Journey to Surrender

Part 4 of “What I Believe About Marriage”

If you haven’t read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of my “What I Believe About Marriage” series, I encourage you to do so before reading this post. These definitely lay some important groundwork for the remainder of the series.

Today I’m jumping in with both feet. I fully expect some will be offended by what I have to say, though truthfully I expect that most of those who are easily offended stopped reading here long ago.

Let me state this clearly and without equivocation: I believe that God has ordained a specific order for marriage and families.

There, I said it. You still reading? I hope you’ll stay with me for the next few posts while I dig into this contentious and hotly debated topic, even if (maybe especially if) you disagree with my belief statement above.

Contrary to the way many imagine it, the martial order I speak of has rather little to do with who is the boss, who makes all the decisions, who has the power or a strict hierarchical structure.

Ordered Partnership

Though it is very difficult to describe my view of God’s ordained order for marriage in just a few words that cannot be quickly twisted and misconstrued, if I were forced to do so, I would describe it as an ordered partnership.

An ordered partnership in marriage is one in which husbands and wives have equal value and worth but differing roles. He loves, leads and serves her. She loves, honors and submits to him. Yeah I said submit. However, stay tuned for the Part 6 post to see more on what I think on the dreaded S-word. It’s probably not what you think.

Up front, however, let me be emphatically clear on this point, this is not about who is more and who is less, who is better or worse, smarter or dumber, stronger or weaker. It’s about having a God-ordained order in place in your marriage that reflects His design, as portrayed for us in the bridal paradigm picture of Jesus and the church.

The Authority Question

Now for sure, the “ordered” part does mean that I believe that God places unique authority and responsibility on husbands. However, the implications of the bridal paradigm for the authority question are vast and tend to stand in rather drastic contrast to what many understand about authority. I’ll be expounding more on what that is supposed to look like in my next post, a Man-Up Monday post aimed directly at husbands. Again, it’s probably not at all what you think, so check back, especially if you are skeptical about the concept of a husband’s authority.

What do you think of my description of the marital relationship as an ordered partnership?

Part 3 of “What I Believe About Marriage”

I started off this series (Part 1) by stating that I believe God is the creator and designer of marriage. In Part 2 I explained how I think there are some eternal, biblical principles that God has established. These are principles that we should not stray away from or weaken based on what we see or experience, but instead choose to believe that every marriage has the potential to reach the fullness of what God intends.

In both of those first two posts I made reference to the fact that the Bible often refers to Jesus as our Bridegroom and to you and me (the church) as His bride. Though there are other analogies for our spiritual relationship with God (Father/son, Cornerstone/building, etc.), none other is so powerful in its application to marriage.

This leads me to the second of my basic biblical marriage principals: God has revealed to us a template for the ideal marriage in the relationship between Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5, perhaps the Bible’s clearest and most informative passage on God’s marriage design, makes this principle rather clear:

"For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5:31-32 (NKJ)

The first part of that passage (verse 31) refers back to God’s original institution of marriage, the one between Adam and Eve. Verse 32 then ties that institution directly the bridal relationship between Christ and the church. This is what I (and others) refer to as the bridal paradigm.

It is this bridal paradigm principle that has, more than any other, affected my understanding of my own marriage. As I began to dig deeper into this notion that I am the much-loved bride of Christ, I started to see all kinds of parallel principles between my spiritual relationship with Jesus and my martial relationship with my wife. Even though I’ve been going pretty hard after this notion for several years now, I still feel I am just on the very front end of understanding what Paul calls “a great mystery.”

As I move forward with this series and begin to discuss further what I believe about marriage, you will see this notion of the bridal paradigm pop up frequently. As I said, it is one of my core beliefs about marriage.

At the outset, however, I should clarify what I see as the limitations to the marriage analogy.

• Jesus came as a man, but he was also fully God. Husbands are not gods or in any way exalted beings over wives. Period.
• Jesus alone came to give us eternal life and no one but he has the power to forgive sins. A husband cannot be the “savior” of his wife, though he may well desire to be her “hero.”
• Jesus is the perfect role model for all people, both men and women, and as such there are plenty of bridal paradigm principles that apply equally to men and women.
• The bridal analogy of Jesus and the church obviously stops short of the sexual and physical relationship between husband and wife, though there are certainly spiritual parallels that do very aptly apply.

How brilliant for God to give us a living template of how he wants marriage to work!! At least I think so. What about you?