This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 10: “Husbands and Wives: Together at the Cross”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The author writes without understanding the new birth and the new identity we have in Christ.
- The author does not understand the reality of the church being Christ’s body.
- The author misunderstands that marriage is a representation, not a metaphor, of the Head and the church.
This week’s lesson is written in the context of an organization that calls itself the “remnant church” but which, in reality, is not part of the true church at all. Adventism teaches a false gospel and appropriates the words of Scripture for itself, re-defining Scripture’s words to fit its own great controversy worldview.
Ephesians 5:22–33 can only be understood after believing that one is a sinner in need of a Savior and trusting the finished work of the Lord Jesus, then believing the literal words of this passage to mean what they say. They should not be read as a mere “metaphor” but as reality.
Understanding Ephesians 5:22–33 is helped by reading 1 Corinthians 11:3:
But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.
Paul is painting a word picture in both Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11. He intends for us to picture a literal body (as he describes even more fully in 1 Corinthians 12). We are to picture the church, men and women who have believed in the Lord Jesus and have been born again—made alive by the indwelling Holy Spirit—as literally being the physical body of which Christ is the Head.
We are literally the physical representatives of the Lord Jesus in the world—and significantly, a body can never be separated from the Head.
The head of the body is the command center of a person. The body, in fact, cannot perform any of its functions if the head or the nerves connecting the brain with the body are severed. This is the image Paul intends for us to see when we picture the body of Christ: we are permanently, eternally connected to our Head. Without Him we would be dead, unable to function or to perform the duties which were created for us to do (Eph. 2:10).
Similarly, this is the image of marriage which Paul describes. The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. We are intended to see this union as a permanent, indissoluble relationship as long as life lasts. The head—the husband—is to protect and direct the family’s navigation through life as he simultaneously submits to his own Head—Christ.
This picture is given to believers, yet we know that believers sometimes have unbelieving spouses. The body picture is much harder to embrace if one spouse is not alive in Christ, yet 1 Corinthians 7 describes how a believer is to love an unbelieving spouse.
What’s a wife to do?
Significantly, the passage in Ephesians 5 does not say a wife is to submit to her husband “as to the Lord” only if her husband loves her as Christ loves the church. In fact, in 1 Peter 3:1–7, Peter explains that wives are to be submissive to their husbands even if they husband “are disobedient to the word”. Importantly, Peter is NOT saying (nor is Paul) that wives are to submit to abuse such as physical harm, but Peter is saying that if a disobedient husband observes his wife displaying “chaste and respectful behavior”, the wives may be able to win their husbands “without a word”.
Perhaps a helpful word here is “respect”. Paul ends his marriage passage in Ephesians 5:33 with the words, “the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.” In other words, the submission to which a wife is called is closely related to “respect”.
The comparison between a wife and her husband with Christ and the church gives us perspective here. As believers, we wouldn’t be hostile to Jesus when He leads us to do things we might not naturally choose to do. We might have conversations with Him, but ultimately, if we love and honor Him, we trust Him even when we can’t see the benefit in whatever is going on around us. We trust and love Him, so we treat the Lord Jesus with respect and honor. This is the picture Paul is painting for wives: we are to trust and respect our husbands. If they make decisions with which we disagree even after we discuss a matter together, our response to him must be to respect him.
Even Sarah (to refer again to the 2 Peter passage) submitted to Abraham—and she had to leave her home country with him and even trust him when he told her to call herself his sister when they travelled to Egypt! Sarah was sent to a harem because of Abraham’s selfish request of her—but God protected her. He kept Pharaoh from hurting her, and He exposed Abraham’s lie. He rescued Sarah from that harem, and she is remembered in 2 Peter 3 as an example of a wife’s respect of her husband as well as of a wife’s trust in God.
Wives are not to submit to requests to sin; they are to submit “as to the Lord”. But a wife’s call as a believer is to honor and respect her husband and to submit to him as the Lord instructs her in His word, not arguing and clamoring or insisting on having her way, but in trust and obedience to the Lord Jesus. Ultimately, God cares for both the wife and the husband. He reveals His care and disciplines to both of them and to them as a couple.
Are men superior?
Husbands are not superior to their wives; in Christ, men and women are equal before God (Gal. 3:28). Yet God created men and women to be different from each other. Men were intended to be the head of the marriage, trusting God and protecting their wives and children with the wisdom and insight that comes from the Lord. Women were intended to be their husband’s helpers, trusting God to be able to love their husbands for God and to treat them with respect.
Men have unique strength and assignments from God that reflect their biological imprinting. Men are created to be stronger physically and more aggressive and able to fight for protection. Yet they are also expected to love and nurture their wives and children as only one with a certain authority can do.
Women are created with a different kind of strength. Women who try to be “as good as any man” will only create a caricature: neither a feminine woman nor a real man. If women attempt to function as men with men’s strengths, they will fail. Conversely, men will fail to be strong as women are created to be strong if they attempt to function with women’s strengths. God made each to be uniquely strong and to have their own “power” which He uses for His glory. For men and women to get into a power struggle means neither one reflects what they were created to be, and neither one reflects God’s intentions.
The equation of marriage with Christ and the church is intended to show us that husbands are to love their wives, and wives are to respect their husbands.
Called to what is not natural
By nature, women tend to love their families. They lead with love and attentiveness, sometimes even creating a somewhat suffocating environment if they try too hard to be sure every details of a person’s needs is provided.
Conversely, men respect by nature. They tend to be collegial, encouraging one another with affirmation for accomplishments and with respect for their opinions. Yet in Ephesians 5, Paul commands men to LOVE their wives as Christ loved the church—sacrificially and to the point of death if necessary in order to protect and nurture her—and he commands women to RESPECT their husbands.
These commands are the opposite of what men and women tend to do naturally. For a woman to respect her husband, even when she feels disapproving of his ideas, requires her to trust her Savior. She has to know that she is safe and can lean on Him as she gives her husband respect, submitting to him as to the Lord.
Similarly a husband has to trust God as he loves his wife, placing himself in an emotionally vulnerable situation to care for her and to nurture her—perhaps in ways she might not even know she needs—thus risking her criticism or argument.
Thus both husbands and wives are called to live vulnerably before the Lord, trusting Him to enable them to give their spouse what is not always “natural”.
Wives have to see themselves as the body connected to the head, as the body of Christ is connected to Jesus. They have to see that the Lord Jesus will teach them to trust their husbands as they trust Jesus Himself, not being withholding, argumentative, or emotionally punishing even while being free to express themselves to him. Husbands likewise will make decisions, with input from their wives, that will guard and nurture their wives and their families.
The Lord Jesus knew His bride—He knew all who would trust Him—before the foundation of the world. The names in the Lamb’s book of life were written there before the creation of the world (Rev. 13:8). God gave us marriage as a mirror of His eternal love and relationship with His church; it wasn’t merely a social structure designed to organize humanity. God didn’t compare His relationship with His church to marriage because marriage already existed, and He wanted to use an example from life to help us understand. It actually works the other way around; the Lord’s purposes and intentions for His bride (pictured as the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven in Revelation 21) are eternal and came before any one of us was born. Our human marriage reflects the Lord’s eternal commitment and self-sacrificing love expressed by the Lamb slain for His people from the foundation of the world.
Only the born again can understand this unity of trust and identity that comes from being born of God.
The lesson this week misses the profound identification of Jesus with those He makes alive with His own resurrection life, and it misses the fact that these commands to husbands and wives are only understood by those who have this new life in Christ.
The unregenerate are still operating under the consequences of sin as outlined in Genesis 3. Those who are born again, however, have the life of Jesus in them, and they know that in Him they can trust Him as they obey His commands to love and respect and submit as the Body submits to Christ, and as Christ loves His church. †
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