Three Ways God Has Redeemed Marriage
1. By Elevating Marriage To The Status Of God-Glorifying Mystery
Marriage is regularly degraded in culture. Legal scholar John Witte laments: “[the earlier] ideal of marriage as a permanent contractual union designed for the sake of mutual love, procreation, and protection is slowly giving way to a new reality of marriage as a ‘terminal sexual contract’ designed for the gratification of the individual parties.”1 Comedian Chris Rock expressed this degradation of marriage quite poignantly: “Do you want to be single and lonely or married and bored?”2 Marriage has fallen on hard times. In fact, so diminished has our culture’s estimation of marriage that some have taken to extolling Homer and Marge Simpson as a fine example of marriage commitment. After all, whatever else might be said of Homer and Marge, after twenty-eight seasons (as of 2016), they are at least still together!
No matter how much disdain our culture might pour upon the institution of marriage, this most basic of human institutions is highly exalted in the pages of Scripture. John Piper, in his excellent book This Momentary Marriage, rejoices over the fact that the Bible takes marriage out of the gutter of the culture and lifts it high above our sinful tendencies. Piper writes: “Marriage exists ultimately to display the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church.”3 This is a great summary of Ephesians 5. God redeems marriage by infusing it with the ultimate symbolism: the man and the wife are not just about themselves, but point to the much greater reality of Christ and the church. Your marriage is not just about you! It is about God’s glory being on display.
2. By Issuing Commands Aimed at Reversing Effects of Sin
The relationship dynamic set in place by the Creator’s mandate became grossly distorted as a result of sin. The most significant text in this regard is Genesis 3:16b:
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.
The two crucial creation truths in terms of the relationship dynamic between husband and wife are headship and submission. Headship and submission are not consequences of the fall. Instead, it is the corruption of these two crucial truths that is the consequence. Bonhoeffer wisely cautioned: “You may order your home as you like, except in one thing: the wife is to be subject to her husband and the husband is to love his wife.”4 So to directly confront the effects of the fall on the relationship dynamic between husband and wife, God issued countermanding decrees. A natural consequence of the fall on the makeup of the woman would be that her “‘desire’ would be for her husband.” The word translated “desire” in Genesis 3:16 regarding the woman is used again in 4:7 where God warned Cain: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” The word “desire” does not carry the connotation we might expect. Instead, it means “desire to control or conquer.” As a consequence of the Fall, the woman created to be the man’s companion would now become his rival, seeking to undermine his headship over her. However, to the woman redeemed by Christ, God issues a command that directly confronts this sinful tendency: “submit to your own husband as to Christ” (Eph. 5:22-24, Col. 3:18, 1 Pet. 3:1-6).
The Wife’s Submission. Submission, of course, does not entail “agreeing with everything.” In fact, the Apostle Peter counseled Christian women to “win their unbelieving husbands without a word.” The believing wife is not instructed to agree with her unbelieving husband regarding the gospel. She can’t; by definition, an unbelieving husband rejects the gospel. Submission does not necessarily entail agreement. A submissive Christian woman is not called upon to abandon her faith because of her husband’s lack of faith (or contrary faith). Instead, she is encouraged to win him to the Lord, without nagging, but through a quiet and gentle spirit. Neither does “submission” mean “acting out of fear.” Again we turn to Peter, who provided this strong encouragement to the Christian women among his readership: “You are Sarah’s children if you do not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Pet. 3:6). The “Proverbs 31” woman smiles at the future, even while living in submission to her husband. In fact, the exemplary woman of Proverbs 31 seamlessly combined industry with her settled priority, her family. She seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands, for the purpose of clothing her household. She brings her food from afar, again, providing food for her household. She’s even involved in some real estate transactions, as she considers a field and buys it. The result? Her husband will have no lack of gain. Finally, she perceives that her merchandise is valuable, and she looks well to the ways of her household. This is not the picture of a woman acting out of fear, but a smiling woman who submits herself and her endeavors to the welfare of her husband and family. As Piper rightly observes, “submission is free, not coerced.”5
Submission does not mean “agreeing with everything,” nor does it mean “acting out of fear.” And neither is submission absolute. Only to Christ Himself can (and should) any man or woman be in absolute submission. To put it another way, while we are all called to be submissive in some respects and in some relations, only to an Absolute Person does anyone owe absolute submission. This is true of the wife as well. She never, under any circumstances, owes absolutesubmission to her husband, because her husband is not an absolute being. But she does owe appropriate submission.
As an analogy, consider the command that all Christians submit themselves to governing authorities (Rom. 13:1-7, 1 Pet. 2:13-17). This is an unambiguous command that we subject ourselves to this God-ordained human institution. It is clear, however, that this submission is relative. There are limits to what the government can command of its citizens as well as limits to what a Christian can be obligated to obey. So Peter and John told the religious leaders of the day who had commanded the apostles to stop preaching in the name of Jesus: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Just as there are limits to what governing authorities or church elders can demand of those under their charge, so there are limits to the authority that a husband may wield. While it is a fine line to navigate, and the default position ought to be one of happy and godly submission as unto Christ, there are times a woman may be forced to say, “I must obey God rather than my husband.” If a husband demanded that his wife renounce Christ, she would be expected to submit to Christ over and against her husband, as he has in this grossly abused his position of headship. A woman must not make a rallying cry out of the fact that her submission is not absolute. Nevertheless, the husband’s headship is not absolute, nor is the woman’s responsibility to submit. All the same, submission is the default position, even unto unbelieving or unfair husbands (1 Pet. 3:1-6).
As far as what submission is. Piper offers this helpful definition: “The divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts.”6 The submissive wife is relating freely and honorably and respectfully to her husband just as the church does to Christ. Submission is the honorable, God-honoring disposition of worship and obedience in the heart.
The Husband’s Headship. Whereas the wife would seek to rival and undermine the man’s headship, the man’s sinful inclination is to rule harshly over the wife. His retaliatory response to her desire to master him is an excessive domination over her. What has God said in response? “You shall love your wife as Christ loved the church.” This is a call to self-sacrifice rather than the sheer maintenance of one’s dominion.
The man is called to exercise headship for his wife’s well being. A husband is called to use his God-given authority for the purpose of protecting and guiding his wife that she may flourish under his headship. So just like above, we first note what headship is not. Biblical headship is not absolute. A man has authority only because it is delegated to him by God, who alone possesses absolute authority. That means very plainly that a man’s authority in his marriage is never unqualified. Neither is headship meant to be self-serving. Men are not made the head so that they can command service from those under their charge. Biblical headship is not harsh, cruel, overbearing, arbitrary, or demanding. But neither is biblical headship negotiable. It is not for the husband and wife to get together and decide who is going to lead. God has already decided that for us, and it is not based upon ability or intelligence or income or educational level or skill set or looks or anything of the sort.
So what is biblical headship? It is the man’s God-honoring disposition of worship and submission to Christ. Headship, says Piper, is “the divine calling of the husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.”7 So the man is called to use his headship for the wife’s protection, whether physical or spiritual. If a wife is forced to fight off an intruder in the house, it should be because the husband is either physically incapable, not home at the time, or rendered unconscious by his own attempt.8
But the husband is also given primary responsibility for the spiritual protection of the home. This is where so many husbands utterly and disgracefully fail. Too many men look at “religion” as something for the wife and children, and they are unduly passive about leading the family in spiritual conversation, biblical thinking, theological formation, and doctrinal discernment. The wife is to be the man’s helper in all these things, but God assigns the man with the primary responsibility. That is biblical headship.
3. By Insisting That One Thing Comes Between Husband And Wife
What could ever rightly come between a husband and a wife? The cross of Christ. Christian marriage is founded upon the Person and work of Christ. A marriage is not distinctively Christian just because a couple was married in a church building. A marriage is distinctively Christian because it is founded upon the redemptive work of the cross of Christ, informed by the Holy Scriptures, and empowered by the Spirit of God. The language of Ephesians 5 is “gospel” language, the language of redemption: Christ gave himself up for her; Christ gave himself to present her spotless.
The Book of Colossians tells us that through the cross of Christ, God canceled the enormous, unpayable record of debt that we owed (Col. 2:13-14). This describes the vertical experience of grace and forgiveness. We are called, in Piper’s words, to bend this experience of grace and forgiveness outward horizontally.9 There is no such thing as a marriage without conflict. Sometimes that conflict begins very early in the marriage. Sometimes, the conflict is deferred a while. But there is no such thing as a marriage without conflict, because marriage involves two sinners whose natural inclinations are self-centered and disordered from God’s original design. Conflict comes in many forms and can manifest itself in fear, blame, dysfunction, bitterness, guilt, misunderstanding, a lack of love, unresolved baggage from previous relationships, and general personal weaknesses. All these things cause conflict. God, however, wants to plant a cross right in the middle of that mess. God wants the cross to come between a husband and wife.
Keller rightly observed: “Marriage is glorious but hard.” Thus, Piper exhorts: “Let the measure of God’s grace to you in the cross of Christ be the measure of your grace to your spouse.”10 As Christ bears with us, so we must bear with our spouse. As Christ forgives us, so we must forgive. Or, to borrow language from Bonhoeffer: “In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all marriage, can survive.”11 Because of sin, marriage is hard. But because of Christ, marriage can be glorious. Marriage is not only God’s idea in the first place. But the redemption of marriage in Christ is God’s idea and ideal as well.
[1] Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011), 27.
[2] Ibid., 22.
[3] John Piper, This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 42.
[4] Cited in Piper, 94.
[5] Ibid., 101.
[6] Ibid., 101.
[7] Ibid., 85.
[8] Ibid., 91.
[9] Ibid., 43.
[10] Ibid., 46.
[11] Ibid., 40.