Even the casual observer has to admit, whether they believe in a Divine Creator or not, there is an established, recognizable symmetry and order in life and life’s surroundings. This also applies to family structure.
Many teaching God’s Word as a guide for marriage picture this as God’s umbrella of protection for the family. The inference is simple and obvious. As an umbrella protects from falling rain so God’s Word protects from fall-out as a family unit.
One conclusion from this premise can certainly be that any time anyone gets out of line, that is, out from God’s Umbrella of Protection, they are out from under the Authority of God.
Let’s turn our attention to selected passages from the fifth chapter of Ephesians to enhance our understanding of this lesson. This material builds upon last week’s article on Submission. To see the Divine Line of Order allow me to support my teaching by re-ordering the verses without subverting the teaching.
Obedience to God = Guaranteed Protection
Ephesians 5:28 admonish husbands: “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.”
Ephesians 5:25 commands: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.”
Ephesians 5:22-24 speaks to wives: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and He is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”
Ephesians 5:21 sets the stage for a marriage relationship which establishes fairness and order within the family structure that will not have to live in a state of fright and/or alarm of God’s judgment: “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”
During my thirty plus years of counseling, I have met many husbands, churched and un-churched, who know Ephesians 5:25 but have never heard Ephesians 5:21.
In an earlier lesson we looked in depth as First Peter 3:7 which I will repeat without comment as rendered in the English Standard Version: “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered (Author’s Note: unanswered)”.
Ephesians 6:1-4 speaks to the children and establishes their position under God’s Umbrella of Protection: “Children obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it might be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Hopefully, absorbing this lesson and the previous, readers will look at Biblical submission as liberating rather than debilitating.
Next time: Have Predetermined Prerequisites for Marriage
