Love That Lasts (Foreword by CJ and Carolyn Mahaney) (eBook)

2: Leading with Love

THE ROLE OF THE HUSBAND

As I (Gary) walked into a massive auditorium in Montreat, North Carolina in 1974, men of all ages were already streaming in. Among them were several elderly gentlemen with the clear-eyed look of men who had lived wise and honorable Christian lives for many decades. It was fascinating to me that, of all the seminars at the conference, they had chosen this one, on marriage. You see, along with a few other guys, I was holding down the bottom end of the age-and-experience spectrum. And though I was still single and didn’t even have anyone in mind (yet), I wanted to seize any opportunity to prepare for the day when I too might say, “I do.”

What happened next is etched in my mind as if it happened yesterday. We settled into our seats, and the speaker approached the podium. Scanning the audience, a wry smile crossed his face, and he began his presentation with a sentence I have never forgotten: “When you hear how much God expects of you as a husband, you’re gonna want to quit.”

It seemed humorous at first, and we all laughed. But the more he spoke, the more humbled, captivated, and inspired I became. I was learning that in marriage God entrusts to mere men the awesome privilege and responsibility of loving, leading, nourishing, and cherishing a woman in the same way that Christ loves his church. Amazing!

Since that day I have grown to see ever more clearly, both from Scripture and experience, that understanding, embracing, and intentionally pursuing biblical roles are all crucial to building a marriage that glorifies God. We’ll take the next two chapters to explore the critical but widely misunderstood subject of roles in marriage—from the Garden of Eden to your own bedroom.

STARTING FROM SQUARE ONE

A big mistake many of us make in this area is to think of role as basically synonymous with job description—“just tell me what to do, so I can get on with it.” We want it practical and pragmatic (am I right, guys?), as if marriage could be run from a well-structured set of his and her to-do lists.

A more modern and more serious error dismisses any significant distinction between gender roles within marriage. This view denies and often despises the whole range of biblical teaching on male and female, leadership and submission, headship and helper.

Both views are way off course. As we saw in Chapter One, if you start with man rather than God, with the creature rather than the Creator, you will never arrive at a clear, accurate view of any aspect of human nature. That’s letting the world speak more loudly than the Word, and allowing personal preferences rather than biblical patterns and truth to rule our hearts.

Whenever our convictions and practices become rooted in secular culture, personal experience, pragmatism, or sinful desires—rather than in the teaching of Scripture, the inspired Word of God—confusion gradually and inevitably takes hold. How tragic that society abounds with the deeply confused and misguided people who grew up in families that went their own way (Isaiah 53:6) and did what was right in their own eyes (Deuteronomy 12:8).

In this chapter we’ll see from Scripture that God created us male and female and gave us unique and distinct roles in marriage. The emphasis here will be on the role of the husband. So, men, let’s take a look.

THE ORIGIN OF ROLES

In the significant and much-needed book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Wayne Grudem and John Piper, general editors), John Piper frames the fundamental biblical understanding of role differences between husbands and wives.

When the Bible teaches that men and women fulfill different roles in relation to each other, charging man with a unique leadership role, it bases this differentiation not on temporary cultural norms but on permanent facts of creation. . . . In the Bible, differentiated roles for men and women are never traced back to the fall of man and woman into sin. Rather, the foundation of this differentiation is traced back to the way things were in Eden before sin warped our relationships. Differentiated roles were corrupted, not created, by the fall. They were created by God.3

Let me rephrase the main point of this quote, for emphasis. The idea of roles in marriage did not originate with Ozzie and Harriet or any other 1950s sitcom. It is not the archaic plan of domineering men to subjugate women. Roles are not an unfortunate by-product of God’s Plan B, implemented as an emergency measure after sin entered the world. Rather, the essential nature of roles in marriage was established before sin.

Roles, it turns out, are a reflection of God’s best, not a response to our worst! They display the wisdom of divine order and care and are designed to bring glory to God as they reflect his perfect plan for the greatest good of those he has created.

To state the case even more strongly, the concepts and roles of headship, leadership, subordination, and submission did not originate in a particular culture, period of history, or religious tradition. Defined roles and distinct functions are timeless and divine, because they are part of the order in the Godhead, the Trinity. The persons of the Godhead are one in essence and equal in nature, attributes, and perfections. They differ, however, in role.

God the Father has authority over God the Son. Jesus said, “The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing” (John 5:19). And, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). “. . . the head of Christ is God” (1 Corinthians 11:3). And in eternity “. . . the Son himself will also be subjected to him [God]” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

God the Son had the authority to send God the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples, “If I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). And, “He will not speak on his own authority. . . . He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13-14).

So headship and submission are both found in God, and one is not superior or inferior to the other. The apostle Paul speaks of divine order, in the home and in heaven, in this same way: “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Corinthians 11:3).

If God had no purpose or plan for creation, roles would not matter. But he does have a plan, both for creation and for redemption: to manifest who he is and how he relates to those he creates and saves. And the fulfillment of that plan requires men and women to live within the roles for which they were created.

Now that we know roles have their origin in God, let’s go back to the garden to look more closely at what John Piper was talking about. Here is a passage of Scripture you may have read many times. But please read it again, slowly and carefully.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone;I will make him a helper fit for him.” So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:15-25)

The first man and woman were created equally in the image of God. They both reflected God’s character, dignity, intelligence, and morality, and yet the man was given a distinct leadership role:

in being created first from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7);

in being given responsibility and authority to tend God’s creation (2:15);

in receiving the commands of God to ensure blessing (2:16-17);

in receiving a helper to fulfill God’s plan (2:18);

in giving names to what God had created, including woman (2:20; 3:20);

in leaving father and mother to hold fast to his wife (2:24). (Obviously Adam had no father and mother to leave, but his male descendants did.) The woman was given a distinct subordinate and supportive (not inferior) role:

in being created after man, not simultaneously (Genesis 2:18);

in being created from man, not from the soil as Adam was (2:22);

in being named by man (3:20);

in being the suitable helper man needed to fulfill God’s...