Is it just me or does it seem like everyone in the world is getting engaged or married?....okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I know more than a dozen people who have recently gotten engaged and another handful that have gotten married. It's funny to think of this huge life change happening to so many people I know, when I am thinking I am nowhere near ready for this step!
Since marriage has been on my mind I decided to write one of my mid-term papers about what Paul has to say about marriage in the New Testament. I put it off as long as possible, as per usual, and once I started writing I actually learned a lot more than I was expecting. One of the things that really stood out in this paper was found in Ephesians 5:21-33
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
I chose this passage as one to focus on because I know it is often used in a negative way for women. Men will use it against their wife telling them they have to submit because it is Biblical.....Well, let's look at this for just a moment. The word that Paul uses in the original Greek for submit is hupotassomai which means something more like "give allegiance to," "tend to the needs of," "be supportive of," or "be responsive to." Not exactly the way we think of submit is it? I would venture as far to say that the word submit in our society could be tied to something you would command of a slave. NOT what God wants wives to be. Wives are not slaves to their husbands. [I'm really not a feminist, I promise]
Now that we have that part down, we can look at what the role is for a man. Paul gives more direction to the husband than the wife, as we can see with the length of the second part of the passage. We may think that the man gets a very different command (love), but actually it is very similar. The Greek word Paul uses for love is agapao, which is a self-sacrificing love not based on emotion. However, I think we can all see how this can get confusing in English because we only have one word for love and we use it to mean a myriad of different things.
"Agapao is almost identical with hupotassomai. Both involve giving up one's self-interest to serve and care for another's. Both mean being responsive to the needs of the other. And both are commended to all Christians, as well as to husbands and wives."
The first sentence of this passage is telling us to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, with no specifications for men or women, married or unmarried. (Many translations even separate this sentence from the discourse on husbands and wives). BUT before we can even take on this role of husband or wife we must be willing to submit to (give allegiance to, respect, tend to the needs of, support) one another. We all have a role to play and no one role is better than another. It breaks my heart to see or hear of women being taken advantage of in any way by their husband, but to use scripture against them? really? I feel like every couple entering marriage should seriously look at what their roles are and what it means to hupotassomai and agapao one another. To me, knowing these things reinforces the fact that marriage is not just something you do because everyone else is doing it, or because you have nothing else to do and figure why not?...it is a COMMITMENT!
