female. So the oneness we enjoy in Christ breaks down all the social barriers that have been built up since the fall. (But more of that in a moment.)
So the Christian worldview that we should be working from allows us confidently to affirm 3 truths:
the dignity of womanhood, childhood and servanthood as shown by the ministry of Christ himself
the equality before God of all human beings, irrespective of race, rank, class, culture, sex or age.
and the even deeper unity of all Christian believers as fellow members of God’s family and of Christ’s body.
So we shouldn’t see here any hint of inferiority. Submission does not equal subjection or subordination. In fact could you say that there’s a sense in which you can only submit yourself if you’re free to do so? That is, if in fact you’re an equal. If you’re not free, if you’re not acting as an equal, then it isn’t submission, it’s subjection.
Well, that’s all by way of background before we come to actually look at what Paul has to say about personal relationships in the Church. Now remember that Paul is in the middle of explaining how our unity in Christ and the holiness that being in Christ requires is to be lived out in our everyday lives. And now he comes to personal relationships. He wants us to see that being united as a Church also has to be worked out in our one to one relationships. And he chooses the 3 most common relationships in society: husband-wife, child-parent; and master-slave. Now can I say to begin with that nothing that happens today in these areas matches the conditions then In Paul’s day it didn’t matter whether you were Jewish, Greek, or Roman, wives had no rights. They were there to look after their husband’s household and legitimate children. They would hardly have spoken to their husbands. Adultery was the norm. A woman was considered a mere chattel, her legal position amounted to enslavement. Children and slaves were no better. Things were a lot different to today. So what Paul has to say is a radical departure from the general thinking of the dominant culture of his time.
He begins by telling them to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Christ is our model. He came as a servant, submitting his whole life to those he served. So out of reverence for Christ, we too are to submit ourselves to one another. Notice right from the start, that the notion of submission bears no sense of inferiority. How can there be a sense of inferiority if Christ is our model? No-one would suggest that Christ was inferior to those he came to serve. And it’s mutual submission he’s talking about, not the dominance of one over another, even if the outworking in the various social roles may be different.
He begins with husbands and wives. "Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church." Now there’s a difficulty here isn’t there. That’s the difficulty of working out what it means for the husband to be the head of the wife. It raises the issues of subjection and oppression that I’ve spent the last 5 minutes talking about and it raises the question to what extent does the husband’s headship depend on the social situation of the time? But it’s also a difficult issue because we live in a fallen world. Let me take you back to Gen 3, to the fall, to the source of our difficulty. Here’s what God said would be the result of their disobedience: (Gen 3:16 NRSV) "To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."" Now the term desire there is the same word that’s used in the next chapter where God warns Cain that Sin desires to have him. In other words her desire for her husband isn’t necessarily a physical desire, rather it’s a desire to control him. So the result of the fall is that men rule over women and women desire to have it the other way around. Rather than to love and to cherish, our desire is to dominate. So our natural inclination isn’t to submit to one another but to rule one another. So that makes it doubly difficult for us to deal with a verse like this. Wives find it hard because they don’t want to submit to the rule of another. Husbands find it hard because it gives them a perfect excuse to exercise their sinful urge to dominate. But neither response is a Christian one.
So let me take you back even further to Gen 2. What was God’s intention for men and women? Wasn’t it that they work together as equals? The woman was created to be a helper, that is, someone who’d share the man’s load. But it’s important that she be an equal. None of the animals that God has made is suitable. The man needs one who is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones. And there’s no sense of superiority or inferiority in their relationship. Rather they’re spoken of as being one flesh, the prototype and model for all future marriages.
So when Paul tells wives to be subject to their husbands the way the church is subject to Christ, and tells husbands to love their wives the way Christ loved the Church, he’s urging us to turn our backs on that way of relating that comes from the fall and rediscover God’s intention for male-female relationships. Mutual submission only works when we’re working together as a team. It only works when we each consider the other an equal.
Now if you’re a husband, let me say that vs22-24 are not meant to be read by you. They’re none of your business. Paul never instructs husbands to make their wives submit. In fact the opposite is true as we’ll see in a moment. On the other hand if you’re a wife, it’s only vs 22-24 that should concern you. You need to work out what it means for you to submit to your husbands. I’m a husband so I can’t tell you. I can however suggest some of the ways that the Church submits to Christ. The church submits to Christ primarily by continuing his work in the world. It submits to Christ by working towards unity and holiness of life, which reflect our identity with him. It submits to Christ by showing his love to the world. In other words the Church’s submission to Christ has to do with being united with him in his mission to humanity. So I guess that in so far as a husband is part of that mission, a wife’s submission will entail working with him to see Christ’s mission go forward. That doesn’t mean she’ll be a passive follower either. The term helper used in Gen 2 to describe the man’s need of another is also used in the Psalms to refer to God coming to our aid. So there’s no reason why a wife can’t be an initiator within a relationship of mutual submission.
As I said a moment ago, Paul never tells husbands to make their wives submit. On the contrary, his instruction to us is to love our wives the way Christ loved the Church. Now think about that. How did Christ get the church to submit to him? Did he order us to? Did he ever use force? Did he work on our guilt? No. He humbled himself. He gave himself up for her. He washed her clean with the washing of water by the word. He provided the bridal clothes so she’d appear in splendour. Paul takes up the idea of husband and wife being one flesh and he asks, how do you treat your own body? Don’t you nourish it and tenderly care for it? Well, that’s how you should treat your wife if the two of you are one body. It’s no different from loving yourself. In fact he says, there’s a mystery reflected in the marriage bond, that sums up all he’s been saying about the unity of the church. Just as a man and woman become one flesh, so too the Church and Christ are united into a single entity, so that the two can’t be separated.
Let’s face it, there’s nothing we can do about the natural differences between men and women. It’s a fact of life that men have that terrible stuff, testosterone, roaring around in their blood, making them naturally aggressive, with a drive to dominate. But, Paul says, that drive is to be redirected. Rather than letting it drive us to dominate, direct it to service. Direct our energies to caring for our wives the way we care for ourselves. Do what Christ does as he cares for his church. Let’s face it, if that was how husbands normally acted, it would be a lot easier for wives to be submitted to them.
[Perhaps it would also be good to say that in our modern context where women are encouraged to fight for their rights, and to take a lead, we need to be careful how we understand that. It may be that in some contexts, that is, those marriages where the wife is the dominant personality, we need to encourage those wives to love their husbands the way Christ loved the church.]
Paul then turns his attention to children and slaves. He says: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2’Honor your father and mother’ -- this is the first commandment with a promise: 3’so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth’" Paul gives three reasons for obeying parents. First because it’s right. That is, there’s a natural ordering of family life that gives parents responsibility for caring for their children and children the responsibility to obey their parents. Secondly God commands it. Thirdly, God thinks it’s so important that he rewards those who do it. But again he says obey your parents "in the Lord". That is, so long as what they tell you to do isn’t contrary to God’s law. We haven’t got time to go into the issue of when this responsibility ends, but let me suggest that we never lose the responsibility of honoring our parents even if we no longer need to obey them.
The other side of the coin of course is that fathers are not to provoke their children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Parents have a responsibility to make it as easy as possible for their children to do the right thing, not doing things that get them angry, but nevertheless bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. That means that we need to understand the stage our children are at; the needs they have at a particular age; the pressures they’re under; the need to stretch their wings, test out the boundaries, etc. And it means we have to provide the structure of parental discipline that helps them grow without strangling them, and that directs them in helpful directions rather than unhelpful but at the same time doesn’t just let them do what they want. We have to walk a fine line between being overprotective or over restrictive in our discipline and being too permissive.
Finally slaves, or in our context, employees, are to work with enthusiasm, even when no-one is watching, as though we’re working for the Lord. Now it seems to me that that is so contrary to the Australian work ethic that it’ll take some doing. But again he promises that God will reward those who work like that. Similarly masters are to treat their slaves as though they too were working for Christ. This is an out working of the golden rule: "Do unto others what you would have them do to you." If you want respect, show it to your employees. If you want to receive service, show it, just as Christ did. They’re not to threaten. That is they’re not to misuse the power they have over their servants. And remember that Christ is watching and he shows no partiality. The reason that people in power get away with abuse of power is that too often there’s no impartial judge of their actions. So abuse is OK if you’re on top. Dishonesty is OK if you get away with it. But Paul says there is an impartial judge, your Master in heaven, and he’s watching how you behave.
So how does being one of Christ’s church affect our personal relationships? Well, if we’re united with Christ then our general behaviour will be one of mutual submission, working together to do Christ’s work. For wives that means working together with a partner, not toiling for a master, or seeking to overcome an adversary. For a husband it will mean not dominating his wife but sacrificing himself in order to serve the one who is joined to him in a unity that reflects the unity between Christ and the Church. For the child it will mean obeying parents because God has placed them in families. For parents it will mean providing a loving environment where children will grow to independence loving and serving Christ. For employees it will mean serving our employers with enthusiasm and commitment, while for employers it will mean treating employees the way we’d like to be treated ourselves.
The key to all this is in vs 18 & 21: "Be filled with the Spirit" and "be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." Let’s pray that Christ’s Spirit living within us would help us to change our natural inclinations so we can be more Christ-like.
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