Teach the Young Women to be Obedient to Their Own Husbands

This is a very “new and unique” topic in this present culture! However, it is not unique to God who created male and female and established the rules of how marriage was intended to be!

First of all, notice that it says to be “obedient to their OWN husbands”. This takes us back to our earlier discussion concerning whether women should place themselves under the authority of men who are not their “own” husband in the work place. It is particularly crucial if the other man is going to be requiring time and allegiance that belongs only to your husband. I believe that this gives credence to my earlier statement that women ought to consider this before they take a job outside the home and avoid this circumstance if at all possible!

Now we get to the topic of obedience. This is a bit hard to describe as we live in a culture where these role issues are very distorted and we don’t have a good picture of what this means. Basically, God meant for the relationship between husband and wife to be one big picture, but sin entered in and everything went haywire! God meant for the husband to love his wife as Christ loves the Church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5:25). With that in mind, God gave women the responsibility to submit (obey) to the leadership of her husband (Ephesians 5: 22 and Titus 2:5). However, most husbands don’t know what it means to really love their wives as Christ loves the Church and that makes it very difficult for a wife to submit to her husband. Some husbands think that to obey means that he rules and she is his door mat. Husbands in this culture aren’t being encouraged to be the loving Spiritual leaders of their wives, so in some cases the wife must make her own way and the family submits to her. There are so many issues here, and I am not prepared to confront them all, but I do want to speak to women and I pray that God will use this lesson in your life in whatever circumstance you might find yourself.

Basically, I believe that God designed marriage and that He knows how it works best. He knows that someone must be in charge and someone must follow. He gave it to the husband to be the leader and the wife is to follow. His intention was for the husband to love his wife and lead her in a loving and gentle way and for the wife to respond with loving submission. When sin came into the world, things changed drastically and mankind has never recovered. However, God repeated His design for marriage in the New Testament and it is to be our lifelong desire and goal to obey His desires in this area. God used the example of a marriage relationship as His picture to the world of how much He loves the Church and gave His Son for the Church (Ephesians 5:25). It is therefore VERY important for us as Christians to present to the world an undistorted picture of marriage where the husband loves his wife and she lovingly submits for a lifetime.

As none of us is perfect, we must daily make course corrections in order to keep the picture pure. If we have a husband who is not fulfilling his part of the plan, we must pick up the slack and do the best we can to still respond in a Godly manner. God does not let us off the hook at that point, but He tells us to stay with our husband and do everything we can to win him for the Lord. So, if you have a Godly husband who loves you in a Christ-like way, praise the Lord and do everything you can to keep him happy and to submit to him in a loving manner. If you don’t have a husband who is loving you as Christ loved the Church, then lovingly submit to him anyway and pray for him and do everything you can do to let him see the love of God in you! Remember: You can only control your own attitude and that is your responsibility! God is at work and He will do the work that needs to be done in your husband and He may very well use you to help accomplish that, so be sure you are up to and ready for that task!

I will be away from the computer for a couple of weeks now, so I pray that you are all having a great summer! When I get back, I will start a new series as this pretty well finishes Titus 2. “Talk” to you soon!