Coming Up: Sonday December 14, 2014
Colossians 3:18-4:1. Christ Brings Relational Harmony.
Read Colossians 3:18, Ephesians 5:22-24, 1 Peter 3:1
The relationships in our lives bring us the very best times and often the very worst times as well. Unfortunately relationships were marred by sin when Adam and Eve transgressed God’s law. But this week we’ll see that Christ brings relational harmony. Christ allows relationships to grow closer to what God created them to be.
As we turn to marriage today and consider the role of the wife, we come across one of the most hated words in the Bible. The word ‘submit’ has caused much angst and agony to women across the world. Many have vowed never to marry a man that insists on this word being a part of their marriage vows. The word ‘submit’ conjures up for many images of slavery, of a beaten wife tied to the kitchen and at the beck and call of her domineering husband.
But the words of Colossians 3:18 , Ephesians 5:22 and 1 Peter 3:1 are not misogynistic. They are not anti-female propaganda seeking to enslave women to women-hating men. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether we like it or not, the word ‘submit’ is there in the Bible in every New Testament passage about marriage.
When Adam and Eve transgressed God’s law, God promised that the wife-husband relationship would involve a power struggle (Gen 3:16). When the New Testament calls wives to submit, it’s calling them to respect and honour their husband’s decisions and to avoid resisting, rebelling and resenting them. Submission is not passive. It is active and beneficial to the husband. Submission is a voluntary limiting of what one might do in a relationship for the express benefit of the other person. It’s a willingness to give authority to the other.
Ephesians 5:24 pushes the envelope a little further. Wives are told to submit to their husbands in everything. The wife does not choose what to submit to and what not to submit to. She does not engage in passive resistance or an undermining of her husband’s role.
The key to submission in Colossians 3:18 is the phrase ‘in the Lord’. In Ephesians 5:22 it’s ‘as is fitting in the Lord’. The wife is called to submit to her husband in a way that honours and glorifies the Lord. Submitting to something sinful is never enjoined upon the wife. While she is never called to be disrespectful, she has the obligation to the Lord to refuse to submit to sinful desires, both her own and her husband’s.
Submission may seem to be a hard call and looking at only one side of the argument can cause a loss of balance. Tomorrow we will look at the husband’s role. When we have the full picture we can see how Christ brings relational harmony.
Prayer:
Using today’s Bible reading and notes spend time praying.
Adoration:
Confession:
Thanks:
Supplication:
à Ask the Lord to bless the marriages in your church with great harmony and Christ-likeness. Pray that both wives and husbands would fulfil the roles given them by Christ Himself.
à Pray that the singles in your church would be strong in the face of temptation and that they would seek to honour God in all things.
A good, Bible based marriage witnesses to the love of Christ in a powerful way.
1. What does submission look like in a Christian marriage?
2. What are your thoughts on the wife’s call to submission?
3. Philomena is having a hard time submitting to her husband who has just become a Christian. She argues that he doesn’t know enough to lead the relationship. How do you counsel her?
Intro: Many families are either breaking down or already broken. Many families are hurting and suffering. God’s plan is to bless and lift up families because He created families to be a unit of love and safety.
Share: the struggles you have had in your own family.Read: Ephesians 5:22-24.
God gives a role to everyone in the family - husband, wife and children. The roles are different and no one is better or worse than anyone else.
What is the role of the wife?Pray Together: that God would bring healing and togetherness to families that are broken.
Intro: Many families are either breaking down or already broken. Many families are hurting and suffering. God’s plan is to bless and lift up families because He created families to be a unit of love and safety.
Share: the struggles you have had in your own family.Read: Ephesians 5:22-24.
God gives a role to everyone in the family - husband, wife and children. The roles are different and no one is better or worse than anyone else.
What is the role of the wife?Pray Together: that God would bring healing and togetherness to families that are broken.
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