Wednesday 4 March 2015

God's Rules For The Man In Marriage.

I ended yesterday's post with a promise to discuss the rules for the man in marriage. For the fact that the man is the head of the home it should be expected that he carries a bigger responsibility in the home. He is the head of the home, and within the head resides the brain and biologically all the nerves in the body are connected to the brain. For the hands to move, and the mouth to talk, and the eyes to blink, there are communications and connections with the brain. All the emotions felt by the body originates in the brain and so when the man is refereed to as the head then he carries a lot of weight on himself. He is automatically responsible for the whole body.

Ephesians 5:22-31
Wives, submit to your husbands as 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 Saviour. 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 his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, 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.  

1 Peter 3:1-4, 7
Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewellery and fine cloths. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentile and quiet spirit, which is of greater worth in God's sight. 

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

Bearing in mind the fact that the man is the head of the home as ordained by God, the next thing is to know what God's rules are to the man in marriage, the husband to the wife. From the passage above, God has asked the husbands to LOVE their wives as Christ loved the church. There are many ways a man can love a woman, but when it comes to the love of a man to his wife, his life should be in the pattern in which Christ loved the church.
So the next thing to know is "How does Christ love the church?" If a man is able to understand the love between Christ and the church, it will not be difficult to know and understand what God requires of him to his wife. From my understanding of this love, it is such a deep love that it took Christ dying for. He loved the church to the point of offering Himself up as an atonement sacrifice for the sins of the church. He didn't just die for the church, He is the advocate of the church before God. He is pleading the case of the church till date before God. The is the pacesetter for the church, teaching her the acceptable way of living through His own life and washing her continually with the word, cleansing her and making her blemish free not for any other lover, but for Himself.
Christ as a lover of the church is a shield of protection over the church. He is the provider for the needs and wants of the church. For as long as the church prays and cries to Him, He is there to meet their needs. He is the comforter of the church, and He delivers her from all her troubles. And I can go on and on about the love of Christ for the church. It is a deep love in which the depth reaches deep into the earth and the length extends to the heaven. And this is the kind of love the Lord has asked the man to give to his wife. The deep sacrificial unconditional love, just as Christ loves the church.
It is interesting to seek God and know why He demands that a man loves his wife with a deep sacrificial and unconditional love in the pattern in which Christ loves the church. Proverbs 18:22 says "He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favour from the Lord." From this passage, it will not be wrong to say that your wife whom the Lord has given to the man (Proverbs 19:14b but a prudent wife is from the Lord) is favour in human skin, she is favour personified. So if a man seeks favour and is looking up to God for favour and you look into the eyes of your prudent wife, she is the human container in which the Lord has packaged all the favour you are seeking for from Him. So it is not a mystery that God said through Paul and Peter that you should love your wife deeply. You need to love and appreciate God's favour in your life in the person of your wife.
Let's take a simple illustration to better understand what God is requiring of a man. Assuming a man has been given as assignment to do, and given a single multipurpose tool to carry out the gigantic task. This single all purpose tool is all the man requires to carry out effectively the various assignments and tasks that he may ever come across as he journeys through life. If on receiving this tool he does not handle it with care he stands the risk of failing in all the task that will be assigned to him. The tool is one of its kind, it cannot be bought with money and does not have a replica. And lastly, it is uniquely made just for the man needing it. It's totally useless to the man next door, so it cannot be borrowed. If this man wants to succeed in his life's task, then he needs to take special care of the tool of his accomplishment.
The tool in this illustration is the wife, and the man is the husband. All that a man needs to be a success in life has been packaged in his wife, she is the container carrying God's favour for the man and so it is so very important that a man seeking success in life needs to take very good care of his wife. And so Peter said in 1 Peter 3:7 "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and heirs with you to the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers."   Again Malachi 2:13-14 reads "Another thing you do: You flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask why, 'Why?' It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant."
Here are the words of God to the man who has not learnt to love deeply, sacrificially and unconditionally the wife whom the Lord has given him. Speaking in plan terms, neglecting your wife is just like throwing away God's favour for your life and so God has asked the husbands to love their wives and treat them with respect as one who carries the favour of God for their lives.
As a man, to love your wife is obeying God's command and it is not subject to whether your wife has earned your love or not. The church has done nothing to earn the love of Christ, yet He loves us anyway. You need not wait for your wife to submit to you before loving her like God has asked you to. Your unending love in submission to the command of God with plenty of prayers will eventually bring out God's deposit for you in the life of your wife.

 

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