Marriage 21
This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband. (Ephesians 5.32-33)
The picture here is so helpful. On the
one hand, we have Christ’s sacrificial love and tender care for the church. On
the other hand, we have the church’s complete obedience and deep honor directed
toward Christ. It is the wife’s portion of this picture we want to examine
today.
The dictionary defines reverence as a
feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe. Synonyms include admiration,
adoration, approbation, approval, awe, bow, deference, deification, devotion,
esteem, fealty, fear, genuflection, high esteem, homage, honor, love, loyalty,
obeisance, obsequiousness, praise, prostration, respect, veneration, and
worship.
Of the three specific commands in this chapter directed toward the wife – to love her husband, to submit to her husband, and to reverence her
husband – this is the more difficult one, in my opinion. After all, mothers are
familiar with the idea of unconditional love no matter what the child does or
is, and every mother is a woman. Generally speaking, women are better
instinctively at all sorts of emotional things, including love. Respect, on the
other hand, is often viewed as something that must be earned. Unconditional
respect is a bit of an oxymoron.
In other contexts, I agree that
respect should be earned, but bringing that into marriage is problematic at
best. Why? Because the closer you get in a relationship the harder it is to
maintain respect. Put your face six inches from the mirror, and you will
clearly see all the flaws that are veiled at a distance of six feet. In a
marriage, there is humanity without mystique; there is frailty, weakness,
hesitation, insecurity, and sin visible. There is no earthly relationship quite
so revealing or unveiling of the inner person as a long marriage.
Put another way round, the greater the
distance between us, the easier it is to cultivate respect. But the closer the
relationship, the more you discover my humanity and the harder it becomes to
maintain a respect so deep as to be called reverence. Of course, you can try to
remind yourself of the things about me you respect in the first place, but it
will be a constant battle in the face of my unveiled humanity. This is why the
concept of earned respect is often damaging in a marriage; a wife knows her husband's
humanity too well.
So respect him unconditionally.
How can you possibly do that?
The same way you submit to him –
through him to God.
We see an Old Testament example of
this in the relationship established between Moses and Aaron. And he shall
be thy spokesman unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to thee
instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God. (Exodus 4.16) God
instructed Aaron in this context to view his brother – a man about whom he
surely knew more than one or two peccadilloes – as if his brother was God.
Aaron failed at this, as indicated by his and Miriam's rebellion against Moses,
but if Aaron had followed God's instructions, he would not have failed.
Many years ago, I spent two summers
traveling with an older evangelist named Joe Boyd. I was just a teenager; he
was in his upper sixties at the time. He had taken young men training for
ministry with him every summer for years. I can only imagine the nonsense he
had to put up with over those years. From time to time, Dr. Boyd would attempt
to prevent the outbreak of such nonsense by preemptively warning us. On one
such occasion, he was describing an interaction he had with an unruly preacher
boy. The boy flatly disagreed with an instruction given to him by Dr. Boyd and
said, "The Holy Spirit is leading me not to." Dr. Boyd looked at him
and said, "Son, I am your Holy Spirit."
I do not know that I would have said
that, but it was not as blasphemous as it sounds. There was a clear biblical
line of authority from the parent through Dr. Boyd to that young man. Just as
that young man did not have the right to look at his parents and tell them the
Spirit was leading him to disobey them, he could not use that line on Dr. Boyd
either. Joe Boyd was to him instead of God, so to speak.
Turning yet again to the Old
Testament, we find a bad example of this.
II
Sam 6.15 So David and all the house of
Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting, and with the sound of the
trumpet.
16 And as the ark of the LORD came into the city
of David, Michal Saul’s daughter looked through a window, and saw king David
leaping and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart.
...
20
Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul
came out to meet David, and said, How glorious was the king of Israel to day,
who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as
one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself!
21 And David said unto Michal, It was before the
LORD, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me
ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel: therefore will I play before
the LORD.
22 And I will yet be more vile than thus, and
will be base in mine own sight: and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken
of, of them shall I be had in honour.
23 Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no
child unto the day of her death.
Michal’s failure here is even more
startling when placed against Sarah for contrast. Even as Sara obeyed
Abraham, calling him lord. (I Peter 3.6) Sarah and Michal both were aware
of unpleasant facts about their husbands, yet Sarah managed to box that out and
maintain her reverence toward Abraham, while Michal signally failed at doing
the same thing with David.
The position of husband merits deep
respect and reverence, as the King James Version puts it. The man in the
position is not the point. Just as the wife submits through her husband to the
Lord, so she extends reverence in the same manner.
I suspect if that last sentence were
carried out it would revolutionize more than a few homes in our midst.
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