God's Purpose For the FamilySample

Let’s admit it. Submission can be very disagreeable no matter who the man is—even when he is the image of the invisible God. But submission is required. It is always required. Every human institution in the history of the world has been held together by it. We tend to mollify this awkward fact by using more palatable terms, like compliance. This is intended to keep authority figures out of sight. But authorities are still working behind the scenes in even the most liberal and light-filled bureaucracy.

Nevertheless it is easy to justify obstinacy. Sometimes a boss really is foolish; sometimes a police officer really is brutal; sometimes a politician really is corrupt—and sometimes rebellion really is the only solution. But you can’t build anything on rebellion. Submission will eventually be called for: armies can’t win without submission, and football teams can’t score without submission, and children can’t learn math without submission, and businesses can’t make a profit without submission. We can be honest about it, or we can try to hide it—this is life. And it is true for the house of God, and for the households we live in. Paul makes the connection: “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church.”

For, if a wife is a man’s body, then she belongs to him in some sense. This was something taken as a matter of course not too long ago. While Paul doesn’t say it here, it is also true that a husband’s body belongs to his wife. And he does say that very thing elsewhere (1 Cor. 7:1–4). Today all of this is contested because people believe that they belong only to themselves. They think their bodies are inviolable and impregnable things, bound to other people only by a thin cord of consent. But if this is so, then our unions are only as strong as our will.

Salvation depends upon something stronger than a human will, because no human will, no matter how strong, can raise the dead. The Christian hope is not based on consent, but on belonging to God. Our bodies belong to Him. We are not our own.

-C.R. Wiley