lifeasmission

Would Jesus Get Any E-Harmony Action?

March 28, 2006

In a class I took this past quarter, the professor was off on one of his (in)famous tangents and was talking about one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Ephesians 5:22-33. Specifically, he was drawing our attention to the last part of verse 33, “…a wife should respect her husband.” As I have always read the entirety of the passage as a description of the way husbands and wives are to be mutually submissive to one another (which it is), I simply glossed over this verse as a simple statement to that effect. But there’s quite a bit more to it than that.

Paul has spent the last 9 verses describing how the husband is supposed to act towards his wife and why he should do so. His aim is basically for husbands to love their wives self-sacrificially as Christ loved the Church. He is to love his wife as he loves his own self. What I had always failed to realize, however, was that for Paul to suggest this in the context of the first century, given its bent toward patriarchialism and the assumption that women were a second rate form of human being (this is specifically why I think Paul links his remarks with the creation account), he would have been calling for nothing short of a completely new understanding of what it meant to be a man.

Women expected men to be controlling and powerfully assertive. They were the ones in control and all the decisions were left finally in their realm of responsibility. Paul is here shaking up this whole system by asking men to imitate the humility and servanthood of Jesus. It is little wonder, then, that Paul concludes with a final word to wives – that despite the fact that their husbands will probably appear weak and inferior compared to the norms by which men were evaluated, they are nevertheless to respect them. Paul is calling for a new kind of man, men who, like Christ, will be ridiculed and scorned because they don’t act according to social customs, choosing instead to imitate Jesus in their approach to others, especially their wives.

In the weeks following this class I had conversations with several guys and girls about this and I realized, sadly, that we may not have come very far in the last two millenia. The ideal man is still held out in popular culture to be one who walks out on the edge, who is dangerous, mysterious, the object of womens attention because of his seeming distance and unattainability. This is to say nothing of the obvious infatuation with looks! I’m amazed at the number of Christian females I meet who talk about which guys “do it” for them, but whose list of top qualities seem to lack those Paul called for husbands to exemplify. Now I don’t want to speak too broadly. I am quite certain that if asked, just about ever woman I know whose heart is for God desires to be with a man with a servant heart and a spirit of humility, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there seems to be a disconnect between what many women say they want and what seems to more naturally attract them to guys.

This phenomenon, to whatever extent it pervades the church, has twin evil effects. On one hand, men fail to lead through servanthood and humility as Jesus did, opting instead for the more culturally appropriate models of manhood. Why? Because it is supposed to (and often does) attract the opposite sex. On the flip side, women are left with far too few examples of godly men who live in the pattern of Jesus to convince them that to do so is actually more attractive than any other option. Result? Bad marriages, bad families, bad child raising, bad Church, bad Christian witness, bad effect of the world. That’s not being over dramatic, it’s just how it plays out over time.

My message…

Guys, serve your heart out. Give your life away to others that they might know the love, grace, forgiveness, and mercy of our great God.

Ladies, refuse to settle for any guy whose life doesn’t exemplify the heart of Jesus. Does he have to do it perfectly? I sure as heck hope not, or we’re all (especially me) in big trouble! But ask God to touch your heart in such a way that He changes what you find attractive about the opposite sex. This is the beauty of the Holy Spirit. God does not simply ask us to will ourselves to act and think differently, He says He will come and actually change us if we invite Him. How awesome is that?!?

Church, part of our mission in the world is exemplifying the relationship between God and God’s people and marriages marked by mutual submission, self-sacrifice, and respect are a concrete example of this cosmic reality. We have to subvert the lies of our culture which tells people that the best men have 6-packs and are completely self-sufficient and that the best women wake up looking perfect and are self-sufficient in their own right.

And the only way that is going to happen is if we get serious about spurring one another on toward true, God-centered masculinity and femininity.

Posted in: Jesus, bible, church, culture, family, love