A Christ Centered Marriage

You have heard the story of the little girl who saw the movie “Cinderella” for the first time and was telling her neighbor about it. The lady said, “I know what happened in the end.” The little girl said, “What?” She replied, “They lived happily ever after!” And the girl said, “Oh, no they didn’t. They got married!” Sadly for many in the world, marriage has fallen into disrepute. But in God’s economy, it is meant to be a blessed and holy place for all who enter into it.    
 
Life in the Roman Empire was brutal for women, especially single women, but married women as well were considered property more than people. She had no legal rights. She lived in seclusion, mostly, and was commanded to be chaste and pure, even while her husband could enter into as many relationships outside of marriage as he chose. What Paul writes to the believing families in Colosse was revolutionary and liberating: “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.” Paul went further in helping us understand this in Ephesians when he wrote that the wife is to submit to her husband just as the church is to submit to Christ. And the man is to love his wife, even lay down his life for her, as Christ loves the church. So, what does that mean? 
 
For the wife, it means she agrees with the biblical order of authority in the home. FF Bruce wrote that Paul “did hold that there is a divine instituted hierarchy in the order of creation, and in this order the place of the wife comes next after her husband.” The word “submit” comes from a military term that means to be “under in rank.” Not under in worth, talent, or ability. David Guzik wrote, “We know that a private can be smarter, more talented, and be a better person than a general. But he is still under rank to the general. He isn’t submitted to the general so much as a person as he is to the general as a general. In the same way, the wife doesn’t submit to her husband because he deserves it. She submits because he is her husband.” The word for submission is in the middle voice here, which means it is voluntary. He is not a cruel tyrant who forces her submission. And she is not a woman who resents being under his authority and chooses to circumvent it or seek to manipulate it any way she can. She submits, as Paul said, “as is fitting in the Lord.” 
 
Paul then turns to the man and says, “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” Two commands. Love your wife. Do not be harsh with her. We can say we love her, but harshness, anger or dismissiveness will rule the day and sour the marriage. Paul says, “Love your wives.” And the word for love Paul uses is not eros, erotic love, or even phileo, brotherly love. It is agape, unconditional love. We are to love our wives with the same love God has for us. The love that Jesus had for us that sent Him to the cross. Paul said in Ephesians we love our wives as our own bodies, which we nourish and cherish. Sometimes, we nourish our own bodies way too much, right men? So we are to cut way down on self-nourishing and turn way up the love that cherishes and nourishes our wives. And we are to study her to know her and know how to love her the very best way we can. When it comes to studying my wife, I confess I have gotten a C- on way too many days in my marriage. But God gives grace.  
 
I love the account by Dr. Robert Seizer, a surgeon who removed a tumor from a young woman and had to sever a facial nerve to do it. The surgery left her mouth permanently twisted. He wrote this about what happened next. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But her young husband smiles. “I like it,” he says, “it’s kind of cute.” All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with the divine. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to her; to show her that their kiss still works.”  
 
Husband, love your wife as your own body. And see if you don’t, even so, live happily ever after.