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Husband and Wife in the Biblical Family

Husband and wife are hallowed relationships based on God-appointed “equalities” and “differences.”  Husband and wife are not interchangeable roles; the two identities are designed to unite spouses in Christian marriage.  God declares that the husband and wife become “one flesh” to: (1) facilitate procreation; (2) signify inseparable marital union; (3) raise Godly children; and (4) proclaim “equality” in love, fidelity, justice, accountability, submission to Christ and service to one another.  “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds it and cares for it, just as Christ does the church.”   “Woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman.”  God arranged gender “differences” to strengthen the marital union through complementary spousal functions.  The wife is “the help-meet” (in Hebrew: “ezer kenegdo” also meaning “a help: fit for, counterpart, corresponding to or adequate to”) and the husband is “the head” -“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.”  And “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”  God is no chauvinist in declaring marital roles; each is meant to liberate, not enslave.  “Help-meet” and “head” are of equal importance to God, but nonetheless different.  God is characterized as “helper”: “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.” “My father’s God was my helper.” “For He shall deliver the needy when He crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.” God’s intended “headship” role for the male (husband in marriage; father in the family) is consistent across Old and New Testaments.  When Eve and Adam were hiding after eating the forbidden fruit, God called to the man (Adam, the first created), “Where are you?” - not to the couple, not to Eve.  And the Apostle Paul holds Adam responsible for the fall even though Eve was the first to sin: “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.  For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

Destroy “headship” and the biblical family is ruined.  God’s design for gender roles in marriage intends procreation and that nurturing of infants will follow “union” and acknowledges the need for male leadership in a family.  Male headship entails the husband being the last authority; and therefore, the one holding greatest responsibility before God for the material, physical, mental and spiritual welfare of the mother and children.  Proper headship reveres the wife, the children, and Christ, and requires that the man be entirely yielded to the Holy Spirit; a husband and father who fully accepts his family responsibilities, provides security, selflessly serves, and makes needed sacrifices.  The secret for successful headship is found in Christ - “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”  God designed the sexes to complement each other; not compete against one another; and headship has not been overturned by secular feminist ideology - “We [feminists] must never forget that abortion is the bottom line of birth control.  Without it, women don’t have control over their bodies, and therefore over their lives.  Without it, the competitive playing field of money, power and independence is so skewed in men’s favour that women really cannot have equal opportunity.”[1]  Headship and submission are two sides of a marital coin made from humility.  And God gives grace to the humble.  Submission by the wife requires an attitude of co-operation and support, and does not imply the male makes all the decisions, nor that the husband holds some higher-level discernment of God’s will.  In biblical marriage the husband and wife must “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The secret for successful submission is found in Christ, who did not seek to promote Himself.

 

Ge 2:18, 20-25, 3:9-13, 16-17; Ps 37:40, 118:7; Mt 20:25-28; 1Co 7:2-7, 3-5, 15:22; Gal 3:28; Eph 5:22-32; Col 3:18-21; 1Ti 2:13-14, 5:8; Heb 13:6; 1Pe 3:7.


[1] Karla Mantilla, “Abortion, power, and the morality wars,” Off Our Backs, Washington, February 1999.  An interview with co-author Diana Alstad, “Abortion and the Morality Wars: Taking the Moral Offensive.”