My ethics professor often times likes to quote the Bible. He'll do this with verses he approves of and verses he disapproves of. His favorite among the verses he disapproves of are the ones about the roles men and women play in marriage. "Men have authority over women," he'll quote as he slaps the desk with his palm. "Women should be submissive to their husbands," he'll say in a louder voice, slapping the desk again. I told him I thought he was quoting those verses in a vacuum, which causes us to put our own connotations of "authority" and "submission" in those verses instead of understanding how the Bible defines them. It's a common danger in Biblical interpretation, reading a verse all by itself without reading the rest of the paragraph or even the rest of the chapter. Sometimes one must understand the entire Bible to get a good idea of what more specific Biblical principles mean. Those verses that my professor quotes sound bad when read by themselves, but not so when we understand what the Bible means by them. Let's take a look.
The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. So we see here that Marriage is a picture pointing us to something greater. We are analogous to Christ and the church. What does the Bible mean when it says that? "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." (Ephesians 5:25-27). So we have someone to compare ourselves to when in a marriage. Act as Jesus did towards the church. How did Christ love the church? He loved her as a sacrificial servant. Christ, the head of the church, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, humbled himself to the point of washing the feat of his disciples (John 13:5). The God-Man who suffered an unjust, torturous death in order to redeem and forgive the church. This is a high calling for the man. The woman isn't the man's property that he can lord over, but is someone who is so important to him that he'd die for her and cultivate her. This is but a taste of what it means for the man to be the head.
A wife is the "helper (Genesis 2:18), but is this a lowly calling? No, not at all. Throughout the Old Testament, God Himself is called a helper (Psalm 10:14, Psalm 118:7). The Holy Spirit is also called a helper (John 14:16). Is God weaker and less important than Israel or the church? Certainly not! God is much more than we could ever be. His strength is exactly why He can be our helper. Far from being a lowly position, having the "helper" status in marriage is an area of great honor. Wives are a strength that men don't have, which is why God provided Adam with Eve after saying "it is not good that the man should be alone," (Genesis 2:18).
Sounds a bit more noble now that we look beyond those initial verses and our own connotations, right?
