Dear friends
and readers:
The
following was composed while my series on love was being considered. So I saved it to post after the finish of
that series. The date I wrote it was
February 5, 2013, and I originally started it as a post for Facebook, but I got
a little carried away and ended up with something more appropriate to my blog. The photo was shared by its creator on Valentine's day, but I thought it a good one for this post and a good theme text even though I don't directly quote it in the essay. Enjoy:
Today the
verse in the devotional I use, it's called "Daily Heavenly Manna,"
and was first published in 1905, came from 1 Thess. 4:3. But I would like to present the verse in
context to bring home the thought the Apostle was making instead of just what
the comment in the Manna zeroed in on, which is appropriate:
"For
this is the will of God, your sanctification that you should abstain from
sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel
in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do
not know God; that no one should take advantage of his brother in this matter,
because the Lord is the avenger of all such as we also warned you and
testified. For God did not call us to
uncleanness, but holiness." (1
Thessalonians 4:3-7; NKJV)
Paul, here,
is talking about marriage and adultery.
But notice how he speaks about marriage in in terms of sanctification
and honor. In several places Paul
expands on how that should be. Probably
one of the most significant passages really explains what Paul meant as to the
relationship of the man and the wife in marriage on the sexual side, which is
what Paul was speaking to. That is from
his first letter to the Corinthians:
“Now
concerning the things of which you wrote me it is good for a man not to touch a
woman [that is to engage in immoral conduct such as fornication or adultery, as
his next statement makes clear].
Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality let each man have his own
wife and let each woman have her own husband.
Let the husband render to his the affection due her and likewise also
the wife to her husband. The wife does
not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have
authority over his own body, but his wife does.
Do not deprive on another except with consent for a time that you may
give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together agin so that Satan
does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control,” (1 Corinthians 7:1-5; NKJV)
I think this
is one often misused passage. But what
is noticeable and appropriate to the passage I’m discussing is this thought of
the way marital possession goes. Paul
clearly writes that it isn’t a one-way street and both are entitled to their
needs, not just the husband. Paul also
wrote of the matter in a different way to the Ephesians, where he emphasized relations
in marriage as a whole instead of just the sexual side. The passage is Ephesians 5:22-33 and for a
time was famous for the ruckus it caused in the media when a Baptist leader
cited verse 22 in particular and feminists took umbrage.
What they
ignored was the rest of the passage where not only is the wife told to submit
to her husband’s leadership as the Church
submits to Christ’s, but the man is to love his wife as the Christ loves the Church (Thess. 5:25). But he goes further by telling husbands that
they are also to love their wives as their own bodies, which in a sense they are under the biblical principle of
married couples being one flesh (vss. 28-29,Gen. 2:24, Matt. 19:3-6).
The point of
this came to mind when I saw a photo meme shared by a friend about a real man
continuing to treat his wife after their marriage the same way he did
before. As I’ve just outlined the same
meaning behind the meme is what God’s word teaches, but it takes the thought
further by telling the man to treat his wife as he would himself in all
matters, and telling him that he has no authority over his own body in sexual
matters, because ownership in marriage is not a one-way thing.
I am well
aware of the objection many women have to the thought of being owned by their
husbands. That is the way this world
teaches them to think. But a “real man,”
that is one who really follows God’s word, will treat the owner of his body, his wife with the entire honor
she is due. But that message goes both
ways as well.
It is often
said that one must also consider the context of the times in which a passage
was written and its audience. I’m one
who believes that is important as well.
In the times the New Testament was written men were the masters of their
families. Women weren’t much more than
chattel, or property, which weren’t much more in the arrangement than brood
mares. Abuse was common, as we often
still see in many lands today. Women had
little or no rights. So what the apostle
wrote was nothing less than radical, breathtakingly radical at that.
Yet the
apostle in not one, but several places pushed the thought that Christians were
not to be like that. Women weren’t just property;
they were fellow members of the Church,
the future rulers of the Kingdom. And
Christian men were expected to treat them so, with the same love commanded by
the Christ of his disciples just before his death on the cross (Joh. 13:34 and
which he repeated for good measure that same night at Joh. 15:12). So they were to be loved with the same love Christ
had for them, that is with love so strong that they would die for their wives
if need be.
That being
the case, why would any Christian maltreat his wife, in any aspect of their
marriage? By the same token why would a Christian
sister treat her husband badly? If we
love our spouse to the same degree that Christ loved us would we not also
extend that love to the marriage bed? Of
course we would! In that case we wouldn’t
be demanding of each other and we would also be willing to fill each other’s
needs as long as they aren’t unseemly, even if those needs aren’t convenient at
the time. In other words, we would be
giving in intimate matters to the extent we can. And that goes both ways.
The man’s
headship is in an administrative capacity as to the organization and running of
the family, not the pleasures of the
bed. So while that means we should
willingly give in the bed, it also means we would respect our spouse’s
unwillingness to engage in acts they find distasteful and that we would be considerate and try not to burden them with
our desires when we know they aren’t up to it.
Such is the way of love, love doesn’t “seek its own interests,” that is
put its wants first (1 Cor. 13:5).
Thank you
for reading my message for today, and I hope that through it you saw things in
a different way, one which will lead to success in your marriage if you are
married.