Dear BPCWA worshipper, In past years, Family Seminars have been on bringing up godly seeds for God’s church. This year, we turned the focus back on the marriage. Godly seeds are brought up at home. Bringing up godly seeds begins with good marriages. A good marriage according to God’s design makes your marriage useful to God and positively affects the church, which is God’s house. Such a marriage also positively affects your relationship and walk with God. But God’s model of headship and submission has been inverted by the world. Who would you follow?

The foundation of a happy marriage. What is God’s blueprint to build and sustain a biblical one flesh marriage model? What is the best picture to illustrate it? Christ and His Bride of course! A “one flesh” marriage should reflect the relationship between Christ and His church. We know this from Ephesians 5:31-32 where Paul instructs, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. 32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” Throughout this chapter, the roles of the husband and the wife and the individual duties that arise from them are compared to Christ and the church. When we realise that God’s model of headship and submission is the bedrock for the one flesh marriage to thrive, the Christian couple should not baulk at God’s expectations of headship and submission, even if it seems contrary to what the world teaches and propounds.

Living out the model for a happy marriage. The husband must model Christ in his love and spiritual headship, while the wife models the church in submission and reverence. Understanding this also helps us to understand that when God commands the husband to “love your wives”, it is “as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph 5:25). However, the sacrificial love that God commands is not to indulge the wife in aspects that are not spiritually the best for her. Instead, this love aims to sanctify the wife. He must be willing to sacrifice anything to achieve that. This is to love as how Christ loves. The acts of love are so that the wife can be sanctified and cleansed (Eph 5:26). In the same manner, the wife’s submission is “to their own husbands in every thing”, not just in those things she wants to do (which by the way requires no spirit of submission).  Submission is not just about things a wife does not mind submitting to. This is because the submission is to be “as the church is subject unto Christ” (Eph 5:24). This is why I spent 2 pastorals discussing submission to God’s authorities. The husband’s authority is not just so that he gets things done his way to please himself. It is a purposeful headship, following what Christ’s headship entails and sets out to achieve. Likewise, the wife must understand that her obedience is “as unto the Lord” (Eph 5:22) and not in areas contravening God’s laws or precepts. The church’s obedience to Christ is to be complete and she cannot pick and choose what to or not to obey simply based on personal preference. This is the model for the wife towards the husband. These principles are of such foundational importance that they are repeated in other areas of the Bible such as in Colossians 3:18-19, 1 Timothy 2:11-13, and 1 Peter 3:1-8. Such a happy agreement will eliminate much of the unhappiness in marriage from arguing about whose way things should be done. Instead, God’s way is the way. This is how all disagreements in choices, preferences, and conflicts are resolved. A happy marriage begins with the husband reflecting Christ as the head in spiritual leadership, instead of passivity and laziness. It is also about the wife reflecting the church in submission and reverence (Eph 5:33) to her husband’s spiritual directions for her and the family. Unhappy marriages undoubtedly result when the husband absconds from a spiritual headship based on Christ’s rule, and the wife refuses the role God designed for her. Disobedience to the covenant of marriage which God designed will only bring His covenantal chastisement and unhappiness.

Maintaining a happy marriage. After the blissful spiritual union of Adam and Eve, they fell, and sin inevitably entered their marriage too. What wrecks the marriage is sin, in its varied forms. Sin in their marriage resulted in Adam and Eve not admitting to their personal accountability for their transgressions and blaming another instead. We see this in so many unhappy marriages today. But despite us being sinners, God put in His children the Holy Spirit that enables us to be overcomers. This overcoming begins only with facing up to ourselves when we have fallen from God’s standards and not resisting what God has clearly taught. If we have failed or when we fail in the future in any aspect of our roles and duties, there must be repentance. The foundation of headship and submission must be repaired to keep to God’s design. Without this, the house will fall. Repent, instead of just “letting the dust settle” and thereafter continue in sin. Repentance begins in the heart, and not in mere actions. Repentance will include confession to one another and God. Genuine repentance will yield genuine fruits that are not only outward in nature for others to see.  When there is true repentance, it will not be limited to putting up a show of headship/submission outside the home but with things very different when you are in the privacy of your home.

As you read this pastoral, what sentiments arise in your heart? If you continue to struggle and inherently think that headship and submission are bad and not relevant today, then you must honestly admit that you haven’t embraced God’s age-old design and model of a one flesh marriage. If you don’t think that God’s model for marriage is good, your children will see it and despise those who live according to God’s design, much less want to live it out themselves. You can deceive men and even yourself, but you cannot deceive God. Remember your covenantal vows exchanged before God, or you will eventually regret, “I wish I changed earlier”. A marriage lived any other way, however happy it may seem now, is destined to deteriorate if God’s design is not its basis and if His model is not followed. If we desire to walk as Christ walked, it must be in obedience to God’s commands. Just as any other command in the Bible, disobedience to God’s purpose is a transgression of His law. Problems in our family will not just affect our fellowship with God because of our sin, but our prayers to Him will be hindered (1Pe 3:7, Ps 66:18) and we blaspheme His Name (Ti 2:5). On the other hand, those who live out their marriage according to God’s model “have a good reward for their labour” because when it is according to His design, “two are better than one” (Ec 4:9). Return to His design for marriage. Submit to His model. Remember and believe that you are not wiser than God. God designed marriage to be very good – choose His covenantal blessings by obeying His design for marriage.   

Ps 127:1   <<A Song of degrees for Solomon.>> Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor